Gift fic for anamuan
To: anamuan
From: pithetaphish
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Title: Again tonight, embraced by the stars...
Pairing/Group: Akame / Kat-tun
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Like dark chocolate, a little bitter at first, but oh so sweet by the end. Boys kissing.
Notes: Merry Christmas, anamuan! I hope you like this :D. Thanks ever so much to K and W for beta reading!
Summary: A tale of Jin and Kame and a bed in New York.
AGAIN TONIGHT, EMBRACED BY THE STARS...
February, 2007
It's the same hotel. He'd wondered when he'd seen the name but now that he's standing in the lobby with its mirrors and upholstered chairs, it's all coming back -- the jokes and shoving and half-terrified laughter of six teenagers arriving in this city of all cities for the first time. This place would swallow them whole and ask for seconds.
He drops the keys in his pocket. A cold weight against his hip. The jimusho had wired him the money to fly but he'd taken the cash and rented a car. He's come here with an escape route tucked in the back of his mind, mapped all the way to the New Jersey turnpike.
"Can I help you, sir?"
One of the girls behind the desk isn't sure what to make of him, probably not sure he understands a word out of her mouth. He looks a wreck and he knows it -- army surplus coat and second-hand boots -- not someone you see in a hotel with chandeliers.
"Um yeah, thank you. I'm Jin Akanishi. Maybe my friends already come-- iya, came here?"
For a moment she looks ready to ask more questions. Maybe it's the smudges of highway dust on his hands or the lingering stench of too many cigarettes smoked with the windows up. Or maybe it's written over his face and all down his neck. After too many hours on the road deciphering signs and highway maps straight through from Chicago, his English quota is full, it's choking with all the words he had to look up there on the road shoulder. Nothing else is getting through tonight, he's done. He tries a smile.
She flicks him one more glance and types something into her computer. Click, click.
"Okay, here we are. Your colleagues have already checked in, Mr. Akanishi, and they've checked you in as well, so all I need right now is a piece of identification. Do you have your passport with you?" He doesn't. He gives her his US driver's license instead (passed first try). "You'll be staying in room 4217 -- here's your room key. The dining room is open for breakfast at six and if you need anything at all . . ."
The words are going straight over his head, down his back and out the revolving doors. Maybe the wind will snatch them up and sweep them off to someone who could use a few kinds words in their ear.
"Thanks," he says. He doesn't realise he's spoken in Japanese, and it's only as the elevator's approaching the ninth floor that he realises he has no idea where the others are holed away. It's a relief. It gives him time for a shower and heaven willing, some sleep.
Inside room 4217 the shower unit is smaller than the one in his LA apartment, but Jin makes it no further than the bed frame. He's asleep before his head hits the pillows.
Above the bed, three long windows run the length of the wall. Outside the bright lights of New York City twinkle and flash like a blanket of stars. They cover the city and keep out a little of the dark February cold. Lines of cars are motionless on the streets, locked bumper to bumper, strange constellations hanging in a black pavement sky. Forty-two stories up, through thick glass, the noise of horns and brakes and angry mutterings are lost -- like space itself, the silence is total. A whole astronomy reflected below.
Jin rolls over and opens his eyes. Tiny pinpricks of light in the window -- he takes them for stars at first. Slowly, he props himself upright, lays his hand against the freezing glass. The lights outside trace their paths like a long-exposed photograph, ducking in and out between his fingers. It's been a long time since he's seen snow.
He hasn't bothered to change. There's no one in the lobby but the staff behind the desk and they pay him no mind. The girl from earlier is on the phone. She's tapping the end of a pen against her bottom lip as she speaks. The lights in the chandelier have been dimmed, pale little diamonds have scattered across the carpet. He remembers Taguchi trying to catch the refractions in his hands the first time they sneaked out. Jin tries to step on as many as he can walking through to the bar. More than four years ago now; it seems like another life.
He's feeling light-headed -- it's the reason he's down here -- but more than that he wants more time. Even if it's just an hour of nursing a screwdriver minus the vodka, talking to the bartender, doing something to take his mind off why he's really here. It went so quickly, the months of freedom and textbooks and sunshine through the winter. There are weeks when he can barely afford to eat. He's crashed on a lot of people's couches but he wouldn't call them friends. Somehow the fans always find him and damn them, they're still stealing his phone bills. He's desperately lonely. But still. Still . . .
The barroom door is heavy; he pushes it open with his shoulder. Inside is warm and dim, the way a bar should be. A lot cleaner than the ones he's been taken to in LA, the wooden tabletops look more like burnished glass. At this time of night, the barkeep has plenty of time on his hands.
It takes his eyes a moment to adjust. There's a chameleon in the shadows at the end of the counter. Dark hair, dark coat, dark-framed glasses that he doesn't need but wears anyway. Said they made him look more thoughtful, then chuckled and put them back on the rack with a pointed look that said one day, one day he'd do more than wish for Gucci frames in a New York department store. And he'd grabbed Jin's hand and made for Dior Homme. Jin had felt his arteries freeze with one look at the price tags and a very similar feeling runs through his veins now, upward to the four chambers in his heart.
"Kame . . ." The word is soft off his lips, clinks against the ice in the man's drink.
Kamenashi Kazuya doesn't hear or doesn't acknowledge. He lifts the glass to his mouth and throws back the rest of the liquor. Something amber, probably scotch. With a turtle in his name and fish in his zodiac, it's no wonder in times of stress that Kame turns to drink.
It would be a simple matter to slip out unheard and unseen. Jin's life is never that simple. He makes to step back and then the bartender looks up from polishing his reflection in the wood, looks surprised to see anyone this close to closing.
"What can I get you?" the man asks, plain and direct, and Kame looks up at the sound. Slow, uncertain movements betray how long he's been here and how many empty ice-filled glasses the barkeep has taken away.
His eyes narrow. Jin knows they'll be bloodshot.
"You," Kame says.
"Me," Jin echoes. The first words they've spoken to each other in months.
~
October, 2003
He shuts the door carefully because he knows Jin will be fast asleep, already lost in the strange cardboard and coloured foil land of his dreams. Sometimes he'll talk about them, if Kazuya's awake enough to ask questions and Jin's still three-quarters unconscious. Jin talks about rowing the Milky Way in a bathtub, fixing broken stars with sticky tape, and growing wings so he'll never be late to work again. Things magical and mundane are as mixed up in his dreams as they are when he's awake -- Kazuya could listen to him for hours.
Someone told him once that dreams are your brain's way of doing the paperwork, sorting and filing bits of memory away so you don't go mad. He doesn't want to interrupt Jin's dreams when they're keeping him sane (kind of), so Kazuya pulls his shoes off quietly though his feet are shaking, along with his hands, and every other part of him. He tries not to make a running dive for his bed. He ran up eight flights of stairs to get to their room and the adrenaline is still electric in his veins. His heart reverberates through his body like someone's thumping his chest
Jin's left the curtains open. He likes to sleep with some kind of light cutting the darkness, and Kazuya likes to see where he's going in the middle of the night. He sheds coat and scarf, jumper and jeans as he goes, tiptoeing across the room, then scrambling under the covers.
