FIC: "Behind The Music" 1/2; 17,300 WORDS, RATED PG.
credit to samenashi for the beautiful banner!!
Title: Behind the Music
Author: soundczech
Word count: 17,300 words
Pairing: Akame
Rating: PG
Genre/Warnings: Angst; minor Character death.
Prompt (if used): Losing my edge
Notes: This was originally posted for spiritdream here as part of kizuna_exchange. For those of you who’ve never heard the term, ‘busker’ is just a word for street performer. I failed to provide smut... sorry T_T.
Summary: AU; Jin is a teen busker and some scrawny kid tries to move in on his territory.
Jin likes American songs best, the kind you can get up and dance to, with a pulsing bassline and filthy lyrics. He plays Usher and R Kelly to the small clusters of shoppers and salarymen that stream out of the train station in the evening. He throws in a Kinki Kids or SMAP song every now and again. These are crowdpleasers. He doesn't really care for them, but whenever he plays Lion Heart he is virtually guaranteed a fistful of thousand yen notes. Garasu no Shounen paid for his vintage leather jacket, for his ripped jeans and expensive sneakers. The Beatles will probably pay for his first car.
He has played in this spot almost every other day since he was thirteen. He has regular customers, the old lady who owns the dango shop and the guy, not much older than Jin himself, who inherited the tofu shop from his father. Jin even has groupies, mostly pairs of nervously giggling twelve year old girls from the junior high down the street. They throw heavy 500 yen coins in his upturned fedora and shriek when he smiles his thanks. Jin is a local institution.
When he lugs his Casio Keytone into the square one afternoon and sees a scrawny kid with messy hair playing guitar (pretty badly, Jin thinks) and singing enka for a group of enthusiastic old ladies, his reaction is more shock than rage. He drops his bag at his feet, wobbling a little from the weight of the keyboard strapped across his back.
"Eh??" he says. In four years of coming here this has never happened before, and it takes him a minute to truly comprehend the interloper spewing enka all over his territory.
The rage starts to set in. He moves closer.
Up close, the kid looks about thirteen or fourteen, maybe fifteen if you took him out of the gigantic black hoodie that swims around his slender body. In contrast, his jeans are a little too small, ripped at the knees and showing too much ankle. He has a strange angular face like a fox. His fuzzy eyebrows crumple with concentration as he strums his guitar, which is old and wooden with a profusion of faded hand painted flowers spilling over the body. He looks up and smiles when Eri-chan the florist drops a few coins into the beat up baseball cap at his feet; in the brief flash of grin Jin sees he is slightly gap-toothed. Jin's heart thumps with fury.
He wants to storm over, rip the guitar from the brat's hands and smash it on the pavement, but a lot of the women standing around are Jin's regulars. They probably wouldn't like it if he started terrorising skinny little kids, even if he is totally justified.
He stands paralysed as the kid starts playing an old Bob Dylan song. His English is garbled and thickly accented, nowhere near as good as Jin's own. He has a high, imperfect voice that wobbles a little in his lower register, as if he is scratching the depths of his breath There's a sweetness in the breaking sighs that is dangerous to Jin. Buskers don't have to be perfect. They just have to hold the hearts of the passing crowd in their grasp.
This kid must be eliminated.
-
When Jin walks into the square the very next day to find that same fucking kid poaching his audience, he snaps. He manages, barely, to wait until the kid is packing up his guitar and the crowd has drifted into the surrounding shops and houses. The second they are alone he stalks right up into that kid's space and pokes him in his boney chest.
"I play here," he says. "I've always played here."
The kid's shoulders are tense and square; the geometry of his body is all acute angles. "Excuse me?"
"This is my spot," Jin says. "You're trespassing."
"Oh," the kid says. "I'm sorry, I didn't realise."
Jin, who had been expecting fighting and shoving rather than this polite acquiescence, is thrown. "Huh?" he says, and scratches his head through thick, messy hair. "Um, ok. Just don't let it happen again."
The kid just clicks the clasps of his case into place and walks away.
-
It’s not quite a beautiful day. The sky is a pale, timid blue, folding here and there into fields of fluffy white clouds. It rained all morning and the streets have been washed clean; the leaves are thick and green on the trees that line the boundaries of the square. Jin swings happily from side to side and feels the reassuring weight of his keyboard gaining momentum, making him a human pendulum, fast swinging out of control. He grips the straps tighter.
Jin loves to sing. He could probably make more money working evening shifts at the conbini or walking dogs like his friend Sawada, but he wouldn't be able to feel his spirits lifting as his voice rose; wouldn't feel his ego beat in time with people's dancing feet. He likes the thought of some random salaryman humming his songs as he draws a bath at night; of schoolgirls singing as they muddle through their boring homework. He wants to be the bright spot in somebody's day.
When he reaches his destination and sees that kid sitting his spot for the third day in a row, he snaps. There is nobody around as he stomps over and kicks the faded baseball hat. Coins jangle across the ground and the kid stops mid-song to exclaim, "Hey!"
“I thought we had an understanding,” Jin says, hearing a shrill whine in his voice that embarrasses him. He tries to pitch his voice lower, manlier. Intimidating. “You weren’t going to play here anymore.”
