Fic: Blind Curve (1/1) G
JE Fic
Title: Blind Curve
Pairing: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya
Warnings: none
Genre: RPS, AU
Wordcount: 1,850
A/N: From the "American Gangster"-inspired AU 'verse, this is a sequel to " Deserve, which should probably be read first. This was written for a fic-request meme: maya_morning asked for one month after Jin is released from prison.
Akanishi coughs, prompting the man beside him to twitch his head in the direction of Akanishi's jutting chin. He wonders how it is that Kamenashi can run with such single-minded endurance, run like he's being chased, and for this long, nearly an hour now. His lungs burn, but he's kept up, setting his brain to autopilot as they run side-by-side over empty paths.
Kamenashi looks up at the early Sunday morning sky whose darkness presents a stark contrast to the rolling green lawns through which they're running.
"Oh," he puffs, a single syllable of surprise, and that's all he says, arms and legs steadily pumping without faltering. A flash lights his face and thunder cracks suddenly, not so far away. Kamenashi hadn't noticed the heavy black thunderheads creep closer, or the sudden swift wind swaying the trees along the path.
Akanishi's been watching it draw near for some time. He's been waiting for the thunder that didn't sound until this moment, startling him, even though he's been expecting it. For a month he's been waiting for something to happen, waiting with the hair lifted all along his skin, tense and as laconic as prison made him after fifteen years inside.
He keeps pace with Kamenashi, one footfall after the other, their stride identical, fast, and he's so attuned to Kamenashi's rhythm that he almost doesn't realize that they're no longer merely running on the path. Huge, fat raindrops spatter his face.
Akanishi turns instinctively to Kamenashi's fierce challenging expression. "Race you," he says unnecessarily because it's too late, they already are, hurtling forward, headlong, into heavy rain.
*
Every day for a month, he wakes at five in the morning without an alarm clock and blinks into the darkness of Kamenashi's living room. By five-thirty, his futon is neatly folded away, his teeth are cleaned, he's dressed and fifteen minutes into a warm-up. He follows Kamenashi out the door and they run into dawn.
For a month, Akanishi watches the tail-end of spring melt into humid summer. He drinks in the sounds of traffic, the savory, mouth-watering odors from food stalls outside the train stations, the colorful flashing signs and the electric hum of the vast city. He marvels at the expanses of dewy green grass in the park, at trees heavy with leaves, and at a soaring sky that never becomes concrete ceiling at night in that claustrophobic memory of a small cell he shared with three other men. He studies small birds and other animals in the park, and swarms of people along crowded Tokyo streets, and he can only feel relief to be back in the world. For a month he learns to relax, safe from dangerous eyes and intentions, no curfews or shouting guards, no time limits for how long he has to eat or shit or shower or shave.
For a month, Akanishi watches him: his lawyer, his one-night-stand lover, his unlikely friend, and he sees a man straight and tough without being unyielding. From those old days when they formed their alliance, he remembers the careful cop who painstakingly prepared his cases, who questioned calmly and rarely raised his voice - a man who was exacting in his methods and required integrity from his peers - and commanded the respect of his comrades and his enemies alike. He finds Kamenashi unchanged in his qualities and yet his lawyer has unwound from his old tightly-coiled persona and grown more humorous - and more thoughtful somehow, as if the gray strands in his sugar-brown hair, which he wears long and often pulled straight back into a severe ponytail, have made him a kinder person than he once was.
He calls him "Kame" now, at Kamenashi's insistence, and Kamenashi calls him "Jin." It still feels strange. During his time in prison, when Kamenashi visited him a half-dozen times a year, even then, he couldn't quite bring himself to drop the formality. Kamenashi had been his adversary, and that demanded respect. He'd become his friend, and that demanded honor. It wasn't until they sat across from each other at Kamenashi's low table and slurped hot noodles in their shirtsleeves that he could bring himself to taste the unfamiliar brevity of "Kame" in his mouth.
*
Thunder cracks and lightning flashes as they race forward.
