Satellite Hearts (Akame, R) [2/5]

[maayacolabackup]

Part Two

*

“Kame-chan!” Koki cheers when Kame walks in. He hops off the sofa, where he’s doing something with envelopes, knocking several to the floor, and it earns him a beleaguered look from Nakamaru, who gathers the envelopes up again and returns them to the stack on the low table by the sofa. “Want a beer?”

“Sure,” Kame says agreeably, even though he’ll only drink about half because his alcohol tolerance is still shamefully low. “Where’s Masuda?” It’s strange that the best man isn’t here, but Kame’s sort of glad for a KAT-TUN-only afternoon. It’s not that they’re each other’s best friends, but there’s something wonderfully similar to family about it.

“Up to something gluttonous, I’m sure,” Ueda says, and Nakamaru talks over him with a grin.

“He’s in charge of the kids today,” Nakamaru says. “Too busy for wedding duty.”

“What do you need me to do?” Kame asks, shedding his light jacket and fedora, leaving them both on the crowded coat rack. There are bizarre chains hanging there too, and Kame thinks about Koki’s lack of clanking on his way into the kitchen and smiles. Some things never change.

“We’re writing up invitations,” Nakamaru says. “It’s the only task Meisa trusts me with. She thinks everything else should be left completely up to her and her friends.”

“You are so lucky,” Koki says, and Kame hears the hiss of an opening bottle. Koki returns and hands Kame a beer. “Minako made me go along for everything. I wasn’t allowed to make any decisions, but I had to be there while she made them.”

“Ditto,” Junno says, and he crosses his arms. “Except I was asked my opinion, and then Eri would pick the opposite of whatever I chose ‘because I was in a boyband, which means obviously my taste is questionable’.”

“Really?” Ueda says, looking through typed lists. “I suppose it’s no surprise, considering that the rest of your relationship goes about exactly the same.”

“Haha,” Junno says. “As charming as ever, Ueda. Anyway, Nakamaru should count himself lucky that Meisa only thinks him capable of managing the invitations for this massive wedding she’s throwing.”

“Massive?” Kame asks. “I thought it was going to be a small private thing…?”

“The first lesson of marriage,” Nakamaru says, with a fond smile, “is that somehow, you’ll do anything to make your bride happy.”

Ueda, who’s sitting on the arm of the chair, looking casually at ease in his loose sweater, rolls his eyes. “Gross,” he says, but Kame notices that he fingers his own wedding ring as he speaks, and maybe there’s a secret softness around his eyes. “You’re forty. You’re too old to sound like a character in a Getsu-9, don’t you think?”

“Hey!” Koki says, stretching his arms over his head before settling back into his place on the sofa. “Some of us still do Getsu-9 dramas.”

Kame steps over the stamps and special pens on the floor, and finds a place on the sofa next to Koki. He leans over toward Koki and bats his eyelashes, and Koki chuckles and wraps an arm over Kame’s shoulders. “Koki-sama, how do you get all the good roles?”

“Shut-up, movie star,” Koki says, and affectionately messes up Kame’s hair, like they’re still teenagers. “Help me put these nicely printed stickers with addresses onto these envelopes straight. I keep making them crooked.”

“Why do you get a helper?” Junno says petulantly, and Koki grins wolfishly.

“Because Kame-chan is mine,” Koki says, and presses their cheeks together. Kame laughs and flicks him, grabbing a handful of envelopes and the top sheet of stickers and pulling away. He pulls a magazine off the table and sets it on his lap for use as a makeshift table.

Kame peels the first label off without reading it, fixing it carefully into the center of the envelope, eyeing the upper and lower margins with the eye of a perfectionist. Kame’s the worst kind of perfectionist for this sort of work, though. His artistic talent is mostly expressed through fashion and poetry and art appreciation—he doesn’t have the steady hands of an artist, and the label still looks crooked even after he carefully contemplates the position for a good minute before he presses down on the adhesive.

Akanishi Jin, it says, when Kame holds it up to look at it. He blinks, like it’s a hallucination, but it isn’t, not by a long shot. Kame feels goosebumps on the back of his neck.