"Well?"
The single word is muffled -- Jin's got the cover pulled right up to his nose -- but Kazuya hears it well enough. Across the narrow space between the beds, two shining eyes are watching him. If he looked close enough, Kazuya might see the entire night sky reflected in them.
"Have you been awake this whole time?" he murmurs back for appearances' sake as his heart rate slowly goes down. Every muscle in his jaw is aching to talk about the game and the food and the smells, and how much more exhilarating it is to sit with the crowd and breathe when they do, and to feel like you're swinging with the batter or rolling the ball between your fingers to get a feel for its balance right along with the pitcher, and how when Matsui Hideki hit a homerun there wasn't a single person in Yankees Stadium cheering louder than Kazuya. But he holds it back just to hassle his best friend. "Did you miss me that much?" He knows well enough if you give Jin an inch, the guy will take an entire ocean.
"Like hell. You're stomping round like a fucking elephant, how's anyone supposed to sleep through that?"
"I don't know -- you do pretty well most of the time."
A rustle of sheets and duvet and Jin props himself up on his elbow. The scattered light from the window catches a few highlights in his bleach-brown hair, which right now is fanned round his head like a lion's mane. Come morning, Jin always looks like he's been in a fight. As for what kind . . . Kazuya bites back a smile.
"So?" And there's a very clear note of expectation in the guy's voice. "How was it?"
There're a hundred words Kazuya could throw out to describe what it felt like, walking out of a dark inner corridor to see the blazing green pitch under night lights so bright that when he'd looked up he hadn't seen a single star. It was another cosmos, with only one constellation: first, second, third, and home.
"It was . . . god, amazing."
And he talks.
And talks.
He talks about the sea of hats and jackets and the cold night air, "and this kid, I'm not sure, I think he was about seven or eight, it's hard to tell with Americans, anyway, he and his family were sitting in the row behind me and he leans over and I don't know what he said, the only word I got was 'cold', but then he gave me his scarf. Just like that!"
One memory links up to a dozen others. A couple of times he trips over his tongue trying to keep up with the recollections. They come as fast as the pitches.
Jin's eyes shine a little brighter when Kazuya talks about the girl who sang the national anthem, with her very strong voice and very blonde hair, and trying to buy peanuts and a hot dog with everything because that's what you do if you go to a baseball game in America (or so Jimmy Mackey had always told him). "The guy selling the peanuts-- I'm not sure if he couldn't understand me or if he just couldn't hear me because you know with loaded bases the crowd's really screaming loud, and he ended up going through everything in his box holding it up to see if I wanted that too. Maybe they sell a lot of stuff to tourists that way?"
"And what'd you get for me, Tourist-kun?"
He doesn't need to see Jin smiling to know that he is.
"Just a sec." Bracing himself, Kazuya slips his feet outside the duvet and back on the cold floor. He stops himself shivering in reflex; he's boasted too many times of practising pitches in the snow. Jin might be a shameless crybaby about getting up on an icy morning, but Kazuya has his pride. The backpack he dropped by the door -- he sprints for it and digs through the bags of souvenirs he'd bought for everyone. Little knick-knacks he'd carefully split his money for, that he planned to give to each person at a quiet and private moment. No one had to know he'd spent more on Jin than everyone else combined.
"Here," he says, kneeling beside the other bed, laying the plastic-wrapped parcel down on the mattress.
"Thank you!" Even still wiping the sleep from his eyes, Jin's like a kid when he has a gift in his hands. Half the fun's in tearing off the wrappings, and Jin rips through the plastic like it's Christmas Day.
Actually Kazuya feels a bit stupid smiling the way he is right now. But he likes giving people things. It feels like his insides are easing into a deep bath of contentment. After a bad day at practise, he'd go home via the empty lot and pick some of the wildflowers that grew there. When he held them out to her, his mother's soft responding smiles had made him feel better.
Sitting fully upright now, Jin's holding the Yankees hoodie up in front of him, shifting it round to catch a few threads of moonlight to make out the details. He's grinning in that same way that always gets him out of trouble but this time it's genuine and his joy is infectious.
"Seriously, thank you," Jin says again and beams and Kazuya's whole chest feels warm, even if he can't feel his toes.
"You owe me big time," he replies, but they both know he'll never call in the favour, at least, not until Matsui Hideki is back in town.
"Yeah, I think this makes up for two or three of the favours you owe me. You're slowly clearing your debts!"
"What are you, a loan shark? What about all the times I've covered for you when you were late? Or lost." Kazuya raises one sternly plucked eyebrow and folds his arms on the mattress (mainly to draw off some of the heat, but he's not telling Jin that).
"Totally different. That kind of shit you do for friends without even thinking about it." Then he glances down. Kazuya knows that look of kind and amused semi-disbelief on his face. "Are you gonna stay down there until you freeze or something?" And he throws back the corner of the duvet.
The same as fifteen-year-old Jin with his stories to cover a baseball boy's string of absences, Kazuya doesn't think twice. He scrambles up into the warmth of the bed, pulling the duvet over his shoulders and jamming his cold feet against Jin's, which earns him a kick to the shins but he doesn't care. He's warm.
"Idiot," Jin murmurs under his breath, but still shoves his second pillow in the interloper's direction. "It's gonna take more than a hoodie to turn me into your personal hot water bottle."
"There's a bag of peanuts in the pocket?"
It's not much of an enticement but with how big Jin's stomach has been on this trip . . .
"Are they going to be the best fucking peanuts I've ever eaten in my life?" Jin's leaning back against the headboard with the hoodie in his lap, searching in the fabric for a pocket, and the weak blue light through the window is casting shadows over his face. It reminds Kazuya a little of the paintings Koki had shown him at that museum yesterday -- strange things done in Italy hundreds of years ago, where the darkness of the shadows seemed like it would swallow the people within it the second he turned away. Maybe that's what Jin tussles with each night? He can imagine Jin being the type to throw peanut shells in the face of fear.
"I don't know about your whole life, but at least you can say you've eaten peanuts from a game in America."
Jin looks down at him and the shadows recede. "It'd probably make Jimmy happy, hey?"
"Probably."
The bag of peanuts, when he finds it, Jin props up between the pillows. The smell of salt makes the water run in Kazuya's mouth -- the taste of them as he tipped handfuls onto his tongue and he can't help licking his lips in memory. Jin's shivering, the next second he's sinking down into the warmth too. When their feet touch again under the covers, Jin doesn't kick him or try to move away.
"Fuck, it's cold."
Kazuya's of half a mind to argue. There's a hazy melting feeling taking over his limbs that he might mistake for sleep except his heart's started rebounding off his ribs. He gets this way sometimes, when Jin's being extra nice to him. And when Jin's not. And when Jin uses him as a human hat stand to lean all over or pulls stupid faces at him in the rehearsal room mirrors. And the times Jin's pulled him under the blankets so they can gossip all night without getting caught. And whenever Jin's around really. Kazuya just tries to pretend like nothing's happening and things go on (mostly) as normal. He's good at pretending everything's fine.