Kamenashi is faster, lighter, and determined, but Akanishi didn't spend practically every day of fifteen years on a prison treadmill for nothing. He pounds up the wet inclined path while his entire body screams for more oxygen and the large muscles in his legs burn in protest. He can see Kamenashi smiling, a flash of white teeth glimpsed between raindrops. Akanishi clenches his jaw, determined to put his friend to the test.
Just as they crest the hill and burst out from between trees onto a wide expanse of grass punctuated only by a parkbench, Akanishi sees Kamenashi fall away.
Akanishi breaks his stride and stumbles to a halt, doubled over and gasping for breath.
"Kame?" he pants. He looks over his shoulder to see Kamenashi sprawled in the deep, thick, wet grass, flat on his back with his arms flung wide. Akanishi limps over to him and throws himself down close by. Kamenashi has his eyes closed and his mouth wide open and his glistening tongue is just visible as it pokes out to taste the rain. Akanishi lies on his stomach to watch him quietly while Kamenashi's chest heaves.
Akanishi isn't sure how long they lie there with the rain pounding down on them. The scent of steaming wet grass fills his nose as he cradles his head on his folded arms. After a while, he catches his breath, and his heartbeat slows.
"Jin," he hears eventually. He lifts his head. Kamenashi has rolled onto his side and is watching him.
"Yeah," he replies, his voice sounding distant in his ears. It's still raining. Thunder cracks directly overhead, and if he was a more timid man, he's sure he would jump, but he thinks he's too old to be startled by a bit of thunder and lightning.
"You have gray hair now," Kamenashi says in a different voice.
"What?" Akanishi blinks at Kamenashi in puzzlement. "Of course I do. So do you." He frowns. "Where've you been? It's not like it just happened, you know. Been there for years." It's the only time he feels angry, when he considers how old he grew in prison, wasting his prime years among convicts. He could have married, had a family by now - there were so many things he could have done. Now he's past what most people consider the mid-life mark, and although he's not foolish enough to be vain about his age, he's a realist; already he feels the twinging reminders of a body no longer young.
"Yeah," Kamenashi says, and suddenly his fingers are in Akanishi's hair, stroking the clumped wet strands back from his face. There's tenderness in those fingers, and gentleness, and something more that Akanishi isn't prepared for, not yet. He flushes hot at Kame's touch. His throat tightens into a choking vice, and he feels his heart hammer in his chest.
"Kame," he manages. "What-" He finds himself wanting to look around wildly, self-consciously, but he knows there's no one with them on the empty rainswept hill. He pushes himself up and away from Kamenashi's hand. It falls to the wet grass lightly.
More thunder. Lightning flashes on Kamenashi's face and Akanishi sees that whatever else happened in fifteen years, this hasn't changed, the thing they ignited between them on that last night before he went away. Something to remember. He doesn't need to see its light in Kamenashi's face because the glow stayed inside him all along as a faint, buried hope. He thinks he's not ready for it, though, not yet - not when he still feels like he's waking up after a long, cold sleep.
Despite the heat and the rain, electricity lifts the hair everywhere on Akanishi's body. He gets to his feet and looks down at Kamenashi who gazes at him steadily, expressionless and relaxed. It's Akanishi who's wound tight. It's Akanishi who wants to run away, but where can he go when he knows his footsteps will bring him back to this place every time, to stand beside this man.
Kamenashi rises, his arms easy at his sides. Curtains of gray rain hang between them.
"I'm not sorry," he says evenly. Akanishi closes his eyes to let those words wash over him.
He opens his eyes and looks down into Kamenashi's eyes.
"I'm not sorry either," he replies, pleading for understanding. "I'm - I'm just not," he stumbles a little, horrified that he could even say the words, but it's not fair to Kamenashi, he has to: "I'm not ready." He scrubs a hand over his face and shoves his disheveled wet hair out of his eyes.
"Okay," Kamenashi replies, seeming unconcerned. He shrugs, cracking his neck, and he almost bounces on his toes. Akanishi is reminded of a boxer gearing up for a fight.