“Nakamaru,” Kame says calmly, and something must be off about his voice, because there’s a strange hush that falls over all of them in the room. “There’s an invitation here for…” Kame swallows. “For Jin?”

Nakamaru scratches the back of his neck. “Yeah,” Nakamaru says. “I was going to give it to his parents and have them forward it.” No one seems surprised. Oh, Kame thinks. A conspiracy.

“You all knew.” Kame says it softly, but they all hear him. No one denies anything. “Did you think I couldn’t handle it?”

“Of course not,” Ueda says. His fingers tap impatiently on his knees. “You’re not someone who needs to be sheltered, Kamenashi. You never have been.”

“But still,” Koki says, and his voice is much gentler than Ueda’s. “We were going to tell you if he said yes.” Koki sighs. “None of us are really sure what happened between you two—“

“Nothing,” Kame says, and Ueda barks an incredulous laugh that makes both Koki and Nakamaru turn to glare at him while Junno looks awkwardly out the window.

“…And we weren’t sure if it would make you upset, and in case it would, we didn’t want to say anything until it was necessary.”

“Like if he says yes,” Kame says. Kame’s thumb swipes along the edges of the adhesive label, pressing them again to ensure they are good and stuck. Jin’s name burns into his retinas.

“Yeah,” Nakamaru says. “Like if he says yes.”

The light fixture in Nakamaru’s flat, the one on the living room ceiling, is very loud, Kame thinks. Kame can hear the distinct buzzing of it above him. He wonders if it’s about to burn out. “You should change the bulb,” Kame says, and Junno lets out a high-pitched giggle, and they’re all relaxing.

Kame thinks it’s strange that Jin doesn’t even have to be here; doesn’t even have to show up, to cause tension in KAT-TUN. A whisper of his name is enough to set them all on edge, and that’s always been true.

“I wonder if he’ll come,” Junno says, lying back on the floor and crossing his arms behind his head.

“Probably not,” Kame says, and it’s like there’s an ocean inside his ears. This isn’t a big deal. Kame sees Jin’s name written down all the time, he doesn’t know why it’s so surreal now. Maybe because it’s Nakamaru’s wedding

“The last time I saw him was at a wedding,” Ueda says. “Junno’s.”

“Yeah,” Koki says. “Has it really been seven years?”

“Fifteen postcards,” Kame says, and every inhale burns. The edges of Kame’s vision flicker. He thinks about that large map, and wonders how anyone can possibly find someone else in a world so big. He thinks about the box of postcards under his bed.

A whisper of his name is enough to make Kame’s control weaken just enough.

Jin isn’t really something they talk about. Kame thinks it keeps them sane, because they’d all watched Jin fall away from them.


*

Jin comes back from Los Angeles quiet. Not that he doesn’t talk—he talks up a storm, regaling Koki with stories about girls in nightclubs and twenty-four hour Mexican food restaurants. He taunts Nakamaru with the same enthusiasm as always, and laughs as he flubs the choreography, and bickers with Junno at rehearsals. He reads Yamapi’s texts aloud to Kame in a high-pitched voice that doesn’t sound anything like Yamapi, and hums along with Ueda as he fools around on the piano.

He makes so much noise, but inside, he’s quiet.

It’s like Jin’s locked away a part of himself, and Kame misses it fiercely, misses it like it’s one of his lungs, and now he breathes slow and labored and there’s never enough air.

“Kame,” Jin says. They’re sitting outside, and Jin’s got a cigarette hanging loosely between his lips. The end’s turning to ash rather quickly, and Jin’s only lazily smoking it. Kame plucks it and brings it to his own mouth, taking a drag and then blowing smoke up into the sky. “Have you ever…” Jin’s voice trails off, and Jin turns to look at him. Kame studies Jin, and he can see all that quiet in Jin’s eyes.

“Ever what?” Kame asks, and Jin shifts, and his knuckles are white, fists clenched and resting gracelessly on his thighs. Kame starts to reach toward Jin’s arm, but Jin seems to sense his movement and moves a little away.

Kame bites his lip. Right. They aren’t close enough for those sorts of touches anymore. Kame wonders, sometimes, if he and Jin are the only people in the world whose friendship is moving in a slow and tragic reverse; if it’ll keep slowly devolving until Jin and Kame pass by each other on the street and don’t bother to wave hello.