He takes a deep silent breath and lets it go and doesn't say anything.
Jin reaches up into the bag and grabs a few peanuts between his fingers. Thoughtfully, one at a time, he pops them into his mouth. The sound of them grinding between his teeth is the only sound in the room. Kazuya stays perfectly still.
"Not bad," Jin murmurs, and his voice is slippery like the shadows slipping around the room as the billboards flash and flicker outside. He has one peanut left in his hand. "You want?"
Yes. To whatever the question, every cell in Kazuya's body is whispering, 'Yes'. Kazuya doesn't trust his voice, he only nods.
There's a lingering tang of salt on Jin's fingers as they push the small nut between his lips and Kazuya can't help himself, the tip of his tongue flicks out to taste them.
Suddenly, his whole body is shaking. In the split second between action and reaction, Kazuya sees their friendship ground into shards of glass. Before his eyes are eternities of forced politeness and cold air filling spaces between them that hadn't been there in years, no more standing shoulder to shoulder even when the bulbs stop flashing and he's alone again, god, why can he never hold onto anyone--
But then Jin slowly begins to smile and it's not a trick of the shadows. The light of a changing billboard heightens the answering gleam in his dark, dark eyes.
"If you're that hungry, you should've just said so," Jin murmurs and traces the tips of his fingers over Kazuya's bottom lip, once and then back. Kazuya leans after it, not wanting to give up the sensations as the warm and so-slightly hesitant touch moves along his jaw and up to trace the shell curve of his ear, then across to dust over his eyelids.
"Open your eyes," Jin says soft and low so it's more of a question. Kazuya does, to prove to himself this isn't another dream -- in the dark he can still see Jin's head's on the pillow next to him, and his still-too-cold feet are still pressed against Kazuya's. When Kazuya runs the curve of his foot up along the curve of Jin's calf muscle and coaxes Jin's leg to rest gently between his own, he can feel every part of their bodies shifting closer. There's a new sound in the room. It takes a moment to get through Kazuya's honey-molten head that Jin is breathing just as fast as he is now. He reaches up to the curve of Jin's jaw. Nerves and hormones are making his hands shake but this is Jin, and like a book he's always opened to Kazuya in the end. There's a question scrawled from Jin's face, down, over his shoulders to wind like a tattoo along his arms, radiating like the heat from his skin.
You want?
"You idiot," Kazuya whispers and who knows if he's berating Jin or himself or them both, but it doesn't matter now because he's pulling Jin to him and Jin's pressing forward. Their mouths find each other like magnets in the dark and Kazuya feels like he's walking on the moon.
~
February, 2007
"Idiot," Kame mutters under his breath and jerks his arm free. There's a half-inch dusting of snow on the ground and ice crusting over the holes in pavement. Kame had just put his foot through one and lurched sharply, and Jin had grabbed him out of instinct, nothing more. The man had almost hissed at him. Under his bare hands, Kame's charcoal grey coat had been freezing -- wet drops of snow on the wool and none of the warmth of the body inside it. Jin wasn't expecting warmth on this trip, but its absence still stings.
With a scowl, Kame keeps walking. There's more alcohol in him than Jin can ever remember seeing beyond their watering holes in Roppongi. The man's footprints wander through the snow like he's chasing the ghosts of fireflies.
Jin sighs and walks after him.
"Quit following me," Kame tries to say over his shoulder, but the shift in balance is too much for his drink-addled senses. He stumbles again and looks quickly back down to the ground. It's all the man can do to put one foot after the other. Every few paces, Jin finds himself stepping in one of Kame's footprints. It reminds him a bit of a song one of his classmates taught him at Christmas, about a king who takes food to a poor man living under a mountain and the servant that warmed himself with the heat left in the king's footsteps. Tough for him that Kame isn't a king or a saint. He tucks his hands deeper in his army jacket pockets and keeps walking.
People walk past them with their heads ducked against the cold. No one pays them any attention except the people Kame stumbles into. Jin bows his head a little and mouths a quick 'sorry' to the grumbling pedestrians, but he knows better than to try and turn the man for home. Kame had insisted with a stubbornness marinated in scotch -- he wanted to go for a walk, and he'll walk until sobriety catches up with him or he finds whatever else he's out here looking for.
Jin half-wonders why he's out here too. He's tired, and his stomach growls in hope every time they pass a restaurant still open or this one couple sharing a bag of hot roasted chestnuts. The smell had reeked as much of their happiness, huddling together with both their hands on the bag trying to keep warm. He could be warm right now, watching TV with a duvet up to his chin and something from room service on its way up. He can be selfish, hadn't moving here proved that? So why is he crunching through the snow after someone he'd sworn four months ago if he ever saw again it would a hundred years too soon?
Why, when Kame's foot catches on something protruding under the snow, does he race forward and grab him round the middle to keep the man on his feet? Everything still hurt and vindictive in him wants to let the guy fall on his face; if there was any justice in New York, he'd break his nose and so much for those shop photos.
"Lemme go!" The words slur together in some watery turtle soup semblance of speech.
"No."
Because he can't. Because if he does, Kame really will hit the ground face first. No matter what his feelings towards the man himself, the thought of anyone fucking with him, even it's just a slab of concrete, sends a flash of protective rage through Jin's arteries. And he doesn't want to have to deal with protective rages and whatever they might mean.
"Lemme--!" Kame's attempts to struggle are pathetic. He's skinnier than he has any right to be under the heavy wool coat, and Jin can't shake the feeling that if he squeezed a little harder the man would break like sugar glass and scatter on the wind across Manhattan to the sea.
(Shards of him might make it back to Japan in the belly of a giant tuna, but Jin doesn't fancy explaining that one to their manager.)
"God just let me go." The voice softer, pleading almost.
"I do that and you'll go head first into the snow."
"So?" Kame's breath plumes in the cold air in front of them. "What the fuck do you care?"
It's not often that Kame swears. Jin doesn't say anything at first. Maybe his running off to LA did give Kame the right to say shit like that when he was three sheets to the wind, but Jin hadn't come here to play '10 things I hate about you', and he really isn't in the mood to play target for Kame's emotional arrows.
He pulls the man's arm across his shoulders, less gentle than he probably could have been, and supporting him, keeps walking. The cars drive past them at dizzying speeds. Horns blare at people trying to get across the road without getting themselves killed.
"Whatever you want to say to me, you might as well say it now," Jin replies over the din. "No one else around to hear."
"So selfish . . ." Kame murmurs so soft Jin can barely distinguish the words. The man laughs then and it's an ugly, broken sound. "Why the hell are you even here? I'm so tired of keeping this up -- being pulled in fifty different directions to fifty different places, and we have to be in all of them at once just to cover up the great gaping hole where you used to be. For fuck's sake, would you just say that you're not coming back so we can start trying to cope?"
Kame's eyes are on the ground, but there's no hiding the thickness in his throat as he speaks. Even with so many months of acrimony and an entire ocean between them, Jin hears the question underneath the accusations. He knows what the man is really asking.
