FIC: "YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND" 1/1, PG, 6000 WORDS
Title: "Your New Best Friend" 1/1
Author: soundczech
Disclaimer:This is not real. No infringement intended.
Summary:Jin thinks he has been replaced.
Notes:This is a response to samenashi 's drabble meme prompt: "rockin like its 2005: pinky rings". Needless to say it just grew and grew and it seemed kind of ridiculous to try to post it in the comments. It is kind of ridiculous generally. I am going to take a break from responding to drabble requests for now because I have to work on my help_haiti and kizuna_exchange fics, but I plan to go back to them!!! I am sorry Tegoshi fans, all opinions contained herein are Jin's and not mine.
Warnings: Sappiness, douchiness, homophobia, angst.
"What is that?" Jin asks one day, watching Kame devour a bowl of steaming ramen in their dressing room. He's taking a five minute break before returning to the Yamanade set, half out of his KAT-TUN clothes, hair pushed back in a haphazard bun.
Kame looks at him quizzically, mouth half full of noodle. "Karaage," he says. "Did you want some?" he adds reluctantly, holding out a piece of chicken between his chopsticks.
"No," Jin says. He points at the tiny silver skull ring nestled on his pinky. "What is that?"
Kame blinks down at it. "Oh," Kame says. "Tegoshi-kun gave it to me."
Jin recoils as if Kame has just punched him in the face. He finds himself gripping the tabletop as if afraid he might topple over. "What is it, a promise ring?" he sneers.
Kame seems unfazed. "Just a Christmas present," he says.
"That brat is in love with you," Jin says.
Kame laughs. "Don't be retarded," he says. "He just thought I'd like it."
"This is so typical of you," Jin bitches. "Don't come crying to me when he tries to rape you."
"Ok," Kame says. "I won't." He looks at his watch and swears. He starts stuffing his ugly face with the last piece of chicken. "I gotta go, I'm late."
He leaves Jin alone, sulking and brooding. He eats the rest of Kame's ramen.
--
Jin calls Pi. "I think Tegoshi and Kame are sleeping together," he blurts out the second Pi answers the phone. It has been a little over a week since they last spoke. He probably should have said hello.
Pi is silent for a long moment. Jin can hear traffic in the background, the honk and hum of passing cars. "You are disgusting," he says flatly, finally.
"Seriously," Jin says.
"Tegoshi has a girlfriend," Pi says.
So he's a cheater, too. "He gave Kame a pinky ring."
Pi snickers. "Were you and Kame sleeping together when you exchanged wedding rings?"
Jin can feel his face explode into red. "Shut up," he hisses, and hangs up the phone.
--
The thing is, Jin knows it is ridiculous to feel the way he does. He and Kame don't see much of each other outside of work these days, and Jin is aware that is probably his fault, even though it ISN'T his fault that he had to go out and get new friends because Kame grew up faggy and lame while Jin grew up manly and awesome. If Kame would just stop dressing up like slutty women in front of thousands of people, maybe Jin would be willing to be seen with him in public more often.
The fact that Kame is not his best friend anymore does not make it okay that he is apparently not Kame's either.
--
Jin calls Ryo. "I think Kame and Tegoshi are sleeping together."
Ryo snorts. "As if," he says. "Tegonyan can do way better than Kamenashi."
"Excuse me?" Jin repeats indignantly. "Kame is WAY out of that guy's league."
Ryo laughs. "Eh? Last time we spoke, Kame was the lamest person in the universe."
Jin hmphs. "Well, Tegoshi is about a thousand times lamer even than that."
"Sometimes I don't think you even know if Kame is your best friend or your worst enemy," Ryo says, and that's probably fair. Sometimes Jin doesn't know either.
--
About a week after his initial discovery of Kame's betrayal, Jin runs into him at a Starbucks not far from the Yamanade set. He is rugged up in a thick coat and scarf, huge sunglasses obscuring his eyes. Beside him, like some kind of deranged mini-me, is Tegoshi.
"Oh," Jin says. Kame's glasses slide down his nose a bit. He looks at Jin over the thick black frames.
"Hey," Kame says. "What's up?"
"I'm not following you," Jin says. Kame's face does not change, but the moment in which he should answer turns into a long, strained silence. Jin can't see Tegoshi's eyes behind his dark glasses, but he just knows that little shit looks smug. "I just want coffee..." he adds lamely.
"Everybody loves coffee, ne?" Tegoshi agrees, with that slight head tilt that makes him look like he's had some kind of stroke.
"Coffee sucks," Jin replies automatically, and he knows Kame well enough to see the slight twitch of his mouth, amused and disapproving all at once.
"Shooting is held up," Kame cuts in smoothly, before Tegoshi can react to Jin's turnabout. "Uchi is having trouble with his scene."
"They're on the 25th take," Tegoshi says. "He keeps screwing up his speech, it's taking FOREVERRRR."
Kame smiles mildly. "We just have to be patient," he says, and Jin nearly chokes on his laughter; if Uchi were any member of KAT-TUN Kame would be impatiently growling for them to suck it up and be a man by now. Kame looks at Jin like he knows exactly what he's thinking. Jin wonders if his precious Tegoshi has even seen that side of the wondrous Kamenashi. He opens his mouth to ask, but suddenly they're at the front of the line and Kame is politely ordering his own skim milk latte and Jin's macchiato. Tegoshi orders himself but Kame pays for all three coffees and smoothly says, "Nakamaru" when the girl asks for his name.
They lean against the wall while they wait for their order. Tegoshi starts playing with his phone, Distracting himself from the awkwardness, maybe. Kame just plays with the ends of his scarf.
"Have you eaten?" Jin asks out of habit. When he's filming, Kame gets bad at eating or sleeping or taking care of himself on the most basic level.
"Mm," Kame says, and obediently lists everything he has eaten that day in response to Jin's prodding. It's quite a lot, even if it is all junk food. Jin grunts his approval.
"Nakamura?" The coffee girl says finally, looking harrassed and confused when Jin and Kame giggle in unison.
Jin stands next to Kame as he shakes chocolate sprinkles over top of his latte, screwing up his nose when Kame offers him the shaker. "I'm not a coffee rapist like you," he says.
Kame just smiles slightly, and Jin tries to think back and remember when Kame stopped reacting to his brattiness at all; it has been years and years since Kame looked at him with that slight nervousness. That slight hurt. It is mostly a relief but lately Jin can't help wanting to provoke a reaction. He wonders how far he'd have to go. What he would have to say.
Kame carefully squashes the lid back on his coffee and says to Tegoshi, "We should get back. They're probably waiting." He punches Jin gently in the arm. "Later," he says.
Jin smiles. "Bye, Nakamura," he says and salutes Kame with his big paper cup. "Thanks for the coffee."
He follows them out onto the street and watches as they disappear into the bustling crowd.
--
Jin talks to Koki about it, sort of seriously this time. They happen to be leaving the jimusho at the same time so Jin scabs a ride. He sits with his feet on the dash and fiddles with the stereo, trying to find something other than Linkin Park on Koki's playlist. He yelps when Koki finally gets sick of his fiddling and slaps his hand away; Koki's big rings are kind of brutal. Jin cradles his hand to his chest and sulks, but after a minute he can't handle it anymore and starts flicking through the songs until he hits a cache of hip hop. He bobs along to Golddigger, ignoring the looks Koki is shooting him.
"So what's up with Kamenashi and Tegoshi?" Jin asks, congratulating himself on how casual he manages to sound; he is sure Koki will never know that he had dreams last night about Kame and Tegoshi sharing a tent in Okinawa, kids with Kame's old eyebrows and Tegoshi's old teeth.