The kid puts down his guitar and squares up to Jin, a few inches shorter but so angry. He is all taut muscles and clenched teeth. He tilts his jaw up arrogantly. Jin wants to break it. “I apologised for the inconvenience,” he says. His eyes are thin and evil like a cartoon villain. “I didn’t say I’d stop.”
“Yeah?” Jin says.
The kid puts his hands on his hips. His gigantic hoodie bunches in folds around the pressure of his fingers. “Yeah,” he says.
“Fine!” Jin spits, and rips the keyboard off his back. He sets it up a few feet in front of the kid’s guitar case, blocking him from the view of passers by. He flicks on the power and ramps up the volume. Nobody will be able to hear him sing over the volume of the music, but at least they won’t be able to hear that little shit’s stupid guitar either.
He starts with Savage Garden’s Crash and Burn, because it always makes the passing women stop and look at him with misty eyes. After the week he has had, he needs some women swooning at his feet. As he plays the beat soothes his anger and he closes his eyes and sings sweetly and earnestly; there is something embarrassing about feeling this open as he sings, but he can’t help it. Music makes him emotional. It eases the tightness and tension he sometimes feels and makes him feel bigger and stronger than he ever was before.
When he opens his eyes the kid is sprawled on the ground with his big backpack and guitar case at his side, leaning back on his arms and looking at Jin with a slight smile. Hair spills from below his floppy beanie and Jin realises his eyes aren’t cold and thin, they’re warm and dark and pretty, and for a minute his voice catches on a high note, breaks roughly as he brings the note back down. The kid’s grins.
He sits and listens through three songs, maybe four, and then he takes a few coins out of his beat up baseball cap and throws them in Jin’s fedora. He flashes Jin a shy gap-toothed smile, and then he walks away.
-
The next day when Jin reaches the station, the kid has already packed up his guitar case. He is sitting on a low stone wall eating onigiri in the same hoodie he has worn every day. His baseball hat is sitting beside him, overflowing with change.
“Hey,” he says as Jin walks towards him.
Jin frowns. “You’re not playing today?”
“I finished up already,” the kid says. There is a grain of rice clinging to the side of his mouth. Jin fights the urge to swipe it off, which he would do without a thought if it were one of his friends. The kid holds himself as if his personal space is an impenetrable barrier of which Jin is wary of stepping inside. After a minute the kid seems to notice and swipes it off himself with the tip of one callused finger; he lifts it to his lips and licks it up with his small pink tongue.
“Oh,” Jin says dumbly. He puts his keyboard down and shoves his hands in his back pockets.
“I won’t play in the evenings anymore,” the kid says. His speaking voice is sort of low and serious; he sounds older than Jin thinks he is. “It’s okay if I play beforehand, right?”
“Oh,” Jin says, baffled by this sharp turnabout. “Yeah.” He smiles slightly. “Every headliner needs a good support band, right?”
The kid snickers. “Whatever,” he says. “I’m Kamenashi,” he adds, and bows slightly; his behaviour is this strange mix of politeness and insolence, as if he got halfway through finishing school before being stolen away and raised by wolves.
“Jin,” Jin says. “I mean, I’m Akanishi Jin.”
“Nice to meet you,” Kamenashi says, and bows again. “Please look after me.”
-
After that, Kamenashi stays and watches Jin play every day, clapping along with the old ladies that gather with their shopping baskets full of vegetables and tofu. Sometimes he stays while Jin starts packing up, fiddling with his bags and asking Jin questions about his day. Sometimes he asks Jin for advice about singing and performing. Jin doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t really know what he’s talking about when he answers, so he just repeats the things he has heard in American movies about singing from your diaphragm and putting your all into it.
Kamenashi blushes when Jin says he has a pretty voice, and says, “I’m not really a musician like you.”
“What’s a musician?” Jin says. He sits next to Kamenashi on the bench and leans back on his elbows, looking up at the darkening sky. “I just love to sing.”
“Me too,” Kamenashi says. “It makes the world seem brighter.”
-
Sometimes, Jin sings Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life). He always sings it a capella because his keyboard sounds so clunky and intrusive with the simple melody. It’s one of the first songs he knew how to sing all the way through in English, part of a two or three month obsession with Green Day and American punk music. His fixation abruptly ended when he broke up with his girlfriend at the time, because Billie Joe’s deranged face just reminded him of the posters on her walls.
He always sings it when he’s feeling lonely.
He sings it on an overcast Thursday evening when the passing crowd all seem damp and grey and miserable. He always feels nervous singing a capella, imagining the crowd hearing every bump and imperfection in his voice; knowing they can hear, now, that his accent makes soft L’s out of hard R’s, or the way his voice sometimes wobbles with emotion.
Another turning point, a fork stuck in the road
time grabs you by the wrist directs you where to go
He’s only a few lines in when he is joined by a slightly clumsy guitar, the chords sounding a little wobbly and uncertain like his voice. He looks across and there is Kamenashi sitting beside him, strumming his guitar and looking a little hesitant, as if he’s not sure if this will be okay.
Jin’s smile breaks out of him and so does his voice, lifting in song almost out of his control.
Kamenashi begins to sing about halfway through the song, his voice slipping in beneath Jin’s; they are not quite in harmony. It is more like their voices are reaching out to one another, each trying to figure out where the other fits.
