[FIC] american smoke. pg-13. gen. 3754 words.
Title: American Smoke
Group: KAT-TUN
Pairing/Genre: Jin-centric, gen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3754 words
Disclaimer: These boys belong to someone else.
Summary: This is a story about Jin's coping methods and their consequences.
Author's Notes: Without the help of pithetaphish, this story would be unbearably wrong. It was surprisingly easy to edit, two months later. It's not beta-read but I've tried to iron out all the mistakes myself, but I'm sure all the verb tenses are still messed up, because English is a stupid language. Also, I can't decide if this story feels unfinished or just part of something a lot bigger, but either way, expect more. Remixed for jentfic-remix by tia_junan, remixed into A View Through Smoke.
It's been more than a year since Jin got back from LA, and most of the time he has no reason to think about it. It seems like a dream, now - the people and the places and the parties just shadows in the back of his mind that sharpen into focus when he least expects it. Now that the air has cleared and the earth has settled and everything between is more comfortable now, it's almost as though it never happened, and Jin doesn't really mind it that way. America was a dream, but Japan is, was, and will always be his reality. As much as he might never have wanted it to be that way, he knows he can't deny it now.
Still, things linger. He still thinks of hamburgers and fries in English, even if he's reading a Japanese McDonald's menu. He's still word-perfect on the handful of CDs he bought when he was there. He still wants to use phrases like "chill out" and "sweet" and "awesome", even though nobody will understand him. And then, there's the smoking.
Jin hadn't smoked in nearly six months when he got to America, but he picked up the habit again at a party, which he imagines are most people's weak spot. It was the first party he'd been to in America, invited by a pretty girl who talked too fast for him to really understand, and it had been the most overwhelming thing he'd ever experienced in his life. Forget walking on stage in front of hundreds of thousands of people, forget being mobbed in the middle of grocery shopping, forget fan mail with suicide threats - this was a party where he didn't know anyone and nobody spoke his language.
The alcohol had helped. It hadn't taught him English, but it taught him not to be offended when people didn't understand what he was saying and taught him to read body language rather than words. It didn't erase everything, though. Eventually, he was outside with a group of guys who were smoking, ranking the girls at the party. Jin understood ranking, so with a drink in one hand and his "scale from one to five" on the other, he found himself a part of a group, laughing and drinking, and though he wasn't talking, he was picking everything up and it felt good. So when someone offered him a cigarette, he didn't think to explain that he'd quit because it was easier than trying not to get caught by the paparazzi; he heard himself saying 'yes'.
He'd smoked for the rest of the night, chatting and ranking and drinking with the other guys, and even though he woke up the next morning with the worst hangover and an impossible stinging in his lungs, he felt good about it. The association with drinking, smoking, and actually being able to follow a conversation was formed, and it didn't go away. He met the same guys, and different ones, outside smoking at parties, and even though there was no reason for it, Jin found it easier to speak English with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Jin would say now, of course, that there was no such association. He'd been capable enough of speaking English and holding a conversation without either alcohol or cigarettes, but not nearly as much as he liked to tell people now. The trouble lay in the fact that it was more often socially acceptable to smoke than it was to drink, so eventually Jin had started smoking even when he didn't need to speak English.
"What's that noise?"
"What noise?" Jin had called Nakamaru for no particular reason except that it was cold outside the Hollywood club and he needed someone to talk to when he was this drunk and shivering. "It's probably the club, I'm standing just outside."
"No, it's more subtle than that. Are you breathing okay? It sounds like you're exhaling all the time."
"What a stupid thing to say, Maru."
"There, you did it again! What.... Akanishi, are you smoking?"
"What! What are you talking about?" It wasn't really that Jin felt like he had to hide it, but he knew what was coming.
"Akanishi," Nakamaru said, his voice lowered to a whisper so Jin could barely hear it. "If Johnny found out you were smoking again -"
"He's not going to find out, is he, dick wad? I'm in fucking America, I can do whatever I want. Chill out."
"Akanishi," Maru said again, like he was begging, "Please stop before you come back. You know how shit you are at hiding it; if you get caught again, we'll be through."
"Maru, if the trip to America didn't ruin the band, smoking won't make a fucking difference." He hung up on Maru then, but the sentiment hit him harder than he cared to admit. Quietly, he knew it pierced that indefinable place inside him where Kame always told him lay the silently beating heart of a true idol.
