fic: Marbellousy (1/2)
Title: Marbellousy
Author: prologuesized
Beta: pinkeuphoria1
Pairing: Akame
Rating: NC-17
Genre: AU, Angst, Romance, Fluff
Disclaimer: …I’m not into slavery, surely you now that?
Summary: Jin has to face the biggest regret of his life when Kame walks back in his life, solidly hard and cold like marble and alarmingly hollow enough to crack for good.
Author Note: The fic that didn’t end up in kizuna_exchange (people will slaughter me for this). pinkeuphoria1 was enough of a kind grammar natzi to volunteer for betaing ♥
…Don’t ask about the title. Obviously I was sleepy and full of IB Artsy analysing and creating stamina (which I didn’t use for school, DAMMIT). I’m ridiculously proud of the nonsense non-English.
Wordcount: 11,800
MARBELLOUSY
The horror arrives on a late Tuesday afternoon in the form of a painfully familiar being with a suitcase clutched tightly in one hand and a Burberry duffel bag in the other. The look in the young man’s harsh eyes reminds Jin about the start of the unfortunate day in question - how the northern wind had howled in his ears and seemed to almost physically caress his very bones from within, how the thermometer had (to be quite frank) pissed him off big time once he actually managed to gather the courage (and enough layers of clothing) to go out and how the shivering and grumpy people hadn’t emitted the source of humane joy from under their thick woollen scarves and beanies which he normally feasts upon.
Needless to say, it hadn’t been all that delightful of a morning.
Yamapi arrives from behind the corner with an excited smile and a wink as he carries an enormous, neatly taped brown box in his arms. It’s only then that Jin returns to reality enough to step further inside the house to make room for the two visitors - except that one of them isn’t going to be a visitor, Jin realises and feels a cold tremble of anxious fear shaking his form.
The best he can do is hope from the very depths of his heart that Kame will grant him the first grimace he’s gotten from him in god knows how many years, shrug his shoulders and mumble something about the whole thing not being such a good idea after all, that he should and would just go and that would be it, best regards for good this time. He sees his small wish shattering right before his eyes as Kame leaves his shoes in the tiny foyer and steps in, politely helping Yamapi with his box which is, by the sounds of it, filled with rattling belongings.
Jin wonders if bad luck is finally catching up with him. It still owes him a punch in the face for the surprisingly luxurious life he’s managed to obtain ridiculously easy since his high school days and Kame’s billion watt smiles.
Kame doesn’t have that familiar smile from Jin’s old memories plastered beautifully on his face, though. Not anymore.
“This is the person I was talking about. Kamenashi Kazuya, meet Akanishi Jin. Jin, this is Kamenashi,” Pi claps his hands together and grants them both enthusiastic pats on their scapulars. Jin does his best to swallow down the vile piece of imaginary something stuck in his throat. Kame looks him straight to his eyes before turning back to Yamapi in a joking yet deadly serious manner.
“We’ve met before. Old acquaintances,” he informs and Jin’s grateful they’ve gotten done with it, grateful that Kame has given them at least some sort of direction.
“Acquaintances” doesn’t quite ring right enough, though. Then again, maybe now, after everything and in this particular situation they’re facing, it’s the safest tag they can put on. It’s all in the past anyway.
“You two know each other?” Yamapi’s eyes widen as he shifts them from one to the other. “Since when?”
“High school,” Jin hears his own voice muttering. He doesn’t dare to turn his gaze away from Kame’s now marble-pale and cold skin coating his slightly fleshier adult form. “We sort of fell out of touch, though.” Quite literally too.
A model he is nowadays, that much he remembers Yamapi mentioning about his “friend looking for an apartment”. Just funnily enough, considering he had been the one with the passion for photography, snapping pictures of Kame’s exotically gorgeous face and body in more unofficial photo-shoots than one. He’s sure he still has the pictures somewhere, gathering dust in albums he’s concealed in the storage cupboard to lock away the memories.
Kame’s radiance has had a 180° turnaround, Jin senses, and crosses his arms in defence as he studies the form that doesn’t look all that familiar after all. The warmth and innocent liveliness has been drained away and when their hands accidentally bump against each other when Jin offers to help with the bags, all he can feel is a smooth, chilly and hard surface.
The softness is gone, in more ways than one. The cold, shielded and uncaring professionalism has taken over the once familiar laughter and soft bumping of the skin so that it doesn’t even yield from his touch anymore. Kame is rock-hard marble nowadays with a few fine scarred cracks decorating the skin on the backs of his hands. The marks disappear under his sleeves, climbing up somewhere where he isn’t able to see them anymore.
All Jin is able to feel is intense regret and shame as he takes in the harshness of reality and life depicted right before his eyes like a very alive sculpture of perfection, scary because things are just horribly wrong under the pretty and deceitful surface.
He wonders if anyone else apart from them knows.
--
Jin stares at the picture with the help of a flashlight to the ungodly hours, safely hidden under his duvet. He caresses his fingers warily over the smooth surface of the photograph and sucks on his lips in a nervously excited manner. He’s a hormone-overrun 17 year old teenager with a stupid little quirk - a quirk of taking in the smiles of the people around him and reflecting them in all authenticity.
At the left corner of the picture of a group of small boys running around a nearby park with plastic trucks in their hands and sand in their hair there is a boy many years older, a boy with his arm comfortably hooked around the chain of the swing he’s sitting on, legs bent in a lazy attempt to keep the movement constant. The boy doesn’t seem much younger than him, but it feels like there’s nothing in the world that can possibly ruin the content ear-to-ear smile he has on as he sits there on the swing all by himself. There’s a certain kind of tranquillity that makes Jin think of stupid abstract things like being one with the world and it makes his heart race happily just a few beats faster than usual, yet it oddly feels like the entire world is different.
He’s a reflector. Jin is. He takes in the brightest smile he remembers ever encountering and wonders how on earth he has managed to miss his existence at the moment the picture was taken, that moment he had been too sucked in by children’s play and camera-itching fingers.
But there he is, forever imprisoned in the shot where Jin just isn’t able to see the children anymore, not because of the sun-like radiance in the background, right there on the left corner, legs bent and a thin arm hooked around the moderately rusted chain. There he is.
Jin thinks that if he can just keep reflecting the boy’s smile from the photograph for the lifetime ahead, he’s going to be the happiest and luckiest guy in the mortal world.
--
“So… how has life been?” Jin manages to utter out the following morning. Kame’s hair is fashionably ruffled with various kinds of hair products (or at least so Jin assumes) but he’s still wearing his forest-green t-shirt , black pyjama pants and a black robe decorated with pictures of red and fiery dragons. Kame finishes chewing his mouthful of freshly cooked vegetable and rice mix before he shrugs uninterestedly.
“It’s life,” comes the short and impersonal answer. “I heard you really became a photographer. Good for you.”
Kame speaks with an unfamiliar tone Jin learned to dislike right away. Then again, looking back at everything between them, he’s certain that it’s exactly what he deserves. He doesn’t get the kind reunion reaction or awkward silence - what he gets is an invisible wall that feels solid and the person he had once loved but isn’t even able to fully recognize anymore behind the closed-in harshness.
Against all the odds, the turtle has hid in his shell and, from what he can see, he’s reluctant to come out. The darkness has fallen to glaze over the once so vibrant eyes and restrict the familiar perky shuffling.
Jin loathes the world for ruining something once so beautiful, but can’t shake off the feeling that maybe it’s his own fault entirely, maybe it’s the prize of his own succession and delight when it comes to life. Maybe Kame is the skeleton he keeps inside his closet. The one he’s avoided facing for the good seven years they’ve been apart.
The marble fingers clang when they come in touch with the porcelain tea cup Kame raises to meet his lips. Jin’s eyes follow his throat as the man swallows before they turn away and start tracing the boring yet now suddenly extremely fascinating plain purple curtains one of his exes had happily sewed to him.
“We have to get rid of those,” Kame notes and Jin’s eyes snap back at him. Kame cocks his head towards the curtains. “The curtains. They’re hideous and need to go. I’ll get proper ones as soon as I can.”
Jin frowns and hides behind his coffee mug with a darkened expression. Just because Kame is unfortunately now, after a lot of stupid misunderstandings, his roommate, he’s still paying for the majority of the small apartment which should grant him the right to keep the house in whatever style he prefers.