Jin looks down at Kamenashi as they sing the final lines and in the crowd the group of girls that have always left him love letters and sobbed his name after ballads are clutching each other and shrieking a little. Jin wonders what it is they see. He needs someone to explain to him what has just happened; whatever it is, it feels momentous, but he doesn’t understand why.
-
Jin begins to talk about Kamenashi to his family and friends, but in doing so, he realises that he doesn’t really know anything about him. His mother asks him where he goes to school, what his parents do, about his siblings and friends and where he lives, and Jin realises with a start that he has no idea about any of these things.
These are the things Akanishi Jin knows about Kamenashi Kazuya:
1. He plays in the town square every day.
2. He taught himself to play guitar.
3. He likes dorky Japanese bands and weird American music that old people listen to.
4. He likes kids.
5. He likes animals.
6. He has just turned sixteen years old.
Jin feels a sudden impulse to run off and find Kamenashi right this second. He wants to sit him down and interrogate him, compile a list of those little pieces until he can sit down and put them together. Until he knows who Kamenashi is.
He doesn’t know where to find Kamenashi, though. He doesn’t even know where to start.
-
He begins to quiz Kamenashi every night while he’s packing up. Kamenashi sits on the wall beside him and swings his legs, hands beneath his knees. His answers to Jin’s questions are polite but reluctant; he only every gives away a single fact at a time. It’s like being a contestant on some kind of elaborate quiz show. Jin is working hard for the grand prize.
Kamenashi’s father is a salaryman who works for a computer company Kamenashi does not know the name of. His mother stays at home. They live in a condo a few stations over, on the fifth floor overlooking a park. He goes to the boy’s school around the corner from where they play in the afternoons. He has two dogs, Ran and Jelly.
There’s something wistful in Kamenashi’s voice as he tells Jin these things. He looks Jin square in the eye as he speaks but his eyes are like one-sided glass. Jin can’t see what’s going on inside. Jin starts to think of him as a lonely person; he always wants Jin to stay until the absolute last moment that he possibly can. Jin reluctantly leaves when his mother calls him to nag him about being late.
Nobody ever calls for Kamenashi.
Sometimes, Jin ignores his mother’s calls and she sends Reio down to get him. Walking away from Kamenashi on those nights feels like it used to when Reio was just starting school and Jin had to drop him off on the way to class; he remembers Reio’s tiny hands clutching his teacher’s and him looking back with glassy eyes and a wobbling chin; if Jin looked back Reio would burst into tears and run for Jin’s knees.
Whenever Jin looks back at Kamenashi, he’s got his head down and his guitar in his lap, carefully plucking out chords.
-
The first time Jin sees Kamenashi away from their usual spot, it is almost midnight and Jin is on his way home from playing FIFA at Sawada's place. He had been on a winning streak all night. He is not usually good at video games; he doesn't have the patience or dexterity, and his A+B+BA combination to often becomes AAAA+BBBBBAB+A. Tonight he was on fire, his little soccer players destroying Sawada's in what must have been an embarrassing upset victory. He'd spent twenty minutes smugly rubbing it in until Sawada had practically forced him out the door, turning the latch in response to his protests.
When he turns the corner and sees Kamenashi crossing the street, backpack hanging low on his hips and hoodie up, hiding his face, he almost doesn't recognize him. He is wearing the same clothes as always and Jin recognizes the firm line of his shoulders on an almost instinctual level, but it comes as a shock to see him out here in the big wide world.
The Kamenashi Jin has slowly drawn out of his shell is cocky and kind of obnoxious. He stands in the crowd and heckles Jin sometimes, giggling with apparent delight when Jin grows red and flustered, when he forgets the lyrics or misses a note. He is the loud voice that cheers and claps over the spattered and polite applause whenever Jin finishes up a set. Sometimes he will reach out and take half of whatever Jin is eating without even asking and stuff it in his mouth whole. When they argue he is prickly and hard; he never backs down when Jin starts advancing on his, even though he's only like half Jin's size. Jin doesn't want to think about what would happen if they ever got in an actual fight; Jin is big and strong but cowardly. Kamenashi is scrappy and fast and would probably wipe him out in seconds. Jin doesn't take his chances. Whenever he sees real heat in Kame's eyes he starts teasing him out of it. The kid is quick to anger but even quicker to forgiveness.
The Kamenashi of the outside world looks almost startlingly frail and wary in comparison. He walks with his head down, hiding inside his hood. One hand clutches the strap of his backpack tightly. The guitar case is swinging from the other. Jin wonders if he ever goes home.
Jin is about to call out when suddenly, Kamenashi is gone.
"Eh?" Jin says, running to close the distance that had been between them. He is now standing in of the tall steel gate of an elemntary school. It is slightly ajar. He prods at it and calls, "Kamenashi?" but he's too afraid to raise his voice. The playground looks grim and murderous in the blue-white glare of the street lights; the shadow of the jungle gym looks like a giant rib cage, cracked open on the ground.
Jin creeps along, heart beating petrified at the thought of the ghosts of dead schoolchildren that he's sure are chasing his shadow. "Kamenashi," he hisses again, wondering what he has gotten himself in for; whatever Kamenashi is doing in an abandoned schoolyard after dark, it probably isn't good. Jin looks around uneasily, half expecting to see Kamenashi coming through a window with a stolen computer or scrawling his name on the wall in neon pink spraypaint.
