Dream Boy: Full Moon (4/4)
Nov. 1st, 2011 02:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
maayacolabackupTitle: Dream Boy
Pairing: Kame/Jin
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Jin dreams of the moon, over and over and over again.
Suddenly, living alone is so hard. Jin's house, which over the last four weeks, had been filled with laughter, with moments of tenseness and moments of idyllic ease, too, is now eerily quiet.
Jin makes enough coffee for two people every day for a week, and then he feels guilty and drinks twice as much as he should.
That's not why he can't sleep, though.
He can't sleep because Kame is gone, and Jin, like an idiot, had left his heart open for destruction.
Jin had known Kame wouldn't, couldn’t, stay forever. His life and career are back in Japan, after all, and even if Kame had come to Jin for a reprieve, it was always going to be a temporary one.
But that doesn't make Jin feel less shattered, less bereft.
Without the moon's gravity, Jin just spins faster and faster on his axis, and until he feels like he'll spin right out of control.
#
Jin gets an envelope in the mail, just white with his name on it in block printed English letters and the kanji written smaller underneath. There’s no return address in the upper left corner, and there are four Japanese stamps lined up neatly in the upper right.
Inside are four photographs.
The first picture is of Olvera Street as it turns to dusk, the stall lights glowing against the setting sun. Jin remembers this picture, Kame standing in the middle of the road, camera held up to his eye and a smile teasing at his lips.
The second picture is of Kame’s shoes, untied and sitting in Jin’s foyer, amidst all of Jin’s shoes. They look like they belong there.
The third picture is of Jin’s yard, and of Jin, feet in the pool with his guitar in his lap, lyric notebook by his side. The picture was taken from the kitchen window, Jin thinks, because the corner of the picture has a glare from the glass, and Jin can see a tiny bit of the yellow daffodils he keeps on the windowsill above the sink.
The fourth picture is of Jin, too. It’s Jin, mouth parted in surprise, hands in his pockets and staring at the camera. Staring at Kame. Beneath his feet is the Walk of Fame, burgundy marbled stars making a path that goes into the distance behind him.
Jin takes in the look in his own eyes—it’s the look of a man who has fallen in love with the moon, he thinks, a man filled with some kind of dizzying, terrible passion that he’ll never escape.
On the back of the fourth picture, it says “You’ll have one of these stars someday. Good luck on your concert,” in Kame’s usual leftward slanting handwriting, and Jin traces the kanji with his fingertip, imagining Kame scrawling the note hastily, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.
It feels like goodbye.
#
Kamenashi’s back, Yamapi’s email says. Johnny didn’t even suspend him, the lucky bastard. I should disappear for a month and refuse to tell anyone where I was.
Jin’s fingers shake as he replies. Where would you go? You couldn’t come here. Johnny would find you in twenty-four hours.
There’s no response to Jin’s email, for about ten hours, and then Yamapi sends him another mail. Are you okay?
I will be, is Jin’s answer, and he hopes it’s true.
#
"You want to go out?" Lizzy asks, and Jin knows he should say yes, because he hasn't done much, when he’s not in rehearsal, but mope pitifully around his house for five days, and he probably hasn't changed his clothes either. “I know we have rehearsal again in the morning but…”
"No," Jin says into the phone, and Lizzy sighs.
"That's it, Jin. I'm coming over."
Without fail Lizzy shows up with Aubree and an oversized bag of chalupas from Taco Bell, and carrying a two-liter of Pepsi. Jin opens the door to them, and they waltz in without fanfare, Lizzy dropping the greasy bag onto Jin's coffee table as they both collapse on Jin's sofa.
"Have a chalupa," Aubree says, tossing Jin a wrapped packed that smells of salsa and beef. He catches it. It's warm.
"I'm not very hungry," Jin says, staring down at the chalupa in his hand like he's never seen one before.
"It's worse than we thought, Liz," Aubree says. "Jin is turning down Taco Bell."
"Where's Kame?" Lizzy asks, as she takes a bite of her own chalupa, and Jin wants to make a dirty joke about the sour cream all over her face, but he doesn't, because hearing Kame's name on someone else's lips sends him right back down into wallowing misery.
"He's gone," Jin says, and even though he means to sound steady and nonchalant, his voice cracks revealingly.
"Oh," says Lizzy, and Aubree is looking at him through narrowed eyes.
"That's why you're all depressed, isn't it?" Aubree asks him, setting her own food down on the coffee table next to the bag. "Because Kame's gone."
"Of course not," Jin says, eyes shifting away from the two girls on the couch as he sinks down in one of the chairs. "Don't be ridiculous."
"You're the worst liar ever," Lizzy says, taking another bite. "It's normal to be upset when a friend leaves, especially one you don’t get to see very often. But seriously, Jin. This is Taco Bell." She opens the two-liter of Pepsi and drinks straight from the bottle. "You're acting like a lovesick girl."
"Don't be ridiculous," Jin says again, unwrapping his chalupa and shoving it in his mouth, fitting almost half of it inside in a single bite. He can feel his face turning red though, and his gut churning, and the chalupa tastes like nothing on his tongue. He chews anyway.
"Oh my god," Aubree says, and she's studying him now. He red hair is falling around he face, and she looks too young to have such a serious face. Jin's a Japanese pop star, though, and he knows looking young doesn't have much to do with maturity or actual age. "You are. You’re lovesick!"
"Lovesick over what, now?" Lizzy asks, and Aubree whips around and grabs the soda bottle from Lizzy's hand. "Hey, I was drinking that!"
"Kame, Liz. Jin's lovesick over Kame!" Jin tries to curl into himself as they both turn back to look at him.
"I never said that," Jin defends weakly.
"You didn't have to," Aubree says. "Your face is totally transparent, dork." Aubree reaches into the bag and pulls out a handful of napkins, shoving them at Jin. "You've got sour cream all over your face."
"So you like boys?" Lizzy says, sitting up and resting her elbows on her knees. She sets her chin in her upward facing palms. "Why am I not surprised, Jinnifer?"
"Shut up," Jin says. "I don't like boys. It's just Kame. I love Kame."
It's the first time he's admitted it aloud, Jin realizes, all of a sudden. He's felt it, for years and years, and he's thought it, to himself, when the lights are out. Yamapi knows, he thinks, but it's not because Jin ever said it, it's just because Yamapi can read his mind with his freaky best-friend mind powers.
"Wow," Aubree says, and Jin gulps, and wishes the chair would swallow him whole. "Does he know?"
"No," Jin replies. "Of course not." Jin takes another bite of his chalupa. "It doesn't matter. I can make it stop. I'll get over it soon."
"Yeah," Lizzy says. "You really look like you're on the right path, what with the wallowing and the not dating anyone ever." Jin gives her the finger, and she laughs. "You should just tell him."
"Out of the question."
"Then you'll never know what could happen," Aubree says quietly.
"You can't touch the moon," Jin says. "You can only watch it from the Earth and admire how brightly it shines."
"Okay," Lizzy says. "This is unacceptable. Jin is making up terrible song lyrics and there are uneaten chalupas on the coffee table." Lizzy crosses her arms. "Jin, grow some balls. Clearly, you've been in love with Kame since forever. Don't you think you should tell him? Or move on? Or something? This is kind of pathetic."
Jin knows she's right. It's the same thing he's been telling his heart for years, even when he was just trying to get over their friendship, and before Kame wandered into his home and back into his life, Jin had almost convinced himself that he'd gotten over it.
But now, he's raw all over again, because when he closes his eyes all he can see is Kame's brilliant smile and the warmth of his hands and the gentle cadence of his laugh, the real one, the one that Kame doesn't show the cameras or his colleagues. All he can do is remember that this feeling, the swelling inside of him like the tide pulling the waves-- this feeling is love, and no matter how far he runs, he can't catch it or escape it.
"Pass me the Pepsi," Jin says, and Aubree smiles at him softly. "And I'll try."
#
In the two days leading up to Jin’s concert, he doesn’t give himself time to sleep, or time to breathe. He fills every moment he can with dancing and singing and going, because it’s those quiet moments, the ones where he’s waiting for the tech guys to change the position of a light, or where he and all the dancers have stretched out on their backs, guzzling water from water bottles and inhaling huge gulps of air into their exhausted bodies… Those are the moments where Kame creeps up on him, where Jin imagines the scent of lemons and wants to wrap his arms around his own knees and try and push the hurt back down to where he can’t see it.
#
Jin’s revelation, as they always do, comes at the most inconvenient of times, when too many people are watching and the stakes are too high.
When Jin had first dreamed of an American career, he hadn’t dreamt of the status quo, performing in smaller venues to crowds of moderate sizes. He’d dreamed of this: filling a huge stadium just like this, with thousands of people all coming to hear his music-- his music, that he was proud of and loved and wanted to be singing.
Jin didn’t get here, to this moment, by accepting things they way they were. He’d had to reach out and grab onto his dream with both hands, despite all the people he’d had to disappoint, and all the people who’d told him that it was crazy and reckless and hopeless.
As Jin belts out ‘The Fifth Season’, sitting on a stool with just a microphone in the middle of a massive stage, black fedora sitting heavy on his brow and sweat pouring down his face, Jin can’t help but think that this is it. This is his American Dream, right here, sweaty and hot and scary and perfect.
Jin knows, he’s always known, that the things he works the hardest for are the things that he wants the most.
As Jin sings his heart out, he thinks of Kame. Kame’s secret smiles and Kame’s short fingers and Kame’s moles to the right side of his mouth, and the way Kame is wonderful, in so many tiny impossible ways, ways that Jin doesn’t even know how to describe because Kame does them as naturally as he breathes.
It occurs to Jin, at that moment, as the word overflowing tumbles over his lips, that he doesn’t want the status quo. He doesn’t want things to be like before, where he pushes everything to do with Kame to the darkest corner of his heart and tries to make it disappear. He’s tired of trying to pretend like thinking about Kame doesn’t make his gut twist and his hands tremble. He’s tired of pretending that Kame isn’t one of the things he wants most.
Jin isn’t afraid of failure. Jin isn’t afraid of jumping from the top of the highest mountain and spreading his arms wide and finding out then and there if he can fly.
So Jin doesn’t know why he’s so afraid of love, because love is just like anything else Jin’s ever dreamed of—big and scary and impossible, and worth the risk.
Jin doesn’t know what Kame will say, or what Kame will do, if Jin tells him that he loves him. All he knows is that he wants to reach out and grab onto his dream with both hands.
As far as epiphanies go, this one’s pretty major, and Jin would have a major epiphany at the most inopportune moment, during a stage show, in the middle of a song, in front of thousands of people who are watching him with bated breath at he hits a high note.
But Jin doesn’t stumble, and he doesn’t forget the words.
Jin thinks it’s because Kame chose this song, and maybe Jin is singing it for him.
After the show, Jin can still feel the adrenaline rushing through his body, making him feel like Superman, and maybe like anything is possible.
“So, how’s it feel to have accomplished your dream?” Dom says, as Jin guzzles water from a giant orange nalgene bottle.
“I’ve got more than one dream,” Jin says, and the words sit in the air, and then, in Jin’s heart, they harden into resolve.
#
Christmas is beautiful in Tokyo. One of the things Jin misses about Japan is the seasons. There are seasons in Los Angeles, too, but in Japan, each season has a mood to it, a certain atmosphere, and the weather changes are far more drastic, and far more beautiful.
A soft blanket of snow covers the ground when Jin steps outside and breathes in Tokyo air. Winter hits him all at once, and the stress of wrapping up his concert and movie promotions melts away in the arctic air, until Jin is left feeling cleansed.
His mother, who is waiting outside the airport in the parking lot with Reio, jumps out of the car and embraces him. “Welcome home, honey,” she says, and Jin feels like somehow, everything is going to be okay. His mother has that effect on him—she’s a pillar of strength, always in Jin’s corner.
“I’m home,” Jin replies, and she smiles.
#
Jin always has to stop by to visit Johnny, when he’s in Japan. The old man always leers at Jin, a cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth as he looks Jin up and down like he’s measuring his worth in U.S. dollars, and then nods.
“Movie sales are doing well,” Johnny says. “Movie’s a blockbuster here in Japan.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jin says.
“Your concert sold out in America, and Test Drive went Gold.”
“Yes, sir,” Jin repeats.
Johnny leans back in his black leather desk chair and sighs. “I guess you did alright, kid,” Johnny says. “I’m happy for you.”
Jin’s not used to receiving praise, not in this business. Jin’s used to receiving scathing criticisms about his personality, his free-time behavior, his lack of prowess in interviews and variety shows, his personal scandals, and his partying habits.
Jin thinks this might be the first time Johnny’s ever said something nice to him. It’s not that Johnny is mean, it’s just that Johnny has high expectations and a mind that’s one-hundred percent focused on marketing. It’s not that he’s kept Jin from doing what he wanted, or told Jin he wasn’t going to succeed. It’s just that he never told Jin he was.
It feels strange. It kind of makes Jin uncomfortable, to be praised. It makes him want to pull up his hood and hide, even though he likes it.