He still finds himself stiffly nodding. Kame nods back, a smile still not present on his lips as he gets up and goes to wash his bowl and chopsticks. Jin just absently stares at the strained fabric coated over his toned back and lets his mind wander to places in the past and a possible alternative outcome for them.
Had things gone differently, Kame wouldn’t be a harsh picture of his old self carved in unevenly coloured yet forcefully smoothed marble. He would have soft flesh which Jin would be able to bury his fingers in as he would hold him in his arms. Kame would be warm to his touch and the most sensitive and loving human being ever granted to have the opportunity of a life on planet Earth.
Had he not done the mistakes he did in the past, maybe Kame could be humane too.
--
Against all the odds in the big city they live in, their paths cross again. Before Jin even realises it, he’s reflecting the gorgeous smile from the picture as he studies the familiar figure feeding portly pigeons with a few slices of plain white bread.
He skips over and stops next to the younger boy who directs his gaze at him awkwardly. Jin offers his hand (his heart is beating so hard) and bites his lip nervously but jubilantly, excitement making his body tremble.
“Can I?” he asks. “It looks fun.”
With an amused laughter the boy extends his arm to offer him a slice. The birds around their feet start growing agitated and Jin rips a small piece of the bread and drops it to the ground, his smile growing even wider as he watches the birds gathering around the piece and fighting over it.
The boy breaks more bread and drops them to other places, making the hysteric group of pigeons part their ways on their quest for the tasty crumbs. Jin looks at him with a stupid smile he isn’t able to contain and wants to say something, anything to start a conversation.
He doesn’t want to miss it this time, because there’s no guarantee he’ll ever get the opportunity again.
“What’s your name?” the boy manages to ask first though, throwing a small crumb at his face. Jin flinches and tries to take cover. The crumb falls between his feet and he cries out in shock as the birds attack it. The boy laughs and holds his hand to keep him still. “Don’t you dare to step on them!”
“I’m not stepping on them!” Jin objects through his pursed lips. “See, I’m not! And it’s Akanishi Jin.”
“Akanishi,” the boy nods with a warm smile that reminds Jin of countryside flower fields during the summer, blooming with vibrant colours under the golden rays of sun and swaying gently in the soft breeze. “You have a nice smile.”
“You too,” Jin manages to croak, squeezing the boy’s hand harder for a second before he realises what he’s doing and tries to hide his blush by forcibly stuffing bread in the boy’s mouth. It makes the boy back away but his eyes shine in genuine amusement which makes it completely worth the sudden impulse. “You’re funny,” Jin continues, trying to distract the birds by throwing the leftovers of the bread slice to the opposite direction. “What’s your name?”
The boy’s eyes flash mischievously and he snickers as he feeds bread to Jin. He doesn’t really care about the taste, the bread is mostly tasteless - but the boy’s fingertips press soothingly on his lips for a small while as the soft piece gets pushed in.
It suddenly feels way dirtier than it is in reality.
“Tell me,” he tries to grumble through his stuffed mouth and swallows, still unable to shake off the sudden electricity in the air and dirty teenage mind. “I’m not a creeper, really!”
The boy breaks into an almost hysteric laughter and pats his shoulder dismissively. Jin feels his heart clenching as he walks away with one wave of a hand and doesn’t turn back in over ten steps.
He touches his lips sadly just as the figure turns around and breaks into another ground-breaking laughter. The boy slouches back and pushes dumbfounded Jin’s chest teasingly with his palm.
“If you want to know it, try a bit harder. What will I gain from giving you my name?”
The world lightens up again and Jin’s smirk reflects the boy’s, the teasing and overwhelming emotions way too easily accessible to him.
“If we’re going this far, can I just as well ask for your phone number to accompany the name?” he tries and taps the crook of the young boy’s nose. He loves the atmosphere around him.
He tells him.
By evening, he’s already receiving tons of text messages. It’s a bit funny, though, how the amount of tiny icons can easily exceed the amount of characters. It suits Kame, though.
He curses as his inbox gets full and he has to start selecting which messages he wants to save and which need to go.
--
Kame’s so cold it’s unsettling. It’s like his nature has been switched with someone else’s. Maybe he’s always had it in him, but hasn’t let it bloom before Jin had gone and meddled with his heart. Quite possibly.
It doesn’t matter anymore, though.
What matters is what is, currently. And “what is” isn’t anything exhilarating anymore. It’s the exact opposite.
Kame’s digging his own grave and he can’t find the words to make him stop. The “I hate to break it to you, but” just doesn’t leave his lips as he quietly observes Kame walking around the house like his roommate would be anyone in the world but Jin. Like he doesn’t matter at all anymore.
He does, though, that much he knows. Otherwise Kame would treat him differently. He wouldn’t fight so hard to keep himself collected and keep him at a lengthy distance on mental level.
Jin rummages through his old belongings and digs up ancient photo albums of the two of them. He studies the pictures of two boys with stars in their eyes and wonders how they have become what they currently are. How something so strong can get so infected that it makes the pictures invert. How brightness becomes just dark.
The first picture he has ever taken of the boy catches his eye and he picks it up. He slides down to sit on the floor and presses a trembling hand over his mouth to keep the raging feelings locked in. He doesn’t want to be pathetic enough to cry, not even over something like this.
The love of his life is dead and never coming back, he tells himself. It’s just what he deserves for being the asshole he had been. Atonements are seven painfully long years too late.
--
It’s a world just for the two of them, even the times they’re apart. Jin knows it’s more than friendship - maybe he’s known it all along. But the way their fingers entwine makes his still childish concept of love bloom in the sweetest ways emotion-wise.
They’re silent that day. It’s already late autumn but they still spend time outside - maybe it’s because of Jin’s love for every season in his photographs, or maybe it’s because Kame shines the brightest outdoors. There he can run around and spin stupidly, attracting everyone’s attention but giving his own only to Jin. Jin feels grateful.
Kame sits on his lap under a tree and pokes his fingers through the fallen leaves on the ground. It’s kind of silly but Jin has always been into silly things, so he rips small holes in the leaves himself and attaches them to thin strands of Kame’s light brown dyed hair.
He’s making a Kame-tree, he chuckles to himself as his fingers work hesitantly, afraid of pulling too harshly and hurting the younger boy. After a while Kame jumps up on his feet and skips away, starting to mimic a tree further away. Jin isn’t able to contain a smile and he chuckles at the boy’s silly expression. It’s way too serious for his face. Kame just isn’t able to hide the happy gleam in his eyes to be serious enough.
Jin picks up his camera and takes several shots of the younger boy. He takes pictures of him standing next to another tree, looking up wonderingly, acting scared and pulling on some branches with some of their leaves gripped between his teeth.
He throws his snack apple at Kame’s direction and the smaller boy yelps as he dodges it. Jin takes pictures as he runs after it, picks it up and takes a good aim at him - only then it strikes him that he should probably take cover and he ducks to the ground, gripping his camera under him, afraid of Kame accidentally breaking it.
The apple, however, flies about a metre above where his head had previously been. It’s intentional, Jin knows - Kame loves baseball and is quite a pitcher, and Jin is well aware that he doesn’t simply miss an easy shot like that except if it’s on purpose.
“Jerk,” he yells at him and Kame fetches the apple before he returns, ripping the leaves off his hair and fingers.
“You always have your camera with you,” Kame notes. “Do you even get all those photos printed?”
“M-hmm,” Jin answers with a nod, snapping another picture of Kame’s face so close now. “That’s why you pay for my lunch so often.”
Kame laughs and sits down next to him, taking the camera from his hands. Jin lets him - he trusts Kame with his belongings, and he’s sure Kame knows the emotional value of the object he’s holding. In a way it’s his heart, that camera of his. He knows Kame will treat it accordingly.
With a firm grip of short fingers Kame turns the camera gently around and leans closer against Jin, pressing against his chest. Jin feels his breathing becoming awkwardly laboured as he looks at Kame nervously, unable to move around because he doesn’t want to move away but rubbing against Kame would just make him even more nervous, he knows, because he really has started developing feelings for the younger boy.
Kame’s eyelids flutter as he turns to face Jin and it makes Jin gulp, afraid of all of his emotions being visible on his face. He isn’t sure what he’s afraid of, because it’s not like he’s afraid of the feeling itself - maybe he’s afraid of rejection, he concludes anxiously. Afraid of being denied of the sunshine in his life.