It’s like poison in his blood, to think of a world in which he and Jin aren’t more than strangers who used to care.

“Never mind,” Jin says, and he lies back in the grass, hair splayed behind him. He looks like the Vitruvian Man, Kame thinks, arms and legs spread like he’s about to hug the sky. “Just… Never mind.”

“You can’t tell me?” Kame asks, and Jin looks at him, a flicker really, one that burns through Kame like a wave of lava. Jin’s got a dusting of pink across his cheeks then, and Kame feels like the distance between them now is vast. More vast than Jin, sending piecemeal emails to Kame from Los Angeles. Kame takes another puff of Jin’s cigarette and passes it back. Jin hauls himself up and takes it, resting it against his lower lip for a moment in contemplation.

“I want to,” Jin says, after a long pause. “I really want to.” He brings his hands in to cover his face. There’s no wind today, and the air is stifling. “But I can’t.”

“I wish I could find you,” Kame says, and Jin is looking at him again. Kame doesn’t know how to explain himself. There’s a block, it seems, and Kame’s not even sure what he means, only Jin used to be so loud, and now there’s all this unbearable silence.

“I’m right here,” Jin says softly, and their gazes lock. Kame can’t see Jin in there at all. Jin’s lips are pressed together, like he always does when he’s nervous, and Kame’s eyes follow the vein in his neck that stands out harshly as Jin clenches his jaw.

“No,” Kame says, and this time, he does reach out to Jin’s face, and tucks a wayward piece of hair gently behind Jin’s ear. “You’re not.” Jin freezes at the touch, his eyes searching Kame’s for something that Kame doesn’t get. Then Jin takes a long pull at his cigarette, and closes his eyes.

Jin exhales heavily, then, and his eyes open again, and he’s regarding Kame with this melancholy sadness that Kame can’t place. “I guess you’re right,” Jin says.

“Why?” Kame asks, and Jin’s skin is so tan, and Jin’s face is so round. Jin’s self-conscious about the weight; Kame reads it in Jin’s anxious glances at his own arms and stomach that he only allows himself when he thinks no one is looking. Kame thinks Jin is beautiful regardless of chubby cheeks and soft bellies. Kame still wants to hug him close.

“I can’t be here,” Jin says. “I’ll never be able to be myself here.”

“You can be yourself with me,” Kame tells him, and there’s an edge to Kame’s voice that he never meant to allow. Jin swallows, and fills his mouth with smoke, letting it blow out of his nose.

Jin looks, for just a moment, like he wants to fall apart, and Kame wishes he were still someone who could hold him together. “No,” Jin says. “No, I really can’t.”

Kame reaches forward and reclaims the cigarette one last time. It tastes strongly of mint, like Jin’s favorite toothpaste. Kame remembers using it when he was a kid, the way it felt for their minty breath to mingle as they whispered gossip to each other beneath the duvet in Jin’s bed, until Jin’s mother would peek her head into the room and lift one commanding eyebrow at the two of them. “Stop chatting, boys, and go to sleep,” she’d say, and then she’d wink to let them know she wasn’t too upset.

“Especially not with you,” Jin says finally, and Kame closes his eyes. But Jin’s image is still there behind his eyelids, and the cigarette is finished: nothing but burnt ash and a useless butt. Jin gestures for him to just put it out in the grass, but Kame frowns at him, and Jin sighs, standing up and jogging over to the trash receptacle.

Jin makes sure the flame is extinguished by jamming the end into the metal of the wastebasket, then drops it in the trash. Kame stands too, and walks over to meet him. Jin watches him approach. The backs of their hands touch, and Jin takes a step back.

Jin used to touch as often as he breathed. Now there’s space between Jin and everyone else that feels forced, like Jin is holding himself back. Kame doesn’t know why. He’d longed for the simple touches that reassured him Jin was there.

“I missed you, while you were gone,” Kame offers. Kame still misses Jin, even though Jin’s close enough that Kame could clasp hands with him like he did when they were younger. “I just… miss you.”

“I miss you too,” Jin says, and Kame licks his lips. Jin follows the motion, and turns away. “I…do.”