When he shuffles out of Johnny’s office, buttoning up his wool coat and pressing the button for the elevator, the last person he expects to run into is Koki.
“Hi,” Jin says, shifting his weight from foot to foot anxiously. “Long time no see.”
“Akanishi Jin?” Koki says, and then he slaps Jin on the back. “Man, how are you?”
“I’m…” Jin stops to think about his answer. “Well. Doing well.”
“That’s good to hear, man. Good to hear.” Koki is grinning at him, and Jin realizes he missed him.
“And you?” Jin says. “Still dating porn stars and having fun?”
“You bet,” Koki replies, with a lascivious wink.
The elevator dings, and Jin’s about to say goodbye, when he stops. “Do you…are you free right now? Do you want to have lunch?”
Koki’s eyes widen, and then his grin gets even larger. “Sure,” he says. “That sounds awesome.”
They walk side by side down the busy street, both of them in sunglasses and hats pulled low to protect their faces from both the fans and the biting winter wind. They stop at this okonomiyaki shop Jin hasn’t visited in years, and Koki orders enough food to feed four people because Jin “looks too thin.”
“So I heard your concert did really well. And I see your ugly face on movie posters everywhere these days, too. I feel like you’re haunting me in the loo.”
“Shut up,” Jin says with a laugh. “I’m having fun. Are you? How is…everyone?”
Koki leans forward and rests his head on his hands. “Well, I’m sure you heard about Kame-chan.”
Jin’s stomach flips. “What do you mean?” Jin asks carefully, his words tenuous.
“He disappeared for a month and won’t tell anyone where he went. And then he just comes into work one day like nothing happened.”
“Like nothing happened?” Jin queries, and Koki looks at him more closely.
“Well, he acted like he was in mourning for a while, but now he’s almost back to himself.” Koki tilts his head to the side. “Now tell me what you know.”
“What makes you think I know anything?” Jin asks, and his voice cracks, and he knows the jig is up.
“Jin,” Koki says, like Jin is saying something really stupid. Jin figures maybe he is.
“I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me. I’m a horrible liar.”
“Yes,” Koki says. “A horrible liar with information. Tell me what you know.”
“Kame was with me,” Jin says, and Koki chokes on his giant bite of pancake, coughing an onion back out onto his plate. “In Los Angeles.”
“Oh,” Koki says, after a few seconds of blank staring. “So that’s it.”
“What do you mean?” Jin asks, and Koki looks at him disbelievingly.
“Jin,” Koki says. “Kame-chan’s spent years trying to let you go. You two have always had this…thing.” Koki takes a sip of his water. “I guess that’s what the mourning was for.”
Jin doesn’t reply for a few moments. “I don’t want him to let me go,” Jin says quietly, and Koki’s gaze turns sharp. Jin wishes he could hide his thoughts right now, because he feels like I’m madly in unrequited love with Kame who is possibly trying to forget I exist is written all over his face, and he doesn’t want it to be.
“Then you should probably tell him that,” Koki says. He digs into his leather bag and pulls out a tiny Moleskine notebook and a pen. He tears a page out of the notebook, and then flips to the front. He copies something down on the paper, and then hands it to Jin.
“What’s this?”
“Kame’s address,” Koki replies. “I’d give you his number, but Kame doesn’t answer calls from numbers he doesn’t recognize.”
“Why are you giving me this?”
Jin hadn’t really had a plan, when he came to Japan, about what he was going to do about Kame.
Now Koki has dropped a plan into his lap.
“Now,” Koki says. “Now you don’t have any excuses not to go and tell Kame…whatever it is you have to tell him.” Koki smiles, and pours more soy sauce into his dish, before taking his chopsticks and ripping another piece off of their okonomiyaki. “If I were you, I’d just go over there and say everything there was to say, you know?”
Jin puts a piece of pancake in his mouth. He can taste the onion and the squid and the vinegary taste of soy sauce against his tongue. “You’re right,” Jin says, and Koki gasps.
“Did you just say that?” Koki says. “Did you really just admit I’m right?” He clutches his heart in fake shock. “Shit, maybe my little brothers should go to America. Clearly it makes you smarter.”
Jin chuckles, and then Koki raises his water glass. “What are we toasting?” Jin asks, raising his own glass.
“To old friends,” Koki answers, and the clink of the glasses resounds in Jin’s head.
#
Jin's still thinking about what Koki said when he hails a cab. He's got Kame's address clutched in his fingers, and his gut is churning with indecision and fear and love, so much love, so fierce and persistent that Jin doesn't think he'll be able to ignore it, ever again.
When the driver asks him "Where to?" Jin hesitates for only a moment before he hands the driver the slip of paper, crinkled and smeared from the grip of Jin's anxious fingers.
Kame lives in a quiet neighborhood. Jin had always imagined Kame living in a slick Tokyo high rise apartment, but the taxi driver drops Jin off in front of a small house, the kind of house Jin grew up in, with three bedrooms and a kitchen overlooking a modest backyard. Jin guesses it's the last place the paparazzi would think to look for a guy like Kame, with his perfectly pressed blazers and his overpriced jeans slung low on his hips.
But beside the front door is a bush, and Jin recognizes it as a hibiscus plant.
"Wait here," Jin says softly to the driver. "This will only take a few minutes."
The door is white, with black numbers down the side, and the knocker is simple, and brass. It's not what he expected, but it fits, Jin thinks, because it's effortlessly beautiful, like Kame himself is, in the morning, hair falling in soft waves down to broad shoulders and tiny moles littering his face and neck, oversized sweatshirt hanging low on his shoulder, and a smile in his eyes.
Jin is done hesitating, because his heart has never been more sure.
Jin rings Kame's doorbell, and Kame answers quickly, eyes widening as he takes in Jin at the door.
"It's rude," Jin says, lips trembling. "It's rude to leave without saying goodbye."
"It's rude to drop by without calling first, too," Kame says, and his smile is gentle.
"Never would have thought that out of the two of us, you'd be the most rude," Jin says, and then he shoves his hands into the pockets of his wool coat for warmth. He's got a knit cap pulled down over his ears but it's still so cold.
"Do you want to come in?" Kame asks, stepping aside.
"No," Jin answers. "I just want you to listen."
"I'm listening, then," Kame says, and Jin wonders if he's cold in just his soft blue corduroy pants and cashmere sweater, with it's deep v-neck, exposing his collarbones to the frigid winter night air.
"You asked me..." Jin takes a breath to steady himself. He feels dizzy, and so afraid. "You asked me why I left you. When it was that we started to have different dreams."
Kame nods, slowly, eyes never leaving Jin's.
"The answer isn't when I left for Los Angeles, the first time."
"It isn't?" Kame asks, and his voice is soft, like he's holding his breath.
"No, Kame, it was...it was way before that." Jin hunches his shoulders. He's always cold, and now he's shivering worse than usual. Jin's not good with this, with saying what's in his heart. He's still looking at Kame, who's starting to shiver too, goosebumps popping up on the bare part of his chest. "See, you were trying to become a star, but to me, you were already the moon."
"Jin, what?"
"Do you know the story of the shepherd and the moon?" Jin asks. "This poor shepherd fell in love with the moon, so high up in the sky that he'd never be able to reach. He just loved, and loved, and loved, forever."
"Jin, what are you trying to say to me?" Kame's voice is unsteady, and he's looking at Jin with wide eyes. He looks…scared, Jin thinks, like he’s terrified of the words coming out of Jin’s mouth. But Jin can’t stop, now that he’s started. And Jin’s scared too. He’s never been more scared in his life, because he can’t turn back from this and pretend he’s never said it.
"Making American music...that's a dream of mine. Writing and singing music that resonates with me--it's something I have always wanted to do." Jin finally breaks from Kame's intense gaze, and looks up to the sky. "But Kame, what I wanted the most, for a long time, was to shine with you. Whether we were together on stage or not, I wanted to shine with you."
"Jin--"
"The problem was...the problem is...how can anyone shine as bright as the moon?" Jin laughs, and then the wind blows, and they both shiver as Jin catches Kame's gaze again. "I’m just a shepherd, after all. And I..."
"Oh Jin," Kame says, and he's looking at Jin with this expression of panic that cuts right through the wind and burns him, turning him to ash.
"And I loved... I love you, god, I've always loved you, since I was seventeen and too young to even know what it meant."
Jin can't bear to look at Kame anymore, with his flushed cheeks and open mouth, arms wrapped around himself as they stand quivering and cold in Kame's doorway, December wind pulling at Kame's hair. He's beautiful, and Jin has never loved anyone more than he loves Kame right now.
He squeezes his eyes shut, and takes a step backward, down off the front step. "I just..." Jin's fumbling and tripping over his words now. "I just wanted to tell you that when I left the group, it was just about music. It wasn't about my heart. You had that. You kept that. I wasn't leaving you, Kame."
Jin takes a ragged gasp of air, and the cold stings in his lungs. “Jin…”
“So even if you said goodbye to our old dream, even if you don’t love me…the same way as I love you,” and those words barely make it out because the idea of it hurts him so damn much. “Please don’t say goodbye to me.” Jin tries to tell himself he isn’t crying, but Jin’s never been good at lying, not even to himself. He reaches out and roughly grabs Kame’s wrist, pulling Kame’s hand toward him, palm up. Kame’s skin is cold, too cold, because he’s standing halfway outside with no coat in the dead middle of winter. Jin’s other hand drops the silver necklace into Kame’s hand, and closes Kame’s fingers around it. “You’re my dream too. I don’t want to let you go. I don’t want you to let me go.” The silver chain is hanging between Kame’s fingers.
And then Jin spins on his heel, and walks briskly back to the cab, climbing in and nodding to the driver to go, tears freezing on his face. He tells the man Yamapi's address, and braves a look out the window as the driver shifts gears.
Kame is standing completely out the door now, and the wind is whipping at his sweater, and Jin can't see the expression on his face. But his porch-light is on, and he's illuminated, glowing against the backdrop of the night sky.
#
"You did what now?" Yamapi asks as he pours Jin and himself another shot. They're piss drunk, now, and Jin's lying on his back on the floor, hazy eyes trying to focus on the ceiling.
He'd shown up at Pi's place about three hours ago, and Pi had taken one look at his face and abandoned him in the genkan to get two shot glasses and a handle of Absolut.
Jin had shed his thick coat in the doorway, not bothering to hang it up, and yanked off his boots and followed Yamapi like a puppy into the living room, and now he's laying on the floor on his back, hands linked and resting on his stomach.
"I sort of...told Kame I was madly in love with him," Jin slurs, for the second time, and then he closes his eyes to stop the room from spinning.
"You are?" Yamapi asks, before he lays down on the floor next to Jin. His own speech is far from steady, and Jin thinks the best friends are the ones who will get drunk with you before they even start asking questions.
"Yeah," Jin says, more sighing than speaking, and Yamapi laughs.
"Well, I kind of figured, but you never really talked about it so I started to wonder if it was something else."
"I'm so stupid," Jin says. "He'll probably never talk to me again. He's probably still heartbroken over Anne, or whatever her name was, or stressed about work, or you know, not gay."
Jin sighs, and the whole thing just pours out of him, like a terrible Telemundo soap opera.
"Wait, wait, back up and tell me about the part where you fled before he could answer by jumping into a cab again," Yamapi says, and he's curling up into a ball as his shoulders shake. "What, are you thirteen?"
"Oh god," Jin says, melodramatically throwing his arm over his eyes. "Stop laughing at me." He hiccups, and he's starting to feel a little sick. "I feel terrible enough already. You don't have to rub it in."
"Dude, you confessed your gay love to Kamenashi and then ran like a sissy before he could even get a word in." Yamapi rolls over to face Jin, flushed face supported by his bent arm. "I don't know why you're even here if you didn't want to get laughed at."
"I dunno," Jin says. "Maybe I just wanted my best friend to support me in my time of romantic misery?" Jin scowls, and he wants to shove Yamapi, but he feels to dizzy to move. "What did I do when you broke up with Maki?"
"You bought me a stripper," Yamapi replies. "Jin, I'm not buying you a man-stripper. I can't have that kind of transaction on my credit card."
"I'm not gay, Jin bellows. “It's just Kame. It's always been Kame." It's strange, Jin thinks, how his face feels numb but his heart is still aching. Alcohol's funny like that, he thinks, because it never takes away the pain you actually want it to.
"I don't think my neighbors heard you, Jin. You should yell a little louder."
"The point is," Jin says, more quietly. "I didn't laugh at you. I was there for you."
"And I'll be here for you," Yamapi says. "But I can't let this confess-and-run pass. As a friend, I owe it to you to help you learn from your mistakes."
"Why does it hurt so much?" Jin asks, and Yamapi stops laughing, propping himself up on his elbows so he can look down at Jin solemnly.
"Because you've been in love with the same person for more than twelve years, and now you're faced with the prospect of having to get over it." Yamapi blows air out of his nose, and it makes his nostrils flare.
"That seems so impossible," Jin whispers, and in the end, it does, because Kame is threaded into every aspect of Jin's life now. Every moment of Jin's history since he was fourteen, and now through his life in LA, too. Kame is everywhere Jin goes, and he's in everything Jin sees, and he blows through Jin's thoughts every moment Jin is awake, and every moment he's asleep too, like a gentle spring breeze.
