Gift fic for mazauric: Dead or Alive (3/3)
Part 2
“You know Tsai is going to be on that dock when the ship pulls into port,” Jin points out. He pulls another slice of pizza from the box laid out on the far nightstand, scooping up a stray tendril of cheese with his tongue.
Kame nods, swallows another bite. “We’re going to have to figure out how to get on board without letting him know we’re there. We should go down to the docks tomorrow morning and do some reconnaissance.”
“Sounds like a good idea. We’re also going to need to have a way to get off the damn thing. If Makino sends up a flare, it won’t take Tsai long to track us down.”
“Point,” Kame says. He leans back against the head of the bed. There’s a pack of cigarettes sitting on the nearer nightstand, and Kame reaches for them-holds them up and glances at Jin, silent request. Jin nods, still chewing. Kame opens the pack.
Normally the water would be an escape option-but if they’ve got the hard drive on them by then, that might not be a good idea. Kame’s orders are to bring it back intact, and a fifty-foot drop into the ocean would make that unlikely.
There’s no lighter on the nightstand. Kame checks his front pockets, but there’s nothing there but the room key.
“You got a light?” he asks.
Jin drops the last of the pizza slice in his mouth and rolls to his side, slipping fingers into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out a silver lighter. He tosses it up toward the head of the bed.
“Thanks,” Kame says, flicking it open and bringing it to his mouth. The nicotine tingles against his tongue-long time since he’s had one of these, especially this brand.
He glances down at the lighter again, running a thumb over the long, curly letter J engraved in the surface. It’s scuffed, scraped against coins and keys in ten years’ worth of pockets. Kame remembers when it was new.
He closes the lighter again.
Tosses it back.
Jin picks it up and holds it between his fingertips, tapping it end over end against the bedspread and watching it slide. Then he glances up at Kame again, watching him take the cigarette from his lips and exhale.
“What?” Kame says. He’s feeling twitchy underneath Jin’s gaze, and the cigarette only helps a little. It’s hard to focus on the job when Jin is there, looking at him like that. It’s hard to focus on much of anything.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with it?” Jin asks quietly. Conversationally.
“Do with what?” Kame says, flicking a bit of ash into the ashtray on the nightstand.
“The key,” Jin says. “Once we get ahold of it.”
Kame frowns a bit. “I’ll turn it over to the agency. Why, what are your plans for it? World domination?”
Jin’s eyes just stay on him, dark and steady. “I think we should destroy it.”
Kame’s eyebrows arch. That was… not what he expected. “Are you crazy?”
“No,” Jin says.
“Jin, we can’t destroy it-it’s not ours. That’s not how this works.”
“That’s how it should work,” Jin says. “That thing is fucking dangerous-nobody should have it. Not the terrorists, not the government, and certainly not the agency.”
“We’re not in a position to decide that.”
“Yes, actually,” Jin says, sitting up and leaning a bit closer. “We are.”
Kame watches him steadily. “How do you figure that?”
“We’re the ones who risk our necks for this shit, and we’re the ones whose asses are on the line when somebody slips up.” He looks fierce, serious in a way that Jin rarely is. “Just because they tell you they know what they’re doing doesn’t mean they know fuck all-and if this thing gets into the wrong hands, maybe it won’t be you, and maybe it won’t be me, but somebody like us is going to pay the price for it. That’s how this works.”
Jin is even closer now, too close, and Kame just stares at him for a moment. He’s seen Jin angry before, but he’s never seen him quite like this. Not just angry, but… bitter. Burned.
“What the hell happened to you?” he murmurs.
Jin huffs a breath. “Finally you ask.”
Kame doesn’t know what to say.
It takes him by surprise when Jin curls a hand around the back of Kame’s neck, pulls him into a firm kiss. Hard, slightly demanding, impatient. Kame’s not used to being manhandled by Jin, but he lets it slide, lets Jin take what he wants, parts his lips and lets Jin inside. He keeps his hands to his sides, doesn’t kiss back. Just waits for Jin to give up. Answer the question.
Eventually Jin stops and leans back, just far enough to catch his breath. Kame can feel it hot against his lips, and he has to resist leaning forward again.
“Don’t you get it? They took you away from me,” Jin says, shaking him slightly.
That’s it. That’s the straw. Kame leaves the cigarette butt in the ashtray and seizes Jin by the hair, kisses him fiercely, pushing, pulling, wrestling him over onto his back. Jin’s arm hits the footboard of the bed as Kame settles his hips between Jin’s thighs, grinds against him where he’s starting to get hard. Jin’s hands are in his hair again, but Kame pushes them away, pins them down above his head and kisses Jin into the mattress until he’s groaning from the weight.
“You left,” Kame growls. It scrapes his throat at the sides.
“I had to,” Jin says, and Kame can feel him where he’s getting harder. “It was me or you.”
“Fuck you,” Kame says, and he’s not even sure which way he means it.
“Yes,” Jin says, hips bucking, and maybe that’s the right way. That’s what he should do, it’s what Jin needs…
There are no condoms in the nightstand, but Kame knows he’s got supplies in his briefcase-sometimes they come in handy. He kisses Jin hard again and worms a hand down between them to grope him, making him gasp and buck.
Kame leans back just far enough. “Take your pants off,” he says, low. An order. And then he lifts away and doesn’t look back, only hears Jin’s hard huff of frustration and the clink of a belt buckle.
Kame pulls his shirt off over his head and drops it on the couch next to the briefcase, starts digging through the pockets, the smallest ones first. Finally he digs out a small black bag with a collection of condoms and a small tube inside. As he shucks off his own pants and gets himself ready, he glances over toward the bed again. Jin has shifted himself sideways at the foot, knees bent and heels on the edge of the mattress, one hand skimming over the head of his cock as he watches Kame roll on the condom. Kame has to look away again to keep his fingers steady, stop them slipping.
Once he’s done, Kame walks back over to the bedside and shifts up between Jin’s knees, hooks his arms up underneath them and presses close-not inside yet, just looming, letting Jin feel his weight. Jin tilts his hips upwards, inviting, and Kame can see the need all over him.
He reaches down between them and lines himself up, starts pushing in again. The first slide is quick, and Jin draws in a sharp breath-but he’s nodding when Kame checks in with him again, spreading his knees a little further. Kame keeps going, pushes all the way in.
He breathes a moment. Steadies his grip on Jin’s thighs, his balance against the side of the mattress, the grip of Jin around him again, tight and firm, too familiar. He pulls out again slowly and then pushes back in, harder, firmer, and Jin breathes yes, his eyes still on Kame and his hand still on his cock. A light tease, quick strokes, double-time to Kame’s thrusts. Kame watches him and pushes in harder, tries to make him shudder, make him twitch.
Some part of him wants to make Jin hurt, but the bigger part of him wants to make Jin feel. Make Jin breathe his name, beg, need, the same way Kame needs. The same way he’s always needed Jin.
Jin makes a noise of complaint when Kame brushes his hand out of the way and wraps his own around Jin’s cock instead-but he gives an approving moan when Kame just starts jerking him harder, pushing the rhythm further. Jin spreads his arms out above his head and lets him, thighs tensing around Kame’s arms, breath hitching. Harder and faster and more. Kame’s got him right where he wants him, caught between his hand and his dick, between watching and feeling, murmuring Kame’s name and pushing helplessly into his grip. Kame flicks his thumb roughly over the tip, and then he feels it ripple through him, through Jin’s thighs and hips and cock, spreading white on his stomach.
Kame doesn’t leave him time to breath through it. He adjusts his grip again and keeps going, takes, feeling the jitters of Jin’s comedown against his cock, hard and fast, not far now, and Jin just lets him have it. Soon he’s over the edge as well, emptying and shuddering, spinning towards the surface.
His knees feel weak. Everywhere is weak, drained and spent. He stares down at Jin spread out before him, and Jin looks the same. He notices Kame’s eyes lingering over the come on his stomach, on his shrinking dick, and his lips tilt upwards with a smile.