All of a sudden, noise cuts across the playground, making Jin gasp and stumble over his feet. The snuffling of a monster, breathy and congested. He clutches his heart over his coat.
Calm down, he thinks as he slowly turns towards the sound. You're Bruce Willis.
It's just Kamenashi, tucked inside the cubby house across the yard, curled up around his guitar inside a ratty sleeping bag, snoring.
Jin stands there for a long time.
-
That night, Jin doesn't sleep. He lies awake in his single bed, looking up at the defaced posters of Johnny's boys he has tacked up on the wall. Yamashita Tomohisa looks down on him from behind his dripping fangs and Hitler moustache, horns piercing through his fashionably mussed hair. Jin doesn't know the others’ names; they are miscellaneous disfigured faces with warts and pirate style scars.
He counts the number of rhinestones on their costumes, trying not to think about the shivering and tense line of Kamenashi's body inside his sleeping bag. He alternates between fear and confusing rage; Kamenashi might get raped or murdered or something sleeping out there like that, so why doesn't he just go home like a normal person?? Has he had a fight with his parents? Maybe his grades were so bad that they screamed at him and he stormed out and was too proud to go back. Maybe he'll go back in the morning when he misses Ran and Jelly too much. He can't just plan to stay out there like that every night.
Jin ran away once, when he was ten years old. He made it as far as the McDonalds on the corner before some creepy old guy started talking to him and he gave in and went home out of sheer terror.
Kamenashi will go home too, Jin thinks. He'll walk in and his mother will cry and fix him a snack, like Jin's did. She'll fuss over him and tell him she loves him and she's sorry. Kamenashi will sleep in a clean, warm bed.
Everything will be okay.
-
Kamenashi is totally normal when Jin next sees him, which is a relief because Jin had half expected him to suddenly be one eyed and bruised all over. He's playing Yesterday and crooning with his goofy, clumsy English. A group of schoolgirls cluster around and squeal.
They have now known each other three months; Jin looks at him with fresh eyes and sees that he has grown a few inches and that his hair has grown long and wild, pieces falling free where he has tried to pin them into submission.
He is wearing the same clothes he wore the day they met. The same clothes he wears almost every day, just slight variations in the layering and combination.
He smiles when Jin sits down beside him and they finish out the song together, just their voices and Kamenashi's solemn guitar.
Later, when Jin asks him how he slept, Kamenashi just smiles and says, "like a baby."
-
Three nights in a row, Jin follows Kamenashi to the schoolyard, lurking a block or so behind and feeling his heart sink when Kamenashi turns into the school gates. Every night he hopes that Kamenashi will take a different route, one that leads him to the little condo he shares with his parents and his beloved pet dogs. Every night Kamenashi crawls into the dark cubby house alone.
-
Jin takes to bringing lots of food with him to the square in the afternoons, stealing onigiri and leftovers from his mother’s supply. She just thinks he’s hungry because he’s a growing young boy and fills his bento to bursting every morning before she sends him off to school. Jin makes a show of eating a few bites in the afternoons and then complaining loudly about how he’s full or the food tastes bad until Kamenashi snaps that if Jin’s just going to waste it then he may as well eat it himself. He takes Jin’s chopsticks without hesitation (indirect kiss, some childish part of Jin whispers) and stuffs his face. Jin realises eventually that he will eat absolutely anything except pickled plums; he screws up his nose whenever they appear and eats conspicuously around them. He leaves a bento box practically licked clean but for the little pile of pickled plums in the corner.
Jin goes home and tells his mother that he doesn’t like pickled plums anymore. She sighs, but stops putting them in his lunch.
Sometimes, Jin wants to tell her about Kamenashi and all the things he isn’t supposed to know. He wants her to wrap him up in a hug and tell him what to do, but he can’t. If he tells her she might call the cops or try to find Kamenashi’s parents, the way any responsible parent would do. Jin knows he is young and irresponsible and stupid, but he also knows that Kamenashi wouldn’t live like this if he didn’t have a good reason. He wouldn’t live like this if he felt he had any other choice.
So Jin can’t tell her. It isn’t his secret to tell.
-
The season turns and it starts getting colder. Jin spends a lot of time lying in bed wondering if Kamenashi is warm enough, if he’s getting enough sleep. One afternoon he goes to the local department store and buys a thick, plush blanket, crimson red and covered in tiny black stars. He leaves it in the cubby house on his way to the square. He hopes Kamenashi finds it before a security guard or one of the packs of roving kids that sometimes hang out on the school grounds after hours. Kamenashi never mentions it, but he has no reason to; he still doesn’t know that Jin knows. That he’s a runaway or an orphan or homeless, or whatever.
Sometimes when they’re talking in the evenings, Kamenashi will look at him a certain way, and Jin will be sure he’s about to tell him. Jin will be telling a story about his mother or Reio, about something dumb or hilarious or enraging that one of them did, and Kamenashi will look at him with naked envy in his eyes, mouth crumbling over a firm jaw.
“Jin,” he says one day. They’re sitting side by side on a bench, watching as the city lights grow brighter as the daylight fades. “What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Jin shrugs. The air is crisp and raises goosebumps on his skin, but he can feel the warmth of Kamenashi’s body pressed up against his arm.