Yamapi pushes at Jin's shoulder with his forearm. "Mario Kart?"
"No thanks," Jin says, and his throat is tightening and his eyes are starting to tear up. "I think I'd like to just wallow."
"That’s cool," Yamapi replies, ruffling Jin's hair like he's the elder of them. "We can do that too."
“Thanks,” Jin says, voice cracking. They both pretend he isn’t crying, because they’re best friends, and that’s the sort of thing you ignore.
But Yamapi does hand Jin a tissue, a little later. “Damn it Jin,” he whispers. “I thought I told you not to get yourself hurt,” and Jin had known he was coming to the right place for comfort.
#
When Jin leaves Japan, it’s with a heavy heart and a resolute mind.
His plane leaves in the middle of the night. Jin watches the moon get smaller and smaller out of the plane window.
He feels like he’s left everything on Kame’s doorstep—his hope, his heart and his truth. He keeps imagining the silver chain of that necklace from Olvera Street hanging through the spaces between Kame’s fingers. Then he imagines it falling into the snow, silver glinting on a bed of white.
#
When Jin dreams, Kame’s holding his heart instead of that necklace, and it’s Jin’s heart melting and slipping from Kame’s hand down onto the snow.
#
O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!
-- Endymion, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#
Jin keeps hoping that Kame will call. That Kame will write. That Kame won’t just ignore Jin for the rest of Jin’s whole life while Jin holds the broken pieces of his heart in his own hands.
But the phone doesn’t ring. He doesn’t get a letter or an email.
Japan has never seemed so far away to Jin.
It’s just like before, Jin thinks. Maybe all Kame can offer Jin, now, is silence.
It’s the new moon.
#
There’s something almost serene about heartbreak. In knowing you’ve said all the things you’ve had to say, and that all your cards on the table.
So even though Jin’s in pieces, and his house feels lonely and there are little bits of Kame around every corner, he’s calm.
If he’s honest with himself, he’s calmer than he’s been in a long time.
He throws himself into recording for his new album, and doesn’t think about how sharp and longing the notes sound when he listens to them on playback.
#
Winter fades to early spring, and Jin still feels raw.
There is nothing from Kame but silence.
#
Jin comes home tired from his recording session, throat raw and eyes heavy. He can't wait to lie down in bed, with his clothes on, and sleep until noon, because it's just been that kind of day.
He opens the door, and slips out of his shoes, hanging his jacket on the coat-rack he keeps in the foyer.
That's when he notices the light in the kitchen. That's funny, Jin thinks, because he'd left in the middle of the day, and there's no way he would have left it on, because he wouldn't have turned it on, not in the bright daylight of a Los Angeles spring.
The last thing Jin expects is Kame, sitting casually on the edge of his kitchen counter, a mug of coffee in his hands. Kame's wearing tastefully faded jeans, and he's cut his hair-- it barely reaches his chin, and it falls in gentle waves around his face. "You got a haircut," Jin says as he drops his bag on the floor next to the kitchen table, because he doesn't know what else to say.
"I did," Kame replies, mouth quirking into a tiny little smile. It's his Jin smile.
"How...?" Jin's not sure what he's asking. It might be any number of things, but he doesn't really get the chance to think about it, because Kame is staring at him over the rim of the coffee cup as he takes a sip, and Jin loses his ability to think in the depths of those eyes.
"You showed me where you keep the extra key, remember? Under the flowerpot on the front porch."
"Right," Jin says, and his knees feel weak, and his heart is racing a mile a minute, and he can't take his eyes off of Kame, who is unfathomably here, in his kitchen, drinking Jin's coffee out of Jin's favorite mug. This time, he’s not wearing his shoes.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?" Kame says, and it rings in Jin's ears, just like it did eight months ago when Kame asked him that for the first time, standing in this same kitchen with dark circles under his eyes, thin and drawn and fragile.
"I told you once," Jin says, and then he stops, hand grabbing the island countertop for support. "I told you once," Jin starts again, "that if you needed me, for anything, I'd be there for you." Jin's eyes are still trapped in Kame's and he doesn't think he could look away even if he wanted to. "I'll always mean it."
"Because you love me," Kame says, and all the breath leaves Jin's body.
"Yes," Jin says, and he feels naked, like there's nothing hidden inside of him anymore. Kame can see him all now, knows everything Jin's ever kept from him.
Jin feels free.
"You're such an idiot," Kame says to him, and Jin blinks.
"What?" Jin asks, and his throat is so dry, and now it's not just from recording.
"I can't believe you showed up at my door in the middle of the winter and stood outside, telling me you've loved me, like, forever, and spewed Greek mythology at me before running away.”
Jin sputters, because now Kame is sliding off the counter, and setting his mug down on his vacated seat. "It wasn't exactly...planned," Jin replies, and Kame grins at him incredulously, his teeth perfect and white and Jin is mesmerized by how brightly Kame always shines.
"And got the mythology all mixed up, too," Kame continues, looping his thumbs through his belt loops and tilting his head to the side. As he does so, there’s a glint around his neck, and Jin’s eyes trace the line of the silver necklace with it’s round pendant to where it sits in the hollow of Kame’s neck.
"Um," Jin says, and in his imagination, he's always eloquent at times like this. But the reality is that Jin's only good with words when he's writing them down to tell a story in lyrics. The rest of the time he just absolutely crashes and burns, in Japanese and in English. He doesn't even know what he would say, really, because he's not sure what's going on, only that Kame is so close to him now that the smell of hibiscus flowers is wafting into Jin's nose and Jin wants, more than anything, to pull Kame even closer and bury his nose in that lemon-scented hair.
"It's true," Kame says, "that Endymion the shepherd loved the moon for all eternity. But." Kame pauses, and his hands slip from his belt loops to slowly come up to Jin's face, cupping Jin's face between his strong square hands. "You forgot the most important part, Jin."
"I did?" Jin whispers, as Kame's thumbs swipe softly across the skin of Jin's cheeks. Jin feels like he's running a race, like he'll never be able to catch his breath. Something that might just be hope is blooming in his chest, unfolding like the first hibiscuses of spring, pinks and golds and yellows and reds, and maybe every other color too, and Kame is just looking at him, eyes wide and honest and perfect.
"Yeah, stupid," Kame says, and now there's a slight waver in his voice, and Kame is so close that Jin can see the crooked shape of Kame's nose in sharp focus. "The moon loved him back."
And then Kame is kissing him, his thin lips feeling so much fuller as they press up against Jin's, and Jin is helpless to the assault, mouth falling open to Kame with no resistance. “Kame,” Jin mumbles against Kame’s mouth, and then he’s closing his eyes.
Kame’s mouth tastes like coffee, and like honey at the same time, and Jin wonders if he’s ever felt anything as intensely as he feels Kame licking his way slowly into Jin’s mouth, his tongue caressing Jin’s and making Jin forget everything, even his own name. Kame’s hands slide into Jin’s hair and drag his face down, so that Kame can press himself even tighter, and Jin’s hands come up to rest on Kame’s hips, thumbs resting along the line of Kame’s belt as he kisses Kame back.
Kame pulls away from Jin, and they’re both breathing hard, and Kame’s eyes glow ethereal as stares at Jin. Jin lets one hand drift up to Kame’s face, and Kame’s eyes flutter shut, delicate like a new butterfly, as Jin pushes a piece of loose hair out of his face, tucking it behind Kame’s ear. “Can I…?”
“Yes,” Kame says, and this time, Jin kisses Kame, fusing their mouths together with no hesitation.
There’s always been a spark between them; an electricity that charges through Jin and makes his hair stand on end. Jin wonders, if now, as his hand falls back to Kame’s hips and he pulls Kame flush against him, if that electricity will set them both on fire.
Kame’s soft gasps into his mouth make Jin want to know how he lived before this moment, how he’d thought his life was complete without the sound of Kame’s low moans and Kame’s slick, hot mouth moving beneath his own, and the feeling of Kame’s strong square hands roaming across the muscles in Jin’s shoulders, clutching at Jin’s sweatshirt to pull him closer.
Kame pushes at him, and Jin stumbles back, through the living room, never letting Kame pull back, clutching at Kame’s hips and making him follow so closely that their legs tangle together, tripping and stumbling until Jin’s back hits the railing of the stairway. Jin lets out a soft gasp at the impact, and Kame chuckles against his lips, and it might be the sexiest sound Jin has ever heard, all low and deep and resonating beneath Jin’s hands, which have made their way up to Kame’s waist.
“Do you think you can let me go long enough to walk up the stairs?” Kame asks, and Jin swallows as Kame’s hand makes its way under his sweatshirt to rub a slow circle into the skin at Jin’s hip right above the waist of Jin’s sweatpants.
“No,” Jin says honestly, and then blushes as Kame lets out a full laugh, grabbing Jin’s wrists and leading him up the stairs, Jin fumbling his way up, eyes trained on Kame’s kiss swollen lips and laughing eyes.
Jin wonders if he would follow Kame right off a cliff, and not even realize it until he feels himself hurtling off the edge.
At the top of the stairs, Kame starts kissing Jin again. It’s addicting, the way Kame makes Jin feel, like there’s no gravity in the room and Jin is floating, anchored only by the silky stroke of Kame’s tongue against his own, and the brush of Kame’s callused thumbs against the fevered flesh of Jin’s torso.
Kame makes a disgruntled sound, tugging at Jin’s sweatshirt, and Jin hurriedly takes it off, throwing it somewhere in the hallway, and then he’s dragging Kame’s top off too, throwing it the same direction as he’d thrown his own. Kame is laughing at him even as Jin’s hands eagerly run up and down Kame’s bare sides, and as he drops tiny kisses along Kame’s neck, he feels Kame’s laughs against the sensitive shell of his ear, and it makes him shudder.
“You’re such a mess,” Kame says.
“Do you really care right now?” Jin says, and Kame’s laughter stops, and then Jin’s breathing stops, because Kame is running exploring hands up the front of Jin’s chest, brushing across his nipples before roaming down his ribs.
“No,” Kame whispers, and then they’re falling through Jin’s bedroom door, and Jin is tripping over a sneaker as he sheds his pants and socks, and Kame steps easily out of his jeans. Jin swears and Kame chuckles, and then Jin shoves Kame down to his bed, scrambling on top of him and kissing him so fiercely he loses track of time and space and everything that’s not Kame. The first touch of flesh against flesh has Jin hissing into Kame’s mouth, and Kame groans, too, and it just makes Jin want to kiss him harder as he relishes the feeling of Kame’s square, narrow hips between his thighs, and the brush of Kame’s chest against his own. Their erections slip across each other, and arousal clenches like a fist in Jin’s belly, sending warmth down his legs and making him shiver.
Jin lets himself look down at Kame, with his hair mussed and his chest heaving, eyes narrowed beneath perfectly arched eyebrows. This is it, Jin thinks. This is everything.
“You’re wearing the necklace,” Jin says, fingering it lightly as he kisses the skin around it and beneath it, enjoying the way Kame comfortably shifts closer to him, hands running up and down Jin’s sides. It’s like when they were younger, but it’s also completely different, because Kame’s touches are filled with intent, and now when Jin gets the urge to cover Kame’s mouth with his own and move his way inside it, he can. He seals their mouths together, and Kame quickly takes control of the kiss, lifting up and caressing Jin’s tongue with his own, making Jin gasp into his mouth. Jin feels like Kame’s hands are everywhere at once, like he’s surrounded by Kame’s heat and Kame’s scent, and like he’s drowning in Kame, who is perfect in this moment, eager and hungry beneath him.
Jin breaks away for air, kissing across Kame’s face, pressing fluttering kisses to his jaw before trailing down to his neck. Kame sighs, hands coming to rest on the small of Jin’s back as Jin’s kisses turn open-mouthed, leaving a trail of saliva in his wake as he makes his way down to Kame’s collarbones. Jin’s arms support his weight as he licks and sucks across them, and Kame shifts beneath him, tiny groans escaping from his throat when Jin blows warm air along the line of wet skin.
“The necklace…It looks like the moon,” Kame replies when Jin’s eyes find his in the dark. Kame’s hair is spread around him, burnt red waves against the stark white of Jin’s sheets, and his eyes are heavy lidded and smoldering. Jin feels like he’s going to explode, like he can’t contain all the feelings swirling inside of him, like he’s so full of hope and joy and love that there’s no way his skin can hold it all in.
“I love you,” Jin says, and then Kame is moving, flipping them over so now it is Jin who lies on his back, and Kame who has to lean down to join their mouths back together. “Oh god, I love you.”
And then Kame slides down him, and Kame is taking Jin’s cock between his lips, mouth stretching around its girth and eyes never leaving Jin’s face. It’s hot and wet and feels so good, and Jin tangles his hands in Kame’s hair, silently urging him on as he trembles and lets tiny moans escape his throat, even as he bites down hard on his lower lip at the overwhelming pleasure as Kame’s tongue circles slowly around the head of his cock. Jin can’t hold back the mewling sound that fights its way out when Kame takes him all the way in, his hands softly stroking Jin’s inner thighs and subtly holding Jin down as Jin gets closer to the edge.
