Kame/Nakamaru: the road that doesn't end, R
Title: the road that doesn't end
Pairing: Kame/Nakamaru, implied past Akame
Rating: R
Word Count: ~3,000
Warnings: A not-very-explicit depiction of masturbation. And it's a fic set in 2010, so you know what to expect.
Summary: Kame through the No More Pain tour.
Notes: Despite what it might sound like, this is really mostly fluff with maybe a teaspoonful of angst. It's also as much a NaKame fic as it is a fic about KAT-TUN and their fans; or should I say, it's me trying to express through fic how glad I am to have found my way back to being a Hyphen.
the road that doesn't end
Years ago, when asked on a TV show which member of KAT-TUN he would date if he were a girl, Kame had found it a difficult question to answer. He’d considered each of his bandmates in turn, and concluded that he wouldn’t want to date any of them.
He’d said that he couldn’t imagine Nakamaru with a girl at all.
That had been true. It still is true.
It’s 2010, and Kame keeps trying to imagine Nakamaru with a girl. He knows for a fact that Nakamaru has had girlfriends. But he just can’t picture it. He can’t see Nakamaru holding hands with a girl, kissing a girl, and--
He doesn’t know why he’s spending all his time thinking about it, either.
---
Summer starts to sink in; as KAT-TUN’s tour carries on, the heat of summer follows them across Japan.
During the concerts, Kame does what he does best. Fanservice. Half of his solo performance is just him burying his face in the necks of various members of Kis-My-Ft2, really. The skit he does with Nakamaru also garners a lot of screams. Whether it’s just because Kame’s acting cute or the fans actually like the thought of him and Nakamaru together, or they’d scream over Kame doing this with anyone, Kame can’t tell. He has no idea how Nakamaru manages to keep a straight face 99% of the time; it’s usually obvious that Kame’s either trying very hard not to break into laughter, or he’s already breaking.
It’s funniest when Kame leans in and makes sucking noises at Nakamaru’s throat and Nakamaru just stands there.
He doesn’t do it every concert. Just occasionally.
And Kame has his hand on the nape of Nakamaru’s neck, and he’s close enough that if he wanted he could lick the sweat from Nakamaru’s skin, and it’s like this for long seconds. Nakamaru just stays so still, and all the fans are always screaming and screaming and screaming.
Kame doesn’t know why he finds it so strange when he’s been doing this forever. He’s been mock-grinding his hips against other people’s on stage for years, mussing their hair, running his hands down their chest, pushing them down to kneel at his feet.
But there’s Nakamaru’s bare neck an inch beyond his lipstick-stained mouth, and every time he just wants to laugh, as if of all the things he’s done in his life, this is the most absurd. It’s not even as if this tour is the first time he’s done similar things with Nakamaru for their fans, but somehow, something’s different.
Then one day he wakes up with the remnants of a dream still caught behind his eyelids, and his hand’s sliding down and gripping his aching cock before he even really registers the light of the morning sun falling upon the bed. Each stroke drags the dream back a little, or maybe it’s not his dream anymore and he’s just filling in the gaps with his own conscious imagination.
And that’s odd, isn’t it.
Because it turns out he can imagine Nakamaru like that, after all.
Just not with a girl.
Nakamaru’s body, naked, inviting, more gorgeous than ever since Rescue, his stomach and arms more defined than before. A waist that makes Kame’s hands want to settle there, on the hardness of his hipbones, press his thumbs into the small of his back, and that neck, that sweet expanse of skin that Kame’s never had the chance to taste despite all the times he’d got so close. Kame had actually been a vampire in his dream; Nakamaru had offered himself to Kame, Kame had bit into Nakamaru’s throat and drawn red, and Nakamaru had, had-- moaned, and Kame shudders now, recalling, imagining.
It’s hot today, and Kame’s dripping sweat onto the sheets, and somehow that just makes it more, better. It’s like in concerts when he’s drowning under layers of clothing and dancing his feet off until he feels as if he might faint and yet nothing can make him happier, the heat soaking his pores, his back arching further and further off the bed, his hand working faster, and--
When he comes, it’s to the shockingly vivid image of Nakamaru’s mouth around his cock.
