Gift fic for lovekame02: Follow Me (1/2)
Title: Follow Me
Written For: lovekame02
Pairing: Akame
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 14.800
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Dear lovekame02, hope you enjoy this - I had great fun with your wonderful request, and hope you like how it turned out!
Summary: A sea of smiling faces. It's Kame's fifth gig today, when three's meant to be the limit, but it's worth it. Behind the curtain, he leans briefly against the cool concrete. Just to collect himself. He can handle this. He doesn't have the top floor ocean view apartment for nothing.
You can also read this story at the AO3.
Follow Me
Kame spreads his arms for the last time, sustaining the ripples of happiness within the crowd. New gasps and sobs and laughter come back. Feathers drop softly, souvenirs to remember the happiness by. He holds it for a minute, for two. Then slowly, as slowly as possible to preserve the afterglow, he lets his arms sink.
A sea of smiling faces. It's his fifth gig today, when three's meant to be the limit, but it's worth it. He turns and walks.
Behind the curtain, he leans briefly against the cool concrete. Just to collect himself. He can handle this. He doesn't have the top floor ocean view apartment for nothing.
"Kamenashi-sama."
Tanaka, with the customary bottle of water.
"Thanks." Kame takes deep gulps.
"Would this be all for tonight, sir?"
Tanaka knows Kame's schedule better than Kame does, but it doesn't stop him from being obsequious whenever he gets a chance.
"That's all," Kame says. He doesn't talk to his aide during the limousine drive back to the apartment.
#=#=#
Slipped under his door he finds a note from Jin.
"New holo game. You, me, tonight?"
Kame takes it in to think about it. He could do with some rest.
On the other hand, a bit of exercise in the holo gym won't hurt.
#=#=#
Jin arrived in the building top floor after Takizawa was stripped of his cuff and vanished. Kame only saw the workmen moving things out as he left in the morning, and moving other things in when he came home at night.
The next evening Jin appeared with cookies.
"There was no need for that," Kame said. The catering bot supplies anything they want within minutes.
He'd also never had a colleague at his door before. He didn't know quite what to do with that.
"My mom taught me the recipe," Jin simply said. "Nicer than bot cookies."
Kame doesn't mind the caterer's cookies, with their nutrition barcodes that tell his watch when he should stop eating.
But he didn't want to appear ungrateful so he nibbled on a corner. Ate the cookie and another one, and Jin's face lit up.
Kame still doesn't know how from there they started taking their morning coffee - and sometimes their evening beer - together. It feels easy, though, so he doesn't mind.
Jin is two years older but was brought in at the same time as Kame. Still, Kame made gold standard first.
#=#=#
"I guess they're not kidding about rewarding success," Jin says, the dark water rippling around his legs. "I feel like I'm trespassing. Unearned riches." He shoots Kame a grin as he picks a side of the underwater bench. If he really feels like he's not supposed to be here, should be confined to the kitchen and sometimes lounge, he doesn't look it. Kame rather thinks he doesn't mean it.
Jin sinks into the water with a happy shudder, ditching the towel around his hips discreetly at just the right moment.
Kame wades after him, the heat giving him goosebumps. The steam clings to him, the sky far and clear. The bamboo enclosure throws some of the light from inside back at them. He's silent until he's sitting, too, water up to his chest. "I like it," he admits. "It was definitely an upgrade."
"You bet," Jin says. "My apartment's pretty fab, but..."
Kame moves his hands to feel the ripples. "When I first came to the complex, I found even the ground floor apartments luxurious. Hadn't seen anything like it before."
"Yeah," Jin says, sounding thoughtful. "It's amazing how they manage to make each level just that little bit more special."
"It makes sense to reward good work, I guess." Kame smiles. "And here we are."
"Hmmm." Jin thinks about it, lets himself sink in just a bit more, and shoots a smile back. "We are indeed."
They take a drink from their bottles - Jin brought a box of Nikko craft beer. Earlier Kame made Trufood on his antique cooking machine, since Jin had mentioned he liked Italian. Jin was so fascinated with the flames, it was terribly cute until he almost managed to burn his fingers.
Kame takes another sip. It's peaceful. Even more so than when Kame is out here by himself, which Kame finds a little odd. "How was Kamakura?" he asks after a moment.
Jin half shrugs, half sighs. "Nothing especially interesting. I think it went well, nobody felt they wasted their ticket, I think." He makes a pouty face. "I didn't get to stop by the beach, of course."
"That's a shame," Kame commiserates. "Maybe next time." He loves the ocean but there's never any time while they're on jobs.
Jin laughs a little. "Yeah, in ten years. Everyone's so chill in Kamakura, they only get entrancers when a piece falls off the big Buddha."
"It's not far, though," Kame says, ignoring Jin's hyperbole. "You could go sometime just on your own."
Jin shoots him a grin. "Or we can go together."
The idea is so novel, Kame wonders if it's even a done thing. "But you have friends."
"Sure." Jin shrugs. "They're nice. I just sometimes like to do stuff that's not completely regulated or screened or encouraged or whatnot for me."
He tilts his head back to empty the bottle, all mouth and jawline and throat… something in Kame twitches. He ignores it. "You know the screening is for our protection."
Jin doesn't try to argue, sets down the bottle and flicks drops of water down towards his toes instead. Then he looks up at Kame from under damp bangs. "Is that a no, then?"
Kamakura and beach. And it may be unusual but surely there's no reason why not. "Let me think about it," he says. "And see if we can get time off on the same day sometime this century."
Jin gives him a big smile. "Let's drink to that!"
#=#=#
He's standing in the light, white feathers dancing around him, all faces turned to him. A low murmur of pleasure from the crowd, soft as a wave, another job perfectly done and he turns, and the swell gets louder, gets sharper and colder, frozen. He spins around, back to the light and back to control but it's gone, both are gone and there is only ice, jagged in the dark. Where's the crowd, where's Tanaka, where... where is this? He takes a step and the ice splinters, the slips and daggers of ice descend on his head, stabbing his face, gouging his eyes, and he's blind, screaming, a bloody doll crushed on sodden white feathers.
When he wakes he wonders if Tanaka came in the end and saved him. His eyes hurt so much. But he can open them and he can see, and he's in his bed, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, trembling.
It's three in the morning.
The light he turns on stabs right into his eyes and his entire head throbs. He quickly turns it out again and fumbles in the dark for painkillers; takes a double dose, lies back, and waits. He never quite feels the pain go, but it loses enough of an edge that he sleeps restlessly until his alarm goes at seven.
Blinking into the morning light, he takes more painkillers straight away. Sets up the coffee on autopilot, the scent of it like another jab into his brain. Then he gets himself dressed, and there's Jin's knock already.
His soft morning smile freezes instantly. "Good god what happened to you? You look like shit."
Kame turns and drops back on a chair. "I feel like shit. Nightmares, headache. I need to be more careful about drinking at night."
Jin's frown only fades slowly. He finishes the coffee prep Kame forgot about, puts the customary dash of milk into Kame's coffee and sets the mug down on the counter for him. "Or get more practice," he says, teasingly, but it's still kind.
"You would say that," Kame replies, rolling his eyes and regretting it straight away.
#=#=#
The throb fades on the journey and he has a grip on himself by the time his first session begins. That's important. Especially so because today he starts with a VIP engagement, a group of ten, higher management from Chiba, they never tell him which industry. They are sophisticated and accomplished, and Kame appreciates the exclusive location, slick leather furniture, fancy pastry nibbles that no bot and no mom can produce.
The small talk ebbs away as everyone has taken their seat and Kame stands in the middle of the half-circle, unfurling his arms, palms up. The pose isn't necessary, but Kame finds a visual cue helps people. He is not expected to make conversation.
When he was first starting out, he was keen to get to a level where he'd get to do these, rather than the mass events of a hundred or more people. Today with his restless night and lingering headache, he'd rather unspool the worries and fears of a hundred housewives, secretaries and ship loaders than the gnarly resentments and complicated jealousies of these seven men and three women.
But he does the job, without glitches or stumbles, smooth as butter and warm as sunshine. Watches their eyes go glazed and the lines in their faces soften, tense expressions melting into unconscious smiles. And somehow, it makes him feel better, too.
He pops more pills back in the limousine as Tanaka drives him to the next engagement, several classes of high school kids getting ready for their final examinations. A staple ever since he started. All the expensive schools buy it in. He can sleepwalk his way through it.
He doesn't have much of an appetite at lunchtime but makes himself eat a rice ball, in order to fill his stomach with something other than medicine. Five hours and two engagements later, he picks up a bento box on his way home, feeling better than he has all day.
Jin knocks on his door just as he's finished eating. He knows it's Jin because no other resident would ever do such a thing.
"It's open," he shouts, too glad to be sitting to get up.
"How are you?" is the first thing Jin says as he sits down in the chair at the side. He looks faintly worried.
"I'm fine again," Kame reassures him. "It lasted till lunchtime and after that it started to fade until it was completely gone."
At that moment he feels a twinge again, but it's not worth mentioning.