“Do you have…?” Kame says, and Jin sticks a hand out, blindly finding the drawer of his bedside table, and grabs the tiny basket he keeps there. Kame smirks. “Organized where it counts, huh?” Kame says, and then Jin is too distracted to reply, because Kame is easing a lubed finger inside of him.
It’s like nothing Jin’s ever felt before. It stings, but it’s not really uncomfortable, and he likes the way Kame’s eyes surge with heat as Jin spreads his legs wider to give Kame more access. “Relax,” Kame says, and then he’s working in a second finger, stretching and scissoring, and Jin feels his breath coming faster and faster. He wants to close his eyes, to just feel, but he also doesn’t want to miss a second of the doting look on Kame’s face, or the way Kame shivers at the tight embrace of Jin around his fingers, or the way Kame’s mouth is parted as he breathes.
Kame brushes against something inside him, with the addition of a third finger, that makes Jin’s world flash in almost unbearable bright color, and makes his abs clench and his hips lift off the bed. “Did I find it?” Kame asks, and Jin nods, and his hair is plastered to his neck with sweat, his entire body tight with desire and need.
“Just…” Jin starts, and Kame’s other hand, the one not inside of him, teasing him into madness, runs a soothing line up Jin’s shaft, and Jin feels like he’s falling apart. “Please,” he says instead, and Kame’s fingers slip from him.
When Kame presses inside of him, much larger than the fingers had been, Jin feels stretched and whole, and Kame, strong arms on either side of him, is beautiful, throat bared to Jin’s devouring eyes, hair wet and skin shining with sweat. Jin pulls his legs up to his chest, holding them there, and just feels. Kame is shaking with the effort of holding still, and for just a moment, Jin savors everything—the cotton digging into his back, the way his cock aches to be touched, the way he feels full in every way, joined with Kame just like this.
Then he whispers “Move,” and Kame is pulling out and slamming back in, and Jin cries out as Kame hits that spot inside him that makes him see stars, makes him feel like he is a star, burning hot and white in the night sky.
Jin’s world is spinning faster and faster, and he reaches out, clutching desperately at Kame’s back, nails digging into Kame’s flesh and making Kame grunt and Jin just drinks in the sounds and the tightening, and he feels himself getting closer to completion.
“Jin, I’m going to—“
“Me too,” Jin manages to gasp out, and then he slips a hand between them to wrap around his own cock. After only a few jerks he comes, and Kame chokes as Jin clenches around him, thrusting into Jin through Jin’s orgasm, and then he’s collapsing down on top of Jin, and Jin’s wondering if he’s ever felt so complete.
#
“I’m sorry I took so long,” Kame says.
“You’re here now,” Jin replies.
“It was scary,” Kame says. “When you showed up at my door, saying all these things I never thought you’d say, and feeling all these things I never thought you’d feel, it was scary. I’d never ever thought… I wasn’t prepared for it. I’ve never been like you. I have to think about every consequence, figure out every way it could go wrong and every way it can go right. I can’t just do it and hope for the best—“
“Kame,” Jin says. “You’re here now.” Jin can feel Kame’s breathing slow beside him, chest moving up and down at the same steady pace as Jin’s heart. “You’re here now.”
“It’ll be hard,” Kame says to Jin, as Jin runs his fingertips up and down the line along the center of Kame’s stomach.
“Everything with you is hard,” Jin says. “But right now, this?” Jin gestures to how they lay, wrapped together, skin to skin, sweat cooling on their backs and Jin’s head tucked into the hollow of Kame’s neck. “This feels easy.” Jin drops a kiss on Kame’s sweaty forehead.
“I never imagined being in an intercontinental romance,” Kame muses. “But I guess we’ll try our best.”
“I love you too much to let you go,” Jin tells Kame, and Kame looks up at him like Jin is sixteen and Kame is fourteen, and Jin has all the answers. “So our best is good enough.”
Kame swallows, and Jin thinks he might cry. “I love you too,” Kame says. “I love you so much.”
“I’ll leap enough for the both of us,” Jin says.
And then Kame laces their fingers together and smiles, so bright and warm that Jin feels like nothing will ever hurt again, and Jin thinks that he’d swim across the Pacific Ocean just to see that smile again.
#
“Mama!” Jin says, when he accepts the call.
He’s in the parking lot again. He leans back in the driver’s seat, and takes off his sunglasses, closing his eyes.
“Jin, how are you?” Jin’s mother says into the phone, and Jin taps his fingers on the steering wheel, humming as he thinks about an answer.
“I’m great,” Jin says. “I’m wonderful.”
“I thought you might be,” Jin’s mom says. “Kame-chan stopped by to visit me yesterday and tell me you two were seeing each other.”
“What?” Jin shouts into the phone, before he quickly lowers his voice. “Mom, I can explain—“
“You don’t have to, Jin. You know I don’t care.” Jin’s mom laughs, and Jin can imagine the gloating expression on his mother’s face when she says her next words. “I always knew something had happened between you and Kame-chan.”
“Oh god, mother, please do not speculate about—“
“I guess I don’t have to bug you about getting a girlfriend anymore,” Jin’s mother muses, and Jin would be melting with embarrassment if the thought of Kame being his didn’t make him feel so gleeful. “Now that you’re Kame’s girlfriend, I mean.”
“I am not Kame’s girlfriend,” Jin squawks indignantly, and Jin’s mother laughs even louder.
“But Jin,” she says, in a more serious voice, and Jin licks his lips, opening his eyes and taking in the sight of the los Angeles afternoon, bright sun beating down on the pedestrians bringing their groceries to their cars. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
“Me too,” Jin says, and then he smiles, because this is a dream he can chase for the rest of his life.
#
Later, Jin gets an email from Yamapi.
I heard you're Kame's girlfriend now, it says, and Jin scowls at his iPhone screen, even as the joy he hasn't been quite able to dampen bubbles up in his gut and froths through his whole body at the thought of Kame. Jin feels like he's flying.
Stop hanging out all the time with my mom, Jin mails back, and Yamapi sends him a picture of a naked woman in response, that Jin quickly deletes before someone in line behind him at Starbucks looks over his shoulder and gets the wrong idea.
He thinks of Kame, who he’s going to visit in Japan next week, and he feels that familiar excitement raging inside him, and this time, Jin lets it consume him.
#
When Jin closes his eyes, he dreams of Spring, lemon and hibiscus and the colors of new life.
When he opens them, Spring is waiting for him with a wicked smile and a warm bubbling laugh, with laced together fingers and a mouth that tastes like the evening rain.
And in the night, Jin wraps his arms around the Moon, and they shine together.
Pairing: Kame/Jin
Rating: NC-17
Summary: Jin dreams of the moon, over and over and over again.
Suddenly, living alone is so hard. Jin's house, which over the last four weeks, had been filled with laughter, with moments of tenseness and moments of idyllic ease, too, is now eerily quiet.
Jin makes enough coffee for two people every day for a week, and then he feels guilty and drinks twice as much as he should.
That's not why he can't sleep, though.
He can't sleep because Kame is gone, and Jin, like an idiot, had left his heart open for destruction.
Jin had known Kame wouldn't, couldn’t, stay forever. His life and career are back in Japan, after all, and even if Kame had come to Jin for a reprieve, it was always going to be a temporary one.
But that doesn't make Jin feel less shattered, less bereft.
Without the moon's gravity, Jin just spins faster and faster on his axis, and until he feels like he'll spin right out of control.
#
Jin gets an envelope in the mail, just white with his name on it in block printed English letters and the kanji written smaller underneath. There’s no return address in the upper left corner, and there are four Japanese stamps lined up neatly in the upper right.
Inside are four photographs.
The first picture is of Olvera Street as it turns to dusk, the stall lights glowing against the setting sun. Jin remembers this picture, Kame standing in the middle of the road, camera held up to his eye and a smile teasing at his lips.
The second picture is of Kame’s shoes, untied and sitting in Jin’s foyer, amidst all of Jin’s shoes. They look like they belong there.
The third picture is of Jin’s yard, and of Jin, feet in the pool with his guitar in his lap, lyric notebook by his side. The picture was taken from the kitchen window, Jin thinks, because the corner of the picture has a glare from the glass, and Jin can see a tiny bit of the yellow daffodils he keeps on the windowsill above the sink.
The fourth picture is of Jin, too. It’s Jin, mouth parted in surprise, hands in his pockets and staring at the camera. Staring at Kame. Beneath his feet is the Walk of Fame, burgundy marbled stars making a path that goes into the distance behind him.
Jin takes in the look in his own eyes—it’s the look of a man who has fallen in love with the moon, he thinks, a man filled with some kind of dizzying, terrible passion that he’ll never escape.
On the back of the fourth picture, it says “You’ll have one of these stars someday. Good luck on your concert,” in Kame’s usual leftward slanting handwriting, and Jin traces the kanji with his fingertip, imagining Kame scrawling the note hastily, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.
It feels like goodbye.
#
Kamenashi’s back, Yamapi’s email says. Johnny didn’t even suspend him, the lucky bastard. I should disappear for a month and refuse to tell anyone where I was.
Jin’s fingers shake as he replies. Where would you go? You couldn’t come here. Johnny would find you in twenty-four hours.
There’s no response to Jin’s email, for about ten hours, and then Yamapi sends him another mail. Are you okay?
I will be, is Jin’s answer, and he hopes it’s true.
#
"You want to go out?" Lizzy asks, and Jin knows he should say yes, because he hasn't done much, when he’s not in rehearsal, but mope pitifully around his house for five days, and he probably hasn't changed his clothes either. “I know we have rehearsal again in the morning but…”
"No," Jin says into the phone, and Lizzy sighs.
"That's it, Jin. I'm coming over."
Without fail Lizzy shows up with Aubree and an oversized bag of chalupas from Taco Bell, and carrying a two-liter of Pepsi. Jin opens the door to them, and they waltz in without fanfare, Lizzy dropping the greasy bag onto Jin's coffee table as they both collapse on Jin's sofa.
"Have a chalupa," Aubree says, tossing Jin a wrapped packed that smells of salsa and beef. He catches it. It's warm.
"I'm not very hungry," Jin says, staring down at the chalupa in his hand like he's never seen one before.
"It's worse than we thought, Liz," Aubree says. "Jin is turning down Taco Bell."
"Where's Kame?" Lizzy asks, as she takes a bite of her own chalupa, and Jin wants to make a dirty joke about the sour cream all over her face, but he doesn't, because hearing Kame's name on someone else's lips sends him right back down into wallowing misery.
"He's gone," Jin says, and even though he means to sound steady and nonchalant, his voice cracks revealingly.
"Oh," says Lizzy, and Aubree is looking at him through narrowed eyes.
"That's why you're all depressed, isn't it?" Aubree asks him, setting her own food down on the coffee table next to the bag. "Because Kame's gone."
"Of course not," Jin says, eyes shifting away from the two girls on the couch as he sinks down in one of the chairs. "Don't be ridiculous."
"You're the worst liar ever," Lizzy says, taking another bite. "It's normal to be upset when a friend leaves, especially one you don’t get to see very often. But seriously, Jin. This is Taco Bell." She opens the two-liter of Pepsi and drinks straight from the bottle. "You're acting like a lovesick girl."
"Don't be ridiculous," Jin says again, unwrapping his chalupa and shoving it in his mouth, fitting almost half of it inside in a single bite. He can feel his face turning red though, and his gut churning, and the chalupa tastes like nothing on his tongue. He chews anyway.
"Oh my god," Aubree says, and she's studying him now. He red hair is falling around he face, and she looks too young to have such a serious face. Jin's a Japanese pop star, though, and he knows looking young doesn't have much to do with maturity or actual age. "You are. You’re lovesick!"
"Lovesick over what, now?" Lizzy asks, and Aubree whips around and grabs the soda bottle from Lizzy's hand. "Hey, I was drinking that!"
"Kame, Liz. Jin's lovesick over Kame!" Jin tries to curl into himself as they both turn back to look at him.
"I never said that," Jin defends weakly.
"You didn't have to," Aubree says. "Your face is totally transparent, dork." Aubree reaches into the bag and pulls out a handful of napkins, shoving them at Jin. "You've got sour cream all over your face."
"So you like boys?" Lizzy says, sitting up and resting her elbows on her knees. She sets her chin in her upward facing palms. "Why am I not surprised, Jinnifer?"
"Shut up," Jin says. "I don't like boys. It's just Kame. I love Kame."
It's the first time he's admitted it aloud, Jin realizes, all of a sudden. He's felt it, for years and years, and he's thought it, to himself, when the lights are out. Yamapi knows, he thinks, but it's not because Jin ever said it, it's just because Yamapi can read his mind with his freaky best-friend mind powers.
"Wow," Aubree says, and Jin gulps, and wishes the chair would swallow him whole. "Does he know?"
"No," Jin replies. "Of course not." Jin takes another bite of his chalupa. "It doesn't matter. I can make it stop. I'll get over it soon."