"Huh?" Koki asks, only half paying attention. He is leaning over the steering wheel to examine the traffic. His rings glint in the sun.
"They seem to be getting on well," Jin says lamely. He looks at his fingernails instead of looking at Koki. His thumbnail is slightly cracked at the corner, threatening to tear into the quick. Koki has been quiet for a while so Jin looks up at him and adds, "They're best buddies, hey?"
Koki is looking at him kind of weirdly, all furrowed brow and kind of twisted mouth, so Jin thinks maybe his attempt at casual was not nearly as successful as he had first thought. Then Koki's face smoothes out and gets that sickeningly fond expression he gets whenever he talks about Kame now, and says, "Yeah, they're like totally BFF."
Jin usually relishes being right, but this time it kind of feels like when he realised he was right about his old girlfriend cheating on him, or right about the shopping centre Santa being a big fat fraud.
"Ah," he says miserably.
"It shocked me~" Koki says. "With the way you used to go on about Tegoshi. I always thought Kame-chan agreed with you."
Me too, Jin thinks miserably. He takes out his phone and starts scrolling aimlessly through the menus.
"I guess not though," Koki continues. "He got all dazzled by Dream Boys. He kept going on about how great it was to work with ‘such a talented singer’. I was like, ‘HEY I’M TALENTED!’ but he said it wasn’t the same. I don’t have Tegoshi’s artistry or some shit, so it doesn’t count." Koki chuckles, "I guess Kame's a huge fanboy at heart."
Jin feels something akin to suicidal and slumps in his seat. "Ah," he chokes out. Kame is supposed to be HIS fanboy. He was Jin's first and biggest. Jin hasn't forgotten gawky fourteen year old Kame asking Jin to help him sing; the hours spent harmonising, the blush rising in Kame's cheeks when people would remark on how lovely they sounded together.
The image of Kame's shining face as he closes up a show at Tokyo Dome flashes into Jin's head, as it often does at random moments, and Jin feels enraged; why should Kame be Tegoshi's fanboy? Kame is a million times the superstar Tegoshi will ever be.
“It’s going to be really weird when they move in together,” Koki says, and Jin combusts.
“EH?” he shouts, fumbling with his phone, only half-noticing as it falls down the crack between the seats. “EH????”
“Tegoshi’s lease is up soon,” Koki says. “Kame’s gonna offer him his spare room.”
“What?” Jin twists violently in his seat. The seatbelt cuts into his neck and stings. “Kame HATES sharing his space.”
Jin knows, because Kame had laughed and said so when Jin had offered to share way back when they were first thinking about moving away from home for the first time, when Kame wanted to leave his brothers and family behind. ‘We’d drive each other crazy,’ Kame had said, but maybe what he’d meant was, ‘You’d drive me crazy.’
“He gets lonely,” Koki says, in this ojii-san tone that makes Jin want to smack him. “It’s nice that he has a best friend again.”
“He already had a best friend,” Jin says before his brain has even processed the words.
“Who?” Koki asks. They’re stopped at a particularly stubborn set of traffic lights outside Roppongi; Jin watches the red light and imagines it looks just like his cheeks. They are four major intersections from home, when Jin can get out of the truck, slam the door, and pretend like this whole thing never happened. “You?”
“No,” Jin spits, but thinks, Yes.
-
“Hey Jin,” Ryan calls from the couch on Friday evening, voice high and mocking. “I think your ex has a new boyfriend.”
Jin is in the kitchen getting a couple of beers from the fridge. “Huh?” He runs through his mental rolodex of ex-girlfriends; Ryan has only met the last two or three, and even then probably not for long enough to remember their faces. Ryan barely ever remembers names.
“Who?” he asks as he comes into the living room and hands Ryan a beer. He looks at the tv screen, and there’s Kame, sitting next to Tegoshi, smiling slightly as he listens to him speak. Tegoshi says something and Kame laughs, his face screwing up hideously. He slaps his knee and Jin can see the traitorous glint of that fucking pinky ring. “Shut up,” Jin says to Ryan.
The thing is, Ryan doesn’t know, not really. He’d come across some weird fan-made collages of Jin and Kame like, making out on a seashore with angsty Korean lyrics floating in the sky overhead one day when creepily googling Jin and he hasn’t let it rest since, but he doesn’t know what things used to be like with them. That if half the fans were convinced that Jin was in love with Kame, it was completely and utterly Jin’s fault, because he’d acted like kind of a freak about it.
“Don’t be upset,” Ryan says. “I’m sure in time this hole in your heart will be healed.”
Jin flips him off as he stalks into the bathroom. He ruffles up his hair while staring in the mirror, trying to remember the bright eyed kid that first collided with Kame at the JE auditions twelve years ago. He looks like a man now, still soft featured but sturdy and strong. When he looks in his eyes, though, he can see that kid inside, that dumb kid that wanted to be a superstar and talked to Kame because he liked his bushy eyebrows. He thinks that kid might hate him.
He opens the cabinet and takes the black box down from the top shelf, where it sits nestled safely behind a pumice stone and an expensive bottle of cologne. He opens the lid and stares down at the delicately crafted ring sitting on a bed of sky blue velvet.
That day, they’d left the jimusho an hour late after rehearsal had run over, shuffling out the door in oversized fluffy coats and baggy jeans, floppy beanies that covered half their faces. The idea, back then, had been to drown their bodies in tidal waves of fabric until their bodies were barely recognisably human, let alone recognisably Johnnies. Jin still dresses like that, if he’s feeling worried or tense. Kame is all form-fitting lines and bare skin showing through ripped jeans.
Kame had been moody and uncommunicative all day, only murmuring in response to Jin’s aggressively cheerful chatter. He got like that sometimes, retreating into his own head where he was stalked by the worry monsters. They perched on his shoulders and gnawed at his ears. Sometimes, Jin can see them there even now, in the slight slump of Kame’s shoulders or the downcast eyes, the fingers that loop in and out of the leather bracelets at his wrists.
“What’s up?” Jin asked that day, bumping his shoulder against Kame’s. They’d been 19 or 20, too old to be considered kids but not quite adults yet, either. Some days they sat in Jin’s living room and drank whiskey, others they had pillow fights and ate candy. They were in-between. Still innocent enough to be real friends.
“I don’t know,” Kame asked He wasn’t being bratty or evasive; he looked at Jin with wide, clear eyes that said help.
“Eh?” Jin asked. He pulled Kame out of the path of an oncoming cyclist. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Don’t you ever worry without knowing why?” Kame asked.
Jin laughed. “I barely worry even when I have a real reason,” he said, which wasn’t strictly true. There were things he worried about almost habitually; bugs, ghosts, Kame. Years later, his self consciousness would overwhelm him and ‘being cool’ would skyrocket to the top of that list, but Jin isn’t sure when it happened.
“I wish I was like that,” Kame said, then looked past Jin’s shoulder. “Shit,” he said, and yanked Jin inside suddenly. There was someone they wanted to avoid, Jin thinks years later, but for the life of him he can't remember who.
They were standing inside a little jewellery store with thick velvet curtains over the windows. It wasn't the sort of store Jin had ever shopped in, before or since. The owner was an old guy with thick salt and pepper hair, moist with pomade. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows beneath an expensive-looking waistcoat; gay, Jin thought casually, from the way his eyes lingered on Kame as he bent over a glass display case. That kind of thing wasn't a big deal back then. It was just another fact like anything else. KAT-TUN was a six member band. Japan was moist and hot in summer. Gay dudes liked Kame.