“Fuck,” Jin mumbles, eyes falling closed again, head tilted back as he catches his breath.
Kame carefully pulls out, let’s Jin’s feet sink to the floor. He tugs off the condom and puts a knot in it, drops it in the wastebasket. Jin is clumsily scooting himself further back on the bed, his muscles shot, trying to pull his knees up again to find a more comfortable position, and Kame gets this wave of… who knows, nostalgia or something, some feeling down deep, from before, and all he wants to do is fall down beside Jin and pull him in, fold their legs together and sleep, a tangled mess.
‘They took you away from me.’
He turns away. Goes into the bathroom and finds one of the hand towels, wipes the sweat from his neck, the edge of his hair. Then he wets the towel underneath the faucet and wipes himself down, brings it out to Jin and does the same for him. Efficiently, no fuss. Jin just lies still tamely, watching him-but Kame doesn’t look him in the eye. He’s not ready to face what he’ll find there, no matter what it is.
Once he’s put the towel away, he slips on one of the bathrobes from the closet, tying the belt loosely around his waist. He drops the other one on top of Jin. Then he returns to his side of the bed, settling against the headboard with a rumpled corner of the duvet pulled across his lap. He stares down at the ashtray where his cigarette butt is still smoking slightly. Presses it down with a fingertip to smother out the ember.
The mattress moves as Jin adjusts himself onto his side, still spread out across the foot of the bed. Kame glances over at him as Jin is pulling the robe across his shoulders, sitting up. He doesn’t bother tying the belt, but one trailing end pools in his lap.
Jin seems to be waiting, but Kame isn’t sure what he’s waiting for. Courage, maybe. Sense.
“There was someone on the inside,” Jin says, quietly.
Kame watches him, but doesn’t say anything.
“They weren’t sure who it was-the guy had covered his tracks really carefully. He must have been in there for months, maybe years. We only found out because of that time in Osaka, when those guys double-teamed us. Remember?”
Kame remembers. They’d been lucky to get out of that warehouse alive.
“They said that was bad intelligence,” Kame says.
Jin shakes his head gravely. “Someone was feeding them information. They knew we were coming.”
Kame narrows eyes at him. It could be a lie. It should be a lie-if Jin had tried to sell him a wild story like this last night, he wouldn’t have believed it for a second. Months? Years, without anybody knowing?
“Why wouldn’t I have been told?” Kame asks.
Jin’s eyes shadow slightly. “Because they wanted to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“The mole had low-level clearance,” Jin says. “No faces or names, just tactical information-but he had info on the two of us, had figured out like eighty percent of our secure codes, and was really close to cracking the personnel files. They needed someone to go after him, and it had to be one of us. They needed a sacrifice.”
Kame swallows. “And they chose you.”
A bitter smile pulls at Jin’s lips. “What else is new?”
Kame tries not to feel it. Not to feel relieved, just buy into this lock stock and barrel because it’s what he’d rather believe. That it was someone else’s fault, someone else who tore his life apart. Not the one who’d been his partner.
But god, he wants to believe.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kame says.
Jin looks down at the mattress between them. “Because it was a suicide mission,” he says. “They had to leak my name to the informant to get him to expose himself.”
Everything sinks. For a moment, Kame can’t breathe.
“After that, I had to take him down before he passed on the information or I would have a target on my back from every direction. And even if I succeeded, I could never go back. I’d get a pension, a foreign passport, and a strong recommendation that I never set foot on Japanese soil again. Happy retirement.”
“You still should have told me,” Kame says. But the words come out thin, scratchy.
“I thought it would be better this way,” Jin says. “If you believed whatever story they fed you, maybe that would be easier than knowing I was gone and didn’t want to be.”
“I don’t care what’s fucking easy,” Kame snaps. “You should have told me the truth.”
Jin looks up at him again, a little surprised. It’s only then that Kame realizes what he’s said.
The truth.
“I’m sorry,” Jin murmurs, his eyes softening. “I wanted to. I really did.”
Kame pushes back the covers and crawls down to the foot of the bed until he’s kneeling over Jin. He digs his fingers into Jin’s hair and pulls his face upwards, pulls him forward, kissing him firmly on the mouth. Punishingly, and then a bit more softly. Slowly.
He leans back again. Not far.
“Don’t ever lie to me again,” Kame says.
Jin looks him in the eyes, his fingertips curling in the fabric at his sides. “I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”
~ $ ~ $ ~ $ ~
The air is crisp and cool coming off the harbor, carrying the clang of chains and moorings onto the docks. Kame turns out the collar of the stolen uniform shirt-the nondescript beige jumpsuit of a crewman-and moves away from the storage room door. He hears Jin close the door behind them and follow him along the edge of the dock building toward the moorings.
When he reaches the corner, Kame peeks out around the edge, carefully. The passenger ramp is on the far end of the dock, hidden from view by a tall stack of shipping containers that are in the process of being unloaded from the ship. At the near end is a wide stretch of dock where a row of large trucks are lined up, waiting for their cargo. At each of the moorings are a couple of gangplanks to allow the dock crew to enter and leave the ship during the unloading process. There are men in uniform running back and forth, operating the cranes and helping to affix containers to the waiting vehicles.
No one takes notice of the pair of them as they step out from behind the building and join the fray. Kame tilts his hard hat lower against the sun and starts up one of the gangplanks, passing under the shadows of the cranes, and another slowly lowering shipping container.
Once they’re on deck, it’s easy to remain inconspicuous. Jin taps Kame on the shoulder and motions away from the wide container bed towards a set of metal stairs marked by yellow and black caution tape, leading down into the belly of the ship. They take stairs down three floors, descending away from the noise of the deck and into the quiet hum of the engines.
“Which way?” Jin murmurs, as they land on the passenger deck. They don’t have any way of knowing what cabin Makino might have been staying in. The passenger complement didn’t list him at all, but that’s not surprising.
Kame glances up and down the corridor. “You take the right, I’ll take the left. If you don’t find him, circle back here in fifteen,” he says.
Jin nods curtly and turns away. Kame watches him until he reaches the first door off of the corridor and carefully peers inside, then disappears from view. Then he turns to the left and begins his own search.
Most of the rooms are empty. They look like they haven’t been used or slept in at all on this journey-a single here, a double there, a twin with bunk beds and a small wooden desk. Even the small kitchen area midway down the corridor hardly looks disturbed. It’s good news if there aren’t many passengers on this trip-fewer people likely to get caught in a crossfire-but it’s a little disconcerting to see so little evidence of anyone having been here at all.
They haven’t seen Tsai yet either. He’d presumably be waiting at the passenger exit by now-but they can’t get near him, so they have no way of knowing that for sure. What if Koki’s information was wrong?
A little further on down the corridor, there’s a door marked Crew Only. Kame tests the handle-it’s not locked.
He slowly turns it, and pushes the door open. Everything inside is dim, lit at odd angles by a series of sallow green neon lights running along the walls. The room is larger than the others, at least three times as long as one of the cabins, and as far as he can tell it runs the width of the ship. In the middle of the room are a tangle of whitewashed pipes and cranks and exhaust vents, running floor to ceiling, and up along the walls.
He lets the door close quietly behind him, stays close to the nearest cluster of pipes, and listens.
Nothing.
He takes a few steps further, peering through the maze, eyes adjusting to the safety lights. There’s a narrow corridor leading off to the right, and then another column of pipes, several feet of it, before another space.
As he sets foot out into the second gap, something barrels into him from behind.
They’ve got him by the arms, still out of sight-too strong, slightly bigger than Kame, trying to take his legs out from under him. Kame pushes back, wrestles one of his arms free just in time to catch a dark-gloved wrist with a gun in it, keep it pointed away. He slams his weight backwards, twice, three times, shoving the attacker up against the pipes. The gun goes off on the second impact, rings out against metal, and a plume of steam spews out above them, clouding the air.