"Yeah," Lizzy says. "You really look like you're on the right path, what with the wallowing and the not dating anyone ever." Jin gives her the finger, and she laughs. "You should just tell him."
"Out of the question."
"Then you'll never know what could happen," Aubree says quietly.
"You can't touch the moon," Jin says. "You can only watch it from the Earth and admire how brightly it shines."
"Okay," Lizzy says. "This is unacceptable. Jin is making up terrible song lyrics and there are uneaten chalupas on the coffee table." Lizzy crosses her arms. "Jin, grow some balls. Clearly, you've been in love with Kame since forever. Don't you think you should tell him? Or move on? Or something? This is kind of pathetic."
Jin knows she's right. It's the same thing he's been telling his heart for years, even when he was just trying to get over their friendship, and before Kame wandered into his home and back into his life, Jin had almost convinced himself that he'd gotten over it.
But now, he's raw all over again, because when he closes his eyes all he can see is Kame's brilliant smile and the warmth of his hands and the gentle cadence of his laugh, the real one, the one that Kame doesn't show the cameras or his colleagues. All he can do is remember that this feeling, the swelling inside of him like the tide pulling the waves-- this feeling is love, and no matter how far he runs, he can't catch it or escape it.
"Pass me the Pepsi," Jin says, and Aubree smiles at him softly. "And I'll try."
#
In the two days leading up to Jin’s concert, he doesn’t give himself time to sleep, or time to breathe. He fills every moment he can with dancing and singing and going, because it’s those quiet moments, the ones where he’s waiting for the tech guys to change the position of a light, or where he and all the dancers have stretched out on their backs, guzzling water from water bottles and inhaling huge gulps of air into their exhausted bodies… Those are the moments where Kame creeps up on him, where Jin imagines the scent of lemons and wants to wrap his arms around his own knees and try and push the hurt back down to where he can’t see it.
#
Jin’s revelation, as they always do, comes at the most inconvenient of times, when too many people are watching and the stakes are too high.
When Jin had first dreamed of an American career, he hadn’t dreamt of the status quo, performing in smaller venues to crowds of moderate sizes. He’d dreamed of this: filling a huge stadium just like this, with thousands of people all coming to hear his music-- his music, that he was proud of and loved and wanted to be singing.
Jin didn’t get here, to this moment, by accepting things they way they were. He’d had to reach out and grab onto his dream with both hands, despite all the people he’d had to disappoint, and all the people who’d told him that it was crazy and reckless and hopeless.
As Jin belts out ‘The Fifth Season’, sitting on a stool with just a microphone in the middle of a massive stage, black fedora sitting heavy on his brow and sweat pouring down his face, Jin can’t help but think that this is it. This is his American Dream, right here, sweaty and hot and scary and perfect.
Jin knows, he’s always known, that the things he works the hardest for are the things that he wants the most.
As Jin sings his heart out, he thinks of Kame. Kame’s secret smiles and Kame’s short fingers and Kame’s moles to the right side of his mouth, and the way Kame is wonderful, in so many tiny impossible ways, ways that Jin doesn’t even know how to describe because Kame does them as naturally as he breathes.
It occurs to Jin, at that moment, as the word overflowing tumbles over his lips, that he doesn’t want the status quo. He doesn’t want things to be like before, where he pushes everything to do with Kame to the darkest corner of his heart and tries to make it disappear. He’s tired of trying to pretend like thinking about Kame doesn’t make his gut twist and his hands tremble. He’s tired of pretending that Kame isn’t one of the things he wants most.
Jin isn’t afraid of failure. Jin isn’t afraid of jumping from the top of the highest mountain and spreading his arms wide and finding out then and there if he can fly.
So Jin doesn’t know why he’s so afraid of love, because love is just like anything else Jin’s ever dreamed of—big and scary and impossible, and worth the risk.
Jin doesn’t know what Kame will say, or what Kame will do, if Jin tells him that he loves him. All he knows is that he wants to reach out and grab onto his dream with both hands.
As far as epiphanies go, this one’s pretty major, and Jin would have a major epiphany at the most inopportune moment, during a stage show, in the middle of a song, in front of thousands of people who are watching him with bated breath at he hits a high note.
But Jin doesn’t stumble, and he doesn’t forget the words.
Jin thinks it’s because Kame chose this song, and maybe Jin is singing it for him.
After the show, Jin can still feel the adrenaline rushing through his body, making him feel like Superman, and maybe like anything is possible.
“So, how’s it feel to have accomplished your dream?” Dom says, as Jin guzzles water from a giant orange nalgene bottle.
“I’ve got more than one dream,” Jin says, and the words sit in the air, and then, in Jin’s heart, they harden into resolve.
#
Christmas is beautiful in Tokyo. One of the things Jin misses about Japan is the seasons. There are seasons in Los Angeles, too, but in Japan, each season has a mood to it, a certain atmosphere, and the weather changes are far more drastic, and far more beautiful.
A soft blanket of snow covers the ground when Jin steps outside and breathes in Tokyo air. Winter hits him all at once, and the stress of wrapping up his concert and movie promotions melts away in the arctic air, until Jin is left feeling cleansed.
His mother, who is waiting outside the airport in the parking lot with Reio, jumps out of the car and embraces him. “Welcome home, honey,” she says, and Jin feels like somehow, everything is going to be okay. His mother has that effect on him—she’s a pillar of strength, always in Jin’s corner.
“I’m home,” Jin replies, and she smiles.
#
Jin always has to stop by to visit Johnny, when he’s in Japan. The old man always leers at Jin, a cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth as he looks Jin up and down like he’s measuring his worth in U.S. dollars, and then nods.
“Movie sales are doing well,” Johnny says. “Movie’s a blockbuster here in Japan.”
“Thank you, sir,” Jin says.
“Your concert sold out in America, and Test Drive went Gold.”
“Yes, sir,” Jin repeats.
Johnny leans back in his black leather desk chair and sighs. “I guess you did alright, kid,” Johnny says. “I’m happy for you.”
Jin’s not used to receiving praise, not in this business. Jin’s used to receiving scathing criticisms about his personality, his free-time behavior, his lack of prowess in interviews and variety shows, his personal scandals, and his partying habits.
Jin thinks this might be the first time Johnny’s ever said something nice to him. It’s not that Johnny is mean, it’s just that Johnny has high expectations and a mind that’s one-hundred percent focused on marketing. It’s not that he’s kept Jin from doing what he wanted, or told Jin he wasn’t going to succeed. It’s just that he never told Jin he was.
It feels strange. It kind of makes Jin uncomfortable, to be praised. It makes him want to pull up his hood and hide, even though he likes it.
When he shuffles out of Johnny’s office, buttoning up his wool coat and pressing the button for the elevator, the last person he expects to run into is Koki.
“Hi,” Jin says, shifting his weight from foot to foot anxiously. “Long time no see.”
“Akanishi Jin?” Koki says, and then he slaps Jin on the back. “Man, how are you?”
“I’m…” Jin stops to think about his answer. “Well. Doing well.”
“That’s good to hear, man. Good to hear.” Koki is grinning at him, and Jin realizes he missed him.
“And you?” Jin says. “Still dating porn stars and having fun?”
“You bet,” Koki replies, with a lascivious wink.
The elevator dings, and Jin’s about to say goodbye, when he stops. “Do you…are you free right now? Do you want to have lunch?”
Koki’s eyes widen, and then his grin gets even larger. “Sure,” he says. “That sounds awesome.”
They walk side by side down the busy street, both of them in sunglasses and hats pulled low to protect their faces from both the fans and the biting winter wind. They stop at this okonomiyaki shop Jin hasn’t visited in years, and Koki orders enough food to feed four people because Jin “looks too thin.”
“So I heard your concert did really well. And I see your ugly face on movie posters everywhere these days, too. I feel like you’re haunting me in the loo.”
“Shut up,” Jin says with a laugh. “I’m having fun. Are you? How is…everyone?”
Koki leans forward and rests his head on his hands. “Well, I’m sure you heard about Kame-chan.”
Jin’s stomach flips. “What do you mean?” Jin asks carefully, his words tenuous.
“He disappeared for a month and won’t tell anyone where he went. And then he just comes into work one day like nothing happened.”
“Like nothing happened?” Jin queries, and Koki looks at him more closely.
“Well, he acted like he was in mourning for a while, but now he’s almost back to himself.” Koki tilts his head to the side. “Now tell me what you know.”
“What makes you think I know anything?” Jin asks, and his voice cracks, and he knows the jig is up.
“Jin,” Koki says, like Jin is saying something really stupid. Jin figures maybe he is.
“I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me. I’m a horrible liar.”
“Yes,” Koki says. “A horrible liar with information. Tell me what you know.”
“Kame was with me,” Jin says, and Koki chokes on his giant bite of pancake, coughing an onion back out onto his plate. “In Los Angeles.”
“Oh,” Koki says, after a few seconds of blank staring. “So that’s it.”
“What do you mean?” Jin asks, and Koki looks at him disbelievingly.
“Jin,” Koki says. “Kame-chan’s spent years trying to let you go. You two have always had this…thing.” Koki takes a sip of his water. “I guess that’s what the mourning was for.”
Jin doesn’t reply for a few moments. “I don’t want him to let me go,” Jin says quietly, and Koki’s gaze turns sharp. Jin wishes he could hide his thoughts right now, because he feels like I’m madly in unrequited love with Kame who is possibly trying to forget I exist is written all over his face, and he doesn’t want it to be.
“Then you should probably tell him that,” Koki says. He digs into his leather bag and pulls out a tiny Moleskine notebook and a pen. He tears a page out of the notebook, and then flips to the front. He copies something down on the paper, and then hands it to Jin.
“What’s this?”
“Kame’s address,” Koki replies. “I’d give you his number, but Kame doesn’t answer calls from numbers he doesn’t recognize.”
“Why are you giving me this?”
Jin hadn’t really had a plan, when he came to Japan, about what he was going to do about Kame.
Now Koki has dropped a plan into his lap.
“Now,” Koki says. “Now you don’t have any excuses not to go and tell Kame…whatever it is you have to tell him.” Koki smiles, and pours more soy sauce into his dish, before taking his chopsticks and ripping another piece off of their okonomiyaki. “If I were you, I’d just go over there and say everything there was to say, you know?”
Jin puts a piece of pancake in his mouth. He can taste the onion and the squid and the vinegary taste of soy sauce against his tongue. “You’re right,” Jin says, and Koki gasps.
“Did you just say that?” Koki says. “Did you really just admit I’m right?” He clutches his heart in fake shock. “Shit, maybe my little brothers should go to America. Clearly it makes you smarter.”
Jin chuckles, and then Koki raises his water glass. “What are we toasting?” Jin asks, raising his own glass.
“To old friends,” Koki answers, and the clink of the glasses resounds in Jin’s head.
#
Jin's still thinking about what Koki said when he hails a cab. He's got Kame's address clutched in his fingers, and his gut is churning with indecision and fear and love, so much love, so fierce and persistent that Jin doesn't think he'll be able to ignore it, ever again.
When the driver asks him "Where to?" Jin hesitates for only a moment before he hands the driver the slip of paper, crinkled and smeared from the grip of Jin's anxious fingers.
Kame lives in a quiet neighborhood. Jin had always imagined Kame living in a slick Tokyo high rise apartment, but the taxi driver drops Jin off in front of a small house, the kind of house Jin grew up in, with three bedrooms and a kitchen overlooking a modest backyard. Jin guesses it's the last place the paparazzi would think to look for a guy like Kame, with his perfectly pressed blazers and his overpriced jeans slung low on his hips.
But beside the front door is a bush, and Jin recognizes it as a hibiscus plant.
"Wait here," Jin says softly to the driver. "This will only take a few minutes."
The door is white, with black numbers down the side, and the knocker is simple, and brass. It's not what he expected, but it fits, Jin thinks, because it's effortlessly beautiful, like Kame himself is, in the morning, hair falling in soft waves down to broad shoulders and tiny moles littering his face and neck, oversized sweatshirt hanging low on his shoulder, and a smile in his eyes.
Jin is done hesitating, because his heart has never been more sure.
Jin rings Kame's doorbell, and Kame answers quickly, eyes widening as he takes in Jin at the door.
"It's rude," Jin says, lips trembling. "It's rude to leave without saying goodbye."
"It's rude to drop by without calling first, too," Kame says, and his smile is gentle.
"Never would have thought that out of the two of us, you'd be the most rude," Jin says, and then he shoves his hands into the pockets of his wool coat for warmth. He's got a knit cap pulled down over his ears but it's still so cold.
"Do you want to come in?" Kame asks, stepping aside.
"No," Jin answers. "I just want you to listen."
"I'm listening, then," Kame says, and Jin wonders if he's cold in just his soft blue corduroy pants and cashmere sweater, with it's deep v-neck, exposing his collarbones to the frigid winter night air.
"You asked me..." Jin takes a breath to steady himself. He feels dizzy, and so afraid. "You asked me why I left you. When it was that we started to have different dreams."
Kame nods, slowly, eyes never leaving Jin's.
"The answer isn't when I left for Los Angeles, the first time."