He'd survived the flight back to Japan, but only barely. It was a long flight, and he had gotten used to the sting in his throat and lungs, so his body felt strange without it. Stranger than when he'd quit slowly and with patches and unread self-help books. Not to mention he'd gotten used to excusing himself for a smoke break when he was nervous, and if there was anything in the last six months that had played on his mind, it was the thought of facing everyone when he got back.
He'd stepped off the plane and the change was instant - the knowledge that here, he wasn't just that quirky exchange student who didn't know how to conjugate a verb for the life of him, he was Akanishi Jin, second most important member of super famous pop group KAT-TUN, and there were eyes and cameras on him everywhere he looked. He could feel the pressure seeping back into his skin, the weight settling back onto his shoulders and it was suffocating.
It was a cruel joke, he decided, that the first moment he had to steal away from cameras and handlers and fans was huddled in a stall in the bathrooms at Johnny's headquarters, feet tucked up onto the toilet seat lid as he smoked as quickly and as surreptitiously as he could. He felt ridiculous, but Nakamaru's words rang still in his ears. KAT-TUN mightn't have been as squeaky clean as the others, but he wasn't about to adopt the bad boy image. He was no good at it, even when he tried, and he was pretty sure that hiding in a bathroom stall didn't count as "trying".
Despite being terrible at keeping his secrets, he managed to hide it for much longer than he thought he would. In his more paranoid moments in LA, he'd always thought there'd be a big reveal: Yamapi would catch him in the bathroom of his apartment, and before he knew it, KAT-TUN found out. In his nightmares, they always confronted him together, Johnny standing mysteriously behind them all, smirking as though he'd known everything all along.
In reality though, Johnny wasn't there. It wasn't even Yamapi who found out. Not Nakamaru, despite the fact he'd been worried about it in the first place. It was Kame. Jin could have handled Yamapi, because they were basically the same person. It would have been acceptable if it was Nakamaru, because it's always easier to be shown up in front of someone as hopeless as Maru, but Kame was the last person he'd wanted to find out. Kame had been the one to convince him to quit in the first place, literally slapping him in the face with paparazzi photos and giving him a lecture on appropriate behavior (which was more convincing than it sounded), and Jin knew that he would take it personally. Another betrayal, something else to hate Jin for, and Jin couldn't stand the thought of it.
In his better nightmares, Jin fantasized that everyone else - even Johnny - found out, but he managed to convince them that Kame couldn't know. Of course, that wasn't how it happened.
It had been a little more than a month since he'd been back, and he'd cut his smoking back so that he was only smoking at his apartment. It wasn't easy, and he'd started chewing gum and the ends of pens and scarves and occasionally on his thumb to compensate, but he'd managed it. Until one day at rehearsals, he fucked up his dance steps one too many times and his resolve cracked. He grabbed his bag and stormed out, not imagining anyone would follow him. Nobody ever used to follow him in his tantrums, so there was no reason to expect anything different now.
He knows now that he should have waited to make sure nobody had followed him before desperately rummaging through his bag for his cigarettes, but he didn't. The door had barely closed behind him and he was squatting at the far corner of the roof, his eyes closed and his free arm around his knees as he took the first drag. It was an embarrassingly blissful sensation as the smoke filled his lungs, but the feeling was gone the moment he opened his eyes.
"Akanishi." Kame wasn't calling him Jin again yet, and every time Jin heard the distant name in such a familiar voice, it sent a shock of tension through his shoulders. This was worse, though.
"Oh, Kame. I was just -" Jin stumbled to his feet, holding the cigarette almost behind his back, as though there was any possibility of hiding what he had been doing. Kame was looking directly at him, the disappointment piercing straight through to Jin's heart so painfully that he had to look away.
"What do you think you're doing?" Kame's voice was still and hard, his words clipped and Jin found it hard to listen to. There was a distance between them, but Jin had thought they were making progress. Kame had been talking to him directly now, looking at him, and could be in the same room alone with him - all things that had seemed impossible in the first fortnight after Jin's return. It was unbearable to think that all of it could disappear with one transgression.
"I... I just needed to relax. Get some fresh air." Jin was mumbling, looking over Kame's shoulder so that he didn't have to look at his eyes.
"Fresh air?" Kame said blankly, and the tone made Jin wince. It wasn't really a question, but it demanded an explanation nonetheless. Jin chanced a look at Kame's features, just in case there was any expression to go along with his words. There wasn't; just the overwhelming feeling that Kame was never going to forgive him. For anything.