Kame uses the distraction to twist around and thrust upwards with a palm, knocking the attacker back-but the gun slips through Kame’s fingers, and soon they’re standing four feet apart, Kame and the man in dark, each pointing a gun at the other’s face.
“Give me the key,” Kame says. “We can both get out of this alive.”
The man in dark chuckles, brings a second hand up to steady the pistol. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
It was worth a try.
Kame’s finger is on the trigger when another dark shape barrels out from behind the pipes and latches onto the man in dark. Kame dives to the side as another shot rings out.
A crack.
A slump.
There’s someone standing there, someone else lying motionless on the ground, and Kame’s heart leaps into his throat. He doesn’t want to think it, raises his gun again and takes a step forward before he even has the chance.
The steam clears slightly in front of him, and… it’s Jin. Jin is standing there, just visible under the greenish lights. The man in dark is lying at his feet, his gun in Jin’s hand.
In Jin’s other hand is a small black box.
Kame breathes a sigh of relief, lowers his gun. “Are you okay?” he says, taking another step toward Jin.
But then there’s a click, and Kame stops. Suddenly Jin’s eyes are on him, gleaming green in the dim. The gun in Jin’s hand is trained on him as well.
“What?” Kame says. It’s cold, deep in his stomach. Cold, and growing colder
The truth.
He should have known better.
“Sorry,” Jin says quietly, steadily. “I had no choice.”
Another shot. Searing pain in Kame’s leg as it collapses under him, but that’s nothing compared to how he feels everywhere else.
He should be fighting it. He should be clawing back, he could take Jin out with a shot, just from here, he should… he should have fucking known better.
But Jin is gone.
~ $ ~ $ ~ $ ~
The reception area is bright and quiet, black and chrome furniture and a whole wall of windows overlooking West Shinjuku. Kame leans on the metal cane they gave him at the infirmary as he stands by the window, looking out over the city. Maybe it’s just the tint on the glass, but somehow everything seems a little gray. A little cold.
“Kitagawa-san will see you now,” the receptionist says. Kame glances over to see her holding open the door to the inner office.
He makes his way at an easy hobble, trying not to look like he’s leaning too much into the cane. The door closes quietly behind him, and it’s another few yards across carpet to the chair opposite the desk. When he sinks into the leather, Johnny looks up.
This room is also full of windows, and all the colder for it.
“How’s the leg?” Johnny asks.
“Not too bad,” Kame says, with what he hopes is an easy smile. “It’s a superficial injury.”
The bullet went straight through his calf-only broke the fibula, a few inches below the knee. Still, he’d been in no shape to manage the jump into the water after that. He’d had to hide from Tsai’s men as they searched the ship, couldn’t call for an extraction team until he was back on land. By then there was no sign of Jin anywhere-even Jin’s bag was missing from the hotel room.
Johnny nods approvingly. “Glad to hear that. Are they recommending any sort of rehabilitation regimen?”
Kame shakes his head. “Not just yet. They want to see how it heals first. If I’m able to stay on my feet a reasonable amount during recovery, rehabilitation might not be necessary.”
“That’s good,” Johnny says, nodding again. “That’s very good. We’ll have you fighting fit again in no time.”
Kame nods, smile tightening just a little. Fighting fit. All the toy soldiers, standing in a row.
“So tell me, Kamenashi,” Johnny says. Pleasantries over, now down to business. “Have you remembered anything further about the counteragent? Physical details? Anything else that might have been said during the exchange?”
Jin flashes through his mind again, dark and green in the light. His face and his eyes. His mouth. His fingers, curled around the trigger.
‘Sorry.’
“No,” Kame says. “Nothing beyond what I wrote in my report. I hit my head when I fell,” he explains. True enough. “Some of the details are a bit fuzzy.”
“Ah,” Johnny says, nodding understandingly again. “I assume your head injury has been treated as well?”
Kame nods. “Yes, of course.”
“Good. Good, I’m glad to hear that.” Johnny smiles at him again, that crinkly old man smile that Kame has known for so many years. Known and trusted.
He feels… tired.
“Well,” Johnny says, with an air of getting on with things. “I’ll let you get back to your recovery again, if there’s nothing else to report. Please do let me know if you remember any more details, or if there’s anything else you need. Anything at all.”
“Yes, sir,” Kame says.
Johnny is already shifting focus to the papers on his desk as Kame gets to his feet again. His leg twinges a bit as the soft cast resettles, and he adjusts the position of the cane to make his way out of the room.
He nods to the receptionist as he moves through the outer office. Outside in the corridor, he finds Takizawa standing there with one shoulder against the wall. He looks like he’s waiting for something.
“Can you come with me for a sec?” Takizawa asks, motioning down the hall.
Kame tenses slightly. He prefers not to go into meetings without knowing what they’re about-but Takizawa has seniority, is part of the inner circle. Kame can hardly say no.
“Of course,” he says.
Takizawa leads the way a few yards down the hallway, past a couple more offices and into one of the windowless inner conference rooms. He holds the door open for Kame, allows him to pass. Once Kame is inside, he closes it behind them.
“Do you want to sit down?” he offers, indicating Kame’s leg.
“I’m okay,” Kame says, shaking his head. “I sit a lot these days. This is better for the circulation.”
Takizawa nods, gives a little shrug. Then he faces Kame across the table, hands in his pockets.
Kame glances around the conference room, but there’s no one else here. No visible materials or recording devices. It’s just empty.
“Have you heard from him since Hong Kong?” Takizawa asks.
Kame looks back at him. Doesn’t let the surprise show as more than curiosity. “Heard from who?”
“Jin,” Takizawa says.
Kame takes that in. Lowers his brow into a puzzled frown and shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t heard from him in two years.”
It’s convincing, he knows it is-he can feel it when he’s off his game. But Takizawa doesn’t even consider buying it.
“He was with you in Hong Kong,” Takizawa continues. “In your hotel room. He helped you track down the key, and when you found it, he double-crossed you.”
What the fuck?
It’s not… there’s no pokerfacing his way out of this one. Takizawa already knows.
“How do you know that?” Kame says.
“That’s not important right now,” Takizawa says.
“The hell it isn’t,” Kame argues. “Who else knows?”
“Just me.”
“Bullshit.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” Takizawa says, simply. “That’s up to you. Why didn’t you mention him in your report?”
Kame doesn’t say anything.
“Kamenashi,” Takizawa warns. “I asked you a question.”
“I don’t know,” he says, in the end. It’s the closest he can manage to the truth.
Takizawa doesn’t look impressed. “That key is very valuable, and very dangerous. It’s still out there somewhere, and we need to know everything there is to know about who’s got it, and what they’re going to do with it. You know that. So why didn’t you put this information in your report?”
Kame looks him in the eye. It’s there, in his mind, but he hasn’t given voice to it before. Even to himself.
“Because I don’t believe it is still out there,” Kame says, quietly.
“That’s not your place to determine.”
Kame doesn’t look away. “Maybe it is.”
Takizawa just stares him down for a moment, like he’s waiting for Kame to crack, give in under the pressure. Be the good soldier.
But then a small smile curves his lips. “I thought so.”
Wait. What? Kame frowns. “You thought what?”
Takizawa doesn’t answer. Instead he pulls his hands out of his pockets and brings out a familiar small black box. He puts it on the table between them.
Kame reaches over and takes the box, popping open the metal latch. The interior is padded with foam, meant to protect the contents-but the contents themselves are a hunk of twisted metal, scratched and mangled. The remains of the hard drive.
“How did you get this?”
“Jin sent it to me,” Takizawa says.
Kame glances up in surprise. “You’re in contact with him?”