"It isn't?" Kame asks, and his voice is soft, like he's holding his breath.
"No, Kame, it was...it was way before that." Jin hunches his shoulders. He's always cold, and now he's shivering worse than usual. Jin's not good with this, with saying what's in his heart. He's still looking at Kame, who's starting to shiver too, goosebumps popping up on the bare part of his chest. "See, you were trying to become a star, but to me, you were already the moon."
"Jin, what?"
"Do you know the story of the shepherd and the moon?" Jin asks. "This poor shepherd fell in love with the moon, so high up in the sky that he'd never be able to reach. He just loved, and loved, and loved, forever."
"Jin, what are you trying to say to me?" Kame's voice is unsteady, and he's looking at Jin with wide eyes. He looks…scared, Jin thinks, like he’s terrified of the words coming out of Jin’s mouth. But Jin can’t stop, now that he’s started. And Jin’s scared too. He’s never been more scared in his life, because he can’t turn back from this and pretend he’s never said it.
"Making American music...that's a dream of mine. Writing and singing music that resonates with me--it's something I have always wanted to do." Jin finally breaks from Kame's intense gaze, and looks up to the sky. "But Kame, what I wanted the most, for a long time, was to shine with you. Whether we were together on stage or not, I wanted to shine with you."
"Jin--"
"The problem was...the problem is...how can anyone shine as bright as the moon?" Jin laughs, and then the wind blows, and they both shiver as Jin catches Kame's gaze again. "I’m just a shepherd, after all. And I..."
"Oh Jin," Kame says, and he's looking at Jin with this expression of panic that cuts right through the wind and burns him, turning him to ash.
"And I loved... I love you, god, I've always loved you, since I was seventeen and too young to even know what it meant."
Jin can't bear to look at Kame anymore, with his flushed cheeks and open mouth, arms wrapped around himself as they stand quivering and cold in Kame's doorway, December wind pulling at Kame's hair. He's beautiful, and Jin has never loved anyone more than he loves Kame right now.
He squeezes his eyes shut, and takes a step backward, down off the front step. "I just..." Jin's fumbling and tripping over his words now. "I just wanted to tell you that when I left the group, it was just about music. It wasn't about my heart. You had that. You kept that. I wasn't leaving you, Kame."
Jin takes a ragged gasp of air, and the cold stings in his lungs. “Jin…”
“So even if you said goodbye to our old dream, even if you don’t love me…the same way as I love you,” and those words barely make it out because the idea of it hurts him so damn much. “Please don’t say goodbye to me.” Jin tries to tell himself he isn’t crying, but Jin’s never been good at lying, not even to himself. He reaches out and roughly grabs Kame’s wrist, pulling Kame’s hand toward him, palm up. Kame’s skin is cold, too cold, because he’s standing halfway outside with no coat in the dead middle of winter. Jin’s other hand drops the silver necklace into Kame’s hand, and closes Kame’s fingers around it. “You’re my dream too. I don’t want to let you go. I don’t want you to let me go.” The silver chain is hanging between Kame’s fingers.
And then Jin spins on his heel, and walks briskly back to the cab, climbing in and nodding to the driver to go, tears freezing on his face. He tells the man Yamapi's address, and braves a look out the window as the driver shifts gears.
Kame is standing completely out the door now, and the wind is whipping at his sweater, and Jin can't see the expression on his face. But his porch-light is on, and he's illuminated, glowing against the backdrop of the night sky.
#
"You did what now?" Yamapi asks as he pours Jin and himself another shot. They're piss drunk, now, and Jin's lying on his back on the floor, hazy eyes trying to focus on the ceiling.
He'd shown up at Pi's place about three hours ago, and Pi had taken one look at his face and abandoned him in the genkan to get two shot glasses and a handle of Absolut.
Jin had shed his thick coat in the doorway, not bothering to hang it up, and yanked off his boots and followed Yamapi like a puppy into the living room, and now he's laying on the floor on his back, hands linked and resting on his stomach.
"I sort of...told Kame I was madly in love with him," Jin slurs, for the second time, and then he closes his eyes to stop the room from spinning.
"You are?" Yamapi asks, before he lays down on the floor next to Jin. His own speech is far from steady, and Jin thinks the best friends are the ones who will get drunk with you before they even start asking questions.
"Yeah," Jin says, more sighing than speaking, and Yamapi laughs.
"Well, I kind of figured, but you never really talked about it so I started to wonder if it was something else."
"I'm so stupid," Jin says. "He'll probably never talk to me again. He's probably still heartbroken over Anne, or whatever her name was, or stressed about work, or you know, not gay."
Jin sighs, and the whole thing just pours out of him, like a terrible Telemundo soap opera.
"Wait, wait, back up and tell me about the part where you fled before he could answer by jumping into a cab again," Yamapi says, and he's curling up into a ball as his shoulders shake. "What, are you thirteen?"
"Oh god," Jin says, melodramatically throwing his arm over his eyes. "Stop laughing at me." He hiccups, and he's starting to feel a little sick. "I feel terrible enough already. You don't have to rub it in."
"Dude, you confessed your gay love to Kamenashi and then ran like a sissy before he could even get a word in." Yamapi rolls over to face Jin, flushed face supported by his bent arm. "I don't know why you're even here if you didn't want to get laughed at."
"I dunno," Jin says. "Maybe I just wanted my best friend to support me in my time of romantic misery?" Jin scowls, and he wants to shove Yamapi, but he feels to dizzy to move. "What did I do when you broke up with Maki?"
"You bought me a stripper," Yamapi replies. "Jin, I'm not buying you a man-stripper. I can't have that kind of transaction on my credit card."
"I'm not gay, Jin bellows. “It's just Kame. It's always been Kame." It's strange, Jin thinks, how his face feels numb but his heart is still aching. Alcohol's funny like that, he thinks, because it never takes away the pain you actually want it to.
"I don't think my neighbors heard you, Jin. You should yell a little louder."
"The point is," Jin says, more quietly. "I didn't laugh at you. I was there for you."
"And I'll be here for you," Yamapi says. "But I can't let this confess-and-run pass. As a friend, I owe it to you to help you learn from your mistakes."
"Why does it hurt so much?" Jin asks, and Yamapi stops laughing, propping himself up on his elbows so he can look down at Jin solemnly.
"Because you've been in love with the same person for more than twelve years, and now you're faced with the prospect of having to get over it." Yamapi blows air out of his nose, and it makes his nostrils flare.
"That seems so impossible," Jin whispers, and in the end, it does, because Kame is threaded into every aspect of Jin's life now. Every moment of Jin's history since he was fourteen, and now through his life in LA, too. Kame is everywhere Jin goes, and he's in everything Jin sees, and he blows through Jin's thoughts every moment Jin is awake, and every moment he's asleep too, like a gentle spring breeze.
Yamapi pushes at Jin's shoulder with his forearm. "Mario Kart?"
"No thanks," Jin says, and his throat is tightening and his eyes are starting to tear up. "I think I'd like to just wallow."
"That’s cool," Yamapi replies, ruffling Jin's hair like he's the elder of them. "We can do that too."
“Thanks,” Jin says, voice cracking. They both pretend he isn’t crying, because they’re best friends, and that’s the sort of thing you ignore.
But Yamapi does hand Jin a tissue, a little later. “Damn it Jin,” he whispers. “I thought I told you not to get yourself hurt,” and Jin had known he was coming to the right place for comfort.
#
When Jin leaves Japan, it’s with a heavy heart and a resolute mind.
His plane leaves in the middle of the night. Jin watches the moon get smaller and smaller out of the plane window.
He feels like he’s left everything on Kame’s doorstep—his hope, his heart and his truth. He keeps imagining the silver chain of that necklace from Olvera Street hanging through the spaces between Kame’s fingers. Then he imagines it falling into the snow, silver glinting on a bed of white.
#
When Jin dreams, Kame’s holding his heart instead of that necklace, and it’s Jin’s heart melting and slipping from Kame’s hand down onto the snow.
#
O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!
-- Endymion, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#
Jin keeps hoping that Kame will call. That Kame will write. That Kame won’t just ignore Jin for the rest of Jin’s whole life while Jin holds the broken pieces of his heart in his own hands.
But the phone doesn’t ring. He doesn’t get a letter or an email.
Japan has never seemed so far away to Jin.
It’s just like before, Jin thinks. Maybe all Kame can offer Jin, now, is silence.
It’s the new moon.
#
There’s something almost serene about heartbreak. In knowing you’ve said all the things you’ve had to say, and that all your cards on the table.
So even though Jin’s in pieces, and his house feels lonely and there are little bits of Kame around every corner, he’s calm.
If he’s honest with himself, he’s calmer than he’s been in a long time.
He throws himself into recording for his new album, and doesn’t think about how sharp and longing the notes sound when he listens to them on playback.
#
Winter fades to early spring, and Jin still feels raw.
There is nothing from Kame but silence.
#
Jin comes home tired from his recording session, throat raw and eyes heavy. He can't wait to lie down in bed, with his clothes on, and sleep until noon, because it's just been that kind of day.
He opens the door, and slips out of his shoes, hanging his jacket on the coat-rack he keeps in the foyer.
That's when he notices the light in the kitchen. That's funny, Jin thinks, because he'd left in the middle of the day, and there's no way he would have left it on, because he wouldn't have turned it on, not in the bright daylight of a Los Angeles spring.
The last thing Jin expects is Kame, sitting casually on the edge of his kitchen counter, a mug of coffee in his hands. Kame's wearing tastefully faded jeans, and he's cut his hair-- it barely reaches his chin, and it falls in gentle waves around his face. "You got a haircut," Jin says as he drops his bag on the floor next to the kitchen table, because he doesn't know what else to say.
"I did," Kame replies, mouth quirking into a tiny little smile. It's his Jin smile.
"How...?" Jin's not sure what he's asking. It might be any number of things, but he doesn't really get the chance to think about it, because Kame is staring at him over the rim of the coffee cup as he takes a sip, and Jin loses his ability to think in the depths of those eyes.
"You showed me where you keep the extra key, remember? Under the flowerpot on the front porch."
"Right," Jin says, and his knees feel weak, and his heart is racing a mile a minute, and he can't take his eyes off of Kame, who is unfathomably here, in his kitchen, drinking Jin's coffee out of Jin's favorite mug. This time, he’s not wearing his shoes.
"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?" Kame says, and it rings in Jin's ears, just like it did eight months ago when Kame asked him that for the first time, standing in this same kitchen with dark circles under his eyes, thin and drawn and fragile.
"I told you once," Jin says, and then he stops, hand grabbing the island countertop for support. "I told you once," Jin starts again, "that if you needed me, for anything, I'd be there for you." Jin's eyes are still trapped in Kame's and he doesn't think he could look away even if he wanted to. "I'll always mean it."
"Because you love me," Kame says, and all the breath leaves Jin's body.
"Yes," Jin says, and he feels naked, like there's nothing hidden inside of him anymore. Kame can see him all now, knows everything Jin's ever kept from him.
Jin feels free.
"You're such an idiot," Kame says to him, and Jin blinks.
"What?" Jin asks, and his throat is so dry, and now it's not just from recording.
"I can't believe you showed up at my door in the middle of the winter and stood outside, telling me you've loved me, like, forever, and spewed Greek mythology at me before running away.”
Jin sputters, because now Kame is sliding off the counter, and setting his mug down on his vacated seat. "It wasn't exactly...planned," Jin replies, and Kame grins at him incredulously, his teeth perfect and white and Jin is mesmerized by how brightly Kame always shines.
"And got the mythology all mixed up, too," Kame continues, looping his thumbs through his belt loops and tilting his head to the side. As he does so, there’s a glint around his neck, and Jin’s eyes trace the line of the silver necklace with it’s round pendant to where it sits in the hollow of Kame’s neck.
"Um," Jin says, and in his imagination, he's always eloquent at times like this. But the reality is that Jin's only good with words when he's writing them down to tell a story in lyrics. The rest of the time he just absolutely crashes and burns, in Japanese and in English. He doesn't even know what he would say, really, because he's not sure what's going on, only that Kame is so close to him now that the smell of hibiscus flowers is wafting into Jin's nose and Jin wants, more than anything, to pull Kame even closer and bury his nose in that lemon-scented hair.
"It's true," Kame says, "that Endymion the shepherd loved the moon for all eternity. But." Kame pauses, and his hands slip from his belt loops to slowly come up to Jin's face, cupping Jin's face between his strong square hands. "You forgot the most important part, Jin."
"I did?" Jin whispers, as Kame's thumbs swipe softly across the skin of Jin's cheeks. Jin feels like he's running a race, like he'll never be able to catch his breath. Something that might just be hope is blooming in his chest, unfolding like the first hibiscuses of spring, pinks and golds and yellows and reds, and maybe every other color too, and Kame is just looking at him, eyes wide and honest and perfect.
"Yeah, stupid," Kame says, and now there's a slight waver in his voice, and Kame is so close that Jin can see the crooked shape of Kame's nose in sharp focus. "The moon loved him back."