"Well, I -"
"Idiot," Kame said, a sigh in the back of his throat, which Jin just wanted to catch and hold onto since it was the only real reaction he had gotten so far. "What were you thinking, smoking again? Is that what you learned in America, how to chat up girls in bad English and how to blow smoke rings?"
"Hey! That's not fair. You don't even know what I did in America."
"You're right; you never told me anything."
"You never asked! You never answered my phone calls, I could only assume you didn't give a shit about what I was doing; was I meant to chase after you just to tell you something you weren't interested in?" Jin had the uncomfortable feeling that this wasn't a conversation about his smoking habits anymore, so he shook his head and looked away, taking a drag off the cigarette in some sort of defiance.
"Why did you start smoking again?" The quiet voice was back, and Jin wished they were yelling. At least he could tell what Kame felt when he was yelling.
Jin rolled his eyes irritably and blew the smoke down between the two of them. "Because I felt like it. I don't know, Kame, it just happened. Whatever."
"Are you going to quit again?"
"What does it matter? You're the prince now. People don't expect anything other than rebellious behavior from me." It was a cheap shot, but Jin had been dying to take it since he got back, sick to death of walking on eggshells.
"Then why have you been hiding it?" Jin had to admire Kame's ability to deflect, but the cold calmness in his voice made Jin want to punch him to get some sort of normal reaction.
"You know what, Kamenashi? Why don't you mind your own fucking business? What I do with my own time doesn't have anything to do with you, so back off and stop trying to tell me how to act. I'm not as perfect as you want me to be, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll remember what it is to be my friend." Jin punctuated this with a long drag off his cigarette, eyes wandering the skyline as he looked for another purposeful gesture to make. "Besides, I'm older than you."
"You idiot," Kame said through a laugh he didn't try to hide. The noise was unexpected, but the friendly push that followed it was surprising, and Jin was caught so off-guard that the cigarette fell from his fingers and was sucked away by a breeze, flung over the edge of the roof and into the city. "You really think I care if you ruin your lungs and die early from emphysema?" The back-handed casualness about his mortality couldn't be going anywhere good, and Jin peered cautiously at Kame. "It's not my business whether you smoke, of course it's not. What is my business is that you don't get caught. If you turn up in so much as one more pap rag, I swear you're finished. We're finished. KAT-TUN is finished."
Jin didn't realize his jaw was clenched so tightly until he started speaking. "I'm sick of the guilt trips, Kamenashi."
"Then stop being guilty," Kame said, the smile wiped from his face in a heartbeat. "Decide what you want, and then act like it. You don't get any points for pretending you don't care."
"This isn't about you," Jin replied, folding his arms in front of him. He knew it all looked a little petulant, but he couldn't help it. Kame was treating him like a child, so he might as well act like one. "Not everything is about you. This isn't even a problem, there's nothing bad in what I'm doing."
"So if I told Johnny, that would be okay?"
"No, don't!" Jin's reaction was instant, and he frowned when he realized how much it gave away. "Johnny doesn't need to know. I'm not smoking that much, just when I'm at home, alone. Nobody knows, and they don't need to. I'll keep it a secret if you do."
"Why did you pick it back up?" Kame shot out before Jin even finished his sentence.
"Sorry, what?"
"I'll keep it a secret if you tell me why you started smoking again. There has to be a reason, and I want it."
"What? Are you crazy? Why should I answer to you?"
"Because you want me to keep your secret. I'm happy to, but I want to know why."
Jin paused then, looking thoughtful. Though, he wasn't thinking about how to answer the question, just how devious Kame had become. It was a side of Kame that Jin had always known was lurking behind Kame's pretty smile and honest eyes, and Jin couldn't help but feel as though he'd missed a crucial part of Kame growing up. It would not be the only time he felt this, but it was the first, though it was replaced almost immediately with the realization that Kame had just blackmailed him. He frowned, then, arms still folded across his chest, and gave in gracelessly.
"It helped me talk to people. You know, cigarettes are relaxing, they calm your nerves, so I got used to smoking when I had to talk to people. It was difficult, you know? English is so hard, and the people I met sounded so different from my teachers, so I needed something to help me. I couldn't be drunk all the time, so I had to keep smoking. It sounds ridiculous, so laugh all you want, but now you have to keep my secret."