Takizawa nods slowly. “Apparently he was working on behalf of Yamada-sensei, the scientist in charge of the research,” he explains. “He and Jin had crossed paths a few years ago, before he left the agency, and kept in touch. Yamada-sensei had concerns that his work was not being put to good use by the lab board or the research council-and after the lab executives got us involved in the case, Yamada-sensei reached out to Jin directly to see if he could head off whoever we sent. Jin didn’t have any way of knowing it would be you.”
Kame swallows, tries to take that in. Strictly pro-bono, he’d said. If this is true, that would seem to check out. But still, for fuck’s sake, walking into this with no weapons or equipment when he knows he’s likely to run into an agent. Some of the others wouldn’t even have bothered turning him in-they’d have shot him on sight.
“Have you shown this to Johnny?” Kame asks, looking up again.
Takizawa nods. “Johnny knows.”
“If he knows, then why was he just interrogating me as if he didn’t know?”
Takizawa gives him a steady look. “It’s hardly the first time he’s kept you in the dark, is it?”
That puts a bitter twist in Kame’s stomach. He glances down at the hard drive again. Fucking… he was just in there with him. All the questions about his leg and his head, and not a word about this. Not a word about anything.
“He’s not after the hard drive anymore,” Takizawa says. “He just wants to know who destroyed it. And he’s pretty sure you know who it was.”
Kame looks up. “Are you going to tell him?”
Takizawa shakes his head.
“Why not?”
“Because,” Takizawa says. “There are those of us in the inner circle who feel it’s better if Johnny doesn’t know everything.”
That sounds… god. Almost mutinous.
The upper ranks have always seemed like such a monolith, everyone operating in concert, under Johnny’s direction. But if Johnny is hiding things from the lower ranks, and members of the inner circle are hiding things from Johnny himself…
It’s disturbing. Disturbing, and it shouldn’t make Kame feel relieved. The disappearing asshole doesn’t deserve that.
But, he’s relieved.
“You should know, he’s a wreck,” Takizawa says, quietly. They’re not talking about Johnny anymore. “I don’t believe he did this to hurt you. He did what he thought was right.”
Kame nods slightly, still staring down at the mangled hard drive. “I’m not sure he was wrong about that,” he admits.
“Then what are you still doing here?” Takizawa murmurs. “Go.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Isn’t it?” Takizawa says.
Kame looks up at him.
He’s always liked Takizawa-they all have. But this is… strange, everything backwards, Johnny telling him one thing and asking another, the inner circle hiding information from the people at the top. Maybe Jin was right, maybe everything is not what it seems. Neither black nor white-just several shades of gray.
He’s not sure what to believe anymore. Johnny or Takizawa, the person they told him Jin was, or the person he knew. The person who left him bleeding in the bowels of a container ship, or the one who promised he would never lie to Kame. Never again.
‘I had no choice.’
Takizawa reaches into his back pocket and takes out a U.S. Passport, sets it on the table in front of Kame. Kame picks it up and leafs through the pages-his picture is in the front, name, birthday. Born in California.
“It’s simpler than you think,” Takizawa says.
Kame lets the passport fall closed.
~ $ ~ $ ~ $ ~
It’s dark. The sun set gradually over the last few hours, and now it’s nearly pitch black-so dark Kame can’t even see his hand in front of his face.
There’s a jangle of keys in the lock, the sound of the door opening, and then, finally, there’s light. Kame keeps his seat in the chair across from the couch, in the still-dim corner of the living room. Just waits.
He hears shoes in the hallway, a coat shrugging off. The keys jangle again, and then clank in the dish on the side table. Floorboards underfoot, and Jin appears around the corner.
There’s a sharp intake of breath, a freeze, as he spots Kame sitting there. For a long moment, Jin just stares.
Kame lets him.
“Did Johnny send you?” Jin says. His voice is low. Wary.
“Nope,” Kame says. Keeps his face impassive. “This was all me.”
Jin glances subtly around at the walls, like he’s checking for signs of a break-in. Maybe cameras, some other trap. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I have contacts,” Kame says. “You didn’t cut ties with everybody when you left.”
Jin’s eyes narrow slightly, focused on Kame’s face. Trying to read him. “He told you?”
Kame nods slowly.
“How much did he tell you?”
“Pretty much everything,” Kame says. “I think.”
Jin takes that in, nodding slowly. Another breath, and it seems to come a little bit easier this time. “So… you’re not here to kill me.”
Kame huffs a breath, glances away. “Probably not,” he says, blandly.
When he looks back at Jin, a little more of the wariness has fallen away, softened. Jin can’t seem to take his eyes off Kame, but he keeps himself on the other side of the couch. Not too close.
“How’s your leg?” Jin asks, nodding towards it.
“Not bad,” he answers. “Pretty much healed by now-the aim was terrible, didn’t even graze the tibia. It’s kind of amazing, actually, because I happen to know the guy who attacked me is a pretty good shot.”
A small smile curves Jin’s lips, and he glances away. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know,” Kame says. “It’s a messy business. People get hurt.”
Jin nods slowly. “I’m sorry anyway.”
Kame pushes himself to his feet. There’s still a bit of a twinge sometimes, just skin and bone and muscle pulling themselves back into shape. But it’s nothing he can’t handle-he’s had worse.
Jin’s eyes follow him as he rounds the end of the couch. When he comes to a stop right in front of Jin and lifts a hand to brush away a strand of hair, he can see Jin’s breath quicken. See him lean into it, just a little bit. Kame takes a step closer and slides an arm around Jin’s waist gently, not quite bringing their bodies together. Jin holds still for him, lets him get close. Watching.
When his eyes fall closed, Kame tightens his grip. Catches him off balance, turns and slams him up against the wall. Traps him.
Jin is panting, caught, eyes still closed, and Kame presses up against him, lips against his ear. “You lied to me,” he murmurs.
Jin shakes his head, as much as he can with Kame’s hand in his hair. “I told you the truth the whole time. You weren’t listening.”
“Tell me something true, then,” Kame says, brushing his lips up the side of Jin’s neck. “I’ll listen this time.”
Jin’s hands are settling over his hips, pulling, trying not to pull.
“I love you,” Jin says, quietly into Kame’s hair.
Kame sighs into Jin’s neck and wraps him tighter, the brush turning to kisses. It’s the truth. He has to believe that. Nothing makes any sense without Jin.
“How long can you stay?” Jin asks.
Kame pulls back to look at him. He’s still pressed against the wall and doesn’t look interested in moving anytime soon. His eyes are warm on Kame’s face, drinking him in.
Kame untangles his hand from Jin’s hair and reaches into his back pocket-pulls out the passport. Jin stares at it for a moment, a little frown between his brows, until he realizes what it is. What it means.
Then he draws in a breath and looks Kame in the eye.
“You left?” he says quietly.
Kame nods.
Suddenly Jin’s arms go tight everywhere around him, tight enough to lift him to his toes, and they’re stumbling away from the wall. Jin is kissing him-his face, his hair, his mouth-and the couch bumps up against the back of Kame’s thighs, and all he can do is hold onto Jin and enjoy the ride.
He laughs. “Akanishi, you’re kind of busting my flow here,” he murmurs as Jin pushes aside the collar of his shirt to kiss the hollow of his shoulder.
“I don’t care,” Jin says, and Kame can hear the grin, feel the laugh against his skin. It feels raw and vulnerable, like new skin over an old wound.
Kame curls his fingers into Jin’s hair again and gently pulls him up for a kiss. It’s softer, sweeter than before. The way they used to be.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Jin murmurs against his lips.
The truth. That’s the truth too.
Kame kisses him back, breathes into his mouth, “So did I.”
Two hours later, when they’re lying together tangled in the bedsheets, Kame turns his face into Jin’s hair and kisses the back of his neck.
“So, where do we go from here?”
Jin tilts his head into the pillow slightly, exposing his neck for another kiss, or three. There’s a happy little sigh when Kame complies.
“Anywhere we want.”
“You know Tsai is going to be on that dock when the ship pulls into port,” Jin points out. He pulls another slice of pizza from the box laid out on the far nightstand, scooping up a stray tendril of cheese with his tongue.