"Okay, good," Jin says, still watching attentively. "How was your thing?"
"The VIP one? It went fine." Kame shrugs a little. Aside from the headache, everything was as usual.
Jin pulls his head in like he wants to escape a sudden assignment dropping on him. "I hate those things. It's so hard to keep my focus when they're just full of themselves."
As far as Kame knows, Jin hasn't had that many VIP sessions yet. "It gets easier with practice," he promises, though it's almost like an automatic response.
"Hm," Jin says, and then looks at Kame with a tilted gaze. "You still don't look so good. Should I just let you get an early night?"
Kame weighs the suggestion. Jin's presence in his apartment has become a soothing distraction in his life, and he likes having Jin around, but he is exhausted. And he can see Jin practically all the time. "Yeah, maybe," he says apologetically. "I should get a bit more sleep tonight."
"Yeah, smart," Jin nods. "Hope you sleep this off."
#=#=#
He doesn't see Jin the next day, though, or the one after. He's woken up early by special messenger and bundled into a car, then a plane, then a bus with two other top entrancers because of a sudden crisis up in Hokkaido.
"Dairy emergency," Matsumoto snorts, staring out the slightly dirty windows of their bus. The ride is bumpy, between a deteriorated road and the slightly rattly bus taking them from the airport into town. Domoto has been testy throughout the journey, as he's not looking forward to the 'substandard living conditions', and finds Hokkaido and its clinging to semi-autonomy 'precious'. Kame is used to the smoothness of Tokyo and can't help comparing, either, though he feels that the entrancers brought here to facilitate the negotiations between the National Supplies Board and the Associated Dairy Farmers ought to keep their judgements of the locals to themselves.
It's a soft touch job, they learn. That's why they needed the most experienced and most skilled of the entrancers. Any beginner can render a man droolingly happy. Here, their job is to sit in the meeting, in full view of both parties, and siphon off the unfounded anger and irrational fears. They smooth the way.
The dairy farmers, the most powerful professional group in Japan at this point, have consented to have them. It's the way this is done. A harmonious negotiation is good for everyone, and a lack of anger makes for clear heads.
After introductions for all three of them, giving them a chance to feel out the room, Kame takes the first hour. It's subtle work, very gentle. Smoothing over the edges without making anyone feel that their senses are dulled. Of the four main negotiators for the Dairy Farmers, one is a real problem, the one who's most angry and not shy about letting anyone know, and it turns out he's a dud. Kame has no idea how he snuck past the screening and into a position of influence.
Kame is still working on the other three when he's called for his break, and Domoto takes over his high-backed seat.
He wipes over his face as he's guided to the back room, and takes the bottle of water Tanaka gives him. The hair at his temple feels damp.
Matsumoto watches him with ill-concealed interest. "Tough ones, aren't they," he says. It's hard to tell if he means for all of them, or for Kame alone.
"A little," Kame says diplomatically. "But I think it's going well."
There are baked goods, coffee, and, fittingly, various flavoured milk drinks prepared for them. They each have their own corner and there is no further conversation, even when Domoto returns and Matsumoto takes his place. Entrancers don't talk to each other.
#=#=#
That night, on the tenth floor of Sapporo's most stately hotel, which has hot water and working elevators and is kept clean and proud despite the chips in door frames and worn carpets, he falls into the slightly lumpy bed exhausted to the bone. He has a moment of longing for his hot spring bath, before he gets a grip on himself.
But a hot bath and a cool beer, and telling Jin about the angry dud and how his brain is still ringing with it.
He holds that thought for just a moment, and then he's gone, sleeps deep and dreamless all through the night.
#=#=#
They head back to Tokyo after four days. That's apparently what it takes to get the dairy farmers to cooperate with the Supplies Board on the requested quotas and suggested compensation, with everything about the system of inspectors sent from Tokyo staying the same.
"What a waste of time and energy," Matsumoto comments when they're back on the rattling bus and it's so boring a drive after such an intense few days that apparently even the top two entrancers of the country need to vent to each other. Only Domoto is sleeping, his sunglasses on. He's currently single, Kame heard from Matsumoto, and apparently had the energy to be take a meeting with an applicant for the girlfriend position last night.
"It was pretty touch and go at one point," Kame points out. "You weren't on then."
"Sorry you had trouble with them," Matsumoto says with a sympathetic tilt of his head. "I tend to find country folk not much of a challenge."
"Yes, I guessed it's not really your scene," Kame replies, giving a gentle shrug. "They were a little agitated when I took over from you a few times."
Then he stares straight ahead. Entrancers don't make each other feel better.
#=#=#
It's late afternoon when they're back at the high rise. They take separate elevators. Luggage, different walking speeds.
When he walks through his own door, he's not surprised to find a note from Jin.
5D dinosaurs @ 8 downtown, you up for it? Will be back here around 7.
Kame discovered a few weeks ago that Jin leaves the compound at night sometimes to visit the megatheater downtown for nature and travel holos. They have their own holosets in their apartments and a big central one the compound entertainment park, but Jin says the city one is six times bigger. Kame still isn't sure that the attraction outweighs the inconvenience but he is curious.
He writes his own note to push under Jin's door. Pick me up when you're ready.
He scans himself a sweet bun and makes some tea to go with it. Then he does some research into leisurewear and spends some credits on a tight-fitting get-up as far removed from entrancers' suits or performance-wear as possible. The printer whirrs contentedly as he feeds in the code and minutes later he has soft blue pants and a shirt with a checked pattern in many different colours but mostly red. Once he's wearing it, he barely recognizes himself. He wonders if he has time to print shoes to go with it.
Then there's Jin's knock. His normal shoes will be fine.
"Hey," Jin says. He's wearing sneakers, definitely not new, jeans and a dark hoodie. Kame catches a whiff of fresh shampoo. "Welcome back."
"Thanks. I'm pretty much ready, I was just thinking about new shoes but..." He waves off the thought.
Jin doesn't answer for a moment, just inspecting Kame until he lands on Kame's still naked feet.
"Something wrong?" Kame asks, suddenly nervous.
"No! Just, hadn't seen you in that outfit before."
"I just printed it," Kame says. Jin blinks and Kame feels a jolt of unease. "Is it inappropriate?"
But Jin's smile turns warm, reassuring. "No. It looks great, is all."
Kame can feel himself blushing. He really is very new to just going out like this.
"Just printed it, huh?" Jin says. He looks impressed. Kame was too.
"Yes, it came with the last promotion," Kame says.
Jin looks him over properly now, which doesn't help Kame's blush, though he does his best to not look like he's suddenly not sure how to move his arms.
"Forget the shoes," Jin says with a grin. "You're missing something else."
#=#=#
Jin makes him print what he deems the coolest shades in the catalogue. By the time they sign themselves out on the ground floor and their taxi pulls up, they're running a little late.
"Don't stress," Jin says, "there's always fifteen minutes of advertising before the prime minister's address, they don't mind if you miss that."
Kame is quite intrigued by it. He hasn't seen advertising on his entertainment since he started in this job.
They sneak in quietly eight minutes late, while an attractive black lady is extolling the virtues of her bacteria-resistant countertop. As they settle down, Kame also learns about the value of bio-electrical impedance scales and the temptations of virtual reality vacations on demand, before the customary glow of the prime ministers address is faded in.
The words are different from what they get at the compound. The feel is different too. He leans over to Jin. "He's got one of us working with him there, right?"
"Um," Jin whispers back. "I guess?"
The crowd sits in complete silence, fixated on the screen and the message. When the lights come up again it's as if a soft blanket is being pulled away.
"Right," Jin says. "Finally." He slouches in his seat like a teenager. "Gimme T-Rex."
#=#=#
After, Jin talks him into a round or two of drinks before they have to head back. He takes Kame's new shades off him as they walk down the lit main boulevard and puts them on with a flourish.
"It's ten at night!" Kame says, laughing when Jin fluffs his hair.
"Just makes them more stylish," Jin grins. It should look sillier, but Kame doesn't want to ask for them back either.
Jin takes him to an old-fashioned bar where your orders are taken by a person. That person gives Jin the sort of dumb-struck smile that Kame only knows from sessions, which is odd, because they are both purposefully not intruding on anyone else's feelings.
Jin smiles back only briefly, shyly, and pulls Kame to one of the standing tables as soon as their beers have appeared. There is a hum of humans all around them, a well-dressed, well-spoken inner city working crowd. It's just cozy enough that Jin actually takes off the shades.
Any other entrancer could pick them out in a heartbeat, of course, as the only ones not broadcasting their emotions far and wide. But just from looking, the general public can't tell.
It's a long time since Kame has been just out, like a normal person, like someone with no government-endorsed talent or national security missions. It feels good, so good that he almost wants to strike up a conversation with the man next to him at the bar when he gets their third beers.
Maybe next time.
When he returns, he sees Jin laughing with a blonde girl in a tight mini skirt, and she gives him an enthusiastic thumbs up before they each turn back to their drinks. "What was that about?" he says as he sets down the glasses. He's simply curious. Jin hasn't seemed interested in pulling other people into their orbit until now.