When Kame’s lips press against his experimentally, Jin feels the soft tremble and knows that he isn’t the only one. He breathes in shakily before he tries to answer slowly, his own eyelids sliding shut as he gently sucks Kame’s lip in.
He hears the camera taking a picture and chuckles, brushing their noses together amidst the kiss. He breathes against Kame’s face before he returns to his lips, focusing on the soft feel of them and the slight movements as they caress his. The camera shutter keeps going off and Kame whimpers contently, gathering enough courage to press better against him.
The kiss stops, but their faces remain close, tingling. Jin has his arms wrapped around Kame’s lithe torso and from the corner of his eyes he sees Kame’s hand shakily setting the camera back on the ground. Their fingers entwine against Kame’s side and Jin rocks them gently, feeling nervous but exceptionally good, so good he hasn’t ever known the level exists. Euphoric in a calm way.
“Get this set printed for me too,” Kame requests softly, lips still brushing against his. Jin breathes in his mouth and listens to the faint sound of their racing heartbeats. He can feel the sun’s warmth prickling on his goose-bumped skin.
He nods and kisses Kame again, more confidently this time. He doesn’t want to miss any opportunities he has anymore.
--
“You need to fix yourself,” he regretfully snaps at Kame one day. Their eyes meet and Kame cocks a lazy eyebrow almost amusedly. “I’m serious.”
“And you suddenly care? I’m not a child anymore, Jin, that’s what has changed,” he scoffs, pink tongue briefly licking his lips. “I’m not the only one who’s changed. It’s been a long time.”
He hates how Kame can make the blood running right under the surface layer of his skin feel like acid eating him up alive. He eyes him from afar and tries to stabilize his breathing. He doesn’t want to be as weak as he is. It doesn’t feel right. Years’ worth of contentment is gone now that the bit of regret has resurfaced and refuses to leave him alone.
“Those scars aren’t pretty,” he notes, motioning towards Kame’s hands. “Your defence mechanism obviously sucks. And you avoid me, why did you even move in if it’s so hard for you?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Kame’s concrete-hard and headstrong voice objects as he turns properly towards Jin to look him in his eyes. Kame crosses his arms and scoffs, head tilting slightly to the left. “I’m not a weakling. I’m not a bird with his wings ripped away. You don’t affect me anymore. That’s all in the past.”
He has hard time breathing as the icy words claw at him. Jin sniffs and remains still on his position with his back against the boringly white wall of the narrow corridor. There’s a pull somewhere at the corner of his lips he tries to ignore as he holds Kame’s penetrating gaze from across the small hall.
“I think you’re lying,” he hears the faint croak echoing in the silence of the room. It’s spoken with his own voice. There are things he leaves unsaid, though. Stupid, cliché things such as I think you’re lying to yourself and just look at you.
Kame’s empty yet harsh expression doesn’t even falter as he walks over slowly, in a threatening manner that makes Jin wince. He can feel his muscles strain when Kame’s breath grazes his face.
Then he feels the rocky fingers burying themselves in his hair, tugging a little to tilt his head in a more comfortable position for a short and painful kiss.
Jin has imagined it more than once, he admits, but none of the imaginary feelings do any justice to the rush of sensations that flow over him. It isn’t even a positive feeling, no - there’s no tender love or atonement included, just the disgusting feeling of suddenly overwhelming rage and something breaking. Shattering.
He grasps Kame’s shirt and tries to catch his breath as he stares at the man’s eyes with equally cold ones, but whereas Kame’s emotions probably (at least seemingly) stop there, he’s sure his own eyes are a portal to something much, much more. The years’ worth of conflicting emotions switch on full blast all at once and he swallows hard, refusing to let Kame back away. Not even one centimetre.
“We aren’t finished,” he growls with a low voice, fists shaking and mouth dry. “We aren’t finished before you’re fine again. Not this time.”
“I am fine.”
“No, you are not!” Jin roars and their foreheads bump together. It’s hard to make sense of Kame’s face anymore now that they’re so close. “No one believes that shit. You’ve hardened yourself too much. It’s not a shield, Kame. It’s your downfall. One good blow and you’re shattered to pieces.”
“Maybe that’s why I am hard,” Kame hisses venomously back. “So people like you won’t ever manage to break me again. I’m hard enough to survive you. That’s well enough.”
“You’ve lost everything beautiful about you. Only the shell remains,” Jin spits back spitefully, hand snaking to grasp a firm hold of the fabric between Kame’s shoulder blades. “You aren’t alive. And that is what will destroy you. …You’re not supposed to be hard,” he feels his own voice choking as he buries his face under Kame’s chin. “Hard things eventually shatter. You won’t be able to join the pieces back together. You’re supposed to be soft so you can recover, even on your own.”
“I’m hard enough to survive you.”
“Show me,” Jin dares him and pulls back slightly, eyes narrowed as he lets his hands slide to Kame’s shoulders. "Prove it to me.”
Kame’s lips crash on his demandingly and, for the first time in his life, Jin truly feels like he understands love - it’s the ugliest and most hurtful emotion he remembers ever encountering, one that makes him want to explode right there and then, scream in fury and go crazy like a severely insane mental institution patient. He fucking hates it and regrets ever letting himself fall in love.
Strong and stony arms wrap themselves tightly around Jin’s form and he follows the cold touch towards the other man’s bedroom, the rate of his heart palpitation increasing with every pound. Kame stays firmly attached to the shared kiss and when Jin feels his calves hitting the metallic bedframe, he crashes to sit on it, hands located at the nape of Kame’s smooth neck, pulling him down along.
They pull their own shirts off and Kame forces him further on the bed, taking the dominance over the situation as he climbs over Jin and keeps making him writhe on the mattress with his moist and hard kisses. Jin is certain they’re bruising his skin.
Kame’s palms travel devouringly up and down Jin’s chest and sides, thumbs swiftly caressing his nipples as they go. When Kame crouches down to plant rough kisses and suck on them, his tongue twirling around the nubs and lapping at them, Jin wraps his legs around his hips and whimpers gently in his ear. His voice sounds like it would be breaking and it surprises even him - why would he break? For all he knows, apart from the mixed feelings about the whole situation, he’s feeling great and more than ready to join with Kame again for the first time in over seven years.
It’s just sex, though, he has to remind himself. Nothing has changed between them, not really. Sex is just something that has been bound to eventually happen between them. It can never reach the level of a catharsis per se, but it’s an outlet of sorts for the strong emotions they’ve contained for so long.
For Jin, it’s a desperate attempt to restore the fragments and beg for forgiveness. If only he would manage to break Kame down, shatter him for good. Maybe this time he would be there to catch him and hold him tightly to ensure a better outcome than the marble and emotionless monster.
Then he suddenly feels. It happens as Kame’s fingers fumble his jean’s button and fly open, when his fingers pull their jeans and undergarments off, that’s when he feels him, feels the swirl of harsh emotions he doesn’t have names for. Kame’s form casts a shadow over him and Jin rises to the support of his elbows to kiss Kame’s neck and shoulders in a gentler way. Kame trembles.
Jin’s afraid of a tidal wave but feels his stupidity increasing as it draws closer and closer. He can feel it in his fingertips as they run down Kame’s toned stomach; he can feel it in the sudden gentler way Kame’s head tilts to lock his face where it is, lips gently brushing Kame’s neck under his jaw line. He wants to see the horrors when it unleashes and breaks Kame’s barricades, breaks free from within.
His nails rake at Kame’s back and the musky scent of sweat and hormones flood his second by second more sensitive nerve receptors, making his head go fuzzy. He grunts and raises his hips to rub them together against Kame’s with a grimace on his face. Kame pushes him properly down on the bed with a creak and reaches for the bedside drawer. After a while of shuffling and marble clanking against wood and numerous other things, he feels a finger spreading lube around his entrance and penetrating it experimentally. It makes him wince and hiss but somehow it’s all good - he isn’t even able to feel bothered that it’s Kame who’s going to fuck him rather than the other way around. It makes no difference.
Kame’s finger isn’t cold either. The warmth radiates oddly from within as he bends his finger and searches for the spot and - there it is. Jin mewls and arches his body, hips jolting shakily. His heart just races faster and faster and his erection starts firming as blood rushes down painfully.