Kame nods, swallows another bite. “We’re going to have to figure out how to get on board without letting him know we’re there. We should go down to the docks tomorrow morning and do some reconnaissance.”
“Sounds like a good idea. We’re also going to need to have a way to get off the damn thing. If Makino sends up a flare, it won’t take Tsai long to track us down.”
“Point,” Kame says. He leans back against the head of the bed. There’s a pack of cigarettes sitting on the nearer nightstand, and Kame reaches for them-holds them up and glances at Jin, silent request. Jin nods, still chewing. Kame opens the pack.
Normally the water would be an escape option-but if they’ve got the hard drive on them by then, that might not be a good idea. Kame’s orders are to bring it back intact, and a fifty-foot drop into the ocean would make that unlikely.
There’s no lighter on the nightstand. Kame checks his front pockets, but there’s nothing there but the room key.
“You got a light?” he asks.
Jin drops the last of the pizza slice in his mouth and rolls to his side, slipping fingers into the pocket of his jeans and pulling out a silver lighter. He tosses it up toward the head of the bed.
“Thanks,” Kame says, flicking it open and bringing it to his mouth. The nicotine tingles against his tongue-long time since he’s had one of these, especially this brand.
He glances down at the lighter again, running a thumb over the long, curly letter J engraved in the surface. It’s scuffed, scraped against coins and keys in ten years’ worth of pockets. Kame remembers when it was new.
He closes the lighter again.
Tosses it back.
Jin picks it up and holds it between his fingertips, tapping it end over end against the bedspread and watching it slide. Then he glances up at Kame again, watching him take the cigarette from his lips and exhale.
“What?” Kame says. He’s feeling twitchy underneath Jin’s gaze, and the cigarette only helps a little. It’s hard to focus on the job when Jin is there, looking at him like that. It’s hard to focus on much of anything.
“Have you thought about what you’re going to do with it?” Jin asks quietly. Conversationally.
“Do with what?” Kame says, flicking a bit of ash into the ashtray on the nightstand.
“The key,” Jin says. “Once we get ahold of it.”
Kame frowns a bit. “I’ll turn it over to the agency. Why, what are your plans for it? World domination?”
Jin’s eyes just stay on him, dark and steady. “I think we should destroy it.”
Kame’s eyebrows arch. That was… not what he expected. “Are you crazy?”
“No,” Jin says.
“Jin, we can’t destroy it-it’s not ours. That’s not how this works.”
“That’s how it should work,” Jin says. “That thing is fucking dangerous-nobody should have it. Not the terrorists, not the government, and certainly not the agency.”
“We’re not in a position to decide that.”
“Yes, actually,” Jin says, sitting up and leaning a bit closer. “We are.”
Kame watches him steadily. “How do you figure that?”
“We’re the ones who risk our necks for this shit, and we’re the ones whose asses are on the line when somebody slips up.” He looks fierce, serious in a way that Jin rarely is. “Just because they tell you they know what they’re doing doesn’t mean they know fuck all-and if this thing gets into the wrong hands, maybe it won’t be you, and maybe it won’t be me, but somebody like us is going to pay the price for it. That’s how this works.”
Jin is even closer now, too close, and Kame just stares at him for a moment. He’s seen Jin angry before, but he’s never seen him quite like this. Not just angry, but… bitter. Burned.
“What the hell happened to you?” he murmurs.
Jin huffs a breath. “Finally you ask.”
Kame doesn’t know what to say.
It takes him by surprise when Jin curls a hand around the back of Kame’s neck, pulls him into a firm kiss. Hard, slightly demanding, impatient. Kame’s not used to being manhandled by Jin, but he lets it slide, lets Jin take what he wants, parts his lips and lets Jin inside. He keeps his hands to his sides, doesn’t kiss back. Just waits for Jin to give up. Answer the question.
Eventually Jin stops and leans back, just far enough to catch his breath. Kame can feel it hot against his lips, and he has to resist leaning forward again.
“Don’t you get it? They took you away from me,” Jin says, shaking him slightly.
That’s it. That’s the straw. Kame leaves the cigarette butt in the ashtray and seizes Jin by the hair, kisses him fiercely, pushing, pulling, wrestling him over onto his back. Jin’s arm hits the footboard of the bed as Kame settles his hips between Jin’s thighs, grinds against him where he’s starting to get hard. Jin’s hands are in his hair again, but Kame pushes them away, pins them down above his head and kisses Jin into the mattress until he’s groaning from the weight.
“You left,” Kame growls. It scrapes his throat at the sides.
“I had to,” Jin says, and Kame can feel him where he’s getting harder. “It was me or you.”
“Fuck you,” Kame says, and he’s not even sure which way he means it.
“Yes,” Jin says, hips bucking, and maybe that’s the right way. That’s what he should do, it’s what Jin needs…
There are no condoms in the nightstand, but Kame knows he’s got supplies in his briefcase-sometimes they come in handy. He kisses Jin hard again and worms a hand down between them to grope him, making him gasp and buck.
Kame leans back just far enough. “Take your pants off,” he says, low. An order. And then he lifts away and doesn’t look back, only hears Jin’s hard huff of frustration and the clink of a belt buckle.
Kame pulls his shirt off over his head and drops it on the couch next to the briefcase, starts digging through the pockets, the smallest ones first. Finally he digs out a small black bag with a collection of condoms and a small tube inside. As he shucks off his own pants and gets himself ready, he glances over toward the bed again. Jin has shifted himself sideways at the foot, knees bent and heels on the edge of the mattress, one hand skimming over the head of his cock as he watches Kame roll on the condom. Kame has to look away again to keep his fingers steady, stop them slipping.
Once he’s done, Kame walks back over to the bedside and shifts up between Jin’s knees, hooks his arms up underneath them and presses close-not inside yet, just looming, letting Jin feel his weight. Jin tilts his hips upwards, inviting, and Kame can see the need all over him.
He reaches down between them and lines himself up, starts pushing in again. The first slide is quick, and Jin draws in a sharp breath-but he’s nodding when Kame checks in with him again, spreading his knees a little further. Kame keeps going, pushes all the way in.
He breathes a moment. Steadies his grip on Jin’s thighs, his balance against the side of the mattress, the grip of Jin around him again, tight and firm, too familiar. He pulls out again slowly and then pushes back in, harder, firmer, and Jin breathes yes, his eyes still on Kame and his hand still on his cock. A light tease, quick strokes, double-time to Kame’s thrusts. Kame watches him and pushes in harder, tries to make him shudder, make him twitch.
Some part of him wants to make Jin hurt, but the bigger part of him wants to make Jin feel. Make Jin breathe his name, beg, need, the same way Kame needs. The same way he’s always needed Jin.
Jin makes a noise of complaint when Kame brushes his hand out of the way and wraps his own around Jin’s cock instead-but he gives an approving moan when Kame just starts jerking him harder, pushing the rhythm further. Jin spreads his arms out above his head and lets him, thighs tensing around Kame’s arms, breath hitching. Harder and faster and more. Kame’s got him right where he wants him, caught between his hand and his dick, between watching and feeling, murmuring Kame’s name and pushing helplessly into his grip. Kame flicks his thumb roughly over the tip, and then he feels it ripple through him, through Jin’s thighs and hips and cock, spreading white on his stomach.
Kame doesn’t leave him time to breath through it. He adjusts his grip again and keeps going, takes, feeling the jitters of Jin’s comedown against his cock, hard and fast, not far now, and Jin just lets him have it. Soon he’s over the edge as well, emptying and shuddering, spinning towards the surface.
His knees feel weak. Everywhere is weak, drained and spent. He stares down at Jin spread out before him, and Jin looks the same. He notices Kame’s eyes lingering over the come on his stomach, on his shrinking dick, and his lips tilt upwards with a smile.