Kame was silent for a few seconds, and they felt like the longest few seconds Jin had ever endured. There was still no emotion in Kame's face - his eyes weren't telling him anything and not even his shoulders showed any tension. There were no giveaways, nothing that could hint at what he was really feeling, and Jin thought that maybe the Television Drama Academy Awards weren't such a crock of shit after all.
"I guess I do," Kame said eventually, his expression still impenetrable but just a hint warmer than it had been. These days, Jin swears he saw a smile from the corner of his mouth, but he can't really be sure.
Of course, the secret was destined not to stay a secret forever. It wasn't long before everyone else found out. With each person who found out, it became more and more difficult to keep what tenuous a grip he might have had on the secret to begin with.
In the end, it was easier when everyone knew, despite the fact he was reprimanded by every one of them. All except for Taguchi, who just shrugged and gave him the same puppy-dog smile he gave every new piece of information. Even Yamapi had a go at him in his own way, laughing far too loudly at first and then smacking him upside the head and calling him the biggest idiot to ever walk the face of the earth.
Everyone told him that the consequences would be dire, that not just his health would be ruined and his voice would go, but his career would be in pieces once Johnny found out. "You're lucky you're even in KAT-TUN still," Yamapi said to him one day over yakiniku, voice quiet so Jin knew he was serious, "but if Johnny finds out you've taken up smoking again, there's no hope."
Jin pretended he didn't care, but of course he did. He worried so much it frazzled him, distracted him and made him sloppy, and soon enough their manager found out. Jin begged and pleaded, promised everything he could think of to keep the secret, but of course Johnny found out in the end. Johnny always finds out.
It was nerve-wracking, waiting to see Johnny. Jin had been there before, spoken to Johnny before, and unlike most he'd never been scared of the man. Now, though, with everyone's cautions ringing in his ears, his fingers shook even as he clutched them between his jittering knees. His heart beat faster as his name was called, so fast he was sure it was going to pound its way out of his chest, but he kept his shoulders square and his head high as he walked into the large office and took his seat facing Johnny Kitagawa.
His worrying turned out to be for nothing. Johnny wasn't exactly praising, and Jin could see in his eyes that he wasn't about to forgive and forget, but he didn't make a fuss. In fact, the way Jin likes to tell the story, the man was downright courteous.
"He told me, 'It would be best if you could keep this to yourself, Akanishi'."
"But surely," Nakamaru said when Jin first told the story to KAT-TUN, "that just means you should quit."
"'I don't want to lose you,' he said."
"Then he must have meant you'll lose your job if you're found out," Koki countered, a suspicious look in his eye as he tried to work it out.
"Don't be jealous," Jin replied, a smirk in the corner of his mouth, "but I think he loves me. He told me, 'Akanishi, if you are found out, there'll be nothing for it. You'll have to play the bad boy.'"
"That's impossible," Ueda declared from behind crossed arms. "You tried that once before, remember? It didn't last a day."
"I didn't have any incentive then. It's not impossible. Anyway, that's how I still have a job, and don't have to give up smoking."
"Well, congratulations are in order, then, Akanishi." Taguchi tried valiantly to buoy everyone up with a grin, but nobody paid any attention. Instead, they were looking at Kame now, as though they had decided all of a sudden not to resent the fact that the youngest called the shots.
"I guess," Kame said at length, unfolding his arms and sticking his hands in his pockets with obviously fake nonchalance, "we'll all have to help you keep your secret. Otherwise we'll be short a vowel."
The distance of Kame's words might have made Jin's stomach sink any other day, but the smile that accompanied them made his heart soar, and he realized that he was grinning a little too widely when Koki spoke up. "Don't smile like everyone's forgiven you," he grunted, pushing past Jin and out into the hallway.
The mood passed, of course, and eventually everything settled back into a comfortable, friendly colleagueship. It happened out of necessity, like it had so many years before, and it got easier as time went on. They'd already learned that it was impossible to spend so much time with someone and not find parts of them you liked. After a while, everyone remembered the parts of Jin they liked, and the fact that they occasionally had to make excuses for why he smelled of smoke didn't seem to matter.
He doesn't smoke that much anymore, anyway. He doesn't eat McDonald's either, or listen to his American CDs, but neither take him back quite as easily as smoking. Smoking is a little moment of rebellion in the day, week, or month, and not only does it relax him, but it makes him feel invincible. He feels as invincible as he did when he was across the ocean and away from this reality, even if those moments might be stolen and hidden away from prying eyes and camera lenses. Three minutes of freedom might not be much, but he'll take it where he can get it.
the end
Group: KAT-TUN
Pairing/Genre: Jin-centric, gen
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 3754 words
Disclaimer: These boys belong to someone else.