Another finger is added and Jin bites his lip, hand trying to grasp a hold of anywhere on Kame. His fingers bury themselves in the brown hair and he grips it tightly, pulling Kame forward a little as he tries to contain the loudest noises. He isn’t quite sure he wants to give them.
A hoarse gasp leaves his lips as Kame removes his fingers and wipes them clean against the mattress before he guides Jin’s hips into a better position and helps his member slide in. Jin feels his eyes rolling back and he gasps, tensing around the erection inside of him. It’s been so long and their bodies have changed but it’s still all good if not even better, much, much better. Joined bodies have never felt so good together.
Jin keeps his eyes closed as he tries to adjust to the intrusion. He clings to Kame’s upper body and feels the younger man gently kissing his ear, moist lips brushing and a tongue occasionally twirling to examine the curved grooves. It tickles and makes lazy shivers run under his skin. His lips part for quiet gasps against Kame’s shoulder and he bites down to it.
He claims Kame’s lips with his own shakily and grants him a kiss that stays gentle. It turns everything blissfully hot and makes Kame start rocking his hips, first gently and experimentally as if to remember the forgotten feeling, but later increasing in speed and distance back and forth. Jin moans and arches his back with several spasms. He isn’t completely sure whether it’s from trying to get into a more comfortable position or from the sexual pleasure.
The minutes tick by and Jin loses it more and more with every pound, eyes frantically searching for Kame’s at any given moment. He loses it and when he presses his ear against Kame’s shoulder he can hear the hollow inside in a scary way.
Kame isn’t alright; he knows and has known it all along. Kame isn’t fine as he kisses him like a leech sucking the blood and life out of him. His fingers bury themselves in Jin’s soft flesh so hard it actually does hurt more than he likes and the whimpers that travel past his lips are everything but collected and emotionless. Kame’s kiss tastes salty even though Jin isn’t able to detect any tears, but then again that might just be Kame’s dinner.
They’re glued to each other tightly when they come, Jin first and Kame maybe about five seconds later (Jin isn’t confident he counts it right while experiencing his own orgasm). Kame pulls out of him and wipes them clean with his duvet. Jin feels his hands shaking as he pulls him back down in his arms.
Kame’s heartbeat still races. It’s strong and lively. His hand hesitantly lands on Jin’s hip and even though Jin sees just a dishevelled mass of brown hair, he senses Kame’s weakness, never mind the still rock-hard touch.
It takes him a few silent moments of bliss before hell suddenly breaks loose - and to his fear, it arrives from his own depths, surely and sharply and as icy as he remembers Kame being all those days before, if not even icier.
“You’re disgusting,” he breathes out, voice laced with raw loathing. “You’re a weak and selfish bastard, Kamenashi. Always so full of yourself but when it comes down to it, you’re just hiding behind tons of ridiculous excuses and masks such as that pale and hard face of yours,” he tells and Kame sits up with a pained jolt. Jin detects the wild look of fear in his eyes, the fear of something he isn’t able to stop because it’s coming at him with a speed way faster than what he needs to recover his shield. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. All of this shit is created just to save your own sorry ass. I despise people like you. Despise.”
Kame shakes and when their eyes meet, his face is so horribly blank and eyes glazed that Jin fails to breathe. Then there’s a fragment of a second filled with stillness.
He wishes it would stop right there and then. He doesn’t want to know the result of his actions. His hair stands at the edge and he feels a strong shiver travelling up his spine. It feels like he’s going to choke.
Then there’s an ear-wrecking crack and Kame’s face fractures right before his eyes. It all happens in one pained snap and then the moment is gone, leaving behind diverging lines as remainders of the blow he himself had delivered on Kame when his shield hadn’t been quite so hard, when his defence had been down and he had been only fragile enough to break and fracture from the smallest of touch, never mind his harsh words.
Kame’s eyes are wide and he recovers from the shock slowly, pressing his trembling fingers on the bleeding wounds on his once so beautiful face. The blood smears and the flow keeps increasing. Jin hears the quiet drips against the mattress and flinches. He’s unable to move more.
Kame doesn’t make a sound - not even a small and heartbroken cry. He stumbles to get up with his hands pressed on the wounds and staggers out of the room with an incredible speed, disappearing to the hallway and leaving a dirty and shameful Jin behind.
He murmurs a silent whisper of “Kame” and manages to pull his dark boxer-briefs on before following the sounds inside the house that lead him to the bathroom with a familiar yet frail form sitting on the toilet seat with a dark towel pressed against his face. It’s soaking through.
“Get. Out,” a violently shaking voice demands. It gives Jin goose bumps but his feet won’t carry him away, not from this sight.
He’s broken Kame all over again, and all it had taken was a few badly selected words combined with a moment when he hadn’t thought first before he talked. A moment when he had just let his emotions loose.
“Kame, I -”
“OUT!” Kame roars and gets up on his feet, towel-covered face directed at his voice. Jin backs away from the toilet and Kame slams the door shut and locks it, leaving Jin out.
It doesn’t really matter that he isn’t getting a shower. Little things cease mattering. He had no right. He had absolutely no right.
The image of the crack on Kame’s face refuses to erase itself from his mind, staring at him in vibrant colours and detailed to the tiniest gleam in Kame’s anguished eyes in that frozen second. It’s all there like a nightmare he isn’t able to wake up from anymore.
He throws his clothes on and gets out of the nightmare house.
He’s always feared dolls. Ever since the days from when he was young.
--
Jin ruffles Kame’s hair and pushes a pair of glasses on his crooked nose. He steps back to adore his handiwork as Kame smirks at him flirtingly, turning around for a full circle which makes the scarf tied around his hips flow in a tempting way. Jin smiles and bites his lip, taking in the view of Kame on the city streets, in his eyes more gorgeous than anyone else who happens to pass by.
“I think you only miss this,” Jin compliments him cheerfully and hands over a carton mug of Starbuck’s coffee. “Now you look perfect.”
Kame flips the necklace he’s wearing the right way around and pats the cup, unable to clap his hands while he’s holding it. “Alright! Then here we go… What do you want me to do?”
“Look good?” Jin laughs as he switches his camera on and starts messing with the settings. He takes a couple of pictures to make sure the settings have been perfected. “Happy. Desired.”
“How about cool?” Kame tries and leans against a brick wall, posing for him with the cup set on his raised thigh. Jin snaps a picture.
“We could go with cool, yes,” he agrees. Kame flashes him a smile and pulls him from his arm, running ahead through the crowd.
“I know from where I want a picture!” he exclaims excitedly as he turns back to look at Jin who holds on dearly to his camera as he tries to keep up.
Kame leads him to a huge intersection crosswalks and driveways. The lights are red and they join the mass waiting for green, dosed up on adrenaline and dopamine. Kame chuckles as cars drive by and the enormous screen far above them keeps playing a boring news program he doesn’t really care less for at the moment.
When the lights turn green, Kame starts walking with the people to the middle of the road. Jin dodges away to get a better aim and grimaces as people get on the way. It’s just like Kame to choose the most difficult locations, but it makes him improve, he swears as he keeps waiting for the right moment.
Kame stands still amidst the walking crowd. He’s detached from time and life, completely on his own overlapping universe as he stands there. Jin snaps a picture and waves his hand to call Kame back over before the lights turn red, and he sees him rushing before he checks the picture on his camera, amazed at the slightly hurtful and calm expression Kame can have on his face once the bright gleam he usually has on gets hidden.
When Kame comes back, Jin wraps his arm around his shoulder and pulls him close, starting to walk ahead the road again. Kame takes the camera from him and checks the picture excitedly himself, letting out an excited “Hell yes!” that makes Jin know he’s pleased with the shot.
“I want to keep doing this in the future too,” Kame smiles at him widely, eyes full of glimmer from the neon lights around. “You could become a photographer and I could become a model. We could collaborate.”
Jin nods in agreement and pecks Kame’s lips lightly, making him giddy and mischievous again. Kame wraps a hand around his hips and keeps him close as they walk.
“I’m in love with you, Jin,” Kame finally admits after a moment of silence. Jin smiles at him and kisses him a bit more fully - and he can feel it. Feel the love that blurs the world around them and gives him a sense of calmness he doesn’t remember experiencing before. Like it’s alright to just stay in the moment and he doesn’t really want it to end.
“Maybe I love you too,” he speculates teasingly and tickles Kame’s side, making him yelp and jerk.
Then they laugh again, hard enough to get tears in their eyes.