"Right," Akanishi says uncertainly. A thunderclap booms overhead and now he jumps, growing sheepish when Kamenashi's laugh rings out through the thick patter of rain. Still snickering, and yet not unkindly, Kamenashi turns away, his back straight, his chin up, and Akanishi dazedly wonders as he watches him walk away how he could have possibly said no.
"Wait," he calls out, feeling skittish and uncomfortably shy. He used to take risks. He used to be impulsive, back when he ruled an empire. He was a calculating tough guy yesterday, but today, facing a ghost and an invitation, he wonders when his nerve disappeared. Kamenashi pauses, turns, and meets his eyes with that familiar sharp gaze.
"Maybe," Akanishi begins. His clenches his fists. "Maybe-"
"Are you just going to stand there?" Kamenashi interrupts, cocking his head. He reaches back absently and tugs the fastener around his ponytail. Wet hair, waterstained from sugar-brown to nearly-black, falls in heavy waves around his face to brush his shoulders. Like this, he's less severe, and like his eyes, his mouth has grown soft. Youth is gone for both of them, that's true, and they're older now, lined, weathered, and hardened, but desire and affection have somehow survived. Akanishi tries to understand his hesitation. Isn't this what he wants? He takes a step forward, and then another, his feet squishing inside soaked running shoes.
When he reaches Kamenashi, his hands are already there, without conscious thought to guide them, and he watches from somewhere outside himself as he seizes Kamenashi's narrow, rain-streaked face, where water drips down off Kame's humped nose, and Jin tips it up, and he leans in-
--
After fifteen years, when Jin was released from prison, his lawyer met him at the prison gates.
"You ready?" Kame asked.
Uncertainty and anticipation twisted in his belly, but he'd waited long enough. Jin looked up at the sky that arched overhead, and he looked at his friend, and as far as he could see, there was only horizon.
FIN
Notes: When maya_morning requested this, I'd never imagined anything after the end of "Deserve." However, in considering this fic, a few ideas presented themselves which means I might revisit this 'verse again.
I also want to point out what may or may not be guessable from the text: after 15 years in prison, Jin is 47 in this fic.
--
Fanfiction Index
contact: shontosgarden at gmail dot com
Title: Blind Curve
Pairing: Akanishi Jin/Kamenashi Kazuya
Warnings: none
Genre: RPS, AU
Wordcount: 1,850
A/N: From the "American Gangster"-inspired AU 'verse, this is a sequel to " Deserve, which should probably be read first. This was written for a fic-request meme: maya_morning asked for one month after Jin is released from prison.
Akanishi coughs, prompting the man beside him to twitch his head in the direction of Akanishi's jutting chin. He wonders how it is that Kamenashi can run with such single-minded endurance, run like he's being chased, and for this long, nearly an hour now. His lungs burn, but he's kept up, setting his brain to autopilot as they run side-by-side over empty paths.
Kamenashi looks up at the early Sunday morning sky whose darkness presents a stark contrast to the rolling green lawns through which they're running.
"Oh," he puffs, a single syllable of surprise, and that's all he says, arms and legs steadily pumping without faltering. A flash lights his face and thunder cracks suddenly, not so far away. Kamenashi hadn't noticed the heavy black thunderheads creep closer, or the sudden swift wind swaying the trees along the path.
Akanishi's been watching it draw near for some time. He's been waiting for the thunder that didn't sound until this moment, startling him, even though he's been expecting it. For a month he's been waiting for something to happen, waiting with the hair lifted all along his skin, tense and as laconic as prison made him after fifteen years inside.
He keeps pace with Kamenashi, one footfall after the other, their stride identical, fast, and he's so attuned to Kamenashi's rhythm that he almost doesn't realize that they're no longer merely running on the path. Huge, fat raindrops spatter his face.
Akanishi turns instinctively to Kamenashi's fierce challenging expression. "Race you," he says unnecessarily because it's too late, they already are, hurtling forward, headlong, into heavy rain.
*
Every day for a month, he wakes at five in the morning without an alarm clock and blinks into the darkness of Kamenashi's living room. By five-thirty, his futon is neatly folded away, his teeth are cleaned, he's dressed and fifteen minutes into a warm-up. He follows Kamenashi out the door and they run into dawn.