And then Kame is kissing him, his thin lips feeling so much fuller as they press up against Jin's, and Jin is helpless to the assault, mouth falling open to Kame with no resistance. “Kame,” Jin mumbles against Kame’s mouth, and then he’s closing his eyes.
Kame’s mouth tastes like coffee, and like honey at the same time, and Jin wonders if he’s ever felt anything as intensely as he feels Kame licking his way slowly into Jin’s mouth, his tongue caressing Jin’s and making Jin forget everything, even his own name. Kame’s hands slide into Jin’s hair and drag his face down, so that Kame can press himself even tighter, and Jin’s hands come up to rest on Kame’s hips, thumbs resting along the line of Kame’s belt as he kisses Kame back.
Kame pulls away from Jin, and they’re both breathing hard, and Kame’s eyes glow ethereal as stares at Jin. Jin lets one hand drift up to Kame’s face, and Kame’s eyes flutter shut, delicate like a new butterfly, as Jin pushes a piece of loose hair out of his face, tucking it behind Kame’s ear. “Can I…?”
“Yes,” Kame says, and this time, Jin kisses Kame, fusing their mouths together with no hesitation.
There’s always been a spark between them; an electricity that charges through Jin and makes his hair stand on end. Jin wonders, if now, as his hand falls back to Kame’s hips and he pulls Kame flush against him, if that electricity will set them both on fire.
Kame’s soft gasps into his mouth make Jin want to know how he lived before this moment, how he’d thought his life was complete without the sound of Kame’s low moans and Kame’s slick, hot mouth moving beneath his own, and the feeling of Kame’s strong square hands roaming across the muscles in Jin’s shoulders, clutching at Jin’s sweatshirt to pull him closer.
Kame pushes at him, and Jin stumbles back, through the living room, never letting Kame pull back, clutching at Kame’s hips and making him follow so closely that their legs tangle together, tripping and stumbling until Jin’s back hits the railing of the stairway. Jin lets out a soft gasp at the impact, and Kame chuckles against his lips, and it might be the sexiest sound Jin has ever heard, all low and deep and resonating beneath Jin’s hands, which have made their way up to Kame’s waist.
“Do you think you can let me go long enough to walk up the stairs?” Kame asks, and Jin swallows as Kame’s hand makes its way under his sweatshirt to rub a slow circle into the skin at Jin’s hip right above the waist of Jin’s sweatpants.
“No,” Jin says honestly, and then blushes as Kame lets out a full laugh, grabbing Jin’s wrists and leading him up the stairs, Jin fumbling his way up, eyes trained on Kame’s kiss swollen lips and laughing eyes.
Jin wonders if he would follow Kame right off a cliff, and not even realize it until he feels himself hurtling off the edge.
At the top of the stairs, Kame starts kissing Jin again. It’s addicting, the way Kame makes Jin feel, like there’s no gravity in the room and Jin is floating, anchored only by the silky stroke of Kame’s tongue against his own, and the brush of Kame’s callused thumbs against the fevered flesh of Jin’s torso.
Kame makes a disgruntled sound, tugging at Jin’s sweatshirt, and Jin hurriedly takes it off, throwing it somewhere in the hallway, and then he’s dragging Kame’s top off too, throwing it the same direction as he’d thrown his own. Kame is laughing at him even as Jin’s hands eagerly run up and down Kame’s bare sides, and as he drops tiny kisses along Kame’s neck, he feels Kame’s laughs against the sensitive shell of his ear, and it makes him shudder.
“You’re such a mess,” Kame says.
“Do you really care right now?” Jin says, and Kame’s laughter stops, and then Jin’s breathing stops, because Kame is running exploring hands up the front of Jin’s chest, brushing across his nipples before roaming down his ribs.
“No,” Kame whispers, and then they’re falling through Jin’s bedroom door, and Jin is tripping over a sneaker as he sheds his pants and socks, and Kame steps easily out of his jeans. Jin swears and Kame chuckles, and then Jin shoves Kame down to his bed, scrambling on top of him and kissing him so fiercely he loses track of time and space and everything that’s not Kame. The first touch of flesh against flesh has Jin hissing into Kame’s mouth, and Kame groans, too, and it just makes Jin want to kiss him harder as he relishes the feeling of Kame’s square, narrow hips between his thighs, and the brush of Kame’s chest against his own. Their erections slip across each other, and arousal clenches like a fist in Jin’s belly, sending warmth down his legs and making him shiver.
Jin lets himself look down at Kame, with his hair mussed and his chest heaving, eyes narrowed beneath perfectly arched eyebrows. This is it, Jin thinks. This is everything.
“You’re wearing the necklace,” Jin says, fingering it lightly as he kisses the skin around it and beneath it, enjoying the way Kame comfortably shifts closer to him, hands running up and down Jin’s sides. It’s like when they were younger, but it’s also completely different, because Kame’s touches are filled with intent, and now when Jin gets the urge to cover Kame’s mouth with his own and move his way inside it, he can. He seals their mouths together, and Kame quickly takes control of the kiss, lifting up and caressing Jin’s tongue with his own, making Jin gasp into his mouth. Jin feels like Kame’s hands are everywhere at once, like he’s surrounded by Kame’s heat and Kame’s scent, and like he’s drowning in Kame, who is perfect in this moment, eager and hungry beneath him.
Jin breaks away for air, kissing across Kame’s face, pressing fluttering kisses to his jaw before trailing down to his neck. Kame sighs, hands coming to rest on the small of Jin’s back as Jin’s kisses turn open-mouthed, leaving a trail of saliva in his wake as he makes his way down to Kame’s collarbones. Jin’s arms support his weight as he licks and sucks across them, and Kame shifts beneath him, tiny groans escaping from his throat when Jin blows warm air along the line of wet skin.
“The necklace…It looks like the moon,” Kame replies when Jin’s eyes find his in the dark. Kame’s hair is spread around him, burnt red waves against the stark white of Jin’s sheets, and his eyes are heavy lidded and smoldering. Jin feels like he’s going to explode, like he can’t contain all the feelings swirling inside of him, like he’s so full of hope and joy and love that there’s no way his skin can hold it all in.
“I love you,” Jin says, and then Kame is moving, flipping them over so now it is Jin who lies on his back, and Kame who has to lean down to join their mouths back together. “Oh god, I love you.”
And then Kame slides down him, and Kame is taking Jin’s cock between his lips, mouth stretching around its girth and eyes never leaving Jin’s face. It’s hot and wet and feels so good, and Jin tangles his hands in Kame’s hair, silently urging him on as he trembles and lets tiny moans escape his throat, even as he bites down hard on his lower lip at the overwhelming pleasure as Kame’s tongue circles slowly around the head of his cock. Jin can’t hold back the mewling sound that fights its way out when Kame takes him all the way in, his hands softly stroking Jin’s inner thighs and subtly holding Jin down as Jin gets closer to the edge.
“Do you have…?” Kame says, and Jin sticks a hand out, blindly finding the drawer of his bedside table, and grabs the tiny basket he keeps there. Kame smirks. “Organized where it counts, huh?” Kame says, and then Jin is too distracted to reply, because Kame is easing a lubed finger inside of him.
It’s like nothing Jin’s ever felt before. It stings, but it’s not really uncomfortable, and he likes the way Kame’s eyes surge with heat as Jin spreads his legs wider to give Kame more access. “Relax,” Kame says, and then he’s working in a second finger, stretching and scissoring, and Jin feels his breath coming faster and faster. He wants to close his eyes, to just feel, but he also doesn’t want to miss a second of the doting look on Kame’s face, or the way Kame shivers at the tight embrace of Jin around his fingers, or the way Kame’s mouth is parted as he breathes.
Kame brushes against something inside him, with the addition of a third finger, that makes Jin’s world flash in almost unbearable bright color, and makes his abs clench and his hips lift off the bed. “Did I find it?” Kame asks, and Jin nods, and his hair is plastered to his neck with sweat, his entire body tight with desire and need.
“Just…” Jin starts, and Kame’s other hand, the one not inside of him, teasing him into madness, runs a soothing line up Jin’s shaft, and Jin feels like he’s falling apart. “Please,” he says instead, and Kame’s fingers slip from him.
When Kame presses inside of him, much larger than the fingers had been, Jin feels stretched and whole, and Kame, strong arms on either side of him, is beautiful, throat bared to Jin’s devouring eyes, hair wet and skin shining with sweat. Jin pulls his legs up to his chest, holding them there, and just feels. Kame is shaking with the effort of holding still, and for just a moment, Jin savors everything—the cotton digging into his back, the way his cock aches to be touched, the way he feels full in every way, joined with Kame just like this.
Then he whispers “Move,” and Kame is pulling out and slamming back in, and Jin cries out as Kame hits that spot inside him that makes him see stars, makes him feel like he is a star, burning hot and white in the night sky.
Jin’s world is spinning faster and faster, and he reaches out, clutching desperately at Kame’s back, nails digging into Kame’s flesh and making Kame grunt and Jin just drinks in the sounds and the tightening, and he feels himself getting closer to completion.
“Jin, I’m going to—“
“Me too,” Jin manages to gasp out, and then he slips a hand between them to wrap around his own cock. After only a few jerks he comes, and Kame chokes as Jin clenches around him, thrusting into Jin through Jin’s orgasm, and then he’s collapsing down on top of Jin, and Jin’s wondering if he’s ever felt so complete.
#
“I’m sorry I took so long,” Kame says.
“You’re here now,” Jin replies.
“It was scary,” Kame says. “When you showed up at my door, saying all these things I never thought you’d say, and feeling all these things I never thought you’d feel, it was scary. I’d never ever thought… I wasn’t prepared for it. I’ve never been like you. I have to think about every consequence, figure out every way it could go wrong and every way it can go right. I can’t just do it and hope for the best—“
“Kame,” Jin says. “You’re here now.” Jin can feel Kame’s breathing slow beside him, chest moving up and down at the same steady pace as Jin’s heart. “You’re here now.”
“It’ll be hard,” Kame says to Jin, as Jin runs his fingertips up and down the line along the center of Kame’s stomach.
“Everything with you is hard,” Jin says. “But right now, this?” Jin gestures to how they lay, wrapped together, skin to skin, sweat cooling on their backs and Jin’s head tucked into the hollow of Kame’s neck. “This feels easy.” Jin drops a kiss on Kame’s sweaty forehead.
“I never imagined being in an intercontinental romance,” Kame muses. “But I guess we’ll try our best.”
“I love you too much to let you go,” Jin tells Kame, and Kame looks up at him like Jin is sixteen and Kame is fourteen, and Jin has all the answers. “So our best is good enough.”
Kame swallows, and Jin thinks he might cry. “I love you too,” Kame says. “I love you so much.”
“I’ll leap enough for the both of us,” Jin says.
And then Kame laces their fingers together and smiles, so bright and warm that Jin feels like nothing will ever hurt again, and Jin thinks that he’d swim across the Pacific Ocean just to see that smile again.
#
“Mama!” Jin says, when he accepts the call.
He’s in the parking lot again. He leans back in the driver’s seat, and takes off his sunglasses, closing his eyes.
“Jin, how are you?” Jin’s mother says into the phone, and Jin taps his fingers on the steering wheel, humming as he thinks about an answer.
“I’m great,” Jin says. “I’m wonderful.”
“I thought you might be,” Jin’s mom says. “Kame-chan stopped by to visit me yesterday and tell me you two were seeing each other.”
“What?” Jin shouts into the phone, before he quickly lowers his voice. “Mom, I can explain—“
“You don’t have to, Jin. You know I don’t care.” Jin’s mom laughs, and Jin can imagine the gloating expression on his mother’s face when she says her next words. “I always knew something had happened between you and Kame-chan.”
“Oh god, mother, please do not speculate about—“
“I guess I don’t have to bug you about getting a girlfriend anymore,” Jin’s mother muses, and Jin would be melting with embarrassment if the thought of Kame being his didn’t make him feel so gleeful. “Now that you’re Kame’s girlfriend, I mean.”
“I am not Kame’s girlfriend,” Jin squawks indignantly, and Jin’s mother laughs even louder.
“But Jin,” she says, in a more serious voice, and Jin licks his lips, opening his eyes and taking in the sight of the los Angeles afternoon, bright sun beating down on the pedestrians bringing their groceries to their cars. “I’m glad you’re happy.”
“Me too,” Jin says, and then he smiles, because this is a dream he can chase for the rest of his life.
#
Later, Jin gets an email from Yamapi.
I heard you're Kame's girlfriend now, it says, and Jin scowls at his iPhone screen, even as the joy he hasn't been quite able to dampen bubbles up in his gut and froths through his whole body at the thought of Kame. Jin feels like he's flying.
Stop hanging out all the time with my mom, Jin mails back, and Yamapi sends him a picture of a naked woman in response, that Jin quickly deletes before someone in line behind him at Starbucks looks over his shoulder and gets the wrong idea.
He thinks of Kame, who he’s going to visit in Japan next week, and he feels that familiar excitement raging inside him, and this time, Jin lets it consume him.
#
When Jin closes his eyes, he dreams of Spring, lemon and hibiscus and the colors of new life.