--
PART 2
Author: prologuesized
Beta: pinkeuphoria1
Pairing: Akame
Rating: NC-17
Genre: AU, Angst, Romance, Fluff
Disclaimer: …I’m not into slavery, surely you now that?
Summary: Jin has to face the biggest regret of his life when Kame walks back in his life, solidly hard and cold like marble and alarmingly hollow enough to crack for good.
Author Note: The fic that didn’t end up in kizuna_exchange (people will slaughter me for this). pinkeuphoria1 was enough of a kind grammar natzi to volunteer for betaing ♥
…Don’t ask about the title. Obviously I was sleepy and full of IB Artsy analysing and creating stamina (which I didn’t use for school, DAMMIT). I’m ridiculously proud of the nonsense non-English.
Wordcount: 11,800
MARBELLOUSY
The horror arrives on a late Tuesday afternoon in the form of a painfully familiar being with a suitcase clutched tightly in one hand and a Burberry duffel bag in the other. The look in the young man’s harsh eyes reminds Jin about the start of the unfortunate day in question - how the northern wind had howled in his ears and seemed to almost physically caress his very bones from within, how the thermometer had (to be quite frank) pissed him off big time once he actually managed to gather the courage (and enough layers of clothing) to go out and how the shivering and grumpy people hadn’t emitted the source of humane joy from under their thick woollen scarves and beanies which he normally feasts upon.
Needless to say, it hadn’t been all that delightful of a morning.
Yamapi arrives from behind the corner with an excited smile and a wink as he carries an enormous, neatly taped brown box in his arms. It’s only then that Jin returns to reality enough to step further inside the house to make room for the two visitors - except that one of them isn’t going to be a visitor, Jin realises and feels a cold tremble of anxious fear shaking his form.
The best he can do is hope from the very depths of his heart that Kame will grant him the first grimace he’s gotten from him in god knows how many years, shrug his shoulders and mumble something about the whole thing not being such a good idea after all, that he should and would just go and that would be it, best regards for good this time. He sees his small wish shattering right before his eyes as Kame leaves his shoes in the tiny foyer and steps in, politely helping Yamapi with his box which is, by the sounds of it, filled with rattling belongings.
Jin wonders if bad luck is finally catching up with him. It still owes him a punch in the face for the surprisingly luxurious life he’s managed to obtain ridiculously easy since his high school days and Kame’s billion watt smiles.
Kame doesn’t have that familiar smile from Jin’s old memories plastered beautifully on his face, though. Not anymore.
“This is the person I was talking about. Kamenashi Kazuya, meet Akanishi Jin. Jin, this is Kamenashi,” Pi claps his hands together and grants them both enthusiastic pats on their scapulars. Jin does his best to swallow down the vile piece of imaginary something stuck in his throat. Kame looks him straight to his eyes before turning back to Yamapi in a joking yet deadly serious manner.
“We’ve met before. Old acquaintances,” he informs and Jin’s grateful they’ve gotten done with it, grateful that Kame has given them at least some sort of direction.
“Acquaintances” doesn’t quite ring right enough, though. Then again, maybe now, after everything and in this particular situation they’re facing, it’s the safest tag they can put on. It’s all in the past anyway.
“You two know each other?” Yamapi’s eyes widen as he shifts them from one to the other. “Since when?”
“High school,” Jin hears his own voice muttering. He doesn’t dare to turn his gaze away from Kame’s now marble-pale and cold skin coating his slightly fleshier adult form. “We sort of fell out of touch, though.” Quite literally too.
A model he is nowadays, that much he remembers Yamapi mentioning about his “friend looking for an apartment”. Just funnily enough, considering he had been the one with the passion for photography, snapping pictures of Kame’s exotically gorgeous face and body in more unofficial photo-shoots than one. He’s sure he still has the pictures somewhere, gathering dust in albums he’s concealed in the storage cupboard to lock away the memories.
Kame’s radiance has had a 180° turnaround, Jin senses, and crosses his arms in defence as he studies the form that doesn’t look all that familiar after all. The warmth and innocent liveliness has been drained away and when their hands accidentally bump against each other when Jin offers to help with the bags, all he can feel is a smooth, chilly and hard surface.
The softness is gone, in more ways than one. The cold, shielded and uncaring professionalism has taken over the once familiar laughter and soft bumping of the skin so that it doesn’t even yield from his touch anymore. Kame is rock-hard marble nowadays with a few fine scarred cracks decorating the skin on the backs of his hands. The marks disappear under his sleeves, climbing up somewhere where he isn’t able to see them anymore.
All Jin is able to feel is intense regret and shame as he takes in the harshness of reality and life depicted right before his eyes like a very alive sculpture of perfection, scary because things are just horribly wrong under the pretty and deceitful surface.
He wonders if anyone else apart from them knows.
--
Jin stares at the picture with the help of a flashlight to the ungodly hours, safely hidden under his duvet. He caresses his fingers warily over the smooth surface of the photograph and sucks on his lips in a nervously excited manner. He’s a hormone-overrun 17 year old teenager with a stupid little quirk - a quirk of taking in the smiles of the people around him and reflecting them in all authenticity.
At the left corner of the picture of a group of small boys running around a nearby park with plastic trucks in their hands and sand in their hair there is a boy many years older, a boy with his arm comfortably hooked around the chain of the swing he’s sitting on, legs bent in a lazy attempt to keep the movement constant. The boy doesn’t seem much younger than him, but it feels like there’s nothing in the world that can possibly ruin the content ear-to-ear smile he has on as he sits there on the swing all by himself. There’s a certain kind of tranquillity that makes Jin think of stupid abstract things like being one with the world and it makes his heart race happily just a few beats faster than usual, yet it oddly feels like the entire world is different.
He’s a reflector. Jin is. He takes in the brightest smile he remembers ever encountering and wonders how on earth he has managed to miss his existence at the moment the picture was taken, that moment he had been too sucked in by children’s play and camera-itching fingers.
But there he is, forever imprisoned in the shot where Jin just isn’t able to see the children anymore, not because of the sun-like radiance in the background, right there on the left corner, legs bent and a thin arm hooked around the moderately rusted chain. There he is.
Jin thinks that if he can just keep reflecting the boy’s smile from the photograph for the lifetime ahead, he’s going to be the happiest and luckiest guy in the mortal world.
--
“So… how has life been?” Jin manages to utter out the following morning. Kame’s hair is fashionably ruffled with various kinds of hair products (or at least so Jin assumes) but he’s still wearing his forest-green t-shirt , black pyjama pants and a black robe decorated with pictures of red and fiery dragons. Kame finishes chewing his mouthful of freshly cooked vegetable and rice mix before he shrugs uninterestedly.
“It’s life,” comes the short and impersonal answer. “I heard you really became a photographer. Good for you.”
Kame speaks with an unfamiliar tone Jin learned to dislike right away. Then again, looking back at everything between them, he’s certain that it’s exactly what he deserves. He doesn’t get the kind reunion reaction or awkward silence - what he gets is an invisible wall that feels solid and the person he had once loved but isn’t even able to fully recognize anymore behind the closed-in harshness.
Against all the odds, the turtle has hid in his shell and, from what he can see, he’s reluctant to come out. The darkness has fallen to glaze over the once so vibrant eyes and restrict the familiar perky shuffling.
Jin loathes the world for ruining something once so beautiful, but can’t shake off the feeling that maybe it’s his own fault entirely, maybe it’s the prize of his own succession and delight when it comes to life. Maybe Kame is the skeleton he keeps inside his closet. The one he’s avoided facing for the good seven years they’ve been apart.
The marble fingers clang when they come in touch with the porcelain tea cup Kame raises to meet his lips. Jin’s eyes follow his throat as the man swallows before they turn away and start tracing the boring yet now suddenly extremely fascinating plain purple curtains one of his exes had happily sewed to him.
“We have to get rid of those,” Kame notes and Jin’s eyes snap back at him. Kame cocks his head towards the curtains. “The curtains. They’re hideous and need to go. I’ll get proper ones as soon as I can.”
Jin frowns and hides behind his coffee mug with a darkened expression. Just because Kame is unfortunately now, after a lot of stupid misunderstandings, his roommate, he’s still paying for the majority of the small apartment which should grant him the right to keep the house in whatever style he prefers.