For a month, Akanishi watches the tail-end of spring melt into humid summer. He drinks in the sounds of traffic, the savory, mouth-watering odors from food stalls outside the train stations, the colorful flashing signs and the electric hum of the vast city. He marvels at the expanses of dewy green grass in the park, at trees heavy with leaves, and at a soaring sky that never becomes concrete ceiling at night in that claustrophobic memory of a small cell he shared with three other men. He studies small birds and other animals in the park, and swarms of people along crowded Tokyo streets, and he can only feel relief to be back in the world. For a month he learns to relax, safe from dangerous eyes and intentions, no curfews or shouting guards, no time limits for how long he has to eat or shit or shower or shave.
For a month, Akanishi watches him: his lawyer, his one-night-stand lover, his unlikely friend, and he sees a man straight and tough without being unyielding. From those old days when they formed their alliance, he remembers the careful cop who painstakingly prepared his cases, who questioned calmly and rarely raised his voice - a man who was exacting in his methods and required integrity from his peers - and commanded the respect of his comrades and his enemies alike. He finds Kamenashi unchanged in his qualities and yet his lawyer has unwound from his old tightly-coiled persona and grown more humorous - and more thoughtful somehow, as if the gray strands in his sugar-brown hair, which he wears long and often pulled straight back into a severe ponytail, have made him a kinder person than he once was.
He calls him "Kame" now, at Kamenashi's insistence, and Kamenashi calls him "Jin." It still feels strange. During his time in prison, when Kamenashi visited him a half-dozen times a year, even then, he couldn't quite bring himself to drop the formality. Kamenashi had been his adversary, and that demanded respect. He'd become his friend, and that demanded honor. It wasn't until they sat across from each other at Kamenashi's low table and slurped hot noodles in their shirtsleeves that he could bring himself to taste the unfamiliar brevity of "Kame" in his mouth.
*
Thunder cracks and lightning flashes as they race forward.
Kamenashi is faster, lighter, and determined, but Akanishi didn't spend practically every day of fifteen years on a prison treadmill for nothing. He pounds up the wet inclined path while his entire body screams for more oxygen and the large muscles in his legs burn in protest. He can see Kamenashi smiling, a flash of white teeth glimpsed between raindrops. Akanishi clenches his jaw, determined to put his friend to the test.
Just as they crest the hill and burst out from between trees onto a wide expanse of grass punctuated only by a parkbench, Akanishi sees Kamenashi fall away.
Akanishi breaks his stride and stumbles to a halt, doubled over and gasping for breath.
"Kame?" he pants. He looks over his shoulder to see Kamenashi sprawled in the deep, thick, wet grass, flat on his back with his arms flung wide. Akanishi limps over to him and throws himself down close by. Kamenashi has his eyes closed and his mouth wide open and his glistening tongue is just visible as it pokes out to taste the rain. Akanishi lies on his stomach to watch him quietly while Kamenashi's chest heaves.
Akanishi isn't sure how long they lie there with the rain pounding down on them. The scent of steaming wet grass fills his nose as he cradles his head on his folded arms. After a while, he catches his breath, and his heartbeat slows.
"Jin," he hears eventually. He lifts his head. Kamenashi has rolled onto his side and is watching him.
"Yeah," he replies, his voice sounding distant in his ears. It's still raining. Thunder cracks directly overhead, and if he was a more timid man, he's sure he would jump, but he thinks he's too old to be startled by a bit of thunder and lightning.
"You have gray hair now," Kamenashi says in a different voice.
"What?" Akanishi blinks at Kamenashi in puzzlement. "Of course I do. So do you." He frowns. "Where've you been? It's not like it just happened, you know. Been there for years." It's the only time he feels angry, when he considers how old he grew in prison, wasting his prime years among convicts. He could have married, had a family by now - there were so many things he could have done. Now he's past what most people consider the mid-life mark, and although he's not foolish enough to be vain about his age, he's a realist; already he feels the twinging reminders of a body no longer young.