Jin's not sure when it started to matter.
The jewellery in the store was old fashioned and expensive looking, trinkets old men might have bought their wives for their sixtieth wedding anniversary. Diamonds and rubies sparkled arrogantly on the walls, outclassed by the austere loops of Japanese pearls. Jin admired a case of ornate pocket watches; there was something old world and awesome about them, the kind of treasure that you might find in a pirate's chest. Jin decided he would buy one one day and pass it on to his son; he liked the idea of creating a family heirloom, historians tracing it back and finding him in this moment. Standing in this store.
"Kawaii," he heard Kame murmur, still standing over the glass chest at the counter. Jin joined him and peered over his shoulder at the rows of couple rings, some with tiny eternity diamonds, ornate inscriptions, colourful enamelled panels. Kame was pointing at a pair of unpretentious platinum rings, smooth and clean amongst all the glitz.
"Pity I don't have a girlfriend anymore," Kame laughed. He had been dumped a few weeks before by the girl he'd been dating on and off for a couple of months; her name was Ayumi or Ayaka or something and she had worked as a perfume girl in a swanky Ginza department store. Kame had chatted her up when he had gone with Jin to buy a birthday present for Yamapi. Jin had felt obscurely resentful as she'd written her name and number on a card and tucked it into Kame's hand. Jin had been glad when they'd broken up. Kame would not meet that old hag for another year. For a year, Kame had been all his.
"We could get them," Jin said. As usual, it came out without him thinking it through; part of him wanted to retract the offer immediately, the other part just wanted Kame to say yes.
Kame giggled. "Isn't that a bit weird?"
"Who cares?" Jin said. "Friends are important too, right?"
"Right," Kame said, looking delighted. Jin waved over the owner, who didn't even raise an eyebrow as he pulled out the tray and laid the rings carefully on a velvet mat for them to try on.
The smaller ring was a large woman's size, probably meant for the hands of a rich old obaa-san. It slid easily onto Kame's pinky and glimmered in the light when he fluttered his fingers. "Perfect," he said. Jin felt something fierce and unnamed as he looked at it and then slid the larger ring onto his own pinky, where it wobbled, slightly loose; pride, maybe. Gratitude.
Jin pulled out his credit card to pay; they were exorbitantly expensive, the most Jin had ever spent on jewellery at that point.
"Shall I engrave them for you?" the owner asked, taking out a pen and pad of paper.
Now, in his bathroom, Jin lifts the ring to the light and reads the little roman letters that curve around the inside in delicate, ornate script: BROS B4 HOS. He snickers to himself.
"Jesus, are you coming?" Ryan calls from the living room. Jin realises he is smiling up at the ring like some kind of retard and flushes.
"Yeah," he calls back. "Hold on."
After a moment's hesitation, he slips the ring back on; it's a little tight now, but cool and familiar. It feels like arriving back home after school camp.
"Tadaima," he murmurs.
--
It was not pre-meditated. He did not try to murder Kame’s ring in cold blood. It was a crime of passion, an act of petulant desperation. No jury in the world would convict him.
“What are you doing?” Kame asks. Jin’s arm is dangling out the window, the little red velvet bag hanging from his fingertips. Jin freezes and they stare at one another, Jin trying to curl the bag up into his fingers so that Kame won’t realise what it is; won’t ask him any embarrassing questions.
“Nothing,” Jin says, and leans into the window. “Just hanging out.” He wonders if he can drop the little bag without Kame noticing, but Kame is already moving over and yanking his arm back inside.
“Is that my stuff?” he asks, and yanks it out of Jin’s hand, confirming that yes, Jin really was about to drop his jewellery out a twelfth story window. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Jin says. “I think I was sleep walking.”
Kame stares at him, still holding the velvet bag in his fist. “Akanishi,” he says.
“It’s a common problem, Kamenashi!” Jin yells. “You shouldn’t have woken me, you might have scared me into going nuts or something!”
The truth is, Jin had come back into their dressing room after his solo shots for the August issue of Wink Up and Kame’s rings had been sitting on top of the bag on the dressing table, and Jin. Well, he’s not known for his restraint. He couldn’t just get rid of that whore Tegoshi’s ring - that would look suspicious - so he’d swept them both into the bag, tied the drawstring tight, and gone to throw it out the window, as hard as he could. Only that’s when Kame came in and now they’re in this horribly awkward moment, and why doesn’t Kame believe him, it’s not like he’s a liar or something.
“Ok,” Kame says. He scrubs his face with his hand. “Why would you want to, IN YOUR SLEEP, throw my rings out the window?”
“Maybe because they’re ugly,” Jin says. “I was probably trying to protect you.”
Kame looks offended by that, and starts to snap something scathing in retort, but then Jin makes the mistake of moving his hand and Kame’s eyes fall onto his fingers where their ring curls around his pinky. It suddenly seems like the brightest thing in the room.
“Is that-” he cuts off, looks confused and wary. “What’s going on?”
“I probably put it on in my sleep...” Jin says, and stuffs his hand in his pocket.
“Jin,” Kame says, and he just sounds tired now. Jin’s stomach flips over, and he sinks into a chair. Kame sits across from him, and they are both quiet for a while. The others have gone home already, and Jin is glad; it’s awkward enough to sit here in front of Kame, who has already seen him at his worst.
“I don’t want you to replace me,” Jin says, feeling a bit emotional and a bit angry about it. He hunches into his shoulders. “With stupid Tegoshi.”
Kame blinks at him. He is quiet for a long moment and Jin thinks he is trying to figure out a way to let him down easy, to say that Jin had his chance and blew it and that Tegoshi is fifty times the best friend he ever was, but then Kame just says, “Huh?”
Why is he making Jin do this? “I don’t want your new best friend to be Tegoshi.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kame says.
“YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND,” Jin yells. “TEGOSHI. HE SUCKS. HOW MUCH MORE DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT?”
“He’s not... he’s not my new best friend?” Kame says. “I mean, he’s ok and all...”
“What?” Jin says. “YOU TWO ARE LIKE, JOINED AT THE HIP. You don’t have to lie.”
“I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kame says.
“Koki said the two of you are moving in together,” Jin says.
Kame’s lips twitch slightly. “Koki was fucking with you.”
“What?” Jin asks. His heart is beating fast and he grabs at his t-shirt, trying to calm down. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know,” Kame says. “So you’d do this?”
(“Because you deserved it,” Koki says later, when Jin harrasses him for an explanation. “You douchebag.”)
“But he bought you a ring,” Jin mumbles. This whole conversation has been kind of humiliating, especially now that Kame is looking at him with that kind of gentle look on his face. “Like our ring.”
Kame looks down at his hands; Jin becomes acutely aware of the clock ticking loudly and the sound of footsteps in the hall. He wonders what Kame wants to say; why he needs to take the time to phrase his response so carefully. Jin remembers when Kame just used to tell him anything that came into his head, no filters. He misses that. At least then he knew what he was really thinking, even if what he was thinking was that he was angry at Jin and wanted him to go to hell.
“It’s just a ring,” he says finally. He takes it out of the velvet bag and holds it out to Jin. “Here. You can have it, if it’s that important to you.”
“It’s not important to me,” Jin says, but he takes it and clutches it to his chest anyway. He half expects it to sear his flesh like a crucifix would burn a vampire.