He still finds himself stiffly nodding. Kame nods back, a smile still not present on his lips as he gets up and goes to wash his bowl and chopsticks. Jin just absently stares at the strained fabric coated over his toned back and lets his mind wander to places in the past and a possible alternative outcome for them.
Had things gone differently, Kame wouldn’t be a harsh picture of his old self carved in unevenly coloured yet forcefully smoothed marble. He would have soft flesh which Jin would be able to bury his fingers in as he would hold him in his arms. Kame would be warm to his touch and the most sensitive and loving human being ever granted to have the opportunity of a life on planet Earth.
Had he not done the mistakes he did in the past, maybe Kame could be humane too.
--
Against all the odds in the big city they live in, their paths cross again. Before Jin even realises it, he’s reflecting the gorgeous smile from the picture as he studies the familiar figure feeding portly pigeons with a few slices of plain white bread.
He skips over and stops next to the younger boy who directs his gaze at him awkwardly. Jin offers his hand (his heart is beating so hard) and bites his lip nervously but jubilantly, excitement making his body tremble.
“Can I?” he asks. “It looks fun.”
With an amused laughter the boy extends his arm to offer him a slice. The birds around their feet start growing agitated and Jin rips a small piece of the bread and drops it to the ground, his smile growing even wider as he watches the birds gathering around the piece and fighting over it.
The boy breaks more bread and drops them to other places, making the hysteric group of pigeons part their ways on their quest for the tasty crumbs. Jin looks at him with a stupid smile he isn’t able to contain and wants to say something, anything to start a conversation.
He doesn’t want to miss it this time, because there’s no guarantee he’ll ever get the opportunity again.
“What’s your name?” the boy manages to ask first though, throwing a small crumb at his face. Jin flinches and tries to take cover. The crumb falls between his feet and he cries out in shock as the birds attack it. The boy laughs and holds his hand to keep him still. “Don’t you dare to step on them!”
“I’m not stepping on them!” Jin objects through his pursed lips. “See, I’m not! And it’s Akanishi Jin.”
“Akanishi,” the boy nods with a warm smile that reminds Jin of countryside flower fields during the summer, blooming with vibrant colours under the golden rays of sun and swaying gently in the soft breeze. “You have a nice smile.”
“You too,” Jin manages to croak, squeezing the boy’s hand harder for a second before he realises what he’s doing and tries to hide his blush by forcibly stuffing bread in the boy’s mouth. It makes the boy back away but his eyes shine in genuine amusement which makes it completely worth the sudden impulse. “You’re funny,” Jin continues, trying to distract the birds by throwing the leftovers of the bread slice to the opposite direction. “What’s your name?”
The boy’s eyes flash mischievously and he snickers as he feeds bread to Jin. He doesn’t really care about the taste, the bread is mostly tasteless - but the boy’s fingertips press soothingly on his lips for a small while as the soft piece gets pushed in.
It suddenly feels way dirtier than it is in reality.
“Tell me,” he tries to grumble through his stuffed mouth and swallows, still unable to shake off the sudden electricity in the air and dirty teenage mind. “I’m not a creeper, really!”
The boy breaks into an almost hysteric laughter and pats his shoulder dismissively. Jin feels his heart clenching as he walks away with one wave of a hand and doesn’t turn back in over ten steps.
He touches his lips sadly just as the figure turns around and breaks into another ground-breaking laughter. The boy slouches back and pushes dumbfounded Jin’s chest teasingly with his palm.
“If you want to know it, try a bit harder. What will I gain from giving you my name?”
The world lightens up again and Jin’s smirk reflects the boy’s, the teasing and overwhelming emotions way too easily accessible to him.
“If we’re going this far, can I just as well ask for your phone number to accompany the name?” he tries and taps the crook of the young boy’s nose. He loves the atmosphere around him.
He tells him.
By evening, he’s already receiving tons of text messages. It’s a bit funny, though, how the amount of tiny icons can easily exceed the amount of characters. It suits Kame, though.
He curses as his inbox gets full and he has to start selecting which messages he wants to save and which need to go.
--
Kame’s so cold it’s unsettling. It’s like his nature has been switched with someone else’s. Maybe he’s always had it in him, but hasn’t let it bloom before Jin had gone and meddled with his heart. Quite possibly.
It doesn’t matter anymore, though.
What matters is what is, currently. And “what is” isn’t anything exhilarating anymore. It’s the exact opposite.
Kame’s digging his own grave and he can’t find the words to make him stop. The “I hate to break it to you, but” just doesn’t leave his lips as he quietly observes Kame walking around the house like his roommate would be anyone in the world but Jin. Like he doesn’t matter at all anymore.
He does, though, that much he knows. Otherwise Kame would treat him differently. He wouldn’t fight so hard to keep himself collected and keep him at a lengthy distance on mental level.
Jin rummages through his old belongings and digs up ancient photo albums of the two of them. He studies the pictures of two boys with stars in their eyes and wonders how they have become what they currently are. How something so strong can get so infected that it makes the pictures invert. How brightness becomes just dark.
The first picture he has ever taken of the boy catches his eye and he picks it up. He slides down to sit on the floor and presses a trembling hand over his mouth to keep the raging feelings locked in. He doesn’t want to be pathetic enough to cry, not even over something like this.
The love of his life is dead and never coming back, he tells himself. It’s just what he deserves for being the asshole he had been. Atonements are seven painfully long years too late.
--
It’s a world just for the two of them, even the times they’re apart. Jin knows it’s more than friendship - maybe he’s known it all along. But the way their fingers entwine makes his still childish concept of love bloom in the sweetest ways emotion-wise.
They’re silent that day. It’s already late autumn but they still spend time outside - maybe it’s because of Jin’s love for every season in his photographs, or maybe it’s because Kame shines the brightest outdoors. There he can run around and spin stupidly, attracting everyone’s attention but giving his own only to Jin. Jin feels grateful.
Kame sits on his lap under a tree and pokes his fingers through the fallen leaves on the ground. It’s kind of silly but Jin has always been into silly things, so he rips small holes in the leaves himself and attaches them to thin strands of Kame’s light brown dyed hair.
He’s making a Kame-tree, he chuckles to himself as his fingers work hesitantly, afraid of pulling too harshly and hurting the younger boy. After a while Kame jumps up on his feet and skips away, starting to mimic a tree further away. Jin isn’t able to contain a smile and he chuckles at the boy’s silly expression. It’s way too serious for his face. Kame just isn’t able to hide the happy gleam in his eyes to be serious enough.
Jin picks up his camera and takes several shots of the younger boy. He takes pictures of him standing next to another tree, looking up wonderingly, acting scared and pulling on some branches with some of their leaves gripped between his teeth.
He throws his snack apple at Kame’s direction and the smaller boy yelps as he dodges it. Jin takes pictures as he runs after it, picks it up and takes a good aim at him - only then it strikes him that he should probably take cover and he ducks to the ground, gripping his camera under him, afraid of Kame accidentally breaking it.
The apple, however, flies about a metre above where his head had previously been. It’s intentional, Jin knows - Kame loves baseball and is quite a pitcher, and Jin is well aware that he doesn’t simply miss an easy shot like that except if it’s on purpose.
“Jerk,” he yells at him and Kame fetches the apple before he returns, ripping the leaves off his hair and fingers.
“You always have your camera with you,” Kame notes. “Do you even get all those photos printed?”
“M-hmm,” Jin answers with a nod, snapping another picture of Kame’s face so close now. “That’s why you pay for my lunch so often.”
Kame laughs and sits down next to him, taking the camera from his hands. Jin lets him - he trusts Kame with his belongings, and he’s sure Kame knows the emotional value of the object he’s holding. In a way it’s his heart, that camera of his. He knows Kame will treat it accordingly.
With a firm grip of short fingers Kame turns the camera gently around and leans closer against Jin, pressing against his chest. Jin feels his breathing becoming awkwardly laboured as he looks at Kame nervously, unable to move around because he doesn’t want to move away but rubbing against Kame would just make him even more nervous, he knows, because he really has started developing feelings for the younger boy.
Kame’s eyelids flutter as he turns to face Jin and it makes Jin gulp, afraid of all of his emotions being visible on his face. He isn’t sure what he’s afraid of, because it’s not like he’s afraid of the feeling itself - maybe he’s afraid of rejection, he concludes anxiously. Afraid of being denied of the sunshine in his life.