“Famous,” he says, giggling a little in response to Kamenashi’s barked laughter. Kamenashi leans his head on Jin’s shoulder and Jin is a little surprised to feel his heart flip, as if Kamenashi is a pretty girl. Absently, Jin wonders where Kamenashi bathes; the way he lives his life, he should smell like sweat and squalor, like the men that lie around outside Shinjuku station, but he doesn’t. He smells like cheap liquid soap, the kind you find in hand dispensers in the bathrooms at McDonalds or at the mall - like mysterious, synthetic flowers and suds.
“Don’t forget me,” Kamenashi says. His hair brushes Jin’s cheek and makes him want to giggle. “Don’t forget me when you’re on Music Station.”
“What are you talking about?” Jin says. He wraps his hand around Kamenashi’s fist so they’re not quite holding hands. “I’m taking you with me.”
Kamenashi turns and looks up at Jin, smiling slightly. When he reaches up and kisses Jin’s cheek, it’s almost not weird.
-
Jin takes Kamenashi out for ramen one day when the passersby have been particularly generous. He has been in a nostalgic mood all evening, playing the old songs his mother and Kamenashi like; The Beatles and Eric Clapton, a little bit of The Rolling Stones. His selection makes the salarymen more generous.
"Let's go eat," he says, scooping huge handfuls of coins out of his fedora. "My treat."
Someone had thrown him a crisp 1000 yen note. He stuffs it down the back of Kamenashi's hoodie as he passes, giggling in response to his yelp. He watches as Kamenashi stuffs his hand down the back of his hood, fingers scrambling to get a hold of it. He pulls it out and smooths it between his fingers. "Big spender," he remarks, smiling crookedly up at Jin. "Am I supposed to strip or something?"
"Yeah," Jin says, and tugs at the waist of Kamenashi's clothes. His fingers brush warm belly. He wonders if Kamenashi can see his blush. "Take it off, baby."
Kamenashi just laughs and shoves the note in the back pocket of his jeans.
They go to the ramen joint around the corner. Jin orders them two huge bowls if steaming ramen, "extra meat", and a plate of gyoza. He takes pleasure in watching the blissful look on Kamenashi's face as he slurps down the first mouthful of noddles. They'll have to do this more often.
They eat quietly for a while, the meal punctuated only by the loud slurping of the noodles and the hum of the other customers. Kamenashi examines every slice of beef before he eats it, eyes closing in pleasure as his teeth tear into the flesh. Jin wishes he could being him here every day.
"Do I have to call you Kamenashi?" Jin asks out of nowhere; he'd not even really been aware he was about to ask himself.
Kamenashi glances at him and then drops his eyes back to his bowl of noodles; sparsely populated, now, bits of mushroom floating free in a sea of miso. "Like, what else would you call me?" he asks finally.
"I don't know," Jin says. "Kazuya?"
Kamenashi is silent for a long time, until Jin says, feeling wounded. "It's no big deal," Jin says. "I didn't mean to be..." he searches for the word, but it feels ridiculous, like something a character in a Kimura Takuya drama might say. "Forward..." he finishes awkwardly.
Kamenashi looks at him and licks his lips. "It's not that," he says. "Nobody calls me that. It doesn't even feel like me."
Jin bites his lip, then says, "Not even your parents?"
Kamenashi looks resolutely down, and then shrugs, noncommital.
Jin's heart hurts. "Best friends call each other by name," he says stubbornly. "It's how you know you're special."
Kamenashi doesn't reply, but his eyes look moist and his lip is trembling. Manly, Jin thinks, then says, "I'll call you Kame."
-
They start practicing songs together in the park after everyone has gone home, the volume on Jin's keyboard turned right down low so the neighbours don't complain. Jin makes Kame learn all his favourite R&B songs, including the hip hop intros. Kame is a terrible rapper but it makes Jin laugh hysterically to hear him try. Jin doesn't know why Kame indulges him. He sits there stumbling through monologues about his bitches and hos, hands bouncing and flicking to the beat. His movements are too graceful and his tongue too clumsy.
Jin teaches him some of the songs he has written, secretly. He composed them in his room with his headphones on, abruptly stopping whenever his mother came in as if she had just caught him watching porn.
Kame helps him with the lyrics. He is surprisingly sentimental and Jin's songs become littered with lines about sunsets and persevering through hardship amongst the sexual innuendo and whoreish moaning.
Jin makes Kame do the whoreish moaning, too, choking when the first hum leaves his throat.
Kame scowls at him, thankfully mistaking his response for laughter. "I'm not gonna do this if you're just gonna make fun of me," he grumbles.
Jin goes home that night and dreams about it, what those moans would feel like puffing against his neck. In his dream they're just lying together in Jin's single bed. His hands are doing something mysterious beneath the sheets; even in his dream he doesn't really know what that would be. He wakes panting, the words on his lips already half-forgotten.
It's becoming clear that he has some kind of weird gay crush on Kame.
After that, he avoids Kame for days.
-
"What are you doing here?" Sawada asks when Jin shows up on his doorstep at 7pm on Thursday night. He is wearing sweats and a worn out Linkin Park t-shirt.
"It's Thursday," Jin says. "I always come over on Thursdays."
"Sure you did," Sawada says. "Before you met that kid."