“I haven’t replaced you,” Kame says. His voice is steady, and so are his eyes. Jin shifts in his seat. “I’m not going to replace you. No-one can be what you are to me.”
Somehow that just makes Jin feel worse, even as he feels better; the knowledge that he’s made Kame lonely, only half acknowledged and buried at the back of his brain before, slams into him and makes his throat get thick. “Kame,” he says miserably.
“It’s like America, right?” Kame looks at him through his silky bangs; his familiar dark eyes the only part of him that has stayed the same through all the years they have known each other. “You had to go, and it hurt... it hurt a LOT, but I always knew you’d come back.” He breathes out, an unstable breath. “You always come back in the end.”
Jin swallows, pursing his lips together hard to try and stop the tears he feels slowly rising in his throat. He grunts his assent, unable to trust himself to talk without blubbering.
“You’ve been angry at me for a long time,” Kame says, and it is unnerving to have it laid out like that, their wounds stripped bare, pustulating and vile.
“I don’t know why,” Jin manages, and it is true. If he tries to trace the lines of their estrangement back, past Tegoshi, past America, past Kyon-kyon and Seishun Amigo, there’s nothing but a shadow hiding in the dark; a word on the tip of his tongue.
Kame smiles at him, slightly, lips curling in at the corners and eyes shining.
“I do,” he says, and leans in to kiss Jin.
Part of Jin wants to get up and run. He lifts his hands intending to shove Kame away and make a break for the door, but there’s another part, a stronger part, that just thinks, finally, and his hands end up in Kame’s hair instead.
He’s such an idiot.
--
Kame takes him home. Jin lingers in the doorway and looks around as Kame strips off his scarf and coat and throws them on the couch, puts the kettle on for tea, and presses Play on the answering machine. The first message is from Kame’s manager asking where he is; they apparently had a quick meeting scheduled after the shoot and Kame hasn’t been answering his cell. Jin blushes when he thinks about where Kame was; pressed up against him in the tiny bathroom in the studio, hands just skimming the waistband of his jeans.
Jin walks into the room as the next message, from Kame’s mother, plays. Her voice is familiar and vaguely soothing. It makes it easier to document the changes in this space; it is not the same apartment Kame lived in the last time Jin came over, but most of the things in it are the same. Over the mantle are a series of autographed baseballs in glass domes. Jin bought him the second one from the left for his seventeenth birthday. He sinks onto the couch and stretches out his limbs. He tries to get a handle on the euphoria he feels, gather it up and bind it into something manageable.
Kame brings him a cup of tea and perches on the arm of the couch, feet jammed beneath Jin’s thigh. He leans over and kisses Jin again, the way he has been doing every few minutes since the first time, not three hours ago. Jin feels like he is Neo in the Matrix, only instead of going down the rabbit hole and finding a shitty world full of creepy aliens, he realised he is in love, which is kind of awesome but almost scarier than the aliens.
The third message is from Tegoshi, and Jin chokes and accidentally grazes Kame’s lip with his teeth.
“Hi Kame-chan,” Tegoshi says, with his stupid voice. “It’s Tegoshi-kun.”
Kame pulls his lips away from Jin’s a bit as Jin spits, “Why is he calling you at home?”
“I think you should talk to Akanishi-kun,” Tegoshi continues, and Jin thinks, oh no. Kame looks at him in confusion.
“He’s been going around saying really weird things...” Tegoshi says, and Jin replies, aloud, “Shut up.”
“I think he might be upset,” Tegoshi says. “Your MOTHER is upset,” Jin says.
“Anyway, see you...” Tegoshi says, and then Jin is left alone with Kame again. Kame who is looking at him kind of murderously.
“What have you been saying?” Kame asks.
“Nothing,” Jin says. He tries to put his hands back on Kame’s waist, but Kame dodges him.
“Who have you been saying ‘nothing’ to?” Kame asks.
Jin scowls. “Nobody,” he says indignantly. “Just Pi. And Ryo.” He purses his lips sheepishly. “And Koki. And Tackey, and Nagase, and a couple of the kids from Hey! Say! JUMP.” He blushes. “And Johnny.”
Kame looks annoyed, but he’s also laughing, and he lets Jin catch him around the waist and drag him down from his perch on the arm of the couch and into his lap. Jin leans down and kisses him. It feels valiant and free. He feels brave. “I’m sorry,” he says, stroking the side of Kame’s face, and he means it for more than just the weird stuff he said to Pi.
Kame swallows, and Jin sees the weakness that he was hiding earlier, the thin and frail Kame who had nightmares about messing up the choreography in Shounen Club and couldn’t eat from stress. Jin feels manly and determined to protect him. “You should be,” Kame says. “It was horrible.”
“It’s okay now,” Jin says. He squeezes him tight, strokes the loose hair away from his face. “It’s gonna be okay, now.”
Kame sniffles, turning on his side and buring his face in Jin’s stomach. Jin can feel his moist breath puffing through his thin t-shirt. “If you ever suddenly start acting like a dick again, I’m going to go seduce Tegoshi and we’ll have like a billion beautiful children,” Kame says.
Jin’s stomach twists imagining Kame fathering a litter full of tiny Tegoshi’s; little monsters who run around smiling at people all day then try to kill Kame in his sleep. “Don’t even joke about that,” he says.
“I’m not joking,” Kame says, voice muffled in Jin’s tummy. “I’ll do it.”
“Over my dead body,” Jin says. He smoothes Kame’s hair back and kisses him just behind the ear. It is weird how un-weird this is; there is obviously a part of Jin that has held himself back from doing these things for a long time, maybe the whole time they have known each other. After years of starvation, he has greedy hands.
“Better be on your best behaviour then,” Kame says, rolling onto his back and pulling Jin down for a kiss.
--
Jin wakes up in the middle of the night in Kame’s bed, nose pressed to the back of Kame’s hair and legs twisted in Kame’s sheets. It should freak him out more, but he wakes with perfect clarity, as if he has slept in this very spot a million times, pulled Kame close by the hips and nuzzled into his neck every night for a hundred years. A thought occurs to him suddenly, and he carefully pulls himself out from the knot he is tied in.
“Where are you going?” Kame mumbles sleepily as he slips out of bed.
“Shh,” Jin says. “Go back to sleep.”
Kame does, snoring slightly and burrowing into Jin’s pillow.
Jin goes into Kame’s walk-in closet and fumbles around for the switch. On the bench in the middle of the room is a beat up old Doraemon jewellery chest that has followed Kame from apartment to apartment since he was 19. When Jin opens the lid Doraemon starts twirling and music jangles into the still night air. He hisses for it to be quiet, but it doesn’t, of course, so he just tries to force the winder through to the end of the song. The notes speed through and then die off.
There is a row of rings on the top level of the chest, but the one Jin is looking for isn’t there. He takes out the first layer and presses the trick-wall on the left, revealing the hidden cavern Kame showed him once, the day he bought the box. They’d loved stuff like that back then, hidden compartments and hallways, secret passages.
Inside is the familiar black velvet box, just like the one Jin has at home. He takes it out and flips it open, cheering triumphantly to himself. He walks back into the bedroom, where Kame is fast asleep, hand a loose fist on the pillow.
Jin slides the ring onto his pinky, back where it should be. He sits on the bed holding Kame’s hand for a minute, looking at their rings next to each other, their platinum promise. He rubs his finger over Kame’s ring to watch it shine. That’s better, he thinks.
He climbs back into bed and folds himself over Kame’s body. He falls asleep with the feeling of Kame’s breath puffing into his cheek.
Author: soundczech
Disclaimer:This is not real. No infringement intended.