“Fuck,” Jin mumbles, eyes falling closed again, head tilted back as he catches his breath.
Kame carefully pulls out, let’s Jin’s feet sink to the floor. He tugs off the condom and puts a knot in it, drops it in the wastebasket. Jin is clumsily scooting himself further back on the bed, his muscles shot, trying to pull his knees up again to find a more comfortable position, and Kame gets this wave of… who knows, nostalgia or something, some feeling down deep, from before, and all he wants to do is fall down beside Jin and pull him in, fold their legs together and sleep, a tangled mess.
‘They took you away from me.’
He turns away. Goes into the bathroom and finds one of the hand towels, wipes the sweat from his neck, the edge of his hair. Then he wets the towel underneath the faucet and wipes himself down, brings it out to Jin and does the same for him. Efficiently, no fuss. Jin just lies still tamely, watching him-but Kame doesn’t look him in the eye. He’s not ready to face what he’ll find there, no matter what it is.
Once he’s put the towel away, he slips on one of the bathrobes from the closet, tying the belt loosely around his waist. He drops the other one on top of Jin. Then he returns to his side of the bed, settling against the headboard with a rumpled corner of the duvet pulled across his lap. He stares down at the ashtray where his cigarette butt is still smoking slightly. Presses it down with a fingertip to smother out the ember.
The mattress moves as Jin adjusts himself onto his side, still spread out across the foot of the bed. Kame glances over at him as Jin is pulling the robe across his shoulders, sitting up. He doesn’t bother tying the belt, but one trailing end pools in his lap.
Jin seems to be waiting, but Kame isn’t sure what he’s waiting for. Courage, maybe. Sense.
“There was someone on the inside,” Jin says, quietly.
Kame watches him, but doesn’t say anything.
“They weren’t sure who it was-the guy had covered his tracks really carefully. He must have been in there for months, maybe years. We only found out because of that time in Osaka, when those guys double-teamed us. Remember?”
Kame remembers. They’d been lucky to get out of that warehouse alive.
“They said that was bad intelligence,” Kame says.
Jin shakes his head gravely. “Someone was feeding them information. They knew we were coming.”
Kame narrows eyes at him. It could be a lie. It should be a lie-if Jin had tried to sell him a wild story like this last night, he wouldn’t have believed it for a second. Months? Years, without anybody knowing?
“Why wouldn’t I have been told?” Kame asks.
Jin’s eyes shadow slightly. “Because they wanted to protect you.”
“Protect me from what?”
“The mole had low-level clearance,” Jin says. “No faces or names, just tactical information-but he had info on the two of us, had figured out like eighty percent of our secure codes, and was really close to cracking the personnel files. They needed someone to go after him, and it had to be one of us. They needed a sacrifice.”
Kame swallows. “And they chose you.”
A bitter smile pulls at Jin’s lips. “What else is new?”
Kame tries not to feel it. Not to feel relieved, just buy into this lock stock and barrel because it’s what he’d rather believe. That it was someone else’s fault, someone else who tore his life apart. Not the one who’d been his partner.
But god, he wants to believe.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Kame says.
Jin looks down at the mattress between them. “Because it was a suicide mission,” he says. “They had to leak my name to the informant to get him to expose himself.”
Everything sinks. For a moment, Kame can’t breathe.
“After that, I had to take him down before he passed on the information or I would have a target on my back from every direction. And even if I succeeded, I could never go back. I’d get a pension, a foreign passport, and a strong recommendation that I never set foot on Japanese soil again. Happy retirement.”
“You still should have told me,” Kame says. But the words come out thin, scratchy.
“I thought it would be better this way,” Jin says. “If you believed whatever story they fed you, maybe that would be easier than knowing I was gone and didn’t want to be.”
“I don’t care what’s fucking easy,” Kame snaps. “You should have told me the truth.”
Jin looks up at him again, a little surprised. It’s only then that Kame realizes what he’s said.
The truth.
“I’m sorry,” Jin murmurs, his eyes softening. “I wanted to. I really did.”
Kame pushes back the covers and crawls down to the foot of the bed until he’s kneeling over Jin. He digs his fingers into Jin’s hair and pulls his face upwards, pulls him forward, kissing him firmly on the mouth. Punishingly, and then a bit more softly. Slowly.
He leans back again. Not far.
“Don’t ever lie to me again,” Kame says.
Jin looks him in the eyes, his fingertips curling in the fabric at his sides. “I won’t,” he says. “I promise.”
~ $ ~ $ ~ $ ~
The air is crisp and cool coming off the harbor, carrying the clang of chains and moorings onto the docks. Kame turns out the collar of the stolen uniform shirt-the nondescript beige jumpsuit of a crewman-and moves away from the storage room door. He hears Jin close the door behind them and follow him along the edge of the dock building toward the moorings.
When he reaches the corner, Kame peeks out around the edge, carefully. The passenger ramp is on the far end of the dock, hidden from view by a tall stack of shipping containers that are in the process of being unloaded from the ship. At the near end is a wide stretch of dock where a row of large trucks are lined up, waiting for their cargo. At each of the moorings are a couple of gangplanks to allow the dock crew to enter and leave the ship during the unloading process. There are men in uniform running back and forth, operating the cranes and helping to affix containers to the waiting vehicles.
No one takes notice of the pair of them as they step out from behind the building and join the fray. Kame tilts his hard hat lower against the sun and starts up one of the gangplanks, passing under the shadows of the cranes, and another slowly lowering shipping container.
Once they’re on deck, it’s easy to remain inconspicuous. Jin taps Kame on the shoulder and motions away from the wide container bed towards a set of metal stairs marked by yellow and black caution tape, leading down into the belly of the ship. They take stairs down three floors, descending away from the noise of the deck and into the quiet hum of the engines.
“Which way?” Jin murmurs, as they land on the passenger deck. They don’t have any way of knowing what cabin Makino might have been staying in. The passenger complement didn’t list him at all, but that’s not surprising.
Kame glances up and down the corridor. “You take the right, I’ll take the left. If you don’t find him, circle back here in fifteen,” he says.
Jin nods curtly and turns away. Kame watches him until he reaches the first door off of the corridor and carefully peers inside, then disappears from view. Then he turns to the left and begins his own search.
Most of the rooms are empty. They look like they haven’t been used or slept in at all on this journey-a single here, a double there, a twin with bunk beds and a small wooden desk. Even the small kitchen area midway down the corridor hardly looks disturbed. It’s good news if there aren’t many passengers on this trip-fewer people likely to get caught in a crossfire-but it’s a little disconcerting to see so little evidence of anyone having been here at all.
They haven’t seen Tsai yet either. He’d presumably be waiting at the passenger exit by now-but they can’t get near him, so they have no way of knowing that for sure. What if Koki’s information was wrong?
A little further on down the corridor, there’s a door marked Crew Only. Kame tests the handle-it’s not locked.
He slowly turns it, and pushes the door open. Everything inside is dim, lit at odd angles by a series of sallow green neon lights running along the walls. The room is larger than the others, at least three times as long as one of the cabins, and as far as he can tell it runs the width of the ship. In the middle of the room are a tangle of whitewashed pipes and cranks and exhaust vents, running floor to ceiling, and up along the walls.
He lets the door close quietly behind him, stays close to the nearest cluster of pipes, and listens.
Nothing.
He takes a few steps further, peering through the maze, eyes adjusting to the safety lights. There’s a narrow corridor leading off to the right, and then another column of pipes, several feet of it, before another space.
As he sets foot out into the second gap, something barrels into him from behind.
They’ve got him by the arms, still out of sight-too strong, slightly bigger than Kame, trying to take his legs out from under him. Kame pushes back, wrestles one of his arms free just in time to catch a dark-gloved wrist with a gun in it, keep it pointed away. He slams his weight backwards, twice, three times, shoving the attacker up against the pipes. The gun goes off on the second impact, rings out against metal, and a plume of steam spews out above them, clouding the air.