He drapes an arm across his eyes and tells himself that he can deal with this, he can get over this, except with his eyes shut and hazy pleasure yet to clear from his mind entirely, he’s again distracted by the picture his imagination paints for him: this time, it’s Nakamaru kissing him, softly.
Nakamaru’s arms wrapped around him. That feeling he doesn’t have to completely imagine, because Nakamaru’s hugged him before. And Nakamaru’s hugs are... nice. Safe, solid. Warm. As dependable as Nakamaru himself.
---
Jin tells them he’s decided to leave KAT-TUN for good.
It doesn’t surprise them all that much.
What does surprise Kame, is how little it hurts.
It hurts, of course it does, but nowhere near as much as he might have expected it would.
If this had happened a few years ago, he’s sure he would have felt different. But now, he’s finally got to the stage where he can be rational about Jin-- an ability he doesn’t think he used to possess.
Kame has seen their fans screaming for them even when Jin isn’t there. He knows their fans believe in them, so he should too. He should believe in KAT-TUN; their fans will hold them together as much as the members themselves will.
There are tears, at first.
But their fans do keep screaming, sometimes through the tears, louder and louder.
---
Kame doesn’t know what to do about Nakamaru.
He doesn’t have to do anything, he knows. But he wants to do something, anyway. Their skits continue. Kame closes his eyes when he’s pretending to bite Nakamaru, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still see as clearly as if his eyes were open: a sight committed to memory.
Once, he plays it up even more. Both hands on the back of Nakamaru’s neck, running his fingers through Nakamaru’s hair. The screams are deafening.
Afterwards, they never talk about it.
Kame thinks, though, if he can just tease Nakamaru enough, so that he can get a response out of Nakamaru at least, then maybe he’ll feel less restless. Something, anything. Even if it’s just Nakamaru telling him to back off a little. But when they’re not performing on stage, they go on as they always have.
He’s spending so much time with the other members lately, but especially Nakamaru. Nakamaru just seems to stick around even when everyone else drifts away. It’s impossible to stop thinking about him when he’s right there in front of Kame, or when he’s in the room next door and they’re separated only by a thin wall.
Kame wonders when the hell his feelings about Nakamaru got so complicated that some nights, sleepless with unquiet longing, he’ll press his palm flat against the wall, and think about Nakamaru lying asleep on the other side.
---
They go to Korea for their concerts there, and they throw around Korean phrases that they’d started learning a month ago when they’d come to Korea to promote their tour.
Kame discovers that he really likes calling Nakamaru oppa, and Nakamaru gets all exasperated whenever he does it, so Kame refuses to give in.
“Oppa,” he says, waving the menu in Nakamaru’s face and pointing at something. “Why don’t you try this?”
Nakamaru squints at the menu.
“Oi, don’t trick me into ordering Korea’s spiciest dish or whatever this is! And stop calling me oppa.” He bats the menu away.
“You are my oppa,” Kame says.
“So’s everyone else in KAT-TUN. And only women use the word oppa. And we’re not Korean.”
Kame raises his eyebrows, and carries on calling Nakamaru his oppa right into their concert skits. In his pure white dentist uniform, Nakamaru glares at Kame. Kame just grins and says, in the cutest voice he can manage, “Noona?”
The fans go wild.
Nakamaru looks resigned to his fate.
---
Blue paper planes fill the air, soaring at every member of KAT-TUN from every angle.
When the concert ends, Kame pockets one of them and takes it with him back to Japan, hangs it from the ceiling of his flat, reads the words on it every night he’s home.
---
After their last Japan concert of the year, they have dinner together to celebrate. Two more shows left in Taiwan next week, and they’re done with this tour. Their first world tour. Well, they’ve called it that, but it’s hardly a world tour at all.
One day, Kame prays, they’ll conquer the world more thoroughly.
Kame remembers the pinky promises he made with Jin when they were younger, pointing at a map of the world and stumbling through the names of so many different foreign countries they couldn’t even dream of visiting. He thinks of Jin in America, and hopes he’s happy.