Summary: This is a story about Jin's coping methods and their consequences.
Author's Notes: Without the help of pithetaphish, this story would be unbearably wrong. It was surprisingly easy to edit, two months later. It's not beta-read but I've tried to iron out all the mistakes myself, but I'm sure all the verb tenses are still messed up, because English is a stupid language. Also, I can't decide if this story feels unfinished or just part of something a lot bigger, but either way, expect more. Remixed for jentfic-remix by tia_junan, remixed into A View Through Smoke.
It's been more than a year since Jin got back from LA, and most of the time he has no reason to think about it. It seems like a dream, now - the people and the places and the parties just shadows in the back of his mind that sharpen into focus when he least expects it. Now that the air has cleared and the earth has settled and everything between is more comfortable now, it's almost as though it never happened, and Jin doesn't really mind it that way. America was a dream, but Japan is, was, and will always be his reality. As much as he might never have wanted it to be that way, he knows he can't deny it now.
Still, things linger. He still thinks of hamburgers and fries in English, even if he's reading a Japanese McDonald's menu. He's still word-perfect on the handful of CDs he bought when he was there. He still wants to use phrases like "chill out" and "sweet" and "awesome", even though nobody will understand him. And then, there's the smoking.
Jin hadn't smoked in nearly six months when he got to America, but he picked up the habit again at a party, which he imagines are most people's weak spot. It was the first party he'd been to in America, invited by a pretty girl who talked too fast for him to really understand, and it had been the most overwhelming thing he'd ever experienced in his life. Forget walking on stage in front of hundreds of thousands of people, forget being mobbed in the middle of grocery shopping, forget fan mail with suicide threats - this was a party where he didn't know anyone and nobody spoke his language.
The alcohol had helped. It hadn't taught him English, but it taught him not to be offended when people didn't understand what he was saying and taught him to read body language rather than words. It didn't erase everything, though. Eventually, he was outside with a group of guys who were smoking, ranking the girls at the party. Jin understood ranking, so with a drink in one hand and his "scale from one to five" on the other, he found himself a part of a group, laughing and drinking, and though he wasn't talking, he was picking everything up and it felt good. So when someone offered him a cigarette, he didn't think to explain that he'd quit because it was easier than trying not to get caught by the paparazzi; he heard himself saying 'yes'.
He'd smoked for the rest of the night, chatting and ranking and drinking with the other guys, and even though he woke up the next morning with the worst hangover and an impossible stinging in his lungs, he felt good about it. The association with drinking, smoking, and actually being able to follow a conversation was formed, and it didn't go away. He met the same guys, and different ones, outside smoking at parties, and even though there was no reason for it, Jin found it easier to speak English with a drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other.
Jin would say now, of course, that there was no such association. He'd been capable enough of speaking English and holding a conversation without either alcohol or cigarettes, but not nearly as much as he liked to tell people now. The trouble lay in the fact that it was more often socially acceptable to smoke than it was to drink, so eventually Jin had started smoking even when he didn't need to speak English.
"What's that noise?"
"What noise?" Jin had called Nakamaru for no particular reason except that it was cold outside the Hollywood club and he needed someone to talk to when he was this drunk and shivering. "It's probably the club, I'm standing just outside."
"No, it's more subtle than that. Are you breathing okay? It sounds like you're exhaling all the time."
"What a stupid thing to say, Maru."
"There, you did it again! What.... Akanishi, are you smoking?"
"What! What are you talking about?" It wasn't really that Jin felt like he had to hide it, but he knew what was coming.
"Akanishi," Nakamaru said, his voice lowered to a whisper so Jin could barely hear it. "If Johnny found out you were smoking again -"
"He's not going to find out, is he, dick wad? I'm in fucking America, I can do whatever I want. Chill out."
"Akanishi," Maru said again, like he was begging, "Please stop before you come back. You know how shit you are at hiding it; if you get caught again, we'll be through."
"Maru, if the trip to America didn't ruin the band, smoking won't make a fucking difference." He hung up on Maru then, but the sentiment hit him harder than he cared to admit. Quietly, he knew it pierced that indefinable place inside him where Kame always told him lay the silently beating heart of a true idol.