Summary:Jin thinks he has been replaced.
Notes:This is a response to samenashi 's drabble meme prompt: "rockin like its 2005: pinky rings". Needless to say it just grew and grew and it seemed kind of ridiculous to try to post it in the comments. It is kind of ridiculous generally. I am going to take a break from responding to drabble requests for now because I have to work on my help_haiti and kizuna_exchange fics, but I plan to go back to them!!! I am sorry Tegoshi fans, all opinions contained herein are Jin's and not mine.
Warnings: Sappiness, douchiness, homophobia, angst.
"What is that?" Jin asks one day, watching Kame devour a bowl of steaming ramen in their dressing room. He's taking a five minute break before returning to the Yamanade set, half out of his KAT-TUN clothes, hair pushed back in a haphazard bun.
Kame looks at him quizzically, mouth half full of noodle. "Karaage," he says. "Did you want some?" he adds reluctantly, holding out a piece of chicken between his chopsticks.
"No," Jin says. He points at the tiny silver skull ring nestled on his pinky. "What is that?"
Kame blinks down at it. "Oh," Kame says. "Tegoshi-kun gave it to me."
Jin recoils as if Kame has just punched him in the face. He finds himself gripping the tabletop as if afraid he might topple over. "What is it, a promise ring?" he sneers.
Kame seems unfazed. "Just a Christmas present," he says.
"That brat is in love with you," Jin says.
Kame laughs. "Don't be retarded," he says. "He just thought I'd like it."
"This is so typical of you," Jin bitches. "Don't come crying to me when he tries to rape you."
"Ok," Kame says. "I won't." He looks at his watch and swears. He starts stuffing his ugly face with the last piece of chicken. "I gotta go, I'm late."
He leaves Jin alone, sulking and brooding. He eats the rest of Kame's ramen.
--
Jin calls Pi. "I think Tegoshi and Kame are sleeping together," he blurts out the second Pi answers the phone. It has been a little over a week since they last spoke. He probably should have said hello.
Pi is silent for a long moment. Jin can hear traffic in the background, the honk and hum of passing cars. "You are disgusting," he says flatly, finally.
"Seriously," Jin says.
"Tegoshi has a girlfriend," Pi says.
So he's a cheater, too. "He gave Kame a pinky ring."
Pi snickers. "Were you and Kame sleeping together when you exchanged wedding rings?"
Jin can feel his face explode into red. "Shut up," he hisses, and hangs up the phone.
--
The thing is, Jin knows it is ridiculous to feel the way he does. He and Kame don't see much of each other outside of work these days, and Jin is aware that is probably his fault, even though it ISN'T his fault that he had to go out and get new friends because Kame grew up faggy and lame while Jin grew up manly and awesome. If Kame would just stop dressing up like slutty women in front of thousands of people, maybe Jin would be willing to be seen with him in public more often.
The fact that Kame is not his best friend anymore does not make it okay that he is apparently not Kame's either.
--
Jin calls Ryo. "I think Kame and Tegoshi are sleeping together."
Ryo snorts. "As if," he says. "Tegonyan can do way better than Kamenashi."
"Excuse me?" Jin repeats indignantly. "Kame is WAY out of that guy's league."
Ryo laughs. "Eh? Last time we spoke, Kame was the lamest person in the universe."
Jin hmphs. "Well, Tegoshi is about a thousand times lamer even than that."
"Sometimes I don't think you even know if Kame is your best friend or your worst enemy," Ryo says, and that's probably fair. Sometimes Jin doesn't know either.
--
About a week after his initial discovery of Kame's betrayal, Jin runs into him at a Starbucks not far from the Yamanade set. He is rugged up in a thick coat and scarf, huge sunglasses obscuring his eyes. Beside him, like some kind of deranged mini-me, is Tegoshi.
"Oh," Jin says. Kame's glasses slide down his nose a bit. He looks at Jin over the thick black frames.
"Hey," Kame says. "What's up?"
"I'm not following you," Jin says. Kame's face does not change, but the moment in which he should answer turns into a long, strained silence. Jin can't see Tegoshi's eyes behind his dark glasses, but he just knows that little shit looks smug. "I just want coffee..." he adds lamely.
"Everybody loves coffee, ne?" Tegoshi agrees, with that slight head tilt that makes him look like he's had some kind of stroke.
"Coffee sucks," Jin replies automatically, and he knows Kame well enough to see the slight twitch of his mouth, amused and disapproving all at once.
"Shooting is held up," Kame cuts in smoothly, before Tegoshi can react to Jin's turnabout. "Uchi is having trouble with his scene."
"They're on the 25th take," Tegoshi says. "He keeps screwing up his speech, it's taking FOREVERRRR."
Kame smiles mildly. "We just have to be patient," he says, and Jin nearly chokes on his laughter; if Uchi were any member of KAT-TUN Kame would be impatiently growling for them to suck it up and be a man by now. Kame looks at Jin like he knows exactly what he's thinking. Jin wonders if his precious Tegoshi has even seen that side of the wondrous Kamenashi. He opens his mouth to ask, but suddenly they're at the front of the line and Kame is politely ordering his own skim milk latte and Jin's macchiato. Tegoshi orders himself but Kame pays for all three coffees and smoothly says, "Nakamaru" when the girl asks for his name.
They lean against the wall while they wait for their order. Tegoshi starts playing with his phone, Distracting himself from the awkwardness, maybe. Kame just plays with the ends of his scarf.
"Have you eaten?" Jin asks out of habit. When he's filming, Kame gets bad at eating or sleeping or taking care of himself on the most basic level.
"Mm," Kame says, and obediently lists everything he has eaten that day in response to Jin's prodding. It's quite a lot, even if it is all junk food. Jin grunts his approval.
"Nakamura?" The coffee girl says finally, looking harrassed and confused when Jin and Kame giggle in unison.
Jin stands next to Kame as he shakes chocolate sprinkles over top of his latte, screwing up his nose when Kame offers him the shaker. "I'm not a coffee rapist like you," he says.
Kame just smiles slightly, and Jin tries to think back and remember when Kame stopped reacting to his brattiness at all; it has been years and years since Kame looked at him with that slight nervousness. That slight hurt. It is mostly a relief but lately Jin can't help wanting to provoke a reaction. He wonders how far he'd have to go. What he would have to say.
Kame carefully squashes the lid back on his coffee and says to Tegoshi, "We should get back. They're probably waiting." He punches Jin gently in the arm. "Later," he says.
Jin smiles. "Bye, Nakamura," he says and salutes Kame with his big paper cup. "Thanks for the coffee."
He follows them out onto the street and watches as they disappear into the bustling crowd.
--
Jin talks to Koki about it, sort of seriously this time. They happen to be leaving the jimusho at the same time so Jin scabs a ride. He sits with his feet on the dash and fiddles with the stereo, trying to find something other than Linkin Park on Koki's playlist. He yelps when Koki finally gets sick of his fiddling and slaps his hand away; Koki's big rings are kind of brutal. Jin cradles his hand to his chest and sulks, but after a minute he can't handle it anymore and starts flicking through the songs until he hits a cache of hip hop. He bobs along to Golddigger, ignoring the looks Koki is shooting him.
"So what's up with Kamenashi and Tegoshi?" Jin asks, congratulating himself on how casual he manages to sound; he is sure Koki will never know that he had dreams last night about Kame and Tegoshi sharing a tent in Okinawa, kids with Kame's old eyebrows and Tegoshi's old teeth.