Dinner is delicious; yakiniku always is, chased down by cans of cold beer. Kame’s relaxing, slouching a little more in his seat and laughing with his whole body at an awful pun Taguchi just made. They’ve made it through this summer, pretty much. Kame looks around the table at everyone: Koki’s shoving Taguchi’s shoulder and Ueda’s looking into his beer as if it’s a depthless mystery that needs to be solved, and Nakamaru’s starting to tell a story that nobody’s really listening to.
It’s going to be like this from now on. The five of them. Kame can carry the A. He can be proud of carrying the A, as long as he doesn’t have to stand alone.
Koki and Taguchi and Ueda get into an argument about some manga that Kame doesn’t read. From what Kame can make out, Koki surprisingly appears to be on Taguchi’s side. Taguchi starts to get whiny, and Ueda snappy. Koki’s voice rises. Kame’s content to watch them squabble.
Nakamaru puts a hand on Kame’s arm. “Hey, so that story you told during the MC-- do you really have my uchiwa at your place?”
Kame blinks down at Nakamaru’s fingers. Nakamaru’s hand is so soft. “What?”
“You know, you said that thing about using my uchiwa at this party you had with your family or something.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Kame takes a gulp of beer, luxuriates in its cool slide down his throat.
Nakamaru’s eyes widen. “It’s true?”
“Yeah.” Kame shrugs.
“Why do you have my uchiwa?” Nakamaru makes a confused face.
“I have everyone’s uchiwa,” Kame mumbles.
Nakamaru frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I collect our uchiwas,” Kame explains quietly. He’s embarrassed, but they’ve started on the topic now and Nakamaru’s look of curiosity means that Kame has no choice but to keep going.
“It wasn’t really my idea at first. My mum-- and the relatives who’d wanted me to join Johnny’s, you know,” Kame says, grimacing a little. “It was kind of weird, opening a drawer and seeing all our faces staring back at me. Especially back when we still weren’t sure we liked each other.” He chuckles, and Nakamaru smiles in understanding and reminiscence.
“And then I realised that it was easier, better than collecting anything else, if I wanted mementos of us through the years. The concerts were always the best times we shared. Even when we hated each other, somehow whenever we performed during a concert, I think we all felt more of a connection-- a bond. Now I can look at each uchiwa and remember what it felt like to step onto the stage each year: ah, yes, Ueda’s hair looked like that back then! And Nakamaru’s nose seems to have grown bigger every year!”
Nakamaru smacks Kame’s arm in protest. Kame smiles, feeling fond.
“So yes, I have your uchiwa. I have everyone’s uchiwa from every year since we held our first concert.”
“Your own?” Nakamaru asks.
Kame nods. “It’s even weirder to look at those, but the collection wouldn’t be complete otherwise. And they bring back a lot of memories too.” He lets his thoughts linger for a while on the earliest uchiwas of Jin, back when they were still--
He takes a deep breath, and finishes his beer.
“2002,” Nakamaru says, shaking his head. “We were just a bunch of kids back then, weren’t we?”
“We’re still just a bunch of kids, Yucchi,” Kame says. “I don’t think we’ll ever stop being that.” He eyes the other half of the table, where Koki is now reaching over Taguchi to grab Ueda’s shoulder as Ueda spouts an angry rant.
“Um. We do have our occasional relapses,” Nakamaru says.
Kame laughs and leans his shoulder against Nakamaru’s, and really, it’s not that complicated after all. Right at the centre of his messy feelings is just the simple desire for Nakamaru to be there, always. He loves how easy it is to talk to Nakamaru, but even more than that: how easy it is not to talk to Nakamaru, to just sit there with him and enjoy the silences they share.
Nakamaru just lets Kame lean on him. He doesn’t say a word.
---
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame repeats, over and over, until their interpreter nods at him and tells him that’s good enough. Do you love me?
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame yells into the empty stadium. He turns, and Nakamaru’s there behind him, tracing out dance steps. “Ni ai wo ma?” he asks.
“The fans will love that, I’m sure,” Nakamaru says, hardly even lifting his head to look at Kame, and carries on beating out a rhythm onto the stage with his feet. “You’ll keep screaming it at them and they’ll just keep screaming yes back.”
Kame gets this fluttery feeling in his stomach, watching Nakamaru rehearsing. He thinks, yes, but he doesn’t know what it’s in answer to.