He stands aside and lets Jin in anyway. Jin tries to count back the weeks since he last came here, but realises he can't; every Thursday for as long as he can remember has been spent hanging out with Kame eating candy and writing songs. Just like every other day.
"Guess I missed my good friend Sawada," Jin says and pokes him in the cheek. Once, he might have said his best friend Sawada, more out of habit than anything else. They've known each other since they were little kids, growing up through pre-school and elementary school, junior high and high school. When they were kids they were friends because they both loved Dragonball. Now they're friends just because they are.
Jin walks into the living room where a bunch of guys are sitting around watching tv; some anime Jin doesn't recognize with lots of robots and explosions. They are drinking beer that someone must have stolen from their parents. Hiroki hands Jin a can as he sits down.
"What have you been up to, man?" he says.
"Not much," Jin says, thinking of Kame's voice and his teasing smile and his cubby house. "Same old."
Jin tries to be normal and hang out with the guys like always, making the same old jokes about hot girls and boobs and soccer players, but after a while he finds himself staring out the window, wondering what Kame is getting up to without him.
-
On the fifth night that Jin doesn't see Kame, he goes to bed early out of boredom and wakes with a start to the stark clap of thunder. His heart pounds with terror and it takes him a moment to comprehend why; he's staring at the red numbers on his alarm clock that tell him it is almost midnight when his brain catches up with his body and he scrambles out of bed. He grabs an umbrella and jams his feet in his sneakers as he runs out the door.
It's only a few minutes' run, but he is soaked through by the time he runs through the school gates. His hair is heavy and cold as ice and his shoes squelch in his shoes. Lightning cracks overhead as he skids to a stop by the cubby house.
Kame is sitting inside wide awake. The blanket Jin left him is over his head like a cloak, rather inefficiently shielding him from the fat drops of rain that fall through the cracks in the corrugated plastic roof.
Kame jumps when Jin appears, rearing back and clutching his blanket over his face in a shaking fist, as if the dripping fleece can protect him from the monster advancing in the dark.
"Kame," Jin says, reaching to pull the blanket away from his face. "It's just me."
The blanket goes still for a minute before Kame peeks out, brow rumpled with confusion. They stare at each other and Jin waits for Kame to ask how he found him, but he doesn't.
"Come on," Jin says, and holds out his hand.
-
They run the whole way home. Jin discards the umbrella after the wind breaks its arms and then it is just them and the torrential downpour. Kame never lets go of his hand.
Jin's mother is waiting in the kitchen when they let themselves in. She is wearing Jin's father's dressing gown and devouring a bag of potato chips; she eats when she is stressed.
They drip puddles on the floor as she yells at Jin and hits him around the ears. Kame looks down with slightly bowed shoulders as she hollers, flinching slightly in time with her shattering voice.
"This is Kame," Jin says when she has finished. "He's going to stay here tonight."
"You boys are soaking," she tuts. "Go run a bath before you both die of hypothermia, Jin."
Jin kisses her cheek as he passes. He strips off his shirt and drops it on the bathroom floor with a wet plop. He flips the taps and pours some bubble bath into the tub; it his mother’s and it smells like cherries, but Jin likes the way it feels when he squelches the bubbles into his skin.
He turns around and Kame is standing at the door, clutching a bright orange towel and looking a bit bewildered.
“Your mother said we should share,” he says. His hair is sticking to his scalp and curling around his neck. He looks like a drowned chihuahua. He steps inside the room. “I can just wait, if you want...”
“You’ll freeze,” Jin says, shaking his head. “It’s no big deal,” he adds, feigning nonchalance, even though his heart beat picks up a little at the thought of peeling Kame’s wet t-shirt away from his pale skin.
Kame nods and slides the door closed behind them. Steam fills the room and eases the slight ache of Jin’s muscles as he slides his pyjama pants off and steps into the bath. The water is deep enough to reach his shoulders and he pulls his knees up to his chest to leave Kame some room. He tries not to watch as Kame slowly eases his soaked hoodie over his head, but he has time to note the line of Kame’s waist as it slopes into almost womanly hips. He’s so thin that it makes Jin hurt.
He averts his gaze as Kame steps into the bath and sits down opposite him. It’s a big bath but their knees still knock, bones rubbing through their skin. The hot water slowly thaws their frozen muscles.
Jin picks up the loofah from the side of the bath and slowly draws it over his elbows to break up the awkward silence. Kame watches him, so Jin slides the loofah up his arm and over his shoulder. Kame shivers and then says, “You knew?” Jin can feel his toes flexing where they brush against Jin’s own. “About me?”
Jin shrugs. “Sort of.” He abandons he loofah and rests his chin on his knees. “I know you live in that cubby, but I don’t know why.”
Kame’s jaw flexes. “How long have you known?”
“A while,” Jin says.
“You never said anything,” Kame says, a note of disbelief lifting his voice and making it a little whiny.
Jin shrugs again. “I thought you’d tell me,” he says. “Eventually.”
Kame smiles crookedly. “As if,” he says. “You can’t keep a secret.”
“Can too,” Jin says, and splashes him with water. “I kept this one for ages.”
Kame nudges him with his knee. Jin nudges back a bit and his knee slips so it’s trapped between both of Kame’s. Kame’s skin is slippery and slick. “Thanks,” Kame says. His cheeks are a furious, blotchy pink; Jin doesn’t know if it is from the hot water or sheer embarrassment. “For bringing me here.”