When he opens them, Spring is waiting for him with a wicked smile and a warm bubbling laugh, with laced together fingers and a mouth that tastes like the evening rain.
And in the night, Jin wraps his arms around the Moon, and they shine together.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 09:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 10:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2011-11-01 09:46 pm (UTC)I read it while I haven't had much time so I'll write a normal comment when I have more time with quoting *coughliketheyamakistripperpartcough*
But just asdlkhfralj I already love your Pin fics but now Akame as well and just asdjkghkl *=*
And I want to download the fic OST tomorrow and I saw the list and you put Devil's Trill! ♥♥♥ (But why with Vanessa Mae? I hate her :<)
It's going straight to my memories :3
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Date: 2011-11-02 12:10 am (UTC)YAY!!! I'm really excited that you liked it! ~strippers~ was fun to write, not going to lie.
I'm sort of split on my OTPs-- I love Akame and I love Pin, but when I want to write good angsty fic, it's gotta be akame for me.
I hope you enjoy the OST, and thank you for commenting! <3
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Date: 2011-11-01 10:11 pm (UTC)Thank you for writing it. ♥
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Date: 2011-11-02 12:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-01 11:16 pm (UTC)I love ALL of the characters here and how they all seem to have a secret that they know of Jin because of how blatant Jin is on his love for Kame which he himself doesn't realize. lol. Yamapi hanging out with Jin's mom is just hilarious.
This is too much at 5am in the morning. I'm grinning here at my station alone which I think makes me look scary right now. But I can't help smiling because this is the best morning ever! I'm so flailing!
I so love this. ♥ ♥ ♥
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Date: 2011-11-02 12:14 am (UTC)I love Yamapi-- even when I'm writing Akame he is always there, TROLLING <3
Thank you for reading! <3 <3
Maia
Dream Boy: Full Moon (4/4)
Date: 2011-11-01 11:19 pm (UTC)Re: Dream Boy: Full Moon (4/4)
Date: 2011-11-02 12:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 12:21 am (UTC)And then somehow at a certain point I was like "I can't see anymore D:". And then I noticed I was crying.
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Date: 2011-11-02 12:36 am (UTC)Thank you thank you thank you
(you should just...talk to me on gchat tomorrow anyway~~)
<3
Maia
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Date: 2011-11-02 02:24 am (UTC)choooo sweeett..
i like it...
thank you ne.. ^^
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Date: 2011-12-11 07:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:27 am (UTC)Refreshing to read a long one-shot like this time after so long not reading one :)
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Date: 2011-12-11 07:51 pm (UTC)I never seem to manage short things...
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Date: 2011-11-02 02:44 am (UTC)I know your OTP is PIN and I love you as a writer and as a great person too and I hope one day I can be more flexible and will read your PIN, because I’m sure I will love it <3 <3
You told me before, that every author will be happy to receive a flail comment and you will never be scared because of spamming and incoherency! I’m just warning you!! And I was copy -past citation, while I was reading so… no sense in my comment! You will find a lot love and like ;_____;
I admire the way you write! It can be funny, can be heartbreaking and it’s always beautifully written. I read your words and in the same time I have a picture in my head, the weather, the moon, the wind, and the sounds, the movements . Just the languages you use is so poetic.
They’d been soldiers in the same war for such a long time.
I just feel it! I think I will never will be over it! Every time I think about jincident I have my heart aching and everytime I saw Jin face I want to hug him dearly!
"People grow up. People change. People grow apart. That's all."
Such a simple statement, that always so truthful, but so cruel in the same time, because when people grow apart it’s always such a little chance, that will find each other again. ;__________________;
Why? I just start reading your fic and I want to cry already!?
I love legend in fics, or it more like some metaphor and this one is beautiful and so suit to Akame!
“Well, you’re kinda fighting an uphill battle, dude. And a long Google search history of pics of you in drag holding hands with men.”
Sometimes, though, thinking about people he’s left behind, people he can’t talk to anymore… it just makes him hurt.
Maybe this is just my delusional thoughts, but I don’t think, that after spending so many years together, for Jin is nothing and he can’t feel anything, so I love it <3
Kame's not their leader, but he's always leading these days. Jin's not sure when it switched, when Kame stopped following Jin and Jin stopped trying to lead him.♥
I love this moment, when they switch places, even looking their old junior moments, it’s clear how Kame always following Jin and after Kame is more confident and he is leading <3
It's Kame's way, lately, to be quiet instead of silly. To be strong instead of vulnerable.
♥
their dreams curled like cigarette smoke up to the sky
I love how it’s sound! This what I mean, poetic and beautiful
It's just that Jin's always had his head so stuffed full of dreams there isn't really room for much of anything else.
LOL XDXDXDXDXD
It reminds Jin of sitting on the roof of the jimusho, Kame looking at the stars and Jin looking at Kame.
Akame is so much love <3
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Date: 2011-11-02 02:46 am (UTC)thoughts blowing through his mind like leaves in the autumn wind.♥
Jin isn’t afraid of jumping from the top of the highest mountain and spreading his arms wide and finding out then and there if he can fly.
It’s what makes him strong. It’s also what makes him weak.
I LOVE YOU!!!!!!!!! This is beautiful
Jin is the person who can risk, who can reach a lot and don’t afraid to burn his wings and he have my love ! ♥
he's probably got dried drool in a white circle around it. It’s not his sexiest moment, that’s for sure.
Such a cute detail and funny picture <3
As Jin comes, thighs and abs tight like a bowstring as he spills over his hand, he imagines lean muscle instead of curves, and a mouth that takes instead of gives.
The last part of this sentence! ♥
I am sleep’s greatest advocate.
I find this adorable! ♥
Kame studies him, and Jin feels like he's under a microscope, and Kame is picking apart his intentions carefully, trying to figure out why Jin is being so...welcoming.
"But everyone will love you anyway."Jin will love him anyway.
;_____________; I’m so sorry for trolling in such cute emotional romantic moment! <3 <3 I love it <3 <3
like Jin is muscle and Kame is bone, Jin’s voice twining around Kame’s to build something greater than them both.
That my dream to listen their voices together again ;_______;
old ladies in love with Taguchi sobbing at the news stands..."
LOL
Jin doesn’t allow himself to look at Kame on stage—to get too close, or to touch. If he does, he’ll forget the words.
Jin life is so hard XDXDXDXD Akame UST and other little akame moment XDXD so Jin forget every words because of Kame <3 <3
Kame and Anne!!! I was dreaming for Jin jealousy over it !!! <3
and Kame is looking at him like he just declared a sexual preference for zebras.
Kame likes to pretend he likes healthy foods and being reasonable, but secretly, Kame loves to sleep in unmade beds and eat things that are terrible for him if he thinks no one is looking.
His stomach sinks, and he wonders if Kame likes Aubree or Lizzy or something, and he’s jealous of Jin maybe having claimed one of them.
He is an idiot >.>
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Date: 2011-11-02 02:51 am (UTC)*i miss ur pin fic!!*
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Date: 2011-11-02 02:47 pm (UTC)pin is in progressno subject
Date: 2011-11-02 04:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:41 pm (UTC)Maia
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Date: 2011-11-02 04:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:40 pm (UTC)<3
Maia
here's my heart, take it.
Date: 2011-11-02 05:28 am (UTC)♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ YOU MUST PARTICIPATE IN KIZUNA EXCHANGE. ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Re: here's my heart, take it.
Date: 2011-11-02 02:29 pm (UTC)I am terrified to be in an exchange with all those amazing amazing writers you know this!!! X___X But! I'm glad you liked this, dearest, because I like YOU.
<3
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Date: 2011-11-02 07:52 am (UTC)so, i just completely skipped sleep to spend my night with this fic and now that i am done....wow, just wow. I have no words and no coherence but i do have a lot (LOT) of ridiculous and flaily love.
some tears, tooI mean, what.I cant do this right now but i will be back because this fic deserves a decent, proper comment that i cannot deliver at the moment :)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 02:30 pm (UTC)i love it when people tell me they cried<3,
Maia
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From:clearly , i can't shut up ( ・_・)
From:Re: clearly , i can't shut up ( ・_・)
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Date: 2011-11-02 08:49 am (UTC)OMG..THANK YOU FOR WRITING THIS. <3
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Date: 2011-11-02 02:17 pm (UTC)<3, Maia
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Date: 2011-11-02 02:47 pm (UTC)I read your fic while listening to 'I cant smile without you' from Barry Manillow. I just downloaded the song for my next Fanvid project and happen to listening to it when I clicked on your fic. But then realizing how fitting it was, I simply put it on loop and got all emotionally overwhelm reading this SUPER AWESOME fic of yours. I wanted to leave all sort of wonderful adjective but words seem to fail me now. sorry~
The truth is, I should leave a comment for every chapter coz there's so many thing I would love to quote. But the the story was so enchanting I was not able to hold back from clicking next part. Its so full of emotions I cant express how it effected me right now. There were parts I was giggling along with Kame, there were parts my heart clenched painfully and there were parts I didn't even know I was crying.
The whole plot of Kame trying to see Jin's dream left this bittersweet feeling but at the same time warming a cold heart. It doesn't make sense right...LOL. I love how the past and presents entwined so effortlessly. And Pin friendship has always been my fav :)
I'm a kame-centric and will happily ship any Kame pairing. But reading this amazing fic of yours I cant believe I shipped other pair than AKAME. You make me believe in the innocence and pure AKAME dreams once again. This great piece simply pulled me into Akame beautiful world that seems so enticing, so bright and so real.
Thanks so much for sharing this masterpiece with us. Its so inspiring and I wish I have better command of words to express my love for your beutiful work. I'm definitely saving this in memory and will be reading it again and again. No doubt about it. THANKS AGAIN!!
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Date: 2011-11-02 06:38 pm (UTC)Secondly, this is an amazing comment *__* I don't even know where to start responding to it! <3 AHHH! So many things that made me blush and claw happily at my screen.
Um, wow. So, I guess I'm really happy that this affected you-- I always kind of hope, when I write, that someone will feel something, and hearing that made me kind of ridiculously joyful. Thank you so very very much!
Thirdly, I will have a smile on my face the rest of the day, so <3
Love,
Maia
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Date: 2011-11-02 03:26 pm (UTC)Have nothing more to say but congrats and thank you for making such a wonderful fic! :D
*hugs*
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Date: 2011-11-02 06:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 08:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-02 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-03 09:27 am (UTC)I love how the story flows. It's perfect!
I love the interaction between AkaKame! So much love! ♥
Thanks for sharing such wonderful fic!
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Date: 2011-11-03 12:54 pm (UTC)Akakame is love, right?
<3
Thanks for commenting!!
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Date: 2011-11-04 01:41 am (UTC)every story I've read from you so far are all beautiful..
hope you continue to write more akame fics..
off to read your pin fics now.
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Date: 2011-11-04 06:31 pm (UTC)Maia
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Date: 2011-11-04 07:03 am (UTC)You should forget about the audience, because if this is what you write for yourself, you don't need to please anybody. XD
Because it isn't self complacent in a bad way. You're using mythology, literature references, your phrasing, everything. You can indulge yourself anytime then. XD
Akame might be a complete mirage, but you created a beautiful one.
Thanks a lot for sharing!
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Date: 2011-11-04 06:48 pm (UTC)I know what you mean, about the mirage. But it's one i really love, sometimes. :)
I'm glad you enjoyed it anyway <3
Thank you!
<3Maia
*stars in eyes*
Date: 2011-11-04 10:10 am (UTC)Re: *stars in eyes*
Date: 2011-11-04 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-06 06:55 am (UTC)This is just-- amazing. My heart hurts for them, and then it broke some more by the third chapter. ;__; I wanna huggle both Jin and Kame. ;__;
I'm speechless. And my offer (on the master post) still stands. Here's my heart. And soul, too, for good measure.
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Date: 2011-11-06 03:52 pm (UTC)Halfway through writing I wanted to give them hugs, too. <3 BUT I DON'T WANT SAD ENDINGS SO THERE IS PUDDING AND KISSES.
*grabs heart and puts it in jar* *cackles*
Thank you again,
Maia
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Date: 2011-11-07 08:39 pm (UTC)i love your Jin, and Kame soo fragile and i love it too!
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Date: 2011-11-08 05:15 am (UTC)Love,
Maia
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Date: 2011-11-08 10:23 am (UTC)I am so glad you write Akame nonetheless!
This was beautiful. The way the Greek mythology was weaved into the story, the ease Kame slipped back into Jin's life and Jin's realisation of his feelings for Kame. And Pin frienship made me wanna cry. I love how Pin always manages to ninja into your akame fics. I love their friendship and their ~super freaky bff telepathy~
Not exactly coherent a comment but all in all, I love your fics <3
no subject
Date: 2011-11-10 02:14 pm (UTC)Ahhhh, thank you so much! I really enjoyed writing this, so to hear that you liked it makes me thrilled. To hear that you, in general, like my fics is kind of...well, it's kind of awesome. Thank you very much!!! (Lol Pin always ninjas their way in.)
<3 And thanks for commenting! I really appreciate it!!
Love,
Maia