Later, Kame goes into their dressing room and Nakamaru’s the only one there, checking his costumes and humming something. It’s odd, but Kame can’t figure out why. He decides to go for obnoxious; he wants to grab more of Nakamaru’s attention. “Ni ai wo ma?” he shouts.
Nakamaru looks away from the rack of sparkling clothes and meets Kame’s gaze. “Will you please just--” He scrubs a hand through his hair, looks down again. “Kame. Kame, please, just--”
“Just what?” Kame asks, walking closer, his heart an untrained little puppy jumping for food in his chest.
Nakamaru takes a few steps towards him, too. “I’m going to kiss you,” Nakamaru says.
“Okay,” Kame says, feeling his heartbeat slow down some. It’s okay. They’ve got to this point at last.
“What?” Nakamaru splutters.
“I just said okay.” Kame blinks at Nakamaru.
“Okay,” Nakamaru echoes, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Um.”
Kame’s getting impatient, but then Nakamaru reaches out with one hand and it falls, soft, on Kame’s cheek, and Kame closes his eyes and in that split second, imagines--
But then Nakamaru’s lips are on his, and he doesn’t have to imagine anymore.
Kame melts into the kiss, crushing his body against Nakamaru’s.
It’s real, this is real, not play-acting, no distance between them at all and no one they’re doing this for but themselves. His hand goes to Nakamaru’s neck, naturally. He lets his fingers feel out Nakamaru’s pulse; he’ll put his mouth there, soon, lick a wet stripe down Nakamaru’s neck with his tongue, but now he’s too busy with other things.
His hands go down Nakamaru’s sides, up under Nakamaru’s shirt to feel the muscles there, briefly, but then back down again to those hipbones, that skinny waist. His hands settle there.
Perfect. Much better than his imagination.
---
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame yells into the packed stadium.
“Ai!” the fans reply.
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame yells again, spreading his arms.
“Ai!” the fans scream, louder.
“Ni ai wo ma?” This time, Kame glances at Nakamaru before the fans respond.
Nakamaru’s looking at him. He’s standing a bit too far away for Kame to tell whether he’s smiling, but Kame thinks he is.
It suddenly strikes him what Nakamaru had been humming in that dressing room before they'd kissed. It was one of Kame's solo songs. That's why it had felt odd. Aishiteiru kara.
Nakamaru must have been listening to it recently.
---
The voices of their fans are still ringing in Kame’s mind; their fans, not leaving the stadium, continuing to sing along to Smile and waiting for KAT-TUN to come back for a fourth encore. It moves Kame so much to remember walking back into the light from the darkness backstage, hearing the melody of Smile envelop him like palpable warmth, grabbing a mic so that his voice could join his fans’. He saw, in the light, many of them were crying and smiling at the same time, and still singing. Always singing.
Kame hopes that that’s what he can do, too. Always sing, through tears and laughter.
He’s already desperate for their next tour.
But right now, he’s lying next to Nakamaru on a narrow hotel bed, no wall between them anymore. He clings to Nakamaru’s hand, their fingers intertwined. They’re silent, for the most part. Kame’s reliving the entire concert in his head; he hears music in the silence. He kisses Nakamaru now and then, gently, relishing the peace of the dimly-lit room, and the heat of Nakamaru’s body so close to his.
Lost in memory, he remembers something and laughs.
“What?” Nakamaru asks.
“Xiaolongbao,” Kame says, feeling a grin slip onto his face.
Nakamaru groans. “Will you stop picking up ridiculous nicknames for me in foreign languages?”
“You like them,” Kame says. “Admit it.”
“No, I don’t,” Nakamaru says, but Kame can hear it’s half-hearted.
“I won’t stop, oppa,” Kame says, running his free hand down Nakamaru’s chest, slow and deliberate, watching Nakamaru’s flustered expression with delight. “It’ll be-- Thai next, maybe, and we better set our sights further, I’ll find nicknames for you in Spanish and Italian and French.”
Nakamaru sighs, but there it is, that smile tugging at his lips. Kame kisses it, drunken with happiness, thinks in his head of all the ways he knows how to say I love you in different languages, or without any words at all.
The music continues into the night, endless and beautiful.