“I was worried about the lightning,” Jin says.
“Well,” Kame says. “Thanks for worrying.”
They share Jin’s single bed that night because it’s too late and Jin’s too tired to pull the futon out from the cupboard in Reio’s room. He lends Kame a pair of old pajama pants covered in the batman logo; they’re a little too big and Kame has to tie the drawstring tight. He is a hot, bony presence in Jin’s bed, all elbows and arms in Jin’s stomach. He is restless and fidgety, tossing and turning and driving Jin crazy. He flinches awake at every slight noise; the rustling of the sheets or the compressor in the fridge starting to hum. His shoulders are tense and hard until Jin finally wraps his arms around him from behind and murmurs softly at his ear.
Kame clutches Jin's wrist, and finally, he sleeps.
-
The next day is Saturday, and they spend it sitting at the kotatsu playing cards. Reio joins in and Kame teaches them an infuriating game called Cheat that Jin keeps losing. Eventually, he refuses to play anymore until they switch to Texas Hold 'Em poker. He loses that too, but they keep on playing until he wins.
Jin's mother keeps bringing them snacks. Jin can tell she is horrified by the stark jut of Kamenashi's collarbones where they spear out of the v-neck of his borrowed t-shirt. Kame obediently eats everything she brings him; onigiri and miso soup, curry pan, mochi and three or four chocolate bars she must have retrieved from her secret stash. She makes them a big lunch which they devour in seconds. Reio stares at all the food as if they're all insane.
"Your mum is pretty," Kame says when she goes into the kitchen to get them some juice. "She looks like you."
Jin flushes at the indirect compliment.
His mum pulls Jin aside later and interrogates him about where Kame has been living, lips pursing in consternation when Jin tells her about following Kame to the cubby; about how that has been going on for months.
"You should have said something before now," she says. "What were you doing, waiting for him to collapse from malnutrition?"
Jin shifts sheepishly from foot to foot; he hates it when his mother thinks he's an idiot. She's usually the only person that doesn't. "I thought you'd call in child services or something," he says. "He's got his reasons for not wanting to go home."
"What are they, Jin?" she puts her hands on his shoulders. "Maybe we can help him."
"I don't know," Jin says. "But he does."
-
Jin insists that Kame stay again that night. They've spent all night watching baseball with Jin's dad; they leave him snoring on the couch and roll out the futon on the floor beside Jin's bed. They stretch out the blankets; they are Jin's from when he was a little kid and are covered in trucks and robots.
Kame crawls inside and buries his head gratefully into the pillow. Jin lies in bed and looks down at him in the light that streams in from the neon sign outside. Kame's sharp cheekbones cut into icy blue light. Jin closes his eyes.
-
Kame says, "I'm not a runaway."
Jin isn't sure if he has been sleeping; he feels heavy and confused and when he opens his eyes he realises that a couple of hours have passed since they went to bed. The neon has been cut and the only light comes from the little red numbers on Jin's alarm clock. He can't make out the lines of Kame's body.
Kame tells him his story in the dark.
-
When Kamenashi was barely three years old, he lived in a house in the suburbs with his parents and his two older brothers. His father was a salaryman and his mother was a housewife. He has vague memories of the sounds of their voices and the way they moved, the musty cigarette smell of his father and the egg-smell of the stuff his mother used to set her hair.
They were killed in a car crash when they were taking his second-eldest brother to the dentist. Kame doesn't remember this, but he has been told. His brother died instantly. His mother lingered on life support for days. His father, somewhere in between.
There was no-one to look after the Kamenashi children; one surviving grandparent, too senile and too poor. They had been put into the foster system, where they were supposed to stay together. Somehow, they didn't. Kame isn't too clear on the details.
He has lived in twenty-two foster homes since he was three years old. Some were better than others.
The last three were really bad.
-
"He wanted to adopt me," Kame says. His voice is thick and a bit husky. "He said, 'You'll be Kurosawa Kazuya now' and I had to get out. I had to. I mean, who IS that?" Jin hears his breathing hitch. "My brother won't come looking for Kurosawa Kazuya."
Jin doesn't know what to say; Reio has been such a constant source of irritation in his life that Jin can't imagine him being the source of longing like he hears in Kame's voice, but he suddenly feels like going into Reio's room and checking just to make sure he's still there.
"Your family is so nice," Kame says after a while, and when Jin hears the crack in his voice he slips out of his bed and onto Kame's futon, inelegantly tripping and tumbling in the blankets. He ends up uncomfortably squashed around Kame's legs, arms around him and head in his lap.
Tomorrow, they'll both pretend they didn't cry.
-
Jin has school on Monday morning. He reluctantly leaves Kame sitting at the kitchen table, eating rice and letting Jin's mother fuss over him. He's not sure why he's so reluctant to leave, only that it feels like if he walks out the door and shuts it behind him without looking back, then Kame is going to slip away from him.
He is distracted and jumpy all day, moreso even than usual. He watches the clock in his classes and doodles words in English in the margins of his notebooks; honey, lover, fighter, wolf. He doesn’t even pay attention in history, which he usually likes because the teacher Yamada-san is pretty and sometimes puts her hand on your shoulder and smiles when you’ve done a good job.