Kame uses the distraction to twist around and thrust upwards with a palm, knocking the attacker back-but the gun slips through Kame’s fingers, and soon they’re standing four feet apart, Kame and the man in dark, each pointing a gun at the other’s face.
“Give me the key,” Kame says. “We can both get out of this alive.”
The man in dark chuckles, brings a second hand up to steady the pistol. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
It was worth a try.
Kame’s finger is on the trigger when another dark shape barrels out from behind the pipes and latches onto the man in dark. Kame dives to the side as another shot rings out.
A crack.
A slump.
There’s someone standing there, someone else lying motionless on the ground, and Kame’s heart leaps into his throat. He doesn’t want to think it, raises his gun again and takes a step forward before he even has the chance.
The steam clears slightly in front of him, and… it’s Jin. Jin is standing there, just visible under the greenish lights. The man in dark is lying at his feet, his gun in Jin’s hand.
In Jin’s other hand is a small black box.
Kame breathes a sigh of relief, lowers his gun. “Are you okay?” he says, taking another step toward Jin.
But then there’s a click, and Kame stops. Suddenly Jin’s eyes are on him, gleaming green in the dim. The gun in Jin’s hand is trained on him as well.
“What?” Kame says. It’s cold, deep in his stomach. Cold, and growing colder
The truth.
He should have known better.
“Sorry,” Jin says quietly, steadily. “I had no choice.”
Another shot. Searing pain in Kame’s leg as it collapses under him, but that’s nothing compared to how he feels everywhere else.
He should be fighting it. He should be clawing back, he could take Jin out with a shot, just from here, he should… he should have fucking known better.
But Jin is gone.
~ $ ~ $ ~ $ ~
The reception area is bright and quiet, black and chrome furniture and a whole wall of windows overlooking West Shinjuku. Kame leans on the metal cane they gave him at the infirmary as he stands by the window, looking out over the city. Maybe it’s just the tint on the glass, but somehow everything seems a little gray. A little cold.
“Kitagawa-san will see you now,” the receptionist says. Kame glances over to see her holding open the door to the inner office.
He makes his way at an easy hobble, trying not to look like he’s leaning too much into the cane. The door closes quietly behind him, and it’s another few yards across carpet to the chair opposite the desk. When he sinks into the leather, Johnny looks up.
This room is also full of windows, and all the colder for it.
“How’s the leg?” Johnny asks.
“Not too bad,” Kame says, with what he hopes is an easy smile. “It’s a superficial injury.”
The bullet went straight through his calf-only broke the fibula, a few inches below the knee. Still, he’d been in no shape to manage the jump into the water after that. He’d had to hide from Tsai’s men as they searched the ship, couldn’t call for an extraction team until he was back on land. By then there was no sign of Jin anywhere-even Jin’s bag was missing from the hotel room.
Johnny nods approvingly. “Glad to hear that. Are they recommending any sort of rehabilitation regimen?”
Kame shakes his head. “Not just yet. They want to see how it heals first. If I’m able to stay on my feet a reasonable amount during recovery, rehabilitation might not be necessary.”
“That’s good,” Johnny says, nodding again. “That’s very good. We’ll have you fighting fit again in no time.”
Kame nods, smile tightening just a little. Fighting fit. All the toy soldiers, standing in a row.
“So tell me, Kamenashi,” Johnny says. Pleasantries over, now down to business. “Have you remembered anything further about the counteragent? Physical details? Anything else that might have been said during the exchange?”
Jin flashes through his mind again, dark and green in the light. His face and his eyes. His mouth. His fingers, curled around the trigger.
‘Sorry.’
“No,” Kame says. “Nothing beyond what I wrote in my report. I hit my head when I fell,” he explains. True enough. “Some of the details are a bit fuzzy.”
“Ah,” Johnny says, nodding understandingly again. “I assume your head injury has been treated as well?”
Kame nods. “Yes, of course.”
“Good. Good, I’m glad to hear that.” Johnny smiles at him again, that crinkly old man smile that Kame has known for so many years. Known and trusted.
He feels… tired.
“Well,” Johnny says, with an air of getting on with things. “I’ll let you get back to your recovery again, if there’s nothing else to report. Please do let me know if you remember any more details, or if there’s anything else you need. Anything at all.”
“Yes, sir,” Kame says.
Johnny is already shifting focus to the papers on his desk as Kame gets to his feet again. His leg twinges a bit as the soft cast resettles, and he adjusts the position of the cane to make his way out of the room.
He nods to the receptionist as he moves through the outer office. Outside in the corridor, he finds Takizawa standing there with one shoulder against the wall. He looks like he’s waiting for something.
“Can you come with me for a sec?” Takizawa asks, motioning down the hall.
Kame tenses slightly. He prefers not to go into meetings without knowing what they’re about-but Takizawa has seniority, is part of the inner circle. Kame can hardly say no.
“Of course,” he says.
Takizawa leads the way a few yards down the hallway, past a couple more offices and into one of the windowless inner conference rooms. He holds the door open for Kame, allows him to pass. Once Kame is inside, he closes it behind them.
“Do you want to sit down?” he offers, indicating Kame’s leg.
“I’m okay,” Kame says, shaking his head. “I sit a lot these days. This is better for the circulation.”
Takizawa nods, gives a little shrug. Then he faces Kame across the table, hands in his pockets.
Kame glances around the conference room, but there’s no one else here. No visible materials or recording devices. It’s just empty.
“Have you heard from him since Hong Kong?” Takizawa asks.
Kame looks back at him. Doesn’t let the surprise show as more than curiosity. “Heard from who?”
“Jin,” Takizawa says.
Kame takes that in. Lowers his brow into a puzzled frown and shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I haven’t heard from him in two years.”
It’s convincing, he knows it is-he can feel it when he’s off his game. But Takizawa doesn’t even consider buying it.
“He was with you in Hong Kong,” Takizawa continues. “In your hotel room. He helped you track down the key, and when you found it, he double-crossed you.”
What the fuck?
It’s not… there’s no pokerfacing his way out of this one. Takizawa already knows.
“How do you know that?” Kame says.
“That’s not important right now,” Takizawa says.
“The hell it isn’t,” Kame argues. “Who else knows?”
“Just me.”
“Bullshit.”
“You don’t have to believe me,” Takizawa says, simply. “That’s up to you. Why didn’t you mention him in your report?”
Kame doesn’t say anything.
“Kamenashi,” Takizawa warns. “I asked you a question.”
“I don’t know,” he says, in the end. It’s the closest he can manage to the truth.
Takizawa doesn’t look impressed. “That key is very valuable, and very dangerous. It’s still out there somewhere, and we need to know everything there is to know about who’s got it, and what they’re going to do with it. You know that. So why didn’t you put this information in your report?”
Kame looks him in the eye. It’s there, in his mind, but he hasn’t given voice to it before. Even to himself.
“Because I don’t believe it is still out there,” Kame says, quietly.
“That’s not your place to determine.”
Kame doesn’t look away. “Maybe it is.”
Takizawa just stares him down for a moment, like he’s waiting for Kame to crack, give in under the pressure. Be the good soldier.
But then a small smile curves his lips. “I thought so.”
Wait. What? Kame frowns. “You thought what?”
Takizawa doesn’t answer. Instead he pulls his hands out of his pockets and brings out a familiar small black box. He puts it on the table between them.
Kame reaches over and takes the box, popping open the metal latch. The interior is padded with foam, meant to protect the contents-but the contents themselves are a hunk of twisted metal, scratched and mangled. The remains of the hard drive.
“How did you get this?”
“Jin sent it to me,” Takizawa says.
Kame glances up in surprise. “You’re in contact with him?”