He'd survived the flight back to Japan, but only barely. It was a long flight, and he had gotten used to the sting in his throat and lungs, so his body felt strange without it. Stranger than when he'd quit slowly and with patches and unread self-help books. Not to mention he'd gotten used to excusing himself for a smoke break when he was nervous, and if there was anything in the last six months that had played on his mind, it was the thought of facing everyone when he got back.
He'd stepped off the plane and the change was instant - the knowledge that here, he wasn't just that quirky exchange student who didn't know how to conjugate a verb for the life of him, he was Akanishi Jin, second most important member of super famous pop group KAT-TUN, and there were eyes and cameras on him everywhere he looked. He could feel the pressure seeping back into his skin, the weight settling back onto his shoulders and it was suffocating.
It was a cruel joke, he decided, that the first moment he had to steal away from cameras and handlers and fans was huddled in a stall in the bathrooms at Johnny's headquarters, feet tucked up onto the toilet seat lid as he smoked as quickly and as surreptitiously as he could. He felt ridiculous, but Nakamaru's words rang still in his ears. KAT-TUN mightn't have been as squeaky clean as the others, but he wasn't about to adopt the bad boy image. He was no good at it, even when he tried, and he was pretty sure that hiding in a bathroom stall didn't count as "trying".
Despite being terrible at keeping his secrets, he managed to hide it for much longer than he thought he would. In his more paranoid moments in LA, he'd always thought there'd be a big reveal: Yamapi would catch him in the bathroom of his apartment, and before he knew it, KAT-TUN found out. In his nightmares, they always confronted him together, Johnny standing mysteriously behind them all, smirking as though he'd known everything all along.
In reality though, Johnny wasn't there. It wasn't even Yamapi who found out. Not Nakamaru, despite the fact he'd been worried about it in the first place. It was Kame. Jin could have handled Yamapi, because they were basically the same person. It would have been acceptable if it was Nakamaru, because it's always easier to be shown up in front of someone as hopeless as Maru, but Kame was the last person he'd wanted to find out. Kame had been the one to convince him to quit in the first place, literally slapping him in the face with paparazzi photos and giving him a lecture on appropriate behavior (which was more convincing than it sounded), and Jin knew that he would take it personally. Another betrayal, something else to hate Jin for, and Jin couldn't stand the thought of it.
In his better nightmares, Jin fantasized that everyone else - even Johnny - found out, but he managed to convince them that Kame couldn't know. Of course, that wasn't how it happened.
It had been a little more than a month since he'd been back, and he'd cut his smoking back so that he was only smoking at his apartment. It wasn't easy, and he'd started chewing gum and the ends of pens and scarves and occasionally on his thumb to compensate, but he'd managed it. Until one day at rehearsals, he fucked up his dance steps one too many times and his resolve cracked. He grabbed his bag and stormed out, not imagining anyone would follow him. Nobody ever used to follow him in his tantrums, so there was no reason to expect anything different now.
He knows now that he should have waited to make sure nobody had followed him before desperately rummaging through his bag for his cigarettes, but he didn't. The door had barely closed behind him and he was squatting at the far corner of the roof, his eyes closed and his free arm around his knees as he took the first drag. It was an embarrassingly blissful sensation as the smoke filled his lungs, but the feeling was gone the moment he opened his eyes.
"Akanishi." Kame wasn't calling him Jin again yet, and every time Jin heard the distant name in such a familiar voice, it sent a shock of tension through his shoulders. This was worse, though.
"Oh, Kame. I was just -" Jin stumbled to his feet, holding the cigarette almost behind his back, as though there was any possibility of hiding what he had been doing. Kame was looking directly at him, the disappointment piercing straight through to Jin's heart so painfully that he had to look away.
"What do you think you're doing?" Kame's voice was still and hard, his words clipped and Jin found it hard to listen to. There was a distance between them, but Jin had thought they were making progress. Kame had been talking to him directly now, looking at him, and could be in the same room alone with him - all things that had seemed impossible in the first fortnight after Jin's return. It was unbearable to think that all of it could disappear with one transgression.
"I... I just needed to relax. Get some fresh air." Jin was mumbling, looking over Kame's shoulder so that he didn't have to look at his eyes.
"Fresh air?" Kame said blankly, and the tone made Jin wince. It wasn't really a question, but it demanded an explanation nonetheless. Jin chanced a look at Kame's features, just in case there was any expression to go along with his words. There wasn't; just the overwhelming feeling that Kame was never going to forgive him. For anything.