"You're wrong, Kame," is all he says, and Kame's blood-lined eyes are now staring up at him in abject disbelief. It takes a moment for everything in those three loaded words to process, and then there it is: the crack in the ice that even staggering drunk Kame had tried to hide; the flicker of impossible hope. That maybe, just maybe Jin would say LA was great and all, but he didn't belong there any more than he did here, on the streets of a city that could be as icy and distant as the rings of Saturn.
Jin watches the realisation spark and light over Kame's face. It's followed almost instantly by doubt.
"Don't lie to me, Jin. I'll never forgive you if you're lying to me."
"I signed the new contract before I left LA, it'll be on Johnny's desk by now." And when even that isn't enough to quash the man's fear, "For fuck's sake Kame, yes! I'm coming back."
"Thank god." The words slip from Kame's mouth like a sutra and Jin barely manages to stay on his feet as the man collapses against him, all strength gone from his body but the power to keep whispering. "Thank god thank god thankgodthankgodthankgodthankgod . . ."
It's a challenge to get the door open with only one arm free and the weight of an almost-comatose man on the other. Jin can think of a hundred comments to make, none of them worth the effort. He'd managed to get Kame back to the hotel, still sort of conscious and still murmuring his thanks to god and the planets and whatever else in the sky that was listening. Looking at the brass buttons on the elevator though, Jin had remembered he still didn't have a clue where anyone else was staying. Kame had been up to answering some questions on the trek back --
"Why god? What's he done that's so great?"
"You're coming back . . ."
"Yeah?"
"Don' have to be strong all th' time . . . with you . . . here . . . thank god . . ."
-- but he was out like a light when Jin asked what room he was in.
"Oh fuck you, Kamenashi. Fuck you to fucking hell."
He pushes open the door with one foot and then the rest of his body as he drags Kame into room 4217. It's pitch black inside but for the glow of the night sky and dusty reflections of snow filtering through the windows. Groping in the dark, Jin's hand finds the light switch and he presses it once, and then again, but nothing happens.
"Shit."
Because his room key isn't in the slot that doubles as a kill-switch for the entire room.
If he tries to turn around now, he'll lose his precarious grip on Kame's deadweight, and he didn't drag the man all the way here just to dash his brains out on the carpet.
"Why am I always the one stuck with picking up your pieces, huh?" Jin murmurs, and he's not really sure how he feels about it but he's too tired now to care. Kame's drunk, Jin'll bring him home. Kame's passed out, Jin'll find him a blanket and a pillow. Kame needs him, Jin's there. That's the way it's always been. Four months haven't changed a thing, and if he's really honest with himself, Jin's kind of glad for it.
In the dark, he manages not to trip over anything hobbling across the room. His arms scream with the relief as he drops Kame down on the bed and for a few seconds he just stands there, bent over his knees, trying to get his breath back. There's a sharp sting at the back of his throat where the freezing February air scraped over his tonsils -- he'll be lucky if he can still speak come morning. On the bed, Kame pouts and curls further in on himself, unable to suppress a shiver.
"Yeah, I'm getting to it." Whispered as he heads over and fumbles with the room key to get the electricity going. The kick of the air-con starts up almost instantly. "There. Happy?"
Looking back, he sees Kame still being wracked by the occasional shiver. Soft shadows of snowflakes pass over his cheeks and over his dark grey coat, still wet around the edges with snow. With a sigh and a passing glance at the bathroom, where he was thinking of spending the night except there's no bathtub, Jin goes back to the bed and starts undoing Kame's coat buttons.
Ten minutes later, most of Kame's clothes are on hangers and his boots are drying in the bathroom sink. Jin's army jacket and sweater are draper over the room's only chair and he's trying not to let his feet touch Kame's as he crawls under the duvet. After driving all the way from Chicago, if nothing else, buggered if he's going to sleep on the floor.
Kame murmurs occasionally in his foggy alcohol-infused sleep. Jin tries not to listen. There are lots of words he can imagine Kame whispering in his dreams now, and very few of them are ones he wants to hear. He's got his back to the man but he can still feel the gradual warmth radiating under the covers. He's trying to avoid contact but Kame's always been a restless sleeper -- it doesn't take long before his feet start invading Jin's side of the bed.
Never thought we'd be here like this again, did you? his brain whispers to him. Jin hadn't dared let himself hope. Lying preternaturally still, he feels every shift of the mattress as Kame fidgets and turns and inwardly curses. So much for getting any sleep tonight.
". . . thank . . . Jin . . ." Kame mutters somehow much closer than Jin expected and then the man's arm is snaking its way across his chest. Jin bites his tongue very, very hard to make sure this is actually happening.
"Jin." The word is mouthed against his t-shirt, old enough and thin enough that he feels it easily against his skin. All the protests his brain had been cobbling together fall apart like a melting snowball in his hands. Kame's arm tightens around him, a clumsy attempt to pull him over, and throwing caution and sense and whatever else to the wind outside, Jin complies. The city lights are no more than a haze but he can see the corners of Kame's sleepy mouth curving upward. Jin opens his arms a fraction and that's all Kame needs to nestle close with an ear to his chest. There was only way they'd ever managed to get Kame to sleep soundly at night and that was with a pulse steady under the man's ear.
". . . Jin . . . mnh . . ."
Still works like a charm. Within a minute Kame stops tossing, his breathing deepens and his mumblings taper off into a dream-heavy silence.
Above the bed, three long windows run the length of the wall. Glancing up, Jin can see only a portion of the night sky and in it only a single star. He's not even sure if it's a real star, if it's a planet or a satellite or just a random bit of space junk stuck up there somehow. But it's shining, and it's shining down on him now, and he's takes comfort from it regardless.
Closing his eyes, he pulls Kame just a little closer.
"This doesn't mean you're forgiven," Jin murmurs to the dark. All the same, he doesn't even think to resist when Kame reaches up and twines their fingers together.
~
November, 2009
Jin cracks open a none-too-happy eye, filled with sleep and paper moons.
"Wha'?" he says around the sleep-thickness in his mouth. Kame stops twining his fingers but leaves them where they are, tangled up in Jin's long brown hair. He can feel the side of his mouth quirking up and he doesn't bother to stop it this time -- Jin won't remember a thing when he wakes up for real, and who else is there to see?
"Nothing. Just remembering," Kame replies, low and soft.
"Rem'ber on your own fuck'n time . . ." Jin's eyes have already drifted closed. Instinctively, the man burrows into the warmth of Kame's shoulder, and despite the fact his arm will be numb in twenty minutes, Kame pulls him closer, lets him burrow. Jin breathes a steady rhythm into the dip of his collarbone and Kame feels the man's eyelids fluttering against his skin -- all the delicate little twitches of Jin's dreams.
"Love you too," he murmurs and watches the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling. A cosmos all their own Jin had said the day they moved in, tacking stars and planets to the plaster. And at the centre of their universe is a pair of twin suns, shining softly above the bed.
~~
Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,
In that the world's contracted thus --
Shine here to us, and thou art every where;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.
-- John Donne
From: pithetaphish
HAPPY HOLIDAYS!