Pairing: Kame/Nakamaru, implied past Akame
Rating: R
Word Count: ~3,000
Warnings: A not-very-explicit depiction of masturbation. And it's a fic set in 2010, so you know what to expect.
Summary: Kame through the No More Pain tour.
Notes: Despite what it might sound like, this is really mostly fluff with maybe a teaspoonful of angst. It's also as much a NaKame fic as it is a fic about KAT-TUN and their fans; or should I say, it's me trying to express through fic how glad I am to have found my way back to being a Hyphen.
the road that doesn't end
Years ago, when asked on a TV show which member of KAT-TUN he would date if he were a girl, Kame had found it a difficult question to answer. He’d considered each of his bandmates in turn, and concluded that he wouldn’t want to date any of them.
He’d said that he couldn’t imagine Nakamaru with a girl at all.
That had been true. It still is true.
It’s 2010, and Kame keeps trying to imagine Nakamaru with a girl. He knows for a fact that Nakamaru has had girlfriends. But he just can’t picture it. He can’t see Nakamaru holding hands with a girl, kissing a girl, and--
He doesn’t know why he’s spending all his time thinking about it, either.
---
Summer starts to sink in; as KAT-TUN’s tour carries on, the heat of summer follows them across Japan.
During the concerts, Kame does what he does best. Fanservice. Half of his solo performance is just him burying his face in the necks of various members of Kis-My-Ft2, really. The skit he does with Nakamaru also garners a lot of screams. Whether it’s just because Kame’s acting cute or the fans actually like the thought of him and Nakamaru together, or they’d scream over Kame doing this with anyone, Kame can’t tell. He has no idea how Nakamaru manages to keep a straight face 99% of the time; it’s usually obvious that Kame’s either trying very hard not to break into laughter, or he’s already breaking.
It’s funniest when Kame leans in and makes sucking noises at Nakamaru’s throat and Nakamaru just stands there.
He doesn’t do it every concert. Just occasionally.
And Kame has his hand on the nape of Nakamaru’s neck, and he’s close enough that if he wanted he could lick the sweat from Nakamaru’s skin, and it’s like this for long seconds. Nakamaru just stays so still, and all the fans are always screaming and screaming and screaming.
Kame doesn’t know why he finds it so strange when he’s been doing this forever. He’s been mock-grinding his hips against other people’s on stage for years, mussing their hair, running his hands down their chest, pushing them down to kneel at his feet.
But there’s Nakamaru’s bare neck an inch beyond his lipstick-stained mouth, and every time he just wants to laugh, as if of all the things he’s done in his life, this is the most absurd. It’s not even as if this tour is the first time he’s done similar things with Nakamaru for their fans, but somehow, something’s different.
Then one day he wakes up with the remnants of a dream still caught behind his eyelids, and his hand’s sliding down and gripping his aching cock before he even really registers the light of the morning sun falling upon the bed. Each stroke drags the dream back a little, or maybe it’s not his dream anymore and he’s just filling in the gaps with his own conscious imagination.
And that’s odd, isn’t it.
Because it turns out he can imagine Nakamaru like that, after all.
Just not with a girl.
Nakamaru’s body, naked, inviting, more gorgeous than ever since Rescue, his stomach and arms more defined than before. A waist that makes Kame’s hands want to settle there, on the hardness of his hipbones, press his thumbs into the small of his back, and that neck, that sweet expanse of skin that Kame’s never had the chance to taste despite all the times he’d got so close. Kame had actually been a vampire in his dream; Nakamaru had offered himself to Kame, Kame had bit into Nakamaru’s throat and drawn red, and Nakamaru had, had-- moaned, and Kame shudders now, recalling, imagining.
It’s hot today, and Kame’s dripping sweat onto the sheets, and somehow that just makes it more, better. It’s like in concerts when he’s drowning under layers of clothing and dancing his feet off until he feels as if he might faint and yet nothing can make him happier, the heat soaking his pores, his back arching further and further off the bed, his hand working faster, and--
When he comes, it’s to the shockingly vivid image of Nakamaru’s mouth around his cock.
He drapes an arm across his eyes and tells himself that he can deal with this, he can get over this, except with his eyes shut and hazy pleasure yet to clear from his mind entirely, he’s again distracted by the picture his imagination paints for him: this time, it’s Nakamaru kissing him, softly.