"Verdi fan. They signed AI Beckenbauer for the season today."
"That's great!" Kame doesn't follow soccer or Verdi, and baseball still has a strict Humans Only policy, but sport is sport.
He's amazed how easy Jin finds it just to talk to people, random strangers, but Jin's just... different. Those four days in Hokkaido really drove that home.
Kame looks at him as he takes another big gulp of beer, the sunglasses pushed up on his head and holding his hair out of his face. He's moving a bit to the rhythm of some music Kame barely noticed before.
He wishes he could feel so much at home amongst so many people.
"Do you date?" he asks without pausing to stop himself.
Jin blinks at him. Oh, god, he very much should have stopped himself.
"Sorry," he says immediately. "It was just a random thought. There was a whole evening planned out for Domoto up in Hokkaido because he broke up with his girlfriend, I didn't know where he found the energy, so it was on my mind, but it's really none of my business. I mean, whether you date." He tries to clear his throat and finds it dry. "Of course Domoto's girlfriends aren't my business either. Sorry."
He's still got Jin's full and slightly unreadable attention. "Hey, easy," he says, much to Kame's surprise, though he's fondling his beer too. "It's not an evil question or anything."
"Sorry," Kame repeats, but he slows down to breathe. "I didn't mean to pry."
Jin shrugs, a little awkward like he's weighing an answer. "It's a little weird for us, isn't it?" he says. "Like, with a citizen?" Another, more exasperated shrug. "I've tried it, I like... you know. It's nice having someone. But I don't like wondering if they're just with me because I can make them all gooey and drooly, or if I'm doing something to them without really noticing... you know?"
Yes. Kame's wondered that before. More in the abstract. But he's wondered.
"I saw Matsumoto's current girl once and she looked like a happy robot, it was fucking creepy," Jin says disgustedly, and shakes his head. "And I'm not interested in the dud mixers either, there's enough of my life that's screened and managed and vetted, thanks."
Kame hesitates but after all, he's the one who started it. "I went, at the start, a few times after a couple of years." When he was getting desperate, he doesn't add. "It's good to know… well, like you said. To know I can't make them do things. But it all seemed so fake, and I couldn't help wondering how much they got paid and whether they'd like me if they didn't." They'd been attractive men, all of them, but the turn-off had just been too great.
Jin nods, like Kame's confirming what he's always thought. "That's our problem," he says a little tipsily. "Can't do the citizens, can't do the licenced duds, and where are we going to find unlicensed ones with the life we lead?"
#=#=#
The taxi arrives three minutes after Jin dials their special service. Must have been on standby.
Jin's noticed too. "Nothing must happen to the precious human resources." He snorts. "Sometimes I'm surprised they let us out at all."
Their movement are only restricted during security-related lockdown. They’ve seen two in their time. But Jin knows that as well as he does, so he doesn't mention it. The taxi is comfortable and warm and there's only the slightest buzz of fatigue behind his temples.
"Hey," Jin nudges him, pulling him back.
"It was fun tonight," Kame says. "I haven't done this in…" He pauses, briefly. "I've never done this. I was found early, and then it was training and work and, you know."
Jin gives him a big grin. "Fun means we can do it again?" he says, looking bold.
It's weird how he feels put on the spot and pleased at the same time. So he tries to look teasing and mysterious, but probably fails.
#=#=#
This room is a dark one, the faces dull in a blue to black distance. Means he can't see results, just feel them, but that's all right. He doesn't need to see, he can do this with his eyes closed. He gathers the threads of fear and aggression, and the shadows nod to his beats, pulled along. Pulled closer, a winding dance, shadows creeping up to him until the snake unfurls from the grey and he doesn't think to run until it's there, around his foot, up his knee.
He's lost the threads, fear rippling out across the room. Aggression. Kame tries to push the creature off but he's no good at it, soft strong slithery muscle winding up, and tight around his neck like Kame's fighting hands mean nothing, and he screams.
That's when the pain starts. Like he swallows on razors that vibrate the more he tries to call for help, pain that makes him scream more, and the cuts go deeper, there should be blood now, gurgling thickness and this shredding fire in his throat.
He opens his eyes, a ragged whimper in his ears, his own arm sweaty across his neck. The noise is him breathing.
Breathing hurts in his mouth. His head is pounding. The shadows are his nightstand and his curtains and the darkness of his bedroom, cut off from Tokyo's blinking night.
He just lies, for a while, willing his body to wake up and go back to normal. But he's wide awake, and normal isn't happening. He swears - tries to swear under his breath but it brings back the razors. No sudden cold could feel like that.
He gets up and warms some tea, adds honey, to soothe his throat. Grinds up an overdose of painkillers and swallows that with lots of lukewarm water.
It fucking hurts. And he isn't due to get up for another two hours.
He takes a shower to rinse off the sweat, turns over his duvet and gets back into bed, where he lies still, trying to swallow and breathe as little as possible, waiting for the painkillers to work.
#=#=#
His alarm wakes him - he must have drifted off. His head feels better but the first deep breath he takes brings water to his eyes. When he tries to make a sound, it's like something's piercing his windpipe.
Jin's due for coffee in half an hour. Kame starts writing notes.
When the knock comes on his door, he's ready.
"Hey," Jin says, and Kame smiles and holds up the first sign. I can't talk. Come sit down. I'll explain.
Jin gives him a puzzled look but does as he's told. "Throat infection?"
Kame shakes his head. I had a dream. A snake strangled me. It hurt like hell and for some reason it still does.
Jin's eyes get watchful. "Another nightmare?"
Kame almost says yes but stops himself at the first hot scrape of air. He nods, then turns to stir Jin's coffee. He sticks with honey tea himself.
Jin takes the coffee but he's frowning. "If you screamed so much your throat is like this, somebody should have heard."
No note for that. Kame shrugs and makes what he hopes is a fair point face.
"You should get yourself checked out by a doctor," Jin says. "Maybe the nightmares are your brain's way of processing what's wrong with your body. That would be the saner explanation."
Kame knew Jin would want him to see a doctor. Got lots to do today. Don't have to speak for any of it. If not better tonight, I'll do it tomorrow. Jin opens his mouth and Kame quickly produces the follow-up sign. That's final. Now drink your coffee.
Jin closes his mouth and smiles. "Clever. You're too clever for your own good." But he lets it go. "Tomorrow, though. I'll hold you to it."
Kame hopes he'll stop feeling like this long before then.
===
Jin is back by eight, to check on him. He's even still wearing his work clothes. "Any better?"
Kame holds up a sign: Much better. Then he grins and says, "Much." It only rasps a little bit.
Jin's laugh makes him feel pleased with himself. "Good, I'm glad," Jin says. "You troll."
Kame waves him in. "'s still a bit rough," he says. "But better since around lunch time."
"Guess it helps that we don't have to talk unless we want to put on a show," Jin says, though he's still eyeing Kame as if the strangling snakes might come back as he sits in his usual spot on Kame's expansive couch. "You sure you don't want to see a doctor?"
Kame nods in reply, still economical with actually speaking. He still has tea out, now laced with a helpful tonic Tanaka got for him when he saw the state Kame was in. "Drink?" he asks.
Jin looks a little distracted but he says he'll have a beer. "Jobs all went okay?" he asks when Kame is back.
"All fine," Kame says, and has another soothing sip of the tea. "Nothing big, could do it in my sleep and without talking." He gives Jin a teasing grin but Jin is still frowning, and looks down, his eyes focused on the label of the beer bottle.
"Everything okay with you?" Kame prods. His voice only wobbles and scratches a tiny bit. He's basically fine.
"Work was fine," Jin says. There's a frustrated clench to his shoulders. "You know, that's the second time you feel like shit after we had a good night. Maybe you're allergic to me."
"More like I drank too much."
"You had like three beers."
"Maybe I had a weak night," Kame says. Sometimes he doesn't eat much. He doesn't remember his food that day, except the popcorn, because Jin insisted on popcorn even though the scanner was having a little heart attack by proxy at the unhealthy composition, and Kame went along because he cared more about Jin being excited than the scanner.
Jin is still thinking, his mouth in a pout, probably unaware he's doing it. But then he seems to shake himself. "Right. I'm glad you're better, anyway. I'm off on an overnight gig tomorrow and didn't want to miss you completely." He says it very naturally, though there's a pause afterwards, where maybe he, too, is aware how unusual this is for entrancers.
Kame gives him a smile. "Yeah, me too."
"I also," Jin adds with much more profundity, "came to give you these back..." He pulls out yesterday's sunglasses from his hoodie pocket and dangles them from one wing. "But now I'm thinking I might need them in Kyuushuu." And pushes them on his own nose.
Kame laughs, which almost turns into a cough but he gets it under control before Jin gets worried. Apparently laughing hurts more than talking.
"You could print yourself a new pair, you know," Jin says with encouraging twitches of his eyebrows. "I mean, you had such a wild night out yesterday, you probably just lost them!"
They're technically not supposed to use these printers to give things to other people. But Kame is mostly amused by Jin's obvious glee in this little bit of harmless rule-bending.