When Kame’s lips press against his experimentally, Jin feels the soft tremble and knows that he isn’t the only one. He breathes in shakily before he tries to answer slowly, his own eyelids sliding shut as he gently sucks Kame’s lip in.
He hears the camera taking a picture and chuckles, brushing their noses together amidst the kiss. He breathes against Kame’s face before he returns to his lips, focusing on the soft feel of them and the slight movements as they caress his. The camera shutter keeps going off and Kame whimpers contently, gathering enough courage to press better against him.
The kiss stops, but their faces remain close, tingling. Jin has his arms wrapped around Kame’s lithe torso and from the corner of his eyes he sees Kame’s hand shakily setting the camera back on the ground. Their fingers entwine against Kame’s side and Jin rocks them gently, feeling nervous but exceptionally good, so good he hasn’t ever known the level exists. Euphoric in a calm way.
“Get this set printed for me too,” Kame requests softly, lips still brushing against his. Jin breathes in his mouth and listens to the faint sound of their racing heartbeats. He can feel the sun’s warmth prickling on his goose-bumped skin.
He nods and kisses Kame again, more confidently this time. He doesn’t want to miss any opportunities he has anymore.
--
“You need to fix yourself,” he regretfully snaps at Kame one day. Their eyes meet and Kame cocks a lazy eyebrow almost amusedly. “I’m serious.”
“And you suddenly care? I’m not a child anymore, Jin, that’s what has changed,” he scoffs, pink tongue briefly licking his lips. “I’m not the only one who’s changed. It’s been a long time.”
He hates how Kame can make the blood running right under the surface layer of his skin feel like acid eating him up alive. He eyes him from afar and tries to stabilize his breathing. He doesn’t want to be as weak as he is. It doesn’t feel right. Years’ worth of contentment is gone now that the bit of regret has resurfaced and refuses to leave him alone.
“Those scars aren’t pretty,” he notes, motioning towards Kame’s hands. “Your defence mechanism obviously sucks. And you avoid me, why did you even move in if it’s so hard for you?”
“Don’t get me wrong,” Kame’s concrete-hard and headstrong voice objects as he turns properly towards Jin to look him in his eyes. Kame crosses his arms and scoffs, head tilting slightly to the left. “I’m not a weakling. I’m not a bird with his wings ripped away. You don’t affect me anymore. That’s all in the past.”
He has hard time breathing as the icy words claw at him. Jin sniffs and remains still on his position with his back against the boringly white wall of the narrow corridor. There’s a pull somewhere at the corner of his lips he tries to ignore as he holds Kame’s penetrating gaze from across the small hall.
“I think you’re lying,” he hears the faint croak echoing in the silence of the room. It’s spoken with his own voice. There are things he leaves unsaid, though. Stupid, cliché things such as I think you’re lying to yourself and just look at you.
Kame’s empty yet harsh expression doesn’t even falter as he walks over slowly, in a threatening manner that makes Jin wince. He can feel his muscles strain when Kame’s breath grazes his face.
Then he feels the rocky fingers burying themselves in his hair, tugging a little to tilt his head in a more comfortable position for a short and painful kiss.
Jin has imagined it more than once, he admits, but none of the imaginary feelings do any justice to the rush of sensations that flow over him. It isn’t even a positive feeling, no - there’s no tender love or atonement included, just the disgusting feeling of suddenly overwhelming rage and something breaking. Shattering.
He grasps Kame’s shirt and tries to catch his breath as he stares at the man’s eyes with equally cold ones, but whereas Kame’s emotions probably (at least seemingly) stop there, he’s sure his own eyes are a portal to something much, much more. The years’ worth of conflicting emotions switch on full blast all at once and he swallows hard, refusing to let Kame back away. Not even one centimetre.
“We aren’t finished,” he growls with a low voice, fists shaking and mouth dry. “We aren’t finished before you’re fine again. Not this time.”
“I am fine.”
“No, you are not!” Jin roars and their foreheads bump together. It’s hard to make sense of Kame’s face anymore now that they’re so close. “No one believes that shit. You’ve hardened yourself too much. It’s not a shield, Kame. It’s your downfall. One good blow and you’re shattered to pieces.”
“Maybe that’s why I am hard,” Kame hisses venomously back. “So people like you won’t ever manage to break me again. I’m hard enough to survive you. That’s well enough.”
“You’ve lost everything beautiful about you. Only the shell remains,” Jin spits back spitefully, hand snaking to grasp a firm hold of the fabric between Kame’s shoulder blades. “You aren’t alive. And that is what will destroy you. …You’re not supposed to be hard,” he feels his own voice choking as he buries his face under Kame’s chin. “Hard things eventually shatter. You won’t be able to join the pieces back together. You’re supposed to be soft so you can recover, even on your own.”
“I’m hard enough to survive you.”
“Show me,” Jin dares him and pulls back slightly, eyes narrowed as he lets his hands slide to Kame’s shoulders. "Prove it to me.”
Kame’s lips crash on his demandingly and, for the first time in his life, Jin truly feels like he understands love - it’s the ugliest and most hurtful emotion he remembers ever encountering, one that makes him want to explode right there and then, scream in fury and go crazy like a severely insane mental institution patient. He fucking hates it and regrets ever letting himself fall in love.
Strong and stony arms wrap themselves tightly around Jin’s form and he follows the cold touch towards the other man’s bedroom, the rate of his heart palpitation increasing with every pound. Kame stays firmly attached to the shared kiss and when Jin feels his calves hitting the metallic bedframe, he crashes to sit on it, hands located at the nape of Kame’s smooth neck, pulling him down along.
They pull their own shirts off and Kame forces him further on the bed, taking the dominance over the situation as he climbs over Jin and keeps making him writhe on the mattress with his moist and hard kisses. Jin is certain they’re bruising his skin.
Kame’s palms travel devouringly up and down Jin’s chest and sides, thumbs swiftly caressing his nipples as they go. When Kame crouches down to plant rough kisses and suck on them, his tongue twirling around the nubs and lapping at them, Jin wraps his legs around his hips and whimpers gently in his ear. His voice sounds like it would be breaking and it surprises even him - why would he break? For all he knows, apart from the mixed feelings about the whole situation, he’s feeling great and more than ready to join with Kame again for the first time in over seven years.
It’s just sex, though, he has to remind himself. Nothing has changed between them, not really. Sex is just something that has been bound to eventually happen between them. It can never reach the level of a catharsis per se, but it’s an outlet of sorts for the strong emotions they’ve contained for so long.
For Jin, it’s a desperate attempt to restore the fragments and beg for forgiveness. If only he would manage to break Kame down, shatter him for good. Maybe this time he would be there to catch him and hold him tightly to ensure a better outcome than the marble and emotionless monster.
Then he suddenly feels. It happens as Kame’s fingers fumble his jean’s button and fly open, when his fingers pull their jeans and undergarments off, that’s when he feels him, feels the swirl of harsh emotions he doesn’t have names for. Kame’s form casts a shadow over him and Jin rises to the support of his elbows to kiss Kame’s neck and shoulders in a gentler way. Kame trembles.
Jin’s afraid of a tidal wave but feels his stupidity increasing as it draws closer and closer. He can feel it in his fingertips as they run down Kame’s toned stomach; he can feel it in the sudden gentler way Kame’s head tilts to lock his face where it is, lips gently brushing Kame’s neck under his jaw line. He wants to see the horrors when it unleashes and breaks Kame’s barricades, breaks free from within.
His nails rake at Kame’s back and the musky scent of sweat and hormones flood his second by second more sensitive nerve receptors, making his head go fuzzy. He grunts and raises his hips to rub them together against Kame’s with a grimace on his face. Kame pushes him properly down on the bed with a creak and reaches for the bedside drawer. After a while of shuffling and marble clanking against wood and numerous other things, he feels a finger spreading lube around his entrance and penetrating it experimentally. It makes him wince and hiss but somehow it’s all good - he isn’t even able to feel bothered that it’s Kame who’s going to fuck him rather than the other way around. It makes no difference.
Kame’s finger isn’t cold either. The warmth radiates oddly from within as he bends his finger and searches for the spot and - there it is. Jin mewls and arches his body, hips jolting shakily. His heart just races faster and faster and his erection starts firming as blood rushes down painfully.
Another finger is added and Jin bites his lip, hand trying to grasp a hold of anywhere on Kame. His fingers bury themselves in the brown hair and he grips it tightly, pulling Kame forward a little as he tries to contain the loudest noises. He isn’t quite sure he wants to give them.