He is out the door almost before the bell has even rung, barely even stopping to grab his things from his locker. He doesn’t bother stopping at home for his keyboard, just rushes straight to the station. He half expects to explode into the square and find it empty. As if Kame might just skip town now that Jin knows some of his secrets.
Kame is just sitting there, though, same as always, bent over his guitar and tapping his toes in time with the beat. He is playing SMAP and laughing a little at the middle aged women who giggle and dance around him, twirling in their high-waisted mum clothes. Jin can hear his voice shake with giggles. He nods in response to Jin’s wave.
Jin stands by Kame’s guitar case and watches as he plays. There is a bento box sitting beside Kame’s backpack that Jin recognises as his mother’s. It is pale yellow and covered in tiny cartoon zebra.
Kame’s singing has gotten better; his voice has changed in the few months since Jin has known him, getting a little huskier and deeper, losing the slight chipmunkiness that Jin hadn’t even realised had been there originally. Jin whistles as Kame closes up the song and thanks the women for their time.
"Where's your keyboard?" Kame asks. By the looks of the coins scattered in the base of his cap, it's been a quiet day.
"Left it at home," Jin shrugs. "Figured you could play for me."
Kame grunts his assent, looking up at Jin beneath a hand shielding his eyes from the sun. "I've never seen you in school uniform before."
Jin purses lips, shifting uncomfortably from foot to foot; conscious, suddenly, that he probably looks like a total nerd. He runs his hands through his hair to mess it up and undoes the first few buttons on his jacket and shirt, revealing the black tank top beneath.
"Kakkoii," Kame says through the side of his mouth; his pick is lodged firmly in the other side. Jin stammers even though Kame is mocking him, but Kame just ignores him and begins to tune his guitar.
He stole that guitar from his foster father when he ran away. It was one of dozens, but this was his crowning glory, the jewel in his collection. It had belonged to some famous Spanish singer neither Jin nor Kame had ever heard of; renowned in the sixties for his intricate guitar solos. Kame's foster father had bought it at an auction for a fortune. Kame says he would probably kill him to get it back. If he ever finds him.
The story surprised Jin, because Kame never seemed the type to steal, especially something so personal and valuable like that. When Jin asked him about it, all Kame said was, “He deserved it.”
Jin shivers.
“So,” Kame says, abandoning the tuning forks, apparently happy. “What are we playing?”
Jin sits at his side, as close as the drum of the guitar will allow. “I thought,” he starts shyly, then stops.
“What?” Kame asks. He leans over a little so that he can peer into Jin’s face; Jin is refusing to look at him.
“Maybe we could play some of our stuff,” Jin says. For a minute, he hopes that Kame refuses; he is filled with the image of the passing crowd suddenly stopping to boo them, polite Japanese faces contorted with derision.
Kame just nods, businesslike, and says, “Ok.”
They play their songs, Jin singing and Kame strumming his guitar; joining in as a backup singer occasionally, but mostly silent. The people streaming out of the station mostly ignore them but a few stop and drop coins in their collection, tapping their feet to the beat. Some of the songs have lyrics only half-written; Jin fills the gaps with nonsense words in English, some cursing and sha la las. A few times, he sings dumb words like ‘envelope’ or ‘calendar’ and holds them on slow, soulful notes just because he likes the way they sound.
The girls that seem to come see him every day hold each other’s hands and cry. There is one that Jin has come to realise is ‘Kamenashi’s Fan’. Whenever Kame flicks his hair out of his eyes she trembles with delight.
At the end of the evening they empty the coins into their laps and Jin is a bit enraged to realise that they’ve only taken about half of their usual cash; he knows he should have expected it (the punters like what they know) but it still blindsides him a bit. He and Kame were fucking awesome. These people don’t even know what they’ve just seen. History in the making.
“One day we’ll hold lives and people will pay scalpers thousands of dollars for tickets,” Jin says as Kame counts out the coins and divides them by two. “All these people will be begging to come see us.”
Jin expects Kame to laugh at him, but he doesn’t. “Alright, superstar,” he says with a scrunched up smile. “Let’s make that a promise.”
They buy cans of vending machine coffee and sit in the square making plans for their first tour, which grows and grows until it’s a sell-out arena tour with shows in every major city in the world. Jin wants to start in LA, but Kame is insisting on London; they will record their breakout album, he says, in the studios at Abbey Road.
Reio comes down at about 9:30 and says, “Mum says you have to come home now.” He is wearing a bright red hoodie and a pair of sneakers that can’t possibly be his actual size.
Kame smiles at Jin, a firm, brave grin. “See you,” he says, and it hurts more this time than it has every other time he’s let Kame sit here on his own in the dark.
“Kame--” he starts, but Reio interrupts.
His voice is sheepish, hands stuffed inside his pockets all balled up and fidgety. He looks at Kame and says, “Mum says you have to come too.”
-
Jin’s mother takes Kame for a drive. They are gone for two hours; Jin sits in his room trying to concentrate on his homework, 2cos(3x - 1) = 0, but all he can think about is where they are and what they’re doing. What his mother is saying to Kame. When they will be home.
The equations blur on the page. They make little enough sense at the best of times, but right now it’s like staring at an alien language. He emails his mother’s phone, Where are you? but she never replies.
When they return a little after midnight, she says, “Kazuya is going to stay with us for a little while.”
Part 2