"Huh?" Koki asks, only half paying attention. He is leaning over the steering wheel to examine the traffic. His rings glint in the sun.
"They seem to be getting on well," Jin says lamely. He looks at his fingernails instead of looking at Koki. His thumbnail is slightly cracked at the corner, threatening to tear into the quick. Koki has been quiet for a while so Jin looks up at him and adds, "They're best buddies, hey?"
Koki is looking at him kind of weirdly, all furrowed brow and kind of twisted mouth, so Jin thinks maybe his attempt at casual was not nearly as successful as he had first thought. Then Koki's face smoothes out and gets that sickeningly fond expression he gets whenever he talks about Kame now, and says, "Yeah, they're like totally BFF."
Jin usually relishes being right, but this time it kind of feels like when he realised he was right about his old girlfriend cheating on him, or right about the shopping centre Santa being a big fat fraud.
"Ah," he says miserably.
"It shocked me~" Koki says. "With the way you used to go on about Tegoshi. I always thought Kame-chan agreed with you."
Me too, Jin thinks miserably. He takes out his phone and starts scrolling aimlessly through the menus.
"I guess not though," Koki continues. "He got all dazzled by Dream Boys. He kept going on about how great it was to work with ‘such a talented singer’. I was like, ‘HEY I’M TALENTED!’ but he said it wasn’t the same. I don’t have Tegoshi’s artistry or some shit, so it doesn’t count." Koki chuckles, "I guess Kame's a huge fanboy at heart."
Jin feels something akin to suicidal and slumps in his seat. "Ah," he chokes out. Kame is supposed to be HIS fanboy. He was Jin's first and biggest. Jin hasn't forgotten gawky fourteen year old Kame asking Jin to help him sing; the hours spent harmonising, the blush rising in Kame's cheeks when people would remark on how lovely they sounded together.
The image of Kame's shining face as he closes up a show at Tokyo Dome flashes into Jin's head, as it often does at random moments, and Jin feels enraged; why should Kame be Tegoshi's fanboy? Kame is a million times the superstar Tegoshi will ever be.
“It’s going to be really weird when they move in together,” Koki says, and Jin combusts.
“EH?” he shouts, fumbling with his phone, only half-noticing as it falls down the crack between the seats. “EH????”
“Tegoshi’s lease is up soon,” Koki says. “Kame’s gonna offer him his spare room.”
“What?” Jin twists violently in his seat. The seatbelt cuts into his neck and stings. “Kame HATES sharing his space.”
Jin knows, because Kame had laughed and said so when Jin had offered to share way back when they were first thinking about moving away from home for the first time, when Kame wanted to leave his brothers and family behind. ‘We’d drive each other crazy,’ Kame had said, but maybe what he’d meant was, ‘You’d drive me crazy.’
“He gets lonely,” Koki says, in this ojii-san tone that makes Jin want to smack him. “It’s nice that he has a best friend again.”
“He already had a best friend,” Jin says before his brain has even processed the words.
“Who?” Koki asks. They’re stopped at a particularly stubborn set of traffic lights outside Roppongi; Jin watches the red light and imagines it looks just like his cheeks. They are four major intersections from home, when Jin can get out of the truck, slam the door, and pretend like this whole thing never happened. “You?”
“No,” Jin spits, but thinks, Yes.
-
“Hey Jin,” Ryan calls from the couch on Friday evening, voice high and mocking. “I think your ex has a new boyfriend.”
Jin is in the kitchen getting a couple of beers from the fridge. “Huh?” He runs through his mental rolodex of ex-girlfriends; Ryan has only met the last two or three, and even then probably not for long enough to remember their faces. Ryan barely ever remembers names.
“Who?” he asks as he comes into the living room and hands Ryan a beer. He looks at the tv screen, and there’s Kame, sitting next to Tegoshi, smiling slightly as he listens to him speak. Tegoshi says something and Kame laughs, his face screwing up hideously. He slaps his knee and Jin can see the traitorous glint of that fucking pinky ring. “Shut up,” Jin says to Ryan.
The thing is, Ryan doesn’t know, not really. He’d come across some weird fan-made collages of Jin and Kame like, making out on a seashore with angsty Korean lyrics floating in the sky overhead one day when creepily googling Jin and he hasn’t let it rest since, but he doesn’t know what things used to be like with them. That if half the fans were convinced that Jin was in love with Kame, it was completely and utterly Jin’s fault, because he’d acted like kind of a freak about it.
“Don’t be upset,” Ryan says. “I’m sure in time this hole in your heart will be healed.”
Jin flips him off as he stalks into the bathroom. He ruffles up his hair while staring in the mirror, trying to remember the bright eyed kid that first collided with Kame at the JE auditions twelve years ago. He looks like a man now, still soft featured but sturdy and strong. When he looks in his eyes, though, he can see that kid inside, that dumb kid that wanted to be a superstar and talked to Kame because he liked his bushy eyebrows. He thinks that kid might hate him.
He opens the cabinet and takes the black box down from the top shelf, where it sits nestled safely behind a pumice stone and an expensive bottle of cologne. He opens the lid and stares down at the delicately crafted ring sitting on a bed of sky blue velvet.
That day, they’d left the jimusho an hour late after rehearsal had run over, shuffling out the door in oversized fluffy coats and baggy jeans, floppy beanies that covered half their faces. The idea, back then, had been to drown their bodies in tidal waves of fabric until their bodies were barely recognisably human, let alone recognisably Johnnies. Jin still dresses like that, if he’s feeling worried or tense. Kame is all form-fitting lines and bare skin showing through ripped jeans.
Kame had been moody and uncommunicative all day, only murmuring in response to Jin’s aggressively cheerful chatter. He got like that sometimes, retreating into his own head where he was stalked by the worry monsters. They perched on his shoulders and gnawed at his ears. Sometimes, Jin can see them there even now, in the slight slump of Kame’s shoulders or the downcast eyes, the fingers that loop in and out of the leather bracelets at his wrists.
“What’s up?” Jin asked that day, bumping his shoulder against Kame’s. They’d been 19 or 20, too old to be considered kids but not quite adults yet, either. Some days they sat in Jin’s living room and drank whiskey, others they had pillow fights and ate candy. They were in-between. Still innocent enough to be real friends.
“I don’t know,” Kame asked He wasn’t being bratty or evasive; he looked at Jin with wide, clear eyes that said help.
“Eh?” Jin asked. He pulled Kame out of the path of an oncoming cyclist. “What do you mean you don’t know?”
“Don’t you ever worry without knowing why?” Kame asked.
Jin laughed. “I barely worry even when I have a real reason,” he said, which wasn’t strictly true. There were things he worried about almost habitually; bugs, ghosts, Kame. Years later, his self consciousness would overwhelm him and ‘being cool’ would skyrocket to the top of that list, but Jin isn’t sure when it happened.
“I wish I was like that,” Kame said, then looked past Jin’s shoulder. “Shit,” he said, and yanked Jin inside suddenly. There was someone they wanted to avoid, Jin thinks years later, but for the life of him he can't remember who.
They were standing inside a little jewellery store with thick velvet curtains over the windows. It wasn't the sort of store Jin had ever shopped in, before or since. The owner was an old guy with thick salt and pepper hair, moist with pomade. He had his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows beneath an expensive-looking waistcoat; gay, Jin thought casually, from the way his eyes lingered on Kame as he bent over a glass display case. That kind of thing wasn't a big deal back then. It was just another fact like anything else. KAT-TUN was a six member band. Japan was moist and hot in summer. Gay dudes liked Kame.