A hoarse gasp leaves his lips as Kame removes his fingers and wipes them clean against the mattress before he guides Jin’s hips into a better position and helps his member slide in. Jin feels his eyes rolling back and he gasps, tensing around the erection inside of him. It’s been so long and their bodies have changed but it’s still all good if not even better, much, much better. Joined bodies have never felt so good together.
Jin keeps his eyes closed as he tries to adjust to the intrusion. He clings to Kame’s upper body and feels the younger man gently kissing his ear, moist lips brushing and a tongue occasionally twirling to examine the curved grooves. It tickles and makes lazy shivers run under his skin. His lips part for quiet gasps against Kame’s shoulder and he bites down to it.
He claims Kame’s lips with his own shakily and grants him a kiss that stays gentle. It turns everything blissfully hot and makes Kame start rocking his hips, first gently and experimentally as if to remember the forgotten feeling, but later increasing in speed and distance back and forth. Jin moans and arches his back with several spasms. He isn’t completely sure whether it’s from trying to get into a more comfortable position or from the sexual pleasure.
The minutes tick by and Jin loses it more and more with every pound, eyes frantically searching for Kame’s at any given moment. He loses it and when he presses his ear against Kame’s shoulder he can hear the hollow inside in a scary way.
Kame isn’t alright; he knows and has known it all along. Kame isn’t fine as he kisses him like a leech sucking the blood and life out of him. His fingers bury themselves in Jin’s soft flesh so hard it actually does hurt more than he likes and the whimpers that travel past his lips are everything but collected and emotionless. Kame’s kiss tastes salty even though Jin isn’t able to detect any tears, but then again that might just be Kame’s dinner.
They’re glued to each other tightly when they come, Jin first and Kame maybe about five seconds later (Jin isn’t confident he counts it right while experiencing his own orgasm). Kame pulls out of him and wipes them clean with his duvet. Jin feels his hands shaking as he pulls him back down in his arms.
Kame’s heartbeat still races. It’s strong and lively. His hand hesitantly lands on Jin’s hip and even though Jin sees just a dishevelled mass of brown hair, he senses Kame’s weakness, never mind the still rock-hard touch.
It takes him a few silent moments of bliss before hell suddenly breaks loose - and to his fear, it arrives from his own depths, surely and sharply and as icy as he remembers Kame being all those days before, if not even icier.
“You’re disgusting,” he breathes out, voice laced with raw loathing. “You’re a weak and selfish bastard, Kamenashi. Always so full of yourself but when it comes down to it, you’re just hiding behind tons of ridiculous excuses and masks such as that pale and hard face of yours,” he tells and Kame sits up with a pained jolt. Jin detects the wild look of fear in his eyes, the fear of something he isn’t able to stop because it’s coming at him with a speed way faster than what he needs to recover his shield. “You don’t care about anyone but yourself. All of this shit is created just to save your own sorry ass. I despise people like you. Despise.”
Kame shakes and when their eyes meet, his face is so horribly blank and eyes glazed that Jin fails to breathe. Then there’s a fragment of a second filled with stillness.
He wishes it would stop right there and then. He doesn’t want to know the result of his actions. His hair stands at the edge and he feels a strong shiver travelling up his spine. It feels like he’s going to choke.
Then there’s an ear-wrecking crack and Kame’s face fractures right before his eyes. It all happens in one pained snap and then the moment is gone, leaving behind diverging lines as remainders of the blow he himself had delivered on Kame when his shield hadn’t been quite so hard, when his defence had been down and he had been only fragile enough to break and fracture from the smallest of touch, never mind his harsh words.
Kame’s eyes are wide and he recovers from the shock slowly, pressing his trembling fingers on the bleeding wounds on his once so beautiful face. The blood smears and the flow keeps increasing. Jin hears the quiet drips against the mattress and flinches. He’s unable to move more.
Kame doesn’t make a sound - not even a small and heartbroken cry. He stumbles to get up with his hands pressed on the wounds and staggers out of the room with an incredible speed, disappearing to the hallway and leaving a dirty and shameful Jin behind.
He murmurs a silent whisper of “Kame” and manages to pull his dark boxer-briefs on before following the sounds inside the house that lead him to the bathroom with a familiar yet frail form sitting on the toilet seat with a dark towel pressed against his face. It’s soaking through.
“Get. Out,” a violently shaking voice demands. It gives Jin goose bumps but his feet won’t carry him away, not from this sight.
He’s broken Kame all over again, and all it had taken was a few badly selected words combined with a moment when he hadn’t thought first before he talked. A moment when he had just let his emotions loose.
“Kame, I -”
“OUT!” Kame roars and gets up on his feet, towel-covered face directed at his voice. Jin backs away from the toilet and Kame slams the door shut and locks it, leaving Jin out.
It doesn’t really matter that he isn’t getting a shower. Little things cease mattering. He had no right. He had absolutely no right.
The image of the crack on Kame’s face refuses to erase itself from his mind, staring at him in vibrant colours and detailed to the tiniest gleam in Kame’s anguished eyes in that frozen second. It’s all there like a nightmare he isn’t able to wake up from anymore.
He throws his clothes on and gets out of the nightmare house.
He’s always feared dolls. Ever since the days from when he was young.
--
Jin ruffles Kame’s hair and pushes a pair of glasses on his crooked nose. He steps back to adore his handiwork as Kame smirks at him flirtingly, turning around for a full circle which makes the scarf tied around his hips flow in a tempting way. Jin smiles and bites his lip, taking in the view of Kame on the city streets, in his eyes more gorgeous than anyone else who happens to pass by.
“I think you only miss this,” Jin compliments him cheerfully and hands over a carton mug of Starbuck’s coffee. “Now you look perfect.”
Kame flips the necklace he’s wearing the right way around and pats the cup, unable to clap his hands while he’s holding it. “Alright! Then here we go… What do you want me to do?”
“Look good?” Jin laughs as he switches his camera on and starts messing with the settings. He takes a couple of pictures to make sure the settings have been perfected. “Happy. Desired.”
“How about cool?” Kame tries and leans against a brick wall, posing for him with the cup set on his raised thigh. Jin snaps a picture.
“We could go with cool, yes,” he agrees. Kame flashes him a smile and pulls him from his arm, running ahead through the crowd.
“I know from where I want a picture!” he exclaims excitedly as he turns back to look at Jin who holds on dearly to his camera as he tries to keep up.
Kame leads him to a huge intersection crosswalks and driveways. The lights are red and they join the mass waiting for green, dosed up on adrenaline and dopamine. Kame chuckles as cars drive by and the enormous screen far above them keeps playing a boring news program he doesn’t really care less for at the moment.
When the lights turn green, Kame starts walking with the people to the middle of the road. Jin dodges away to get a better aim and grimaces as people get on the way. It’s just like Kame to choose the most difficult locations, but it makes him improve, he swears as he keeps waiting for the right moment.
Kame stands still amidst the walking crowd. He’s detached from time and life, completely on his own overlapping universe as he stands there. Jin snaps a picture and waves his hand to call Kame back over before the lights turn red, and he sees him rushing before he checks the picture on his camera, amazed at the slightly hurtful and calm expression Kame can have on his face once the bright gleam he usually has on gets hidden.
When Kame comes back, Jin wraps his arm around his shoulder and pulls him close, starting to walk ahead the road again. Kame takes the camera from him and checks the picture excitedly himself, letting out an excited “Hell yes!” that makes Jin know he’s pleased with the shot.
“I want to keep doing this in the future too,” Kame smiles at him widely, eyes full of glimmer from the neon lights around. “You could become a photographer and I could become a model. We could collaborate.”
Jin nods in agreement and pecks Kame’s lips lightly, making him giddy and mischievous again. Kame wraps a hand around his hips and keeps him close as they walk.
“I’m in love with you, Jin,” Kame finally admits after a moment of silence. Jin smiles at him and kisses him a bit more fully - and he can feel it. Feel the love that blurs the world around them and gives him a sense of calmness he doesn’t remember experiencing before. Like it’s alright to just stay in the moment and he doesn’t really want it to end.
“Maybe I love you too,” he speculates teasingly and tickles Kame’s side, making him yelp and jerk.
Then they laugh again, hard enough to get tears in their eyes.
--
PART 2