Nakamaru’s arms wrapped around him. That feeling he doesn’t have to completely imagine, because Nakamaru’s hugged him before. And Nakamaru’s hugs are... nice. Safe, solid. Warm. As dependable as Nakamaru himself.
---
Jin tells them he’s decided to leave KAT-TUN for good.
It doesn’t surprise them all that much.
What does surprise Kame, is how little it hurts.
It hurts, of course it does, but nowhere near as much as he might have expected it would.
If this had happened a few years ago, he’s sure he would have felt different. But now, he’s finally got to the stage where he can be rational about Jin-- an ability he doesn’t think he used to possess.
Kame has seen their fans screaming for them even when Jin isn’t there. He knows their fans believe in them, so he should too. He should believe in KAT-TUN; their fans will hold them together as much as the members themselves will.
There are tears, at first.
But their fans do keep screaming, sometimes through the tears, louder and louder.
---
Kame doesn’t know what to do about Nakamaru.
He doesn’t have to do anything, he knows. But he wants to do something, anyway. Their skits continue. Kame closes his eyes when he’s pretending to bite Nakamaru, but that doesn’t mean he can’t still see as clearly as if his eyes were open: a sight committed to memory.
Once, he plays it up even more. Both hands on the back of Nakamaru’s neck, running his fingers through Nakamaru’s hair. The screams are deafening.
Afterwards, they never talk about it.
Kame thinks, though, if he can just tease Nakamaru enough, so that he can get a response out of Nakamaru at least, then maybe he’ll feel less restless. Something, anything. Even if it’s just Nakamaru telling him to back off a little. But when they’re not performing on stage, they go on as they always have.
He’s spending so much time with the other members lately, but especially Nakamaru. Nakamaru just seems to stick around even when everyone else drifts away. It’s impossible to stop thinking about him when he’s right there in front of Kame, or when he’s in the room next door and they’re separated only by a thin wall.
Kame wonders when the hell his feelings about Nakamaru got so complicated that some nights, sleepless with unquiet longing, he’ll press his palm flat against the wall, and think about Nakamaru lying asleep on the other side.
---
They go to Korea for their concerts there, and they throw around Korean phrases that they’d started learning a month ago when they’d come to Korea to promote their tour.
Kame discovers that he really likes calling Nakamaru oppa, and Nakamaru gets all exasperated whenever he does it, so Kame refuses to give in.
“Oppa,” he says, waving the menu in Nakamaru’s face and pointing at something. “Why don’t you try this?”
Nakamaru squints at the menu.
“Oi, don’t trick me into ordering Korea’s spiciest dish or whatever this is! And stop calling me oppa.” He bats the menu away.
“You are my oppa,” Kame says.
“So’s everyone else in KAT-TUN. And only women use the word oppa. And we’re not Korean.”
Kame raises his eyebrows, and carries on calling Nakamaru his oppa right into their concert skits. In his pure white dentist uniform, Nakamaru glares at Kame. Kame just grins and says, in the cutest voice he can manage, “Noona?”
The fans go wild.
Nakamaru looks resigned to his fate.
---
Blue paper planes fill the air, soaring at every member of KAT-TUN from every angle.
When the concert ends, Kame pockets one of them and takes it with him back to Japan, hangs it from the ceiling of his flat, reads the words on it every night he’s home.
---
After their last Japan concert of the year, they have dinner together to celebrate. Two more shows left in Taiwan next week, and they’re done with this tour. Their first world tour. Well, they’ve called it that, but it’s hardly a world tour at all.
One day, Kame prays, they’ll conquer the world more thoroughly.
Kame remembers the pinky promises he made with Jin when they were younger, pointing at a map of the world and stumbling through the names of so many different foreign countries they couldn’t even dream of visiting. He thinks of Jin in America, and hopes he’s happy.
Dinner is delicious; yakiniku always is, chased down by cans of cold beer. Kame’s relaxing, slouching a little more in his seat and laughing with his whole body at an awful pun Taguchi just made. They’ve made it through this summer, pretty much. Kame looks around the table at everyone: Koki’s shoving Taguchi’s shoulder and Ueda’s looking into his beer as if it’s a depthless mystery that needs to be solved, and Nakamaru’s starting to tell a story that nobody’s really listening to.