"Well, I -"
"Idiot," Kame said, a sigh in the back of his throat, which Jin just wanted to catch and hold onto since it was the only real reaction he had gotten so far. "What were you thinking, smoking again? Is that what you learned in America, how to chat up girls in bad English and how to blow smoke rings?"
"Hey! That's not fair. You don't even know what I did in America."
"You're right; you never told me anything."
"You never asked! You never answered my phone calls, I could only assume you didn't give a shit about what I was doing; was I meant to chase after you just to tell you something you weren't interested in?" Jin had the uncomfortable feeling that this wasn't a conversation about his smoking habits anymore, so he shook his head and looked away, taking a drag off the cigarette in some sort of defiance.
"Why did you start smoking again?" The quiet voice was back, and Jin wished they were yelling. At least he could tell what Kame felt when he was yelling.
Jin rolled his eyes irritably and blew the smoke down between the two of them. "Because I felt like it. I don't know, Kame, it just happened. Whatever."
"Are you going to quit again?"
"What does it matter? You're the prince now. People don't expect anything other than rebellious behavior from me." It was a cheap shot, but Jin had been dying to take it since he got back, sick to death of walking on eggshells.
"Then why have you been hiding it?" Jin had to admire Kame's ability to deflect, but the cold calmness in his voice made Jin want to punch him to get some sort of normal reaction.
"You know what, Kamenashi? Why don't you mind your own fucking business? What I do with my own time doesn't have anything to do with you, so back off and stop trying to tell me how to act. I'm not as perfect as you want me to be, and the sooner you accept that, the sooner you'll remember what it is to be my friend." Jin punctuated this with a long drag off his cigarette, eyes wandering the skyline as he looked for another purposeful gesture to make. "Besides, I'm older than you."
"You idiot," Kame said through a laugh he didn't try to hide. The noise was unexpected, but the friendly push that followed it was surprising, and Jin was caught so off-guard that the cigarette fell from his fingers and was sucked away by a breeze, flung over the edge of the roof and into the city. "You really think I care if you ruin your lungs and die early from emphysema?" The back-handed casualness about his mortality couldn't be going anywhere good, and Jin peered cautiously at Kame. "It's not my business whether you smoke, of course it's not. What is my business is that you don't get caught. If you turn up in so much as one more pap rag, I swear you're finished. We're finished. KAT-TUN is finished."
Jin didn't realize his jaw was clenched so tightly until he started speaking. "I'm sick of the guilt trips, Kamenashi."
"Then stop being guilty," Kame said, the smile wiped from his face in a heartbeat. "Decide what you want, and then act like it. You don't get any points for pretending you don't care."
"This isn't about you," Jin replied, folding his arms in front of him. He knew it all looked a little petulant, but he couldn't help it. Kame was treating him like a child, so he might as well act like one. "Not everything is about you. This isn't even a problem, there's nothing bad in what I'm doing."
"So if I told Johnny, that would be okay?"
"No, don't!" Jin's reaction was instant, and he frowned when he realized how much it gave away. "Johnny doesn't need to know. I'm not smoking that much, just when I'm at home, alone. Nobody knows, and they don't need to. I'll keep it a secret if you do."
"Why did you pick it back up?" Kame shot out before Jin even finished his sentence.
"Sorry, what?"
"I'll keep it a secret if you tell me why you started smoking again. There has to be a reason, and I want it."
"What? Are you crazy? Why should I answer to you?"
"Because you want me to keep your secret. I'm happy to, but I want to know why."
Jin paused then, looking thoughtful. Though, he wasn't thinking about how to answer the question, just how devious Kame had become. It was a side of Kame that Jin had always known was lurking behind Kame's pretty smile and honest eyes, and Jin couldn't help but feel as though he'd missed a crucial part of Kame growing up. It would not be the only time he felt this, but it was the first, though it was replaced almost immediately with the realization that Kame had just blackmailed him. He frowned, then, arms still folded across his chest, and gave in gracelessly.
"It helped me talk to people. You know, cigarettes are relaxing, they calm your nerves, so I got used to smoking when I had to talk to people. It was difficult, you know? English is so hard, and the people I met sounded so different from my teachers, so I needed something to help me. I couldn't be drunk all the time, so I had to keep smoking. It sounds ridiculous, so laugh all you want, but now you have to keep my secret."