Title: Again tonight, embraced by the stars...
Pairing/Group: Akame / Kat-tun
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Like dark chocolate, a little bitter at first, but oh so sweet by the end. Boys kissing.
Notes: Merry Christmas, anamuan! I hope you like this :D. Thanks ever so much to K and W for beta reading!
Summary: A tale of Jin and Kame and a bed in New York.
AGAIN TONIGHT, EMBRACED BY THE STARS...
February, 2007
It's the same hotel. He'd wondered when he'd seen the name but now that he's standing in the lobby with its mirrors and upholstered chairs, it's all coming back -- the jokes and shoving and half-terrified laughter of six teenagers arriving in this city of all cities for the first time. This place would swallow them whole and ask for seconds.
He drops the keys in his pocket. A cold weight against his hip. The jimusho had wired him the money to fly but he'd taken the cash and rented a car. He's come here with an escape route tucked in the back of his mind, mapped all the way to the New Jersey turnpike.
"Can I help you, sir?"
One of the girls behind the desk isn't sure what to make of him, probably not sure he understands a word out of her mouth. He looks a wreck and he knows it -- army surplus coat and second-hand boots -- not someone you see in a hotel with chandeliers.
"Um yeah, thank you. I'm Jin Akanishi. Maybe my friends already come-- iya, came here?"
For a moment she looks ready to ask more questions. Maybe it's the smudges of highway dust on his hands or the lingering stench of too many cigarettes smoked with the windows up. Or maybe it's written over his face and all down his neck. After too many hours on the road deciphering signs and highway maps straight through from Chicago, his English quota is full, it's choking with all the words he had to look up there on the road shoulder. Nothing else is getting through tonight, he's done. He tries a smile.
She flicks him one more glance and types something into her computer. Click, click.
"Okay, here we are. Your colleagues have already checked in, Mr. Akanishi, and they've checked you in as well, so all I need right now is a piece of identification. Do you have your passport with you?" He doesn't. He gives her his US driver's license instead (passed first try). "You'll be staying in room 4217 -- here's your room key. The dining room is open for breakfast at six and if you need anything at all . . ."
The words are going straight over his head, down his back and out the revolving doors. Maybe the wind will snatch them up and sweep them off to someone who could use a few kinds words in their ear.
"Thanks," he says. He doesn't realise he's spoken in Japanese, and it's only as the elevator's approaching the ninth floor that he realises he has no idea where the others are holed away. It's a relief. It gives him time for a shower and heaven willing, some sleep.
Inside room 4217 the shower unit is smaller than the one in his LA apartment, but Jin makes it no further than the bed frame. He's asleep before his head hits the pillows.
Above the bed, three long windows run the length of the wall. Outside the bright lights of New York City twinkle and flash like a blanket of stars. They cover the city and keep out a little of the dark February cold. Lines of cars are motionless on the streets, locked bumper to bumper, strange constellations hanging in a black pavement sky. Forty-two stories up, through thick glass, the noise of horns and brakes and angry mutterings are lost -- like space itself, the silence is total. A whole astronomy reflected below.
Jin rolls over and opens his eyes. Tiny pinpricks of light in the window -- he takes them for stars at first. Slowly, he props himself upright, lays his hand against the freezing glass. The lights outside trace their paths like a long-exposed photograph, ducking in and out between his fingers. It's been a long time since he's seen snow.
He hasn't bothered to change. There's no one in the lobby but the staff behind the desk and they pay him no mind. The girl from earlier is on the phone. She's tapping the end of a pen against her bottom lip as she speaks. The lights in the chandelier have been dimmed, pale little diamonds have scattered across the carpet. He remembers Taguchi trying to catch the refractions in his hands the first time they sneaked out. Jin tries to step on as many as he can walking through to the bar. More than four years ago now; it seems like another life.
He's feeling light-headed -- it's the reason he's down here -- but more than that he wants more time. Even if it's just an hour of nursing a screwdriver minus the vodka, talking to the bartender, doing something to take his mind off why he's really here. It went so quickly, the months of freedom and textbooks and sunshine through the winter. There are weeks when he can barely afford to eat. He's crashed on a lot of people's couches but he wouldn't call them friends. Somehow the fans always find him and damn them, they're still stealing his phone bills. He's desperately lonely. But still. Still . . .
The barroom door is heavy; he pushes it open with his shoulder. Inside is warm and dim, the way a bar should be. A lot cleaner than the ones he's been taken to in LA, the wooden tabletops look more like burnished glass. At this time of night, the barkeep has plenty of time on his hands.
It takes his eyes a moment to adjust. There's a chameleon in the shadows at the end of the counter. Dark hair, dark coat, dark-framed glasses that he doesn't need but wears anyway. Said they made him look more thoughtful, then chuckled and put them back on the rack with a pointed look that said one day, one day he'd do more than wish for Gucci frames in a New York department store. And he'd grabbed Jin's hand and made for Dior Homme. Jin had felt his arteries freeze with one look at the price tags and a very similar feeling runs through his veins now, upward to the four chambers in his heart.
"Kame . . ." The word is soft off his lips, clinks against the ice in the man's drink.
Kamenashi Kazuya doesn't hear or doesn't acknowledge. He lifts the glass to his mouth and throws back the rest of the liquor. Something amber, probably scotch. With a turtle in his name and fish in his zodiac, it's no wonder in times of stress that Kame turns to drink.
It would be a simple matter to slip out unheard and unseen. Jin's life is never that simple. He makes to step back and then the bartender looks up from polishing his reflection in the wood, looks surprised to see anyone this close to closing.
"What can I get you?" the man asks, plain and direct, and Kame looks up at the sound. Slow, uncertain movements betray how long he's been here and how many empty ice-filled glasses the barkeep has taken away.
His eyes narrow. Jin knows they'll be bloodshot.
"You," Kame says.
"Me," Jin echoes. The first words they've spoken to each other in months.
~
October, 2003
He shuts the door carefully because he knows Jin will be fast asleep, already lost in the strange cardboard and coloured foil land of his dreams. Sometimes he'll talk about them, if Kazuya's awake enough to ask questions and Jin's still three-quarters unconscious. Jin talks about rowing the Milky Way in a bathtub, fixing broken stars with sticky tape, and growing wings so he'll never be late to work again. Things magical and mundane are as mixed up in his dreams as they are when he's awake -- Kazuya could listen to him for hours.
Someone told him once that dreams are your brain's way of doing the paperwork, sorting and filing bits of memory away so you don't go mad. He doesn't want to interrupt Jin's dreams when they're keeping him sane (kind of), so Kazuya pulls his shoes off quietly though his feet are shaking, along with his hands, and every other part of him. He tries not to make a running dive for his bed. He ran up eight flights of stairs to get to their room and the adrenaline is still electric in his veins. His heart reverberates through his body like someone's thumping his chest
Jin's left the curtains open. He likes to sleep with some kind of light cutting the darkness, and Kazuya likes to see where he's going in the middle of the night. He sheds coat and scarf, jumper and jeans as he goes, tiptoeing across the room, then scrambling under the covers.