"Now that you mention it, I think I remember sitting down on them in that unruly bar you took me to," Kame says. The long sentence hurts more, but Jin's deep smile makes that, too, worth it.
They don't talk long; Kame feels his throat getting steadily worse again and Jin has an early plane to catch.
"You will see a doctor if this gets bad again," Jin says, turning in the door frame. "Or I'll…" he waggles his hands, searching for inspiration. "Do something. I'll do something you won't like, I'll think of it on the plane. So be warned."
Kame suppresses a laugh, just gives him his most innocent smile and rasps, "Understood."
#=#=#
The klaxon shrills once, and Kame is wide awake.
His tablet is blinking and vibrating. Not another tsunami, is his first thought.
The message, when he checks, is brief. Prepare to travel 06:00. Tanaka will pick up.
His clock says 2:45. He could turn on the news, check what's up. He turns out the light again. He'll find out soon enough.
There's a soft knock on his door. Jin. Of course.
"Hey," Kame says as he opens the door, and waves him in. No pajamaed entrancers to be seen at each other's doors, oh no.
"We fucking torpedoed the fucking Chinese?" Jin says, incredulous.
"Oh, is that what it was?"
"Defcon something or other, those fucking islands."
Kame's stomach does a little dip. But this has been coming for years, and there's nothing to be done at three in the morning. "We'll deal with it," he says to Jin. "We'll deal with it somehow. We'll handle the diplomatic side and the citizens. It's what we do, mop up when people make mistakes."
Jin looks a little less outraged. "It's just so fucking dumb," he says. "Why can't people just--" He shakes his head. "Never mind. I'll let you get back to sleep. Six o'clock, right?"
Kame nods. "I'll have coffee on at five."
#=#=#
Jin's bleary-eyed and when questioned, admits that he stayed up to follow the news. "They had a submarine spying around, we found it and wham, twenty-two people dead. They always spy around there, I don't get why suddenly it's a big deal."
"Because we always warn them off and they always ignore us?"
That gets him a wounded look. "You say that means we can kill people?"
"No," Kame concedes. "But if they keep on doing this, knowing that our PM is just waiting for an excuse, well."
Jin sighs. "I guess."
They sip their coffees miserably.
#=#=#
Kimura gets the diplomats and though Kame technically has seniority, Kimura's welcome to them. Diplomats like someone more their own age and Kame has no quarrel with that.
He ends up in Okinawa, where concern is high and tempers are rising. He spends a few days in Naha, then moves into the urban areas around. He goes into companies by day and packs out city halls at night. He keeps the citizens quiet, reassured, and above all loyal.
It's easy work.
#=#=#
After six days, when nuclear war has failed to break out - thank you, Kimura-san - and civil unrest has been avoided, everyone gets to go home. Thankfully the next day is a Sunday.
Jin takes his Sunday coffee late, so Kame stops by the executive gym on the tenth floor. He's feeling rested, despite all the tension and global uncertainties of the last week, like hard work and recovery are in balance. Nobody around, ten mile run through Kyoto circa 1600, one of his favourite landscapes.
He's showered and has just put the coffee on when Jin knocks on his door.
"Morning," Jin says. He looks a little tired still, but his eyes are scanning Kame carefully. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," Kame says. "It was a lot of work but not particularly difficult work." Then he remembers Jin's fretting and sleepless night, the first night. "How are you?"
Jin shrugs. "I don't cope so well with the impending apocalypse, but I'm okay now."
Kame nods. He fixes their coffees the usual way and they sit at the counter.
"I had a wobbler down in Okayama," Jin suddenly says, making Kame blink in shock. "Everyone was scared shitless of exactly the same thing I was scared of, and at that one high school, it almost got away from me."
"But then?" Kame asks nervously.
"I pulled it together at the end, nobody figured it out," Jin says, raising his eyebrows over his coffee. Nobody knows but Kame. "But fuck, I was sweating."
"It's been a very extreme week," Kame offers.
Jin looks for a moment like he might like to say something more on what sort of week it was. But then he tilts his head. "And thank fuck we can put it behind us. What are we going to do today?"
Somehow that makes Kame break out into an involuntary smile, and the shaken look seems to drain out of Jin, replaced by a focus that feels warm and solid and like the day is wide open.
===
"That is a lot of people," Jin says, sounding somewhere between impressed and sceptical as they head up the stairs from the station, the crowd waiting for the Dome entrance becoming thicker. "I didn't think that was your Sunday style."
Kame hasn't been in a while. He was too busy. But unlike the other night, he is the expert here, knows where to get the tickets and where to queue and that you'll really enjoy it more with the proper kit. He's lent Jin one of his spare orange towels.
"I find it relaxing when I just block them out completely," he says, motioning for their gate.
The baseball league's uniformed entrancers are stationed behind the metal detectors, most people passing by without giving them a glance. They flag up Kame and Jin, of course. Jin looks a little uneasy, as most entrancers do when they encounter entrancers outside the hierarchy of the agency. Only baseball and Tepco maintain their own entrancer units. Kame is used to the ones at the games by now.
"You are aware of the all-human nature of the sport of baseball and the prohibition of any interference in the mental state of players, coaches, viewers or anyone else present," the guy begins the customary caution. "According to the Baseball Protection Act of 2038, any violation is punishable by no less than ten years in prison and removal of entrancer status."
Kame nods earnestly, as usual, and the guy lets him pass and wishes him a good day. He has to wait a moment while Jin receives his own caution. Then he leads the way to their box.
"It's not shielding glass," Kame explains as they step in and the door slides shut behind them. The room is bright with the window front and the green below. "But it gives us a bit of a buffer even so." No visuals of people makes blocking them easier.
"Nice," Jin comments on the extra wide seats, the little monitors for watching close-ups on demand. The room could fit a small party, but there's just the two of them today. He drops himself into the upholstery, bounces a bit.
"You can order snacks through the monitor too," Kame says, lowering himself into the seat next to Jin's. The first player song is starting up, and through the numbness of blocking out a Dome's worth of people, Kame feels a jolt of excitement.
When the player saunters out onto the field, applause rises. There's an awkward pause when Jin looks unsure whether to clap or not. Kame doesn't, though he knows the feeling.
"It's been ages that I've seen a baseball game," Jin says, shaking his head softly. "I was still a kid, a cousin took me and my brother. The seats were more like benches." When he glances at Kame, it feels deep and curious.
Kame hesitates a moment. "I miss sitting in the crowd sometimes," he admits. He was a kid then, too. "Just, getting caught up. But this is safer for entrancers. And to be honest, I think it's a grass-being-greener thing. As a kid I'd have loved this." He gestures around, smiles when Jin does.
"I can see that."
Waves of cheers ripple through the stadium, so loud Kame catches the ripple even in their safe box. Jin leans back with a deep breath, and Kame feels warm and glad he can show him this.
"I like that you came," he says. Just lets it slip out.
Jin's smile twitches, shy, but then his eyebrows go up and he's all cheek and mesmerizing eyes. "Dude, this is the thing that makes you go out and brave hordes of excited citizens and I didn't even know about it, I wanted to see this yesterday."
#=#=#
Jin orders his way through the snack menu with barcode-defying gusto, and while Kame gets the feeling he is not deeply invested in the outcome of the game, he seems to be taking great joy in the replay feature at their seats, making up critiques of players' forms that Kame has a hard time commenting on because he actually understands the game.
Kame enjoys Jin's glee over the cocktails that are served in baseball-themed glasses, while he sips at fancy-dressed orange juice. It's better to play that safe this time. He doesn't need booze to feel like he's never had more fun in the VIP box.
The Giants finally pull ahead in the fourth inning. Kame sits upright and claps his hands together, not thinking. Then he feels aware of them being alone in a box when the roar around them fades, and that maybe that was silly.
Over his third drink - the last one, he said, being cautious to maintain control over his abilities out here too - Jin shoots him a look. It makes Kame’s ears burn, but it can’t be bad because Jin is smiling.
“You’ve sold me on baseball," Jin says, and sober or not, Kame hasn't heard anything this nice in forever.
===
It's been a hard working day but a short one. As Kame leaves the building the sun is still in the sky, throwing warm colours and long shadows. A perfect afternoon for walking home - it's been forever since he walked on grass. He's not good at identifying birdsong but he likes hearing them all the same, and every so often he thinks he spots a mouse dashing away.
When he first feels metal under his feet, he's puzzled, but it's smooth and gleaming, just some rails going off somewhere, going the same direction as him, for a while. For a long time. At least he won't get lost while it gets dark. He can't hear the birds anymore, but he sees a light in the distance, maybe a house. Maybe his apartment, it's about time.
The light comes closer fast - is he running? No, he's standing and it's coming, with a roar along the rails. His feet won't move. A black, burnt shape on wheels, and a driver, a driver with no face. He focuses, commands STOP!
It slows. He still can't move. It slows but keeps rolling, towards him, against him, over him, crushing him slowly, every bone in his body one by one, till his head explodes like a melon hit by a baseball bat.