Kame was silent for a few seconds, and they felt like the longest few seconds Jin had ever endured. There was still no emotion in Kame's face - his eyes weren't telling him anything and not even his shoulders showed any tension. There were no giveaways, nothing that could hint at what he was really feeling, and Jin thought that maybe the Television Drama Academy Awards weren't such a crock of shit after all.
"I guess I do," Kame said eventually, his expression still impenetrable but just a hint warmer than it had been. These days, Jin swears he saw a smile from the corner of his mouth, but he can't really be sure.
Of course, the secret was destined not to stay a secret forever. It wasn't long before everyone else found out. With each person who found out, it became more and more difficult to keep what tenuous a grip he might have had on the secret to begin with.
In the end, it was easier when everyone knew, despite the fact he was reprimanded by every one of them. All except for Taguchi, who just shrugged and gave him the same puppy-dog smile he gave every new piece of information. Even Yamapi had a go at him in his own way, laughing far too loudly at first and then smacking him upside the head and calling him the biggest idiot to ever walk the face of the earth.
Everyone told him that the consequences would be dire, that not just his health would be ruined and his voice would go, but his career would be in pieces once Johnny found out. "You're lucky you're even in KAT-TUN still," Yamapi said to him one day over yakiniku, voice quiet so Jin knew he was serious, "but if Johnny finds out you've taken up smoking again, there's no hope."
Jin pretended he didn't care, but of course he did. He worried so much it frazzled him, distracted him and made him sloppy, and soon enough their manager found out. Jin begged and pleaded, promised everything he could think of to keep the secret, but of course Johnny found out in the end. Johnny always finds out.
It was nerve-wracking, waiting to see Johnny. Jin had been there before, spoken to Johnny before, and unlike most he'd never been scared of the man. Now, though, with everyone's cautions ringing in his ears, his fingers shook even as he clutched them between his jittering knees. His heart beat faster as his name was called, so fast he was sure it was going to pound its way out of his chest, but he kept his shoulders square and his head high as he walked into the large office and took his seat facing Johnny Kitagawa.
His worrying turned out to be for nothing. Johnny wasn't exactly praising, and Jin could see in his eyes that he wasn't about to forgive and forget, but he didn't make a fuss. In fact, the way Jin likes to tell the story, the man was downright courteous.
"He told me, 'It would be best if you could keep this to yourself, Akanishi'."
"But surely," Nakamaru said when Jin first told the story to KAT-TUN, "that just means you should quit."
"'I don't want to lose you,' he said."
"Then he must have meant you'll lose your job if you're found out," Koki countered, a suspicious look in his eye as he tried to work it out.
"Don't be jealous," Jin replied, a smirk in the corner of his mouth, "but I think he loves me. He told me, 'Akanishi, if you are found out, there'll be nothing for it. You'll have to play the bad boy.'"
"That's impossible," Ueda declared from behind crossed arms. "You tried that once before, remember? It didn't last a day."
"I didn't have any incentive then. It's not impossible. Anyway, that's how I still have a job, and don't have to give up smoking."
"Well, congratulations are in order, then, Akanishi." Taguchi tried valiantly to buoy everyone up with a grin, but nobody paid any attention. Instead, they were looking at Kame now, as though they had decided all of a sudden not to resent the fact that the youngest called the shots.
"I guess," Kame said at length, unfolding his arms and sticking his hands in his pockets with obviously fake nonchalance, "we'll all have to help you keep your secret. Otherwise we'll be short a vowel."
The distance of Kame's words might have made Jin's stomach sink any other day, but the smile that accompanied them made his heart soar, and he realized that he was grinning a little too widely when Koki spoke up. "Don't smile like everyone's forgiven you," he grunted, pushing past Jin and out into the hallway.
The mood passed, of course, and eventually everything settled back into a comfortable, friendly colleagueship. It happened out of necessity, like it had so many years before, and it got easier as time went on. They'd already learned that it was impossible to spend so much time with someone and not find parts of them you liked. After a while, everyone remembered the parts of Jin they liked, and the fact that they occasionally had to make excuses for why he smelled of smoke didn't seem to matter.
He doesn't smoke that much anymore, anyway. He doesn't eat McDonald's either, or listen to his American CDs, but neither take him back quite as easily as smoking. Smoking is a little moment of rebellion in the day, week, or month, and not only does it relax him, but it makes him feel invincible. He feels as invincible as he did when he was across the ocean and away from this reality, even if those moments might be stolen and hidden away from prying eyes and camera lenses. Three minutes of freedom might not be much, but he'll take it where he can get it.
the end