"Well?"
The single word is muffled -- Jin's got the cover pulled right up to his nose -- but Kazuya hears it well enough. Across the narrow space between the beds, two shining eyes are watching him. If he looked close enough, Kazuya might see the entire night sky reflected in them.
"Have you been awake this whole time?" he murmurs back for appearances' sake as his heart rate slowly goes down. Every muscle in his jaw is aching to talk about the game and the food and the smells, and how much more exhilarating it is to sit with the crowd and breathe when they do, and to feel like you're swinging with the batter or rolling the ball between your fingers to get a feel for its balance right along with the pitcher, and how when Matsui Hideki hit a homerun there wasn't a single person in Yankees Stadium cheering louder than Kazuya. But he holds it back just to hassle his best friend. "Did you miss me that much?" He knows well enough if you give Jin an inch, the guy will take an entire ocean.
"Like hell. You're stomping round like a fucking elephant, how's anyone supposed to sleep through that?"
"I don't know -- you do pretty well most of the time."
A rustle of sheets and duvet and Jin props himself up on his elbow. The scattered light from the window catches a few highlights in his bleach-brown hair, which right now is fanned round his head like a lion's mane. Come morning, Jin always looks like he's been in a fight. As for what kind . . . Kazuya bites back a smile.
"So?" And there's a very clear note of expectation in the guy's voice. "How was it?"
There're a hundred words Kazuya could throw out to describe what it felt like, walking out of a dark inner corridor to see the blazing green pitch under night lights so bright that when he'd looked up he hadn't seen a single star. It was another cosmos, with only one constellation: first, second, third, and home.
"It was . . . god, amazing."
And he talks.
And talks.
He talks about the sea of hats and jackets and the cold night air, "and this kid, I'm not sure, I think he was about seven or eight, it's hard to tell with Americans, anyway, he and his family were sitting in the row behind me and he leans over and I don't know what he said, the only word I got was 'cold', but then he gave me his scarf. Just like that!"
One memory links up to a dozen others. A couple of times he trips over his tongue trying to keep up with the recollections. They come as fast as the pitches.
Jin's eyes shine a little brighter when Kazuya talks about the girl who sang the national anthem, with her very strong voice and very blonde hair, and trying to buy peanuts and a hot dog with everything because that's what you do if you go to a baseball game in America (or so Jimmy Mackey had always told him). "The guy selling the peanuts-- I'm not sure if he couldn't understand me or if he just couldn't hear me because you know with loaded bases the crowd's really screaming loud, and he ended up going through everything in his box holding it up to see if I wanted that too. Maybe they sell a lot of stuff to tourists that way?"
"And what'd you get for me, Tourist-kun?"
He doesn't need to see Jin smiling to know that he is.
"Just a sec." Bracing himself, Kazuya slips his feet outside the duvet and back on the cold floor. He stops himself shivering in reflex; he's boasted too many times of practising pitches in the snow. Jin might be a shameless crybaby about getting up on an icy morning, but Kazuya has his pride. The backpack he dropped by the door -- he sprints for it and digs through the bags of souvenirs he'd bought for everyone. Little knick-knacks he'd carefully split his money for, that he planned to give to each person at a quiet and private moment. No one had to know he'd spent more on Jin than everyone else combined.
"Here," he says, kneeling beside the other bed, laying the plastic-wrapped parcel down on the mattress.
"Thank you!" Even still wiping the sleep from his eyes, Jin's like a kid when he has a gift in his hands. Half the fun's in tearing off the wrappings, and Jin rips through the plastic like it's Christmas Day.
Actually Kazuya feels a bit stupid smiling the way he is right now. But he likes giving people things. It feels like his insides are easing into a deep bath of contentment. After a bad day at practise, he'd go home via the empty lot and pick some of the wildflowers that grew there. When he held them out to her, his mother's soft responding smiles had made him feel better.
Sitting fully upright now, Jin's holding the Yankees hoodie up in front of him, shifting it round to catch a few threads of moonlight to make out the details. He's grinning in that same way that always gets him out of trouble but this time it's genuine and his joy is infectious.
"Seriously, thank you," Jin says again and beams and Kazuya's whole chest feels warm, even if he can't feel his toes.
"You owe me big time," he replies, but they both know he'll never call in the favour, at least, not until Matsui Hideki is back in town.
"Yeah, I think this makes up for two or three of the favours you owe me. You're slowly clearing your debts!"
"What are you, a loan shark? What about all the times I've covered for you when you were late? Or lost." Kazuya raises one sternly plucked eyebrow and folds his arms on the mattress (mainly to draw off some of the heat, but he's not telling Jin that).
"Totally different. That kind of shit you do for friends without even thinking about it." Then he glances down. Kazuya knows that look of kind and amused semi-disbelief on his face. "Are you gonna stay down there until you freeze or something?" And he throws back the corner of the duvet.
The same as fifteen-year-old Jin with his stories to cover a baseball boy's string of absences, Kazuya doesn't think twice. He scrambles up into the warmth of the bed, pulling the duvet over his shoulders and jamming his cold feet against Jin's, which earns him a kick to the shins but he doesn't care. He's warm.
"Idiot," Jin murmurs under his breath, but still shoves his second pillow in the interloper's direction. "It's gonna take more than a hoodie to turn me into your personal hot water bottle."
"There's a bag of peanuts in the pocket?"
It's not much of an enticement but with how big Jin's stomach has been on this trip . . .
"Are they going to be the best fucking peanuts I've ever eaten in my life?" Jin's leaning back against the headboard with the hoodie in his lap, searching in the fabric for a pocket, and the weak blue light through the window is casting shadows over his face. It reminds Kazuya a little of the paintings Koki had shown him at that museum yesterday -- strange things done in Italy hundreds of years ago, where the darkness of the shadows seemed like it would swallow the people within it the second he turned away. Maybe that's what Jin tussles with each night? He can imagine Jin being the type to throw peanut shells in the face of fear.
"I don't know about your whole life, but at least you can say you've eaten peanuts from a game in America."
Jin looks down at him and the shadows recede. "It'd probably make Jimmy happy, hey?"
"Probably."
The bag of peanuts, when he finds it, Jin props up between the pillows. The smell of salt makes the water run in Kazuya's mouth -- the taste of them as he tipped handfuls onto his tongue and he can't help licking his lips in memory. Jin's shivering, the next second he's sinking down into the warmth too. When their feet touch again under the covers, Jin doesn't kick him or try to move away.
"Fuck, it's cold."
Kazuya's of half a mind to argue. There's a hazy melting feeling taking over his limbs that he might mistake for sleep except his heart's started rebounding off his ribs. He gets this way sometimes, when Jin's being extra nice to him. And when Jin's not. And when Jin uses him as a human hat stand to lean all over or pulls stupid faces at him in the rehearsal room mirrors. And the times Jin's pulled him under the blankets so they can gossip all night without getting caught. And whenever Jin's around really. Kazuya just tries to pretend like nothing's happening and things go on (mostly) as normal. He's good at pretending everything's fine.