"Yeah," Kamenashi says, and suddenly his fingers are in Akanishi's hair, stroking the clumped wet strands back from his face. There's tenderness in those fingers, and gentleness, and something more that Akanishi isn't prepared for, not yet. He flushes hot at Kame's touch. His throat tightens into a choking vice, and he feels his heart hammer in his chest.
"Kame," he manages. "What-" He finds himself wanting to look around wildly, self-consciously, but he knows there's no one with them on the empty rainswept hill. He pushes himself up and away from Kamenashi's hand. It falls to the wet grass lightly.
More thunder. Lightning flashes on Kamenashi's face and Akanishi sees that whatever else happened in fifteen years, this hasn't changed, the thing they ignited between them on that last night before he went away. Something to remember. He doesn't need to see its light in Kamenashi's face because the glow stayed inside him all along as a faint, buried hope. He thinks he's not ready for it, though, not yet - not when he still feels like he's waking up after a long, cold sleep.
Despite the heat and the rain, electricity lifts the hair everywhere on Akanishi's body. He gets to his feet and looks down at Kamenashi who gazes at him steadily, expressionless and relaxed. It's Akanishi who's wound tight. It's Akanishi who wants to run away, but where can he go when he knows his footsteps will bring him back to this place every time, to stand beside this man.
Kamenashi rises, his arms easy at his sides. Curtains of gray rain hang between them.
"I'm not sorry," he says evenly. Akanishi closes his eyes to let those words wash over him.
He opens his eyes and looks down into Kamenashi's eyes.
"I'm not sorry either," he replies, pleading for understanding. "I'm - I'm just not," he stumbles a little, horrified that he could even say the words, but it's not fair to Kamenashi, he has to: "I'm not ready." He scrubs a hand over his face and shoves his disheveled wet hair out of his eyes.
"Okay," Kamenashi replies, seeming unconcerned. He shrugs, cracking his neck, and he almost bounces on his toes. Akanishi is reminded of a boxer gearing up for a fight.
"Right," Akanishi says uncertainly. A thunderclap booms overhead and now he jumps, growing sheepish when Kamenashi's laugh rings out through the thick patter of rain. Still snickering, and yet not unkindly, Kamenashi turns away, his back straight, his chin up, and Akanishi dazedly wonders as he watches him walk away how he could have possibly said no.
"Wait," he calls out, feeling skittish and uncomfortably shy. He used to take risks. He used to be impulsive, back when he ruled an empire. He was a calculating tough guy yesterday, but today, facing a ghost and an invitation, he wonders when his nerve disappeared. Kamenashi pauses, turns, and meets his eyes with that familiar sharp gaze.
"Maybe," Akanishi begins. His clenches his fists. "Maybe-"
"Are you just going to stand there?" Kamenashi interrupts, cocking his head. He reaches back absently and tugs the fastener around his ponytail. Wet hair, waterstained from sugar-brown to nearly-black, falls in heavy waves around his face to brush his shoulders. Like this, he's less severe, and like his eyes, his mouth has grown soft. Youth is gone for both of them, that's true, and they're older now, lined, weathered, and hardened, but desire and affection have somehow survived. Akanishi tries to understand his hesitation. Isn't this what he wants? He takes a step forward, and then another, his feet squishing inside soaked running shoes.
When he reaches Kamenashi, his hands are already there, without conscious thought to guide them, and he watches from somewhere outside himself as he seizes Kamenashi's narrow, rain-streaked face, where water drips down off Kame's humped nose, and Jin tips it up, and he leans in-
--
After fifteen years, when Jin was released from prison, his lawyer met him at the prison gates.
"You ready?" Kame asked.
Uncertainty and anticipation twisted in his belly, but he'd waited long enough. Jin looked up at the sky that arched overhead, and he looked at his friend, and as far as he could see, there was only horizon.
FIN
Notes: When maya_morning requested this, I'd never imagined anything after the end of "Deserve." However, in considering this fic, a few ideas presented themselves which means I might revisit this 'verse again.
I also want to point out what may or may not be guessable from the text: after 15 years in prison, Jin is 47 in this fic.
--
Fanfiction Index
contact: shontosgarden at gmail dot com