It’s going to be like this from now on. The five of them. Kame can carry the A. He can be proud of carrying the A, as long as he doesn’t have to stand alone.
Koki and Taguchi and Ueda get into an argument about some manga that Kame doesn’t read. From what Kame can make out, Koki surprisingly appears to be on Taguchi’s side. Taguchi starts to get whiny, and Ueda snappy. Koki’s voice rises. Kame’s content to watch them squabble.
Nakamaru puts a hand on Kame’s arm. “Hey, so that story you told during the MC-- do you really have my uchiwa at your place?”
Kame blinks down at Nakamaru’s fingers. Nakamaru’s hand is so soft. “What?”
“You know, you said that thing about using my uchiwa at this party you had with your family or something.”
“Oh. Yeah.” Kame takes a gulp of beer, luxuriates in its cool slide down his throat.
Nakamaru’s eyes widen. “It’s true?”
“Yeah.” Kame shrugs.
“Why do you have my uchiwa?” Nakamaru makes a confused face.
“I have everyone’s uchiwa,” Kame mumbles.
Nakamaru frowns. “What do you mean?”
“I collect our uchiwas,” Kame explains quietly. He’s embarrassed, but they’ve started on the topic now and Nakamaru’s look of curiosity means that Kame has no choice but to keep going.
“It wasn’t really my idea at first. My mum-- and the relatives who’d wanted me to join Johnny’s, you know,” Kame says, grimacing a little. “It was kind of weird, opening a drawer and seeing all our faces staring back at me. Especially back when we still weren’t sure we liked each other.” He chuckles, and Nakamaru smiles in understanding and reminiscence.
“And then I realised that it was easier, better than collecting anything else, if I wanted mementos of us through the years. The concerts were always the best times we shared. Even when we hated each other, somehow whenever we performed during a concert, I think we all felt more of a connection-- a bond. Now I can look at each uchiwa and remember what it felt like to step onto the stage each year: ah, yes, Ueda’s hair looked like that back then! And Nakamaru’s nose seems to have grown bigger every year!”
Nakamaru smacks Kame’s arm in protest. Kame smiles, feeling fond.
“So yes, I have your uchiwa. I have everyone’s uchiwa from every year since we held our first concert.”
“Your own?” Nakamaru asks.
Kame nods. “It’s even weirder to look at those, but the collection wouldn’t be complete otherwise. And they bring back a lot of memories too.” He lets his thoughts linger for a while on the earliest uchiwas of Jin, back when they were still--
He takes a deep breath, and finishes his beer.
“2002,” Nakamaru says, shaking his head. “We were just a bunch of kids back then, weren’t we?”
“We’re still just a bunch of kids, Yucchi,” Kame says. “I don’t think we’ll ever stop being that.” He eyes the other half of the table, where Koki is now reaching over Taguchi to grab Ueda’s shoulder as Ueda spouts an angry rant.
“Um. We do have our occasional relapses,” Nakamaru says.
Kame laughs and leans his shoulder against Nakamaru’s, and really, it’s not that complicated after all. Right at the centre of his messy feelings is just the simple desire for Nakamaru to be there, always. He loves how easy it is to talk to Nakamaru, but even more than that: how easy it is not to talk to Nakamaru, to just sit there with him and enjoy the silences they share.
Nakamaru just lets Kame lean on him. He doesn’t say a word.
---
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame repeats, over and over, until their interpreter nods at him and tells him that’s good enough. Do you love me?
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame yells into the empty stadium. He turns, and Nakamaru’s there behind him, tracing out dance steps. “Ni ai wo ma?” he asks.
“The fans will love that, I’m sure,” Nakamaru says, hardly even lifting his head to look at Kame, and carries on beating out a rhythm onto the stage with his feet. “You’ll keep screaming it at them and they’ll just keep screaming yes back.”
Kame gets this fluttery feeling in his stomach, watching Nakamaru rehearsing. He thinks, yes, but he doesn’t know what it’s in answer to.