Jin's not sure when it started to matter.
The jewellery in the store was old fashioned and expensive looking, trinkets old men might have bought their wives for their sixtieth wedding anniversary. Diamonds and rubies sparkled arrogantly on the walls, outclassed by the austere loops of Japanese pearls. Jin admired a case of ornate pocket watches; there was something old world and awesome about them, the kind of treasure that you might find in a pirate's chest. Jin decided he would buy one one day and pass it on to his son; he liked the idea of creating a family heirloom, historians tracing it back and finding him in this moment. Standing in this store.
"Kawaii," he heard Kame murmur, still standing over the glass chest at the counter. Jin joined him and peered over his shoulder at the rows of couple rings, some with tiny eternity diamonds, ornate inscriptions, colourful enamelled panels. Kame was pointing at a pair of unpretentious platinum rings, smooth and clean amongst all the glitz.
"Pity I don't have a girlfriend anymore," Kame laughed. He had been dumped a few weeks before by the girl he'd been dating on and off for a couple of months; her name was Ayumi or Ayaka or something and she had worked as a perfume girl in a swanky Ginza department store. Kame had chatted her up when he had gone with Jin to buy a birthday present for Yamapi. Jin had felt obscurely resentful as she'd written her name and number on a card and tucked it into Kame's hand. Jin had been glad when they'd broken up. Kame would not meet that old hag for another year. For a year, Kame had been all his.
"We could get them," Jin said. As usual, it came out without him thinking it through; part of him wanted to retract the offer immediately, the other part just wanted Kame to say yes.
Kame giggled. "Isn't that a bit weird?"
"Who cares?" Jin said. "Friends are important too, right?"
"Right," Kame said, looking delighted. Jin waved over the owner, who didn't even raise an eyebrow as he pulled out the tray and laid the rings carefully on a velvet mat for them to try on.
The smaller ring was a large woman's size, probably meant for the hands of a rich old obaa-san. It slid easily onto Kame's pinky and glimmered in the light when he fluttered his fingers. "Perfect," he said. Jin felt something fierce and unnamed as he looked at it and then slid the larger ring onto his own pinky, where it wobbled, slightly loose; pride, maybe. Gratitude.
Jin pulled out his credit card to pay; they were exorbitantly expensive, the most Jin had ever spent on jewellery at that point.
"Shall I engrave them for you?" the owner asked, taking out a pen and pad of paper.
Now, in his bathroom, Jin lifts the ring to the light and reads the little roman letters that curve around the inside in delicate, ornate script: BROS B4 HOS. He snickers to himself.
"Jesus, are you coming?" Ryan calls from the living room. Jin realises he is smiling up at the ring like some kind of retard and flushes.
"Yeah," he calls back. "Hold on."
After a moment's hesitation, he slips the ring back on; it's a little tight now, but cool and familiar. It feels like arriving back home after school camp.
"Tadaima," he murmurs.
--
It was not pre-meditated. He did not try to murder Kame’s ring in cold blood. It was a crime of passion, an act of petulant desperation. No jury in the world would convict him.
“What are you doing?” Kame asks. Jin’s arm is dangling out the window, the little red velvet bag hanging from his fingertips. Jin freezes and they stare at one another, Jin trying to curl the bag up into his fingers so that Kame won’t realise what it is; won’t ask him any embarrassing questions.
“Nothing,” Jin says, and leans into the window. “Just hanging out.” He wonders if he can drop the little bag without Kame noticing, but Kame is already moving over and yanking his arm back inside.
“Is that my stuff?” he asks, and yanks it out of Jin’s hand, confirming that yes, Jin really was about to drop his jewellery out a twelfth story window. “What the hell are you doing?”
“I don’t know,” Jin says. “I think I was sleep walking.”
Kame stares at him, still holding the velvet bag in his fist. “Akanishi,” he says.
“It’s a common problem, Kamenashi!” Jin yells. “You shouldn’t have woken me, you might have scared me into going nuts or something!”
The truth is, Jin had come back into their dressing room after his solo shots for the August issue of Wink Up and Kame’s rings had been sitting on top of the bag on the dressing table, and Jin. Well, he’s not known for his restraint. He couldn’t just get rid of that whore Tegoshi’s ring - that would look suspicious - so he’d swept them both into the bag, tied the drawstring tight, and gone to throw it out the window, as hard as he could. Only that’s when Kame came in and now they’re in this horribly awkward moment, and why doesn’t Kame believe him, it’s not like he’s a liar or something.
“Ok,” Kame says. He scrubs his face with his hand. “Why would you want to, IN YOUR SLEEP, throw my rings out the window?”
“Maybe because they’re ugly,” Jin says. “I was probably trying to protect you.”
Kame looks offended by that, and starts to snap something scathing in retort, but then Jin makes the mistake of moving his hand and Kame’s eyes fall onto his fingers where their ring curls around his pinky. It suddenly seems like the brightest thing in the room.
“Is that-” he cuts off, looks confused and wary. “What’s going on?”
“I probably put it on in my sleep...” Jin says, and stuffs his hand in his pocket.
“Jin,” Kame says, and he just sounds tired now. Jin’s stomach flips over, and he sinks into a chair. Kame sits across from him, and they are both quiet for a while. The others have gone home already, and Jin is glad; it’s awkward enough to sit here in front of Kame, who has already seen him at his worst.
“I don’t want you to replace me,” Jin says, feeling a bit emotional and a bit angry about it. He hunches into his shoulders. “With stupid Tegoshi.”
Kame blinks at him. He is quiet for a long moment and Jin thinks he is trying to figure out a way to let him down easy, to say that Jin had his chance and blew it and that Tegoshi is fifty times the best friend he ever was, but then Kame just says, “Huh?”
Why is he making Jin do this? “I don’t want your new best friend to be Tegoshi.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kame says.
“YOUR NEW BEST FRIEND,” Jin yells. “TEGOSHI. HE SUCKS. HOW MUCH MORE DO I HAVE TO SPELL IT OUT?”
“He’s not... he’s not my new best friend?” Kame says. “I mean, he’s ok and all...”
“What?” Jin says. “YOU TWO ARE LIKE, JOINED AT THE HIP. You don’t have to lie.”
“I seriously don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kame says.
“Koki said the two of you are moving in together,” Jin says.
Kame’s lips twitch slightly. “Koki was fucking with you.”
“What?” Jin asks. His heart is beating fast and he grabs at his t-shirt, trying to calm down. “Why would he do that?”
“I don’t know,” Kame says. “So you’d do this?”
(“Because you deserved it,” Koki says later, when Jin harrasses him for an explanation. “You douchebag.”)
“But he bought you a ring,” Jin mumbles. This whole conversation has been kind of humiliating, especially now that Kame is looking at him with that kind of gentle look on his face. “Like our ring.”
Kame looks down at his hands; Jin becomes acutely aware of the clock ticking loudly and the sound of footsteps in the hall. He wonders what Kame wants to say; why he needs to take the time to phrase his response so carefully. Jin remembers when Kame just used to tell him anything that came into his head, no filters. He misses that. At least then he knew what he was really thinking, even if what he was thinking was that he was angry at Jin and wanted him to go to hell.
“It’s just a ring,” he says finally. He takes it out of the velvet bag and holds it out to Jin. “Here. You can have it, if it’s that important to you.”
“It’s not important to me,” Jin says, but he takes it and clutches it to his chest anyway. He half expects it to sear his flesh like a crucifix would burn a vampire.