#=#=#
Part 2
Written For: lovekame02
Pairing: Akame
Rating: Teen
Word Count: 14.800
Warnings: None
Author's Notes: Dear lovekame02, hope you enjoy this - I had great fun with your wonderful request, and hope you like how it turned out!
Summary: A sea of smiling faces. It's Kame's fifth gig today, when three's meant to be the limit, but it's worth it. Behind the curtain, he leans briefly against the cool concrete. Just to collect himself. He can handle this. He doesn't have the top floor ocean view apartment for nothing.
You can also read this story at the AO3.
Follow Me
Kame spreads his arms for the last time, sustaining the ripples of happiness within the crowd. New gasps and sobs and laughter come back. Feathers drop softly, souvenirs to remember the happiness by. He holds it for a minute, for two. Then slowly, as slowly as possible to preserve the afterglow, he lets his arms sink.
A sea of smiling faces. It's his fifth gig today, when three's meant to be the limit, but it's worth it. He turns and walks.
Behind the curtain, he leans briefly against the cool concrete. Just to collect himself. He can handle this. He doesn't have the top floor ocean view apartment for nothing.
"Kamenashi-sama."
Tanaka, with the customary bottle of water.
"Thanks." Kame takes deep gulps.
"Would this be all for tonight, sir?"
Tanaka knows Kame's schedule better than Kame does, but it doesn't stop him from being obsequious whenever he gets a chance.
"That's all," Kame says. He doesn't talk to his aide during the limousine drive back to the apartment.
#=#=#
Slipped under his door he finds a note from Jin.
"New holo game. You, me, tonight?"
Kame takes it in to think about it. He could do with some rest.
On the other hand, a bit of exercise in the holo gym won't hurt.
#=#=#
Jin arrived in the building top floor after Takizawa was stripped of his cuff and vanished. Kame only saw the workmen moving things out as he left in the morning, and moving other things in when he came home at night.
The next evening Jin appeared with cookies.
"There was no need for that," Kame said. The catering bot supplies anything they want within minutes.
He'd also never had a colleague at his door before. He didn't know quite what to do with that.
"My mom taught me the recipe," Jin simply said. "Nicer than bot cookies."
Kame doesn't mind the caterer's cookies, with their nutrition barcodes that tell his watch when he should stop eating.
But he didn't want to appear ungrateful so he nibbled on a corner. Ate the cookie and another one, and Jin's face lit up.
Kame still doesn't know how from there they started taking their morning coffee - and sometimes their evening beer - together. It feels easy, though, so he doesn't mind.
Jin is two years older but was brought in at the same time as Kame. Still, Kame made gold standard first.
#=#=#
"I guess they're not kidding about rewarding success," Jin says, the dark water rippling around his legs. "I feel like I'm trespassing. Unearned riches." He shoots Kame a grin as he picks a side of the underwater bench. If he really feels like he's not supposed to be here, should be confined to the kitchen and sometimes lounge, he doesn't look it. Kame rather thinks he doesn't mean it.
Jin sinks into the water with a happy shudder, ditching the towel around his hips discreetly at just the right moment.
Kame wades after him, the heat giving him goosebumps. The steam clings to him, the sky far and clear. The bamboo enclosure throws some of the light from inside back at them. He's silent until he's sitting, too, water up to his chest. "I like it," he admits. "It was definitely an upgrade."
"You bet," Jin says. "My apartment's pretty fab, but..."
Kame moves his hands to feel the ripples. "When I first came to the complex, I found even the ground floor apartments luxurious. Hadn't seen anything like it before."
"Yeah," Jin says, sounding thoughtful. "It's amazing how they manage to make each level just that little bit more special."
"It makes sense to reward good work, I guess." Kame smiles. "And here we are."
"Hmmm." Jin thinks about it, lets himself sink in just a bit more, and shoots a smile back. "We are indeed."
They take a drink from their bottles - Jin brought a box of Nikko craft beer. Earlier Kame made Trufood on his antique cooking machine, since Jin had mentioned he liked Italian. Jin was so fascinated with the flames, it was terribly cute until he almost managed to burn his fingers.
Kame takes another sip. It's peaceful. Even more so than when Kame is out here by himself, which Kame finds a little odd. "How was Kamakura?" he asks after a moment.
Jin half shrugs, half sighs. "Nothing especially interesting. I think it went well, nobody felt they wasted their ticket, I think." He makes a pouty face. "I didn't get to stop by the beach, of course."
"That's a shame," Kame commiserates. "Maybe next time." He loves the ocean but there's never any time while they're on jobs.
Jin laughs a little. "Yeah, in ten years. Everyone's so chill in Kamakura, they only get entrancers when a piece falls off the big Buddha."
"It's not far, though," Kame says, ignoring Jin's hyperbole. "You could go sometime just on your own."
Jin shoots him a grin. "Or we can go together."
The idea is so novel, Kame wonders if it's even a done thing. "But you have friends."
"Sure." Jin shrugs. "They're nice. I just sometimes like to do stuff that's not completely regulated or screened or encouraged or whatnot for me."
He tilts his head back to empty the bottle, all mouth and jawline and throat… something in Kame twitches. He ignores it. "You know the screening is for our protection."
Jin doesn't try to argue, sets down the bottle and flicks drops of water down towards his toes instead. Then he looks up at Kame from under damp bangs. "Is that a no, then?"
Kamakura and beach. And it may be unusual but surely there's no reason why not. "Let me think about it," he says. "And see if we can get time off on the same day sometime this century."
Jin gives him a big smile. "Let's drink to that!"
#=#=#
He's standing in the light, white feathers dancing around him, all faces turned to him. A low murmur of pleasure from the crowd, soft as a wave, another job perfectly done and he turns, and the swell gets louder, gets sharper and colder, frozen. He spins around, back to the light and back to control but it's gone, both are gone and there is only ice, jagged in the dark. Where's the crowd, where's Tanaka, where... where is this? He takes a step and the ice splinters, the slips and daggers of ice descend on his head, stabbing his face, gouging his eyes, and he's blind, screaming, a bloody doll crushed on sodden white feathers.
When he wakes he wonders if Tanaka came in the end and saved him. His eyes hurt so much. But he can open them and he can see, and he's in his bed, tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, trembling.
It's three in the morning.
The light he turns on stabs right into his eyes and his entire head throbs. He quickly turns it out again and fumbles in the dark for painkillers; takes a double dose, lies back, and waits. He never quite feels the pain go, but it loses enough of an edge that he sleeps restlessly until his alarm goes at seven.
Blinking into the morning light, he takes more painkillers straight away. Sets up the coffee on autopilot, the scent of it like another jab into his brain. Then he gets himself dressed, and there's Jin's knock already.
His soft morning smile freezes instantly. "Good god what happened to you? You look like shit."
Kame turns and drops back on a chair. "I feel like shit. Nightmares, headache. I need to be more careful about drinking at night."
Jin's frown only fades slowly. He finishes the coffee prep Kame forgot about, puts the customary dash of milk into Kame's coffee and sets the mug down on the counter for him. "Or get more practice," he says, teasingly, but it's still kind.
"You would say that," Kame replies, rolling his eyes and regretting it straight away.
#=#=#
The throb fades on the journey and he has a grip on himself by the time his first session begins. That's important. Especially so because today he starts with a VIP engagement, a group of ten, higher management from Chiba, they never tell him which industry. They are sophisticated and accomplished, and Kame appreciates the exclusive location, slick leather furniture, fancy pastry nibbles that no bot and no mom can produce.
The small talk ebbs away as everyone has taken their seat and Kame stands in the middle of the half-circle, unfurling his arms, palms up. The pose isn't necessary, but Kame finds a visual cue helps people. He is not expected to make conversation.
When he was first starting out, he was keen to get to a level where he'd get to do these, rather than the mass events of a hundred or more people. Today with his restless night and lingering headache, he'd rather unspool the worries and fears of a hundred housewives, secretaries and ship loaders than the gnarly resentments and complicated jealousies of these seven men and three women.
But he does the job, without glitches or stumbles, smooth as butter and warm as sunshine. Watches their eyes go glazed and the lines in their faces soften, tense expressions melting into unconscious smiles. And somehow, it makes him feel better, too.
He pops more pills back in the limousine as Tanaka drives him to the next engagement, several classes of high school kids getting ready for their final examinations. A staple ever since he started. All the expensive schools buy it in. He can sleepwalk his way through it.
He doesn't have much of an appetite at lunchtime but makes himself eat a rice ball, in order to fill his stomach with something other than medicine. Five hours and two engagements later, he picks up a bento box on his way home, feeling better than he has all day.
Jin knocks on his door just as he's finished eating. He knows it's Jin because no other resident would ever do such a thing.
"It's open," he shouts, too glad to be sitting to get up.
"How are you?" is the first thing Jin says as he sits down in the chair at the side. He looks faintly worried.
"I'm fine again," Kame reassures him. "It lasted till lunchtime and after that it started to fade until it was completely gone."
At that moment he feels a twinge again, but it's not worth mentioning.
"Okay, good," Jin says, still watching attentively. "How was your thing?"