Takizawa nods slowly. “Apparently he was working on behalf of Yamada-sensei, the scientist in charge of the research,” he explains. “He and Jin had crossed paths a few years ago, before he left the agency, and kept in touch. Yamada-sensei had concerns that his work was not being put to good use by the lab board or the research council-and after the lab executives got us involved in the case, Yamada-sensei reached out to Jin directly to see if he could head off whoever we sent. Jin didn’t have any way of knowing it would be you.”
Kame swallows, tries to take that in. Strictly pro-bono, he’d said. If this is true, that would seem to check out. But still, for fuck’s sake, walking into this with no weapons or equipment when he knows he’s likely to run into an agent. Some of the others wouldn’t even have bothered turning him in-they’d have shot him on sight.
“Have you shown this to Johnny?” Kame asks, looking up again.
Takizawa nods. “Johnny knows.”
“If he knows, then why was he just interrogating me as if he didn’t know?”
Takizawa gives him a steady look. “It’s hardly the first time he’s kept you in the dark, is it?”
That puts a bitter twist in Kame’s stomach. He glances down at the hard drive again. Fucking… he was just in there with him. All the questions about his leg and his head, and not a word about this. Not a word about anything.
“He’s not after the hard drive anymore,” Takizawa says. “He just wants to know who destroyed it. And he’s pretty sure you know who it was.”
Kame looks up. “Are you going to tell him?”
Takizawa shakes his head.
“Why not?”
“Because,” Takizawa says. “There are those of us in the inner circle who feel it’s better if Johnny doesn’t know everything.”
That sounds… god. Almost mutinous.
The upper ranks have always seemed like such a monolith, everyone operating in concert, under Johnny’s direction. But if Johnny is hiding things from the lower ranks, and members of the inner circle are hiding things from Johnny himself…
It’s disturbing. Disturbing, and it shouldn’t make Kame feel relieved. The disappearing asshole doesn’t deserve that.
But, he’s relieved.
“You should know, he’s a wreck,” Takizawa says, quietly. They’re not talking about Johnny anymore. “I don’t believe he did this to hurt you. He did what he thought was right.”
Kame nods slightly, still staring down at the mangled hard drive. “I’m not sure he was wrong about that,” he admits.
“Then what are you still doing here?” Takizawa murmurs. “Go.”
“It’s not as simple as that.”
“Isn’t it?” Takizawa says.
Kame looks up at him.
He’s always liked Takizawa-they all have. But this is… strange, everything backwards, Johnny telling him one thing and asking another, the inner circle hiding information from the people at the top. Maybe Jin was right, maybe everything is not what it seems. Neither black nor white-just several shades of gray.
He’s not sure what to believe anymore. Johnny or Takizawa, the person they told him Jin was, or the person he knew. The person who left him bleeding in the bowels of a container ship, or the one who promised he would never lie to Kame. Never again.
‘I had no choice.’
Takizawa reaches into his back pocket and takes out a U.S. Passport, sets it on the table in front of Kame. Kame picks it up and leafs through the pages-his picture is in the front, name, birthday. Born in California.
“It’s simpler than you think,” Takizawa says.
Kame lets the passport fall closed.
~ $ ~ $ ~ $ ~
It’s dark. The sun set gradually over the last few hours, and now it’s nearly pitch black-so dark Kame can’t even see his hand in front of his face.
There’s a jangle of keys in the lock, the sound of the door opening, and then, finally, there’s light. Kame keeps his seat in the chair across from the couch, in the still-dim corner of the living room. Just waits.
He hears shoes in the hallway, a coat shrugging off. The keys jangle again, and then clank in the dish on the side table. Floorboards underfoot, and Jin appears around the corner.
There’s a sharp intake of breath, a freeze, as he spots Kame sitting there. For a long moment, Jin just stares.
Kame lets him.
“Did Johnny send you?” Jin says. His voice is low. Wary.
“Nope,” Kame says. Keeps his face impassive. “This was all me.”
Jin glances subtly around at the walls, like he’s checking for signs of a break-in. Maybe cameras, some other trap. “How did you know where to find me?”
“I have contacts,” Kame says. “You didn’t cut ties with everybody when you left.”
Jin’s eyes narrow slightly, focused on Kame’s face. Trying to read him. “He told you?”
Kame nods slowly.
“How much did he tell you?”
“Pretty much everything,” Kame says. “I think.”
Jin takes that in, nodding slowly. Another breath, and it seems to come a little bit easier this time. “So… you’re not here to kill me.”
Kame huffs a breath, glances away. “Probably not,” he says, blandly.
When he looks back at Jin, a little more of the wariness has fallen away, softened. Jin can’t seem to take his eyes off Kame, but he keeps himself on the other side of the couch. Not too close.
“How’s your leg?” Jin asks, nodding towards it.
“Not bad,” he answers. “Pretty much healed by now-the aim was terrible, didn’t even graze the tibia. It’s kind of amazing, actually, because I happen to know the guy who attacked me is a pretty good shot.”
A small smile curves Jin’s lips, and he glances away. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”
“I know,” Kame says. “It’s a messy business. People get hurt.”
Jin nods slowly. “I’m sorry anyway.”
Kame pushes himself to his feet. There’s still a bit of a twinge sometimes, just skin and bone and muscle pulling themselves back into shape. But it’s nothing he can’t handle-he’s had worse.
Jin’s eyes follow him as he rounds the end of the couch. When he comes to a stop right in front of Jin and lifts a hand to brush away a strand of hair, he can see Jin’s breath quicken. See him lean into it, just a little bit. Kame takes a step closer and slides an arm around Jin’s waist gently, not quite bringing their bodies together. Jin holds still for him, lets him get close. Watching.
When his eyes fall closed, Kame tightens his grip. Catches him off balance, turns and slams him up against the wall. Traps him.
Jin is panting, caught, eyes still closed, and Kame presses up against him, lips against his ear. “You lied to me,” he murmurs.
Jin shakes his head, as much as he can with Kame’s hand in his hair. “I told you the truth the whole time. You weren’t listening.”
“Tell me something true, then,” Kame says, brushing his lips up the side of Jin’s neck. “I’ll listen this time.”
Jin’s hands are settling over his hips, pulling, trying not to pull.
“I love you,” Jin says, quietly into Kame’s hair.
Kame sighs into Jin’s neck and wraps him tighter, the brush turning to kisses. It’s the truth. He has to believe that. Nothing makes any sense without Jin.
“How long can you stay?” Jin asks.
Kame pulls back to look at him. He’s still pressed against the wall and doesn’t look interested in moving anytime soon. His eyes are warm on Kame’s face, drinking him in.
Kame untangles his hand from Jin’s hair and reaches into his back pocket-pulls out the passport. Jin stares at it for a moment, a little frown between his brows, until he realizes what it is. What it means.
Then he draws in a breath and looks Kame in the eye.
“You left?” he says quietly.
Kame nods.
Suddenly Jin’s arms go tight everywhere around him, tight enough to lift him to his toes, and they’re stumbling away from the wall. Jin is kissing him-his face, his hair, his mouth-and the couch bumps up against the back of Kame’s thighs, and all he can do is hold onto Jin and enjoy the ride.
He laughs. “Akanishi, you’re kind of busting my flow here,” he murmurs as Jin pushes aside the collar of his shirt to kiss the hollow of his shoulder.
“I don’t care,” Jin says, and Kame can hear the grin, feel the laugh against his skin. It feels raw and vulnerable, like new skin over an old wound.
Kame curls his fingers into Jin’s hair again and gently pulls him up for a kiss. It’s softer, sweeter than before. The way they used to be.
“I thought I’d never see you again,” Jin murmurs against his lips.
The truth. That’s the truth too.
Kame kisses him back, breathes into his mouth, “So did I.”
Two hours later, when they’re lying together tangled in the bedsheets, Kame turns his face into Jin’s hair and kisses the back of his neck.
“So, where do we go from here?”
Jin tilts his head into the pillow slightly, exposing his neck for another kiss, or three. There’s a happy little sigh when Kame complies.
“Anywhere we want.”