“I haven’t replaced you,” Kame says. His voice is steady, and so are his eyes. Jin shifts in his seat. “I’m not going to replace you. No-one can be what you are to me.”
Somehow that just makes Jin feel worse, even as he feels better; the knowledge that he’s made Kame lonely, only half acknowledged and buried at the back of his brain before, slams into him and makes his throat get thick. “Kame,” he says miserably.
“It’s like America, right?” Kame looks at him through his silky bangs; his familiar dark eyes the only part of him that has stayed the same through all the years they have known each other. “You had to go, and it hurt... it hurt a LOT, but I always knew you’d come back.” He breathes out, an unstable breath. “You always come back in the end.”
Jin swallows, pursing his lips together hard to try and stop the tears he feels slowly rising in his throat. He grunts his assent, unable to trust himself to talk without blubbering.
“You’ve been angry at me for a long time,” Kame says, and it is unnerving to have it laid out like that, their wounds stripped bare, pustulating and vile.
“I don’t know why,” Jin manages, and it is true. If he tries to trace the lines of their estrangement back, past Tegoshi, past America, past Kyon-kyon and Seishun Amigo, there’s nothing but a shadow hiding in the dark; a word on the tip of his tongue.
Kame smiles at him, slightly, lips curling in at the corners and eyes shining.
“I do,” he says, and leans in to kiss Jin.
Part of Jin wants to get up and run. He lifts his hands intending to shove Kame away and make a break for the door, but there’s another part, a stronger part, that just thinks, finally, and his hands end up in Kame’s hair instead.
He’s such an idiot.
--
Kame takes him home. Jin lingers in the doorway and looks around as Kame strips off his scarf and coat and throws them on the couch, puts the kettle on for tea, and presses Play on the answering machine. The first message is from Kame’s manager asking where he is; they apparently had a quick meeting scheduled after the shoot and Kame hasn’t been answering his cell. Jin blushes when he thinks about where Kame was; pressed up against him in the tiny bathroom in the studio, hands just skimming the waistband of his jeans.
Jin walks into the room as the next message, from Kame’s mother, plays. Her voice is familiar and vaguely soothing. It makes it easier to document the changes in this space; it is not the same apartment Kame lived in the last time Jin came over, but most of the things in it are the same. Over the mantle are a series of autographed baseballs in glass domes. Jin bought him the second one from the left for his seventeenth birthday. He sinks onto the couch and stretches out his limbs. He tries to get a handle on the euphoria he feels, gather it up and bind it into something manageable.
Kame brings him a cup of tea and perches on the arm of the couch, feet jammed beneath Jin’s thigh. He leans over and kisses Jin again, the way he has been doing every few minutes since the first time, not three hours ago. Jin feels like he is Neo in the Matrix, only instead of going down the rabbit hole and finding a shitty world full of creepy aliens, he realised he is in love, which is kind of awesome but almost scarier than the aliens.
The third message is from Tegoshi, and Jin chokes and accidentally grazes Kame’s lip with his teeth.
“Hi Kame-chan,” Tegoshi says, with his stupid voice. “It’s Tegoshi-kun.”
Kame pulls his lips away from Jin’s a bit as Jin spits, “Why is he calling you at home?”
“I think you should talk to Akanishi-kun,” Tegoshi continues, and Jin thinks, oh no. Kame looks at him in confusion.
“He’s been going around saying really weird things...” Tegoshi says, and Jin replies, aloud, “Shut up.”
“I think he might be upset,” Tegoshi says. “Your MOTHER is upset,” Jin says.
“Anyway, see you...” Tegoshi says, and then Jin is left alone with Kame again. Kame who is looking at him kind of murderously.
“What have you been saying?” Kame asks.
“Nothing,” Jin says. He tries to put his hands back on Kame’s waist, but Kame dodges him.
“Who have you been saying ‘nothing’ to?” Kame asks.
Jin scowls. “Nobody,” he says indignantly. “Just Pi. And Ryo.” He purses his lips sheepishly. “And Koki. And Tackey, and Nagase, and a couple of the kids from Hey! Say! JUMP.” He blushes. “And Johnny.”
Kame looks annoyed, but he’s also laughing, and he lets Jin catch him around the waist and drag him down from his perch on the arm of the couch and into his lap. Jin leans down and kisses him. It feels valiant and free. He feels brave. “I’m sorry,” he says, stroking the side of Kame’s face, and he means it for more than just the weird stuff he said to Pi.
Kame swallows, and Jin sees the weakness that he was hiding earlier, the thin and frail Kame who had nightmares about messing up the choreography in Shounen Club and couldn’t eat from stress. Jin feels manly and determined to protect him. “You should be,” Kame says. “It was horrible.”
“It’s okay now,” Jin says. He squeezes him tight, strokes the loose hair away from his face. “It’s gonna be okay, now.”
Kame sniffles, turning on his side and buring his face in Jin’s stomach. Jin can feel his moist breath puffing through his thin t-shirt. “If you ever suddenly start acting like a dick again, I’m going to go seduce Tegoshi and we’ll have like a billion beautiful children,” Kame says.
Jin’s stomach twists imagining Kame fathering a litter full of tiny Tegoshi’s; little monsters who run around smiling at people all day then try to kill Kame in his sleep. “Don’t even joke about that,” he says.
“I’m not joking,” Kame says, voice muffled in Jin’s tummy. “I’ll do it.”
“Over my dead body,” Jin says. He smoothes Kame’s hair back and kisses him just behind the ear. It is weird how un-weird this is; there is obviously a part of Jin that has held himself back from doing these things for a long time, maybe the whole time they have known each other. After years of starvation, he has greedy hands.
“Better be on your best behaviour then,” Kame says, rolling onto his back and pulling Jin down for a kiss.
--
Jin wakes up in the middle of the night in Kame’s bed, nose pressed to the back of Kame’s hair and legs twisted in Kame’s sheets. It should freak him out more, but he wakes with perfect clarity, as if he has slept in this very spot a million times, pulled Kame close by the hips and nuzzled into his neck every night for a hundred years. A thought occurs to him suddenly, and he carefully pulls himself out from the knot he is tied in.
“Where are you going?” Kame mumbles sleepily as he slips out of bed.
“Shh,” Jin says. “Go back to sleep.”
Kame does, snoring slightly and burrowing into Jin’s pillow.
Jin goes into Kame’s walk-in closet and fumbles around for the switch. On the bench in the middle of the room is a beat up old Doraemon jewellery chest that has followed Kame from apartment to apartment since he was 19. When Jin opens the lid Doraemon starts twirling and music jangles into the still night air. He hisses for it to be quiet, but it doesn’t, of course, so he just tries to force the winder through to the end of the song. The notes speed through and then die off.
There is a row of rings on the top level of the chest, but the one Jin is looking for isn’t there. He takes out the first layer and presses the trick-wall on the left, revealing the hidden cavern Kame showed him once, the day he bought the box. They’d loved stuff like that back then, hidden compartments and hallways, secret passages.
Inside is the familiar black velvet box, just like the one Jin has at home. He takes it out and flips it open, cheering triumphantly to himself. He walks back into the bedroom, where Kame is fast asleep, hand a loose fist on the pillow.
Jin slides the ring onto his pinky, back where it should be. He sits on the bed holding Kame’s hand for a minute, looking at their rings next to each other, their platinum promise. He rubs his finger over Kame’s ring to watch it shine. That’s better, he thinks.
He climbs back into bed and folds himself over Kame’s body. He falls asleep with the feeling of Kame’s breath puffing into his cheek.