"The VIP one? It went fine." Kame shrugs a little. Aside from the headache, everything was as usual.
Jin pulls his head in like he wants to escape a sudden assignment dropping on him. "I hate those things. It's so hard to keep my focus when they're just full of themselves."
As far as Kame knows, Jin hasn't had that many VIP sessions yet. "It gets easier with practice," he promises, though it's almost like an automatic response.
"Hm," Jin says, and then looks at Kame with a tilted gaze. "You still don't look so good. Should I just let you get an early night?"
Kame weighs the suggestion. Jin's presence in his apartment has become a soothing distraction in his life, and he likes having Jin around, but he is exhausted. And he can see Jin practically all the time. "Yeah, maybe," he says apologetically. "I should get a bit more sleep tonight."
"Yeah, smart," Jin nods. "Hope you sleep this off."
#=#=#
He doesn't see Jin the next day, though, or the one after. He's woken up early by special messenger and bundled into a car, then a plane, then a bus with two other top entrancers because of a sudden crisis up in Hokkaido.
"Dairy emergency," Matsumoto snorts, staring out the slightly dirty windows of their bus. The ride is bumpy, between a deteriorated road and the slightly rattly bus taking them from the airport into town. Domoto has been testy throughout the journey, as he's not looking forward to the 'substandard living conditions', and finds Hokkaido and its clinging to semi-autonomy 'precious'. Kame is used to the smoothness of Tokyo and can't help comparing, either, though he feels that the entrancers brought here to facilitate the negotiations between the National Supplies Board and the Associated Dairy Farmers ought to keep their judgements of the locals to themselves.
It's a soft touch job, they learn. That's why they needed the most experienced and most skilled of the entrancers. Any beginner can render a man droolingly happy. Here, their job is to sit in the meeting, in full view of both parties, and siphon off the unfounded anger and irrational fears. They smooth the way.
The dairy farmers, the most powerful professional group in Japan at this point, have consented to have them. It's the way this is done. A harmonious negotiation is good for everyone, and a lack of anger makes for clear heads.
After introductions for all three of them, giving them a chance to feel out the room, Kame takes the first hour. It's subtle work, very gentle. Smoothing over the edges without making anyone feel that their senses are dulled. Of the four main negotiators for the Dairy Farmers, one is a real problem, the one who's most angry and not shy about letting anyone know, and it turns out he's a dud. Kame has no idea how he snuck past the screening and into a position of influence.
Kame is still working on the other three when he's called for his break, and Domoto takes over his high-backed seat.
He wipes over his face as he's guided to the back room, and takes the bottle of water Tanaka gives him. The hair at his temple feels damp.
Matsumoto watches him with ill-concealed interest. "Tough ones, aren't they," he says. It's hard to tell if he means for all of them, or for Kame alone.
"A little," Kame says diplomatically. "But I think it's going well."
There are baked goods, coffee, and, fittingly, various flavoured milk drinks prepared for them. They each have their own corner and there is no further conversation, even when Domoto returns and Matsumoto takes his place. Entrancers don't talk to each other.
#=#=#
That night, on the tenth floor of Sapporo's most stately hotel, which has hot water and working elevators and is kept clean and proud despite the chips in door frames and worn carpets, he falls into the slightly lumpy bed exhausted to the bone. He has a moment of longing for his hot spring bath, before he gets a grip on himself.
But a hot bath and a cool beer, and telling Jin about the angry dud and how his brain is still ringing with it.
He holds that thought for just a moment, and then he's gone, sleeps deep and dreamless all through the night.
#=#=#
They head back to Tokyo after four days. That's apparently what it takes to get the dairy farmers to cooperate with the Supplies Board on the requested quotas and suggested compensation, with everything about the system of inspectors sent from Tokyo staying the same.
"What a waste of time and energy," Matsumoto comments when they're back on the rattling bus and it's so boring a drive after such an intense few days that apparently even the top two entrancers of the country need to vent to each other. Only Domoto is sleeping, his sunglasses on. He's currently single, Kame heard from Matsumoto, and apparently had the energy to be take a meeting with an applicant for the girlfriend position last night.
"It was pretty touch and go at one point," Kame points out. "You weren't on then."
"Sorry you had trouble with them," Matsumoto says with a sympathetic tilt of his head. "I tend to find country folk not much of a challenge."
"Yes, I guessed it's not really your scene," Kame replies, giving a gentle shrug. "They were a little agitated when I took over from you a few times."
Then he stares straight ahead. Entrancers don't make each other feel better.
#=#=#
It's late afternoon when they're back at the high rise. They take separate elevators. Luggage, different walking speeds.
When he walks through his own door, he's not surprised to find a note from Jin.
5D dinosaurs @ 8 downtown, you up for it? Will be back here around 7.
Kame discovered a few weeks ago that Jin leaves the compound at night sometimes to visit the megatheater downtown for nature and travel holos. They have their own holosets in their apartments and a big central one the compound entertainment park, but Jin says the city one is six times bigger. Kame still isn't sure that the attraction outweighs the inconvenience but he is curious.
He writes his own note to push under Jin's door. Pick me up when you're ready.
He scans himself a sweet bun and makes some tea to go with it. Then he does some research into leisurewear and spends some credits on a tight-fitting get-up as far removed from entrancers' suits or performance-wear as possible. The printer whirrs contentedly as he feeds in the code and minutes later he has soft blue pants and a shirt with a checked pattern in many different colours but mostly red. Once he's wearing it, he barely recognizes himself. He wonders if he has time to print shoes to go with it.
Then there's Jin's knock. His normal shoes will be fine.
"Hey," Jin says. He's wearing sneakers, definitely not new, jeans and a dark hoodie. Kame catches a whiff of fresh shampoo. "Welcome back."
"Thanks. I'm pretty much ready, I was just thinking about new shoes but..." He waves off the thought.
Jin doesn't answer for a moment, just inspecting Kame until he lands on Kame's still naked feet.
"Something wrong?" Kame asks, suddenly nervous.
"No! Just, hadn't seen you in that outfit before."
"I just printed it," Kame says. Jin blinks and Kame feels a jolt of unease. "Is it inappropriate?"
But Jin's smile turns warm, reassuring. "No. It looks great, is all."
Kame can feel himself blushing. He really is very new to just going out like this.
"Just printed it, huh?" Jin says. He looks impressed. Kame was too.
"Yes, it came with the last promotion," Kame says.
Jin looks him over properly now, which doesn't help Kame's blush, though he does his best to not look like he's suddenly not sure how to move his arms.
"Forget the shoes," Jin says with a grin. "You're missing something else."
#=#=#
Jin makes him print what he deems the coolest shades in the catalogue. By the time they sign themselves out on the ground floor and their taxi pulls up, they're running a little late.
"Don't stress," Jin says, "there's always fifteen minutes of advertising before the prime minister's address, they don't mind if you miss that."
Kame is quite intrigued by it. He hasn't seen advertising on his entertainment since he started in this job.
They sneak in quietly eight minutes late, while an attractive black lady is extolling the virtues of her bacteria-resistant countertop. As they settle down, Kame also learns about the value of bio-electrical impedance scales and the temptations of virtual reality vacations on demand, before the customary glow of the prime ministers address is faded in.
The words are different from what they get at the compound. The feel is different too. He leans over to Jin. "He's got one of us working with him there, right?"
"Um," Jin whispers back. "I guess?"
The crowd sits in complete silence, fixated on the screen and the message. When the lights come up again it's as if a soft blanket is being pulled away.
"Right," Jin says. "Finally." He slouches in his seat like a teenager. "Gimme T-Rex."
#=#=#
After, Jin talks him into a round or two of drinks before they have to head back. He takes Kame's new shades off him as they walk down the lit main boulevard and puts them on with a flourish.
"It's ten at night!" Kame says, laughing when Jin fluffs his hair.
"Just makes them more stylish," Jin grins. It should look sillier, but Kame doesn't want to ask for them back either.
Jin takes him to an old-fashioned bar where your orders are taken by a person. That person gives Jin the sort of dumb-struck smile that Kame only knows from sessions, which is odd, because they are both purposefully not intruding on anyone else's feelings.
Jin smiles back only briefly, shyly, and pulls Kame to one of the standing tables as soon as their beers have appeared. There is a hum of humans all around them, a well-dressed, well-spoken inner city working crowd. It's just cozy enough that Jin actually takes off the shades.
Any other entrancer could pick them out in a heartbeat, of course, as the only ones not broadcasting their emotions far and wide. But just from looking, the general public can't tell.
It's a long time since Kame has been just out, like a normal person, like someone with no government-endorsed talent or national security missions. It feels good, so good that he almost wants to strike up a conversation with the man next to him at the bar when he gets their third beers.
Maybe next time.
When he returns, he sees Jin laughing with a blonde girl in a tight mini skirt, and she gives him an enthusiastic thumbs up before they each turn back to their drinks. "What was that about?" he says as he sets down the glasses. He's simply curious. Jin hasn't seemed interested in pulling other people into their orbit until now.