He takes a deep silent breath and lets it go and doesn't say anything.
Jin reaches up into the bag and grabs a few peanuts between his fingers. Thoughtfully, one at a time, he pops them into his mouth. The sound of them grinding between his teeth is the only sound in the room. Kazuya stays perfectly still.
"Not bad," Jin murmurs, and his voice is slippery like the shadows slipping around the room as the billboards flash and flicker outside. He has one peanut left in his hand. "You want?"
Yes. To whatever the question, every cell in Kazuya's body is whispering, 'Yes'. Kazuya doesn't trust his voice, he only nods.
There's a lingering tang of salt on Jin's fingers as they push the small nut between his lips and Kazuya can't help himself, the tip of his tongue flicks out to taste them.
Suddenly, his whole body is shaking. In the split second between action and reaction, Kazuya sees their friendship ground into shards of glass. Before his eyes are eternities of forced politeness and cold air filling spaces between them that hadn't been there in years, no more standing shoulder to shoulder even when the bulbs stop flashing and he's alone again, god, why can he never hold onto anyone--
But then Jin slowly begins to smile and it's not a trick of the shadows. The light of a changing billboard heightens the answering gleam in his dark, dark eyes.
"If you're that hungry, you should've just said so," Jin murmurs and traces the tips of his fingers over Kazuya's bottom lip, once and then back. Kazuya leans after it, not wanting to give up the sensations as the warm and so-slightly hesitant touch moves along his jaw and up to trace the shell curve of his ear, then across to dust over his eyelids.
"Open your eyes," Jin says soft and low so it's more of a question. Kazuya does, to prove to himself this isn't another dream -- in the dark he can still see Jin's head's on the pillow next to him, and his still-too-cold feet are still pressed against Kazuya's. When Kazuya runs the curve of his foot up along the curve of Jin's calf muscle and coaxes Jin's leg to rest gently between his own, he can feel every part of their bodies shifting closer. There's a new sound in the room. It takes a moment to get through Kazuya's honey-molten head that Jin is breathing just as fast as he is now. He reaches up to the curve of Jin's jaw. Nerves and hormones are making his hands shake but this is Jin, and like a book he's always opened to Kazuya in the end. There's a question scrawled from Jin's face, down, over his shoulders to wind like a tattoo along his arms, radiating like the heat from his skin.
You want?
"You idiot," Kazuya whispers and who knows if he's berating Jin or himself or them both, but it doesn't matter now because he's pulling Jin to him and Jin's pressing forward. Their mouths find each other like magnets in the dark and Kazuya feels like he's walking on the moon.
~
February, 2007
"Idiot," Kame mutters under his breath and jerks his arm free. There's a half-inch dusting of snow on the ground and ice crusting over the holes in pavement. Kame had just put his foot through one and lurched sharply, and Jin had grabbed him out of instinct, nothing more. The man had almost hissed at him. Under his bare hands, Kame's charcoal grey coat had been freezing -- wet drops of snow on the wool and none of the warmth of the body inside it. Jin wasn't expecting warmth on this trip, but its absence still stings.
With a scowl, Kame keeps walking. There's more alcohol in him than Jin can ever remember seeing beyond their watering holes in Roppongi. The man's footprints wander through the snow like he's chasing the ghosts of fireflies.
Jin sighs and walks after him.
"Quit following me," Kame tries to say over his shoulder, but the shift in balance is too much for his drink-addled senses. He stumbles again and looks quickly back down to the ground. It's all the man can do to put one foot after the other. Every few paces, Jin finds himself stepping in one of Kame's footprints. It reminds him a bit of a song one of his classmates taught him at Christmas, about a king who takes food to a poor man living under a mountain and the servant that warmed himself with the heat left in the king's footsteps. Tough for him that Kame isn't a king or a saint. He tucks his hands deeper in his army jacket pockets and keeps walking.
People walk past them with their heads ducked against the cold. No one pays them any attention except the people Kame stumbles into. Jin bows his head a little and mouths a quick 'sorry' to the grumbling pedestrians, but he knows better than to try and turn the man for home. Kame had insisted with a stubbornness marinated in scotch -- he wanted to go for a walk, and he'll walk until sobriety catches up with him or he finds whatever else he's out here looking for.
Jin half-wonders why he's out here too. He's tired, and his stomach growls in hope every time they pass a restaurant still open or this one couple sharing a bag of hot roasted chestnuts. The smell had reeked as much of their happiness, huddling together with both their hands on the bag trying to keep warm. He could be warm right now, watching TV with a duvet up to his chin and something from room service on its way up. He can be selfish, hadn't moving here proved that? So why is he crunching through the snow after someone he'd sworn four months ago if he ever saw again it would a hundred years too soon?
Why, when Kame's foot catches on something protruding under the snow, does he race forward and grab him round the middle to keep the man on his feet? Everything still hurt and vindictive in him wants to let the guy fall on his face; if there was any justice in New York, he'd break his nose and so much for those shop photos.
"Lemme go!" The words slur together in some watery turtle soup semblance of speech.
"No."
Because he can't. Because if he does, Kame really will hit the ground face first. No matter what his feelings towards the man himself, the thought of anyone fucking with him, even it's just a slab of concrete, sends a flash of protective rage through Jin's arteries. And he doesn't want to have to deal with protective rages and whatever they might mean.
"Lemme--!" Kame's attempts to struggle are pathetic. He's skinnier than he has any right to be under the heavy wool coat, and Jin can't shake the feeling that if he squeezed a little harder the man would break like sugar glass and scatter on the wind across Manhattan to the sea.
(Shards of him might make it back to Japan in the belly of a giant tuna, but Jin doesn't fancy explaining that one to their manager.)
"God just let me go." The voice softer, pleading almost.
"I do that and you'll go head first into the snow."
"So?" Kame's breath plumes in the cold air in front of them. "What the fuck do you care?"
It's not often that Kame swears. Jin doesn't say anything at first. Maybe his running off to LA did give Kame the right to say shit like that when he was three sheets to the wind, but Jin hadn't come here to play '10 things I hate about you', and he really isn't in the mood to play target for Kame's emotional arrows.
He pulls the man's arm across his shoulders, less gentle than he probably could have been, and supporting him, keeps walking. The cars drive past them at dizzying speeds. Horns blare at people trying to get across the road without getting themselves killed.
"Whatever you want to say to me, you might as well say it now," Jin replies over the din. "No one else around to hear."
"So selfish . . ." Kame murmurs so soft Jin can barely distinguish the words. The man laughs then and it's an ugly, broken sound. "Why the hell are you even here? I'm so tired of keeping this up -- being pulled in fifty different directions to fifty different places, and we have to be in all of them at once just to cover up the great gaping hole where you used to be. For fuck's sake, would you just say that you're not coming back so we can start trying to cope?"
Kame's eyes are on the ground, but there's no hiding the thickness in his throat as he speaks. Even with so many months of acrimony and an entire ocean between them, Jin hears the question underneath the accusations. He knows what the man is really asking.