Later, Kame goes into their dressing room and Nakamaru’s the only one there, checking his costumes and humming something. It’s odd, but Kame can’t figure out why. He decides to go for obnoxious; he wants to grab more of Nakamaru’s attention. “Ni ai wo ma?” he shouts.
Nakamaru looks away from the rack of sparkling clothes and meets Kame’s gaze. “Will you please just--” He scrubs a hand through his hair, looks down again. “Kame. Kame, please, just--”
“Just what?” Kame asks, walking closer, his heart an untrained little puppy jumping for food in his chest.
Nakamaru takes a few steps towards him, too. “I’m going to kiss you,” Nakamaru says.
“Okay,” Kame says, feeling his heartbeat slow down some. It’s okay. They’ve got to this point at last.
“What?” Nakamaru splutters.
“I just said okay.” Kame blinks at Nakamaru.
“Okay,” Nakamaru echoes, wiping his hands on his trousers. “Um.”
Kame’s getting impatient, but then Nakamaru reaches out with one hand and it falls, soft, on Kame’s cheek, and Kame closes his eyes and in that split second, imagines--
But then Nakamaru’s lips are on his, and he doesn’t have to imagine anymore.
Kame melts into the kiss, crushing his body against Nakamaru’s.
It’s real, this is real, not play-acting, no distance between them at all and no one they’re doing this for but themselves. His hand goes to Nakamaru’s neck, naturally. He lets his fingers feel out Nakamaru’s pulse; he’ll put his mouth there, soon, lick a wet stripe down Nakamaru’s neck with his tongue, but now he’s too busy with other things.
His hands go down Nakamaru’s sides, up under Nakamaru’s shirt to feel the muscles there, briefly, but then back down again to those hipbones, that skinny waist. His hands settle there.
Perfect. Much better than his imagination.
---
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame yells into the packed stadium.
“Ai!” the fans reply.
“Ni ai wo ma?” Kame yells again, spreading his arms.
“Ai!” the fans scream, louder.
“Ni ai wo ma?” This time, Kame glances at Nakamaru before the fans respond.
Nakamaru’s looking at him. He’s standing a bit too far away for Kame to tell whether he’s smiling, but Kame thinks he is.
It suddenly strikes him what Nakamaru had been humming in that dressing room before they'd kissed. It was one of Kame's solo songs. That's why it had felt odd. Aishiteiru kara.
Nakamaru must have been listening to it recently.
---
The voices of their fans are still ringing in Kame’s mind; their fans, not leaving the stadium, continuing to sing along to Smile and waiting for KAT-TUN to come back for a fourth encore. It moves Kame so much to remember walking back into the light from the darkness backstage, hearing the melody of Smile envelop him like palpable warmth, grabbing a mic so that his voice could join his fans’. He saw, in the light, many of them were crying and smiling at the same time, and still singing. Always singing.
Kame hopes that that’s what he can do, too. Always sing, through tears and laughter.
He’s already desperate for their next tour.
But right now, he’s lying next to Nakamaru on a narrow hotel bed, no wall between them anymore. He clings to Nakamaru’s hand, their fingers intertwined. They’re silent, for the most part. Kame’s reliving the entire concert in his head; he hears music in the silence. He kisses Nakamaru now and then, gently, relishing the peace of the dimly-lit room, and the heat of Nakamaru’s body so close to his.
Lost in memory, he remembers something and laughs.
“What?” Nakamaru asks.
“Xiaolongbao,” Kame says, feeling a grin slip onto his face.
Nakamaru groans. “Will you stop picking up ridiculous nicknames for me in foreign languages?”
“You like them,” Kame says. “Admit it.”
“No, I don’t,” Nakamaru says, but Kame can hear it’s half-hearted.
“I won’t stop, oppa,” Kame says, running his free hand down Nakamaru’s chest, slow and deliberate, watching Nakamaru’s flustered expression with delight. “It’ll be-- Thai next, maybe, and we better set our sights further, I’ll find nicknames for you in Spanish and Italian and French.”
Nakamaru sighs, but there it is, that smile tugging at his lips. Kame kisses it, drunken with happiness, thinks in his head of all the ways he knows how to say I love you in different languages, or without any words at all.
The music continues into the night, endless and beautiful.