"Verdi fan. They signed AI Beckenbauer for the season today."
"That's great!" Kame doesn't follow soccer or Verdi, and baseball still has a strict Humans Only policy, but sport is sport.
He's amazed how easy Jin finds it just to talk to people, random strangers, but Jin's just... different. Those four days in Hokkaido really drove that home.
Kame looks at him as he takes another big gulp of beer, the sunglasses pushed up on his head and holding his hair out of his face. He's moving a bit to the rhythm of some music Kame barely noticed before.
He wishes he could feel so much at home amongst so many people.
"Do you date?" he asks without pausing to stop himself.
Jin blinks at him. Oh, god, he very much should have stopped himself.
"Sorry," he says immediately. "It was just a random thought. There was a whole evening planned out for Domoto up in Hokkaido because he broke up with his girlfriend, I didn't know where he found the energy, so it was on my mind, but it's really none of my business. I mean, whether you date." He tries to clear his throat and finds it dry. "Of course Domoto's girlfriends aren't my business either. Sorry."
He's still got Jin's full and slightly unreadable attention. "Hey, easy," he says, much to Kame's surprise, though he's fondling his beer too. "It's not an evil question or anything."
"Sorry," Kame repeats, but he slows down to breathe. "I didn't mean to pry."
Jin shrugs, a little awkward like he's weighing an answer. "It's a little weird for us, isn't it?" he says. "Like, with a citizen?" Another, more exasperated shrug. "I've tried it, I like... you know. It's nice having someone. But I don't like wondering if they're just with me because I can make them all gooey and drooly, or if I'm doing something to them without really noticing... you know?"
Yes. Kame's wondered that before. More in the abstract. But he's wondered.
"I saw Matsumoto's current girl once and she looked like a happy robot, it was fucking creepy," Jin says disgustedly, and shakes his head. "And I'm not interested in the dud mixers either, there's enough of my life that's screened and managed and vetted, thanks."
Kame hesitates but after all, he's the one who started it. "I went, at the start, a few times after a couple of years." When he was getting desperate, he doesn't add. "It's good to know… well, like you said. To know I can't make them do things. But it all seemed so fake, and I couldn't help wondering how much they got paid and whether they'd like me if they didn't." They'd been attractive men, all of them, but the turn-off had just been too great.
Jin nods, like Kame's confirming what he's always thought. "That's our problem," he says a little tipsily. "Can't do the citizens, can't do the licenced duds, and where are we going to find unlicensed ones with the life we lead?"
#=#=#
The taxi arrives three minutes after Jin dials their special service. Must have been on standby.
Jin's noticed too. "Nothing must happen to the precious human resources." He snorts. "Sometimes I'm surprised they let us out at all."
Their movement are only restricted during security-related lockdown. They’ve seen two in their time. But Jin knows that as well as he does, so he doesn't mention it. The taxi is comfortable and warm and there's only the slightest buzz of fatigue behind his temples.
"Hey," Jin nudges him, pulling him back.
"It was fun tonight," Kame says. "I haven't done this in…" He pauses, briefly. "I've never done this. I was found early, and then it was training and work and, you know."
Jin gives him a big grin. "Fun means we can do it again?" he says, looking bold.
It's weird how he feels put on the spot and pleased at the same time. So he tries to look teasing and mysterious, but probably fails.
#=#=#
This room is a dark one, the faces dull in a blue to black distance. Means he can't see results, just feel them, but that's all right. He doesn't need to see, he can do this with his eyes closed. He gathers the threads of fear and aggression, and the shadows nod to his beats, pulled along. Pulled closer, a winding dance, shadows creeping up to him until the snake unfurls from the grey and he doesn't think to run until it's there, around his foot, up his knee.
He's lost the threads, fear rippling out across the room. Aggression. Kame tries to push the creature off but he's no good at it, soft strong slithery muscle winding up, and tight around his neck like Kame's fighting hands mean nothing, and he screams.
That's when the pain starts. Like he swallows on razors that vibrate the more he tries to call for help, pain that makes him scream more, and the cuts go deeper, there should be blood now, gurgling thickness and this shredding fire in his throat.
He opens his eyes, a ragged whimper in his ears, his own arm sweaty across his neck. The noise is him breathing.
Breathing hurts in his mouth. His head is pounding. The shadows are his nightstand and his curtains and the darkness of his bedroom, cut off from Tokyo's blinking night.
He just lies, for a while, willing his body to wake up and go back to normal. But he's wide awake, and normal isn't happening. He swears - tries to swear under his breath but it brings back the razors. No sudden cold could feel like that.
He gets up and warms some tea, adds honey, to soothe his throat. Grinds up an overdose of painkillers and swallows that with lots of lukewarm water.
It fucking hurts. And he isn't due to get up for another two hours.
He takes a shower to rinse off the sweat, turns over his duvet and gets back into bed, where he lies still, trying to swallow and breathe as little as possible, waiting for the painkillers to work.
#=#=#
His alarm wakes him - he must have drifted off. His head feels better but the first deep breath he takes brings water to his eyes. When he tries to make a sound, it's like something's piercing his windpipe.
Jin's due for coffee in half an hour. Kame starts writing notes.
When the knock comes on his door, he's ready.
"Hey," Jin says, and Kame smiles and holds up the first sign. I can't talk. Come sit down. I'll explain.
Jin gives him a puzzled look but does as he's told. "Throat infection?"
Kame shakes his head. I had a dream. A snake strangled me. It hurt like hell and for some reason it still does.
Jin's eyes get watchful. "Another nightmare?"
Kame almost says yes but stops himself at the first hot scrape of air. He nods, then turns to stir Jin's coffee. He sticks with honey tea himself.
Jin takes the coffee but he's frowning. "If you screamed so much your throat is like this, somebody should have heard."
No note for that. Kame shrugs and makes what he hopes is a fair point face.
"You should get yourself checked out by a doctor," Jin says. "Maybe the nightmares are your brain's way of processing what's wrong with your body. That would be the saner explanation."
Kame knew Jin would want him to see a doctor. Got lots to do today. Don't have to speak for any of it. If not better tonight, I'll do it tomorrow. Jin opens his mouth and Kame quickly produces the follow-up sign. That's final. Now drink your coffee.
Jin closes his mouth and smiles. "Clever. You're too clever for your own good." But he lets it go. "Tomorrow, though. I'll hold you to it."
Kame hopes he'll stop feeling like this long before then.
===
Jin is back by eight, to check on him. He's even still wearing his work clothes. "Any better?"
Kame holds up a sign: Much better. Then he grins and says, "Much." It only rasps a little bit.
Jin's laugh makes him feel pleased with himself. "Good, I'm glad," Jin says. "You troll."
Kame waves him in. "'s still a bit rough," he says. "But better since around lunch time."
"Guess it helps that we don't have to talk unless we want to put on a show," Jin says, though he's still eyeing Kame as if the strangling snakes might come back as he sits in his usual spot on Kame's expansive couch. "You sure you don't want to see a doctor?"
Kame nods in reply, still economical with actually speaking. He still has tea out, now laced with a helpful tonic Tanaka got for him when he saw the state Kame was in. "Drink?" he asks.
Jin looks a little distracted but he says he'll have a beer. "Jobs all went okay?" he asks when Kame is back.
"All fine," Kame says, and has another soothing sip of the tea. "Nothing big, could do it in my sleep and without talking." He gives Jin a teasing grin but Jin is still frowning, and looks down, his eyes focused on the label of the beer bottle.
"Everything okay with you?" Kame prods. His voice only wobbles and scratches a tiny bit. He's basically fine.
"Work was fine," Jin says. There's a frustrated clench to his shoulders. "You know, that's the second time you feel like shit after we had a good night. Maybe you're allergic to me."
"More like I drank too much."
"You had like three beers."
"Maybe I had a weak night," Kame says. Sometimes he doesn't eat much. He doesn't remember his food that day, except the popcorn, because Jin insisted on popcorn even though the scanner was having a little heart attack by proxy at the unhealthy composition, and Kame went along because he cared more about Jin being excited than the scanner.
Jin is still thinking, his mouth in a pout, probably unaware he's doing it. But then he seems to shake himself. "Right. I'm glad you're better, anyway. I'm off on an overnight gig tomorrow and didn't want to miss you completely." He says it very naturally, though there's a pause afterwards, where maybe he, too, is aware how unusual this is for entrancers.
Kame gives him a smile. "Yeah, me too."
"I also," Jin adds with much more profundity, "came to give you these back..." He pulls out yesterday's sunglasses from his hoodie pocket and dangles them from one wing. "But now I'm thinking I might need them in Kyuushuu." And pushes them on his own nose.
Kame laughs, which almost turns into a cough but he gets it under control before Jin gets worried. Apparently laughing hurts more than talking.
"You could print yourself a new pair, you know," Jin says with encouraging twitches of his eyebrows. "I mean, you had such a wild night out yesterday, you probably just lost them!"
They're technically not supposed to use these printers to give things to other people. But Kame is mostly amused by Jin's obvious glee in this little bit of harmless rule-bending.