"You're wrong, Kame," is all he says, and Kame's blood-lined eyes are now staring up at him in abject disbelief. It takes a moment for everything in those three loaded words to process, and then there it is: the crack in the ice that even staggering drunk Kame had tried to hide; the flicker of impossible hope. That maybe, just maybe Jin would say LA was great and all, but he didn't belong there any more than he did here, on the streets of a city that could be as icy and distant as the rings of Saturn.
Jin watches the realisation spark and light over Kame's face. It's followed almost instantly by doubt.
"Don't lie to me, Jin. I'll never forgive you if you're lying to me."
"I signed the new contract before I left LA, it'll be on Johnny's desk by now." And when even that isn't enough to quash the man's fear, "For fuck's sake Kame, yes! I'm coming back."
"Thank god." The words slip from Kame's mouth like a sutra and Jin barely manages to stay on his feet as the man collapses against him, all strength gone from his body but the power to keep whispering. "Thank god thank god thankgodthankgodthankgodthankgod . . ."
It's a challenge to get the door open with only one arm free and the weight of an almost-comatose man on the other. Jin can think of a hundred comments to make, none of them worth the effort. He'd managed to get Kame back to the hotel, still sort of conscious and still murmuring his thanks to god and the planets and whatever else in the sky that was listening. Looking at the brass buttons on the elevator though, Jin had remembered he still didn't have a clue where anyone else was staying. Kame had been up to answering some questions on the trek back --
"Why god? What's he done that's so great?"
"You're coming back . . ."
"Yeah?"
"Don' have to be strong all th' time . . . with you . . . here . . . thank god . . ."
-- but he was out like a light when Jin asked what room he was in.
"Oh fuck you, Kamenashi. Fuck you to fucking hell."
He pushes open the door with one foot and then the rest of his body as he drags Kame into room 4217. It's pitch black inside but for the glow of the night sky and dusty reflections of snow filtering through the windows. Groping in the dark, Jin's hand finds the light switch and he presses it once, and then again, but nothing happens.
"Shit."
Because his room key isn't in the slot that doubles as a kill-switch for the entire room.
If he tries to turn around now, he'll lose his precarious grip on Kame's deadweight, and he didn't drag the man all the way here just to dash his brains out on the carpet.
"Why am I always the one stuck with picking up your pieces, huh?" Jin murmurs, and he's not really sure how he feels about it but he's too tired now to care. Kame's drunk, Jin'll bring him home. Kame's passed out, Jin'll find him a blanket and a pillow. Kame needs him, Jin's there. That's the way it's always been. Four months haven't changed a thing, and if he's really honest with himself, Jin's kind of glad for it.
In the dark, he manages not to trip over anything hobbling across the room. His arms scream with the relief as he drops Kame down on the bed and for a few seconds he just stands there, bent over his knees, trying to get his breath back. There's a sharp sting at the back of his throat where the freezing February air scraped over his tonsils -- he'll be lucky if he can still speak come morning. On the bed, Kame pouts and curls further in on himself, unable to suppress a shiver.
"Yeah, I'm getting to it." Whispered as he heads over and fumbles with the room key to get the electricity going. The kick of the air-con starts up almost instantly. "There. Happy?"
Looking back, he sees Kame still being wracked by the occasional shiver. Soft shadows of snowflakes pass over his cheeks and over his dark grey coat, still wet around the edges with snow. With a sigh and a passing glance at the bathroom, where he was thinking of spending the night except there's no bathtub, Jin goes back to the bed and starts undoing Kame's coat buttons.
Ten minutes later, most of Kame's clothes are on hangers and his boots are drying in the bathroom sink. Jin's army jacket and sweater are draper over the room's only chair and he's trying not to let his feet touch Kame's as he crawls under the duvet. After driving all the way from Chicago, if nothing else, buggered if he's going to sleep on the floor.
Kame murmurs occasionally in his foggy alcohol-infused sleep. Jin tries not to listen. There are lots of words he can imagine Kame whispering in his dreams now, and very few of them are ones he wants to hear. He's got his back to the man but he can still feel the gradual warmth radiating under the covers. He's trying to avoid contact but Kame's always been a restless sleeper -- it doesn't take long before his feet start invading Jin's side of the bed.
Never thought we'd be here like this again, did you? his brain whispers to him. Jin hadn't dared let himself hope. Lying preternaturally still, he feels every shift of the mattress as Kame fidgets and turns and inwardly curses. So much for getting any sleep tonight.
". . . thank . . . Jin . . ." Kame mutters somehow much closer than Jin expected and then the man's arm is snaking its way across his chest. Jin bites his tongue very, very hard to make sure this is actually happening.
"Jin." The word is mouthed against his t-shirt, old enough and thin enough that he feels it easily against his skin. All the protests his brain had been cobbling together fall apart like a melting snowball in his hands. Kame's arm tightens around him, a clumsy attempt to pull him over, and throwing caution and sense and whatever else to the wind outside, Jin complies. The city lights are no more than a haze but he can see the corners of Kame's sleepy mouth curving upward. Jin opens his arms a fraction and that's all Kame needs to nestle close with an ear to his chest. There was only way they'd ever managed to get Kame to sleep soundly at night and that was with a pulse steady under the man's ear.
". . . Jin . . . mnh . . ."
Still works like a charm. Within a minute Kame stops tossing, his breathing deepens and his mumblings taper off into a dream-heavy silence.
Above the bed, three long windows run the length of the wall. Glancing up, Jin can see only a portion of the night sky and in it only a single star. He's not even sure if it's a real star, if it's a planet or a satellite or just a random bit of space junk stuck up there somehow. But it's shining, and it's shining down on him now, and he's takes comfort from it regardless.
Closing his eyes, he pulls Kame just a little closer.
"This doesn't mean you're forgiven," Jin murmurs to the dark. All the same, he doesn't even think to resist when Kame reaches up and twines their fingers together.
~
November, 2009
Jin cracks open a none-too-happy eye, filled with sleep and paper moons.
"Wha'?" he says around the sleep-thickness in his mouth. Kame stops twining his fingers but leaves them where they are, tangled up in Jin's long brown hair. He can feel the side of his mouth quirking up and he doesn't bother to stop it this time -- Jin won't remember a thing when he wakes up for real, and who else is there to see?
"Nothing. Just remembering," Kame replies, low and soft.
"Rem'ber on your own fuck'n time . . ." Jin's eyes have already drifted closed. Instinctively, the man burrows into the warmth of Kame's shoulder, and despite the fact his arm will be numb in twenty minutes, Kame pulls him closer, lets him burrow. Jin breathes a steady rhythm into the dip of his collarbone and Kame feels the man's eyelids fluttering against his skin -- all the delicate little twitches of Jin's dreams.
"Love you too," he murmurs and watches the glow-in-the-dark stickers on the ceiling. A cosmos all their own Jin had said the day they moved in, tacking stars and planets to the plaster. And at the centre of their universe is a pair of twin suns, shining softly above the bed.
~~
Thou sunne art halfe as happy'as wee,
In that the world's contracted thus --
Shine here to us, and thou art every where;
This bed thy center is, these walls, thy spheare.
-- John Donne