"Now that you mention it, I think I remember sitting down on them in that unruly bar you took me to," Kame says. The long sentence hurts more, but Jin's deep smile makes that, too, worth it.
They don't talk long; Kame feels his throat getting steadily worse again and Jin has an early plane to catch.
"You will see a doctor if this gets bad again," Jin says, turning in the door frame. "Or I'll…" he waggles his hands, searching for inspiration. "Do something. I'll do something you won't like, I'll think of it on the plane. So be warned."
Kame suppresses a laugh, just gives him his most innocent smile and rasps, "Understood."
#=#=#
The klaxon shrills once, and Kame is wide awake.
His tablet is blinking and vibrating. Not another tsunami, is his first thought.
The message, when he checks, is brief. Prepare to travel 06:00. Tanaka will pick up.
His clock says 2:45. He could turn on the news, check what's up. He turns out the light again. He'll find out soon enough.
There's a soft knock on his door. Jin. Of course.
"Hey," Kame says as he opens the door, and waves him in. No pajamaed entrancers to be seen at each other's doors, oh no.
"We fucking torpedoed the fucking Chinese?" Jin says, incredulous.
"Oh, is that what it was?"
"Defcon something or other, those fucking islands."
Kame's stomach does a little dip. But this has been coming for years, and there's nothing to be done at three in the morning. "We'll deal with it," he says to Jin. "We'll deal with it somehow. We'll handle the diplomatic side and the citizens. It's what we do, mop up when people make mistakes."
Jin looks a little less outraged. "It's just so fucking dumb," he says. "Why can't people just--" He shakes his head. "Never mind. I'll let you get back to sleep. Six o'clock, right?"
Kame nods. "I'll have coffee on at five."
#=#=#
Jin's bleary-eyed and when questioned, admits that he stayed up to follow the news. "They had a submarine spying around, we found it and wham, twenty-two people dead. They always spy around there, I don't get why suddenly it's a big deal."
"Because we always warn them off and they always ignore us?"
That gets him a wounded look. "You say that means we can kill people?"
"No," Kame concedes. "But if they keep on doing this, knowing that our PM is just waiting for an excuse, well."
Jin sighs. "I guess."
They sip their coffees miserably.
#=#=#
Kimura gets the diplomats and though Kame technically has seniority, Kimura's welcome to them. Diplomats like someone more their own age and Kame has no quarrel with that.
He ends up in Okinawa, where concern is high and tempers are rising. He spends a few days in Naha, then moves into the urban areas around. He goes into companies by day and packs out city halls at night. He keeps the citizens quiet, reassured, and above all loyal.
It's easy work.
#=#=#
After six days, when nuclear war has failed to break out - thank you, Kimura-san - and civil unrest has been avoided, everyone gets to go home. Thankfully the next day is a Sunday.
Jin takes his Sunday coffee late, so Kame stops by the executive gym on the tenth floor. He's feeling rested, despite all the tension and global uncertainties of the last week, like hard work and recovery are in balance. Nobody around, ten mile run through Kyoto circa 1600, one of his favourite landscapes.
He's showered and has just put the coffee on when Jin knocks on his door.
"Morning," Jin says. He looks a little tired still, but his eyes are scanning Kame carefully. "How are you?"
"I'm fine," Kame says. "It was a lot of work but not particularly difficult work." Then he remembers Jin's fretting and sleepless night, the first night. "How are you?"
Jin shrugs. "I don't cope so well with the impending apocalypse, but I'm okay now."
Kame nods. He fixes their coffees the usual way and they sit at the counter.
"I had a wobbler down in Okayama," Jin suddenly says, making Kame blink in shock. "Everyone was scared shitless of exactly the same thing I was scared of, and at that one high school, it almost got away from me."
"But then?" Kame asks nervously.
"I pulled it together at the end, nobody figured it out," Jin says, raising his eyebrows over his coffee. Nobody knows but Kame. "But fuck, I was sweating."
"It's been a very extreme week," Kame offers.
Jin looks for a moment like he might like to say something more on what sort of week it was. But then he tilts his head. "And thank fuck we can put it behind us. What are we going to do today?"
Somehow that makes Kame break out into an involuntary smile, and the shaken look seems to drain out of Jin, replaced by a focus that feels warm and solid and like the day is wide open.
===
"That is a lot of people," Jin says, sounding somewhere between impressed and sceptical as they head up the stairs from the station, the crowd waiting for the Dome entrance becoming thicker. "I didn't think that was your Sunday style."
Kame hasn't been in a while. He was too busy. But unlike the other night, he is the expert here, knows where to get the tickets and where to queue and that you'll really enjoy it more with the proper kit. He's lent Jin one of his spare orange towels.
"I find it relaxing when I just block them out completely," he says, motioning for their gate.
The baseball league's uniformed entrancers are stationed behind the metal detectors, most people passing by without giving them a glance. They flag up Kame and Jin, of course. Jin looks a little uneasy, as most entrancers do when they encounter entrancers outside the hierarchy of the agency. Only baseball and Tepco maintain their own entrancer units. Kame is used to the ones at the games by now.
"You are aware of the all-human nature of the sport of baseball and the prohibition of any interference in the mental state of players, coaches, viewers or anyone else present," the guy begins the customary caution. "According to the Baseball Protection Act of 2038, any violation is punishable by no less than ten years in prison and removal of entrancer status."
Kame nods earnestly, as usual, and the guy lets him pass and wishes him a good day. He has to wait a moment while Jin receives his own caution. Then he leads the way to their box.
"It's not shielding glass," Kame explains as they step in and the door slides shut behind them. The room is bright with the window front and the green below. "But it gives us a bit of a buffer even so." No visuals of people makes blocking them easier.
"Nice," Jin comments on the extra wide seats, the little monitors for watching close-ups on demand. The room could fit a small party, but there's just the two of them today. He drops himself into the upholstery, bounces a bit.
"You can order snacks through the monitor too," Kame says, lowering himself into the seat next to Jin's. The first player song is starting up, and through the numbness of blocking out a Dome's worth of people, Kame feels a jolt of excitement.
When the player saunters out onto the field, applause rises. There's an awkward pause when Jin looks unsure whether to clap or not. Kame doesn't, though he knows the feeling.
"It's been ages that I've seen a baseball game," Jin says, shaking his head softly. "I was still a kid, a cousin took me and my brother. The seats were more like benches." When he glances at Kame, it feels deep and curious.
Kame hesitates a moment. "I miss sitting in the crowd sometimes," he admits. He was a kid then, too. "Just, getting caught up. But this is safer for entrancers. And to be honest, I think it's a grass-being-greener thing. As a kid I'd have loved this." He gestures around, smiles when Jin does.
"I can see that."
Waves of cheers ripple through the stadium, so loud Kame catches the ripple even in their safe box. Jin leans back with a deep breath, and Kame feels warm and glad he can show him this.
"I like that you came," he says. Just lets it slip out.
Jin's smile twitches, shy, but then his eyebrows go up and he's all cheek and mesmerizing eyes. "Dude, this is the thing that makes you go out and brave hordes of excited citizens and I didn't even know about it, I wanted to see this yesterday."
#=#=#
Jin orders his way through the snack menu with barcode-defying gusto, and while Kame gets the feeling he is not deeply invested in the outcome of the game, he seems to be taking great joy in the replay feature at their seats, making up critiques of players' forms that Kame has a hard time commenting on because he actually understands the game.
Kame enjoys Jin's glee over the cocktails that are served in baseball-themed glasses, while he sips at fancy-dressed orange juice. It's better to play that safe this time. He doesn't need booze to feel like he's never had more fun in the VIP box.
The Giants finally pull ahead in the fourth inning. Kame sits upright and claps his hands together, not thinking. Then he feels aware of them being alone in a box when the roar around them fades, and that maybe that was silly.
Over his third drink - the last one, he said, being cautious to maintain control over his abilities out here too - Jin shoots him a look. It makes Kame’s ears burn, but it can’t be bad because Jin is smiling.
“You’ve sold me on baseball," Jin says, and sober or not, Kame hasn't heard anything this nice in forever.
===
It's been a hard working day but a short one. As Kame leaves the building the sun is still in the sky, throwing warm colours and long shadows. A perfect afternoon for walking home - it's been forever since he walked on grass. He's not good at identifying birdsong but he likes hearing them all the same, and every so often he thinks he spots a mouse dashing away.
When he first feels metal under his feet, he's puzzled, but it's smooth and gleaming, just some rails going off somewhere, going the same direction as him, for a while. For a long time. At least he won't get lost while it gets dark. He can't hear the birds anymore, but he sees a light in the distance, maybe a house. Maybe his apartment, it's about time.
The light comes closer fast - is he running? No, he's standing and it's coming, with a roar along the rails. His feet won't move. A black, burnt shape on wheels, and a driver, a driver with no face. He focuses, commands STOP!
It slows. He still can't move. It slows but keeps rolling, towards him, against him, over him, crushing him slowly, every bone in his body one by one, till his head explodes like a melon hit by a baseball bat.
#=#=#
Part 2