“But it’s not enough,” Kame says.

“I’m sorry,” Jin answers, and Kame feels like he’s looking through thick, thick glass.

*

Jin might have risen in the East, but he set in the West. Jin set over there in America, and the Jin that Kame knew never really came back.


*

“Uchi says you took your doorbell out,” Kame says, and Ryo laughs, adjusting the guitar in his lap. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Says the man who will only wear a t-shirt once,” Ryo replies, running a hand through his shaggy hair. “We all have our quirks. I just don’t want to be bothered.”

“I wear them more than once. It’s just that they wear out,” Kame says. “The ink fades, and then they aren’t bright anymore.”

“Not after one wash,” Ryo says, and shakes his head. “Where do you keep them all? This place isn’t that big.”

“Next time we’ll have coffee at your place, then,” Kame snaps back playfully. “Except I suspect you won’t know when I arrive, because I don’t know where your spare key is and you don’t have a doorbell.” Kame stretches his legs out along the sofa, enjoying the soft feel of worn-in jeans.

“This is not the way to thank someone who’s helping you out,” Ryo says. “Also, I know you are not casting domestic stones at me when you have a creepy shrine to your ex-boyfriend covering the entire west wall of your apartment. “

One thing Kame values about Ryo is that he doesn’t pull punches. Ryo never treats Kame like a fragile child, or like Kame’ll crumble if he mentions Jin’s name. In a way, that nonchalance makes Kame feel stronger. Kame’s always done best when there are people with expectations he doesn’t want to disappoint.

“He’s not my ex-boyfriend,” Kame says. “And it’s not a shrine.”

“Whatever,” Ryo says. His t-shirt’s a pale pink, and it stretches across strong shoulders. Kame recognizes the shirt—he’s pretty sure it used to belong to Yamapi, years ago. Kame himself has got a shirt of Koki’s that he stole by accident during the Chain concert tour in 2012. “I’m not really concerned about all the ways you and Akanishi managed to avoid admitting you had a thing for each other. I’m concerned about this soundtrack. I can’t believe you’re singing. It’s been a couple years.”

“I know,” Kame says, after deciding not to address Ryo’s accusation. “And KAT-TUN is going to sing a few songs for the documentary, too. Acoustic.”

“How’d the interview for that go, by the way?” Ryo asks, and he says it offhandedly, but Kame laughs.

“Like Uchi didn’t tell you,” Kame says. “I may have had some issues.”

“You didn’t tell your interviewer about the shrine right? That might make you look bad.”

“It’s not a shrine!”

“What is it, then?” Ryo says, and he strums a little too hard across the strings, and the discordant sound echoes through the flat. “Look, I know you’ve got your shit together, Kamenashi, and Jin is, or maybe was, fuck if I know, a really good friend of mine, too, but this is…”

“What if it was Uchi?” Kame interrupts. “What if it was your best friend?” Ryo sets the guitar down on the coffee table and leans back against the chair. “Would you just… write him off?”

“Probably not,” Ryo says, leaning back in the armchair, legs spread. He scratches at his stomach idly, but his eyes are watching Kame intensely. Kame can feel them, even as he stares at his map. “Was Jin your best friend?”

Kame doesn’t have a best friend. Kame has people he holds dear; people he holds so close that he can’t imagine his life without them. There’re the people he talks to everyday, fully grown-up pop stars, and there are the people he’s sought out, like fashion designers and artists and photographers. There are people he’s met through baseball, too, because nothing brings people together like mutual respect of the world’s greatest game. Kame’s got his family, and his dog Ieyasu, and two ex-lovers he still meets once every couple of months for a casual lunch and still feel like people Kame doesn’t have to wear a mask around.

Jin’s not any of those people. Jin used to be Kame’s best friend, when they were reckless teenagers with no regard for cameras or gossip. But what they had, what they have, is something completely different. Jin and Kame have been, in turns, so close their hearts beat in sync, and so far that Kame struggles to remember what Jin looks like when he genuinely laughs. Kame’s not quite sure how to explain the quivering line between himself and Jin, one that Kame can feel even now, if he presses two fingers to his wrist to feel his pulse. Kame can’t ignore it, and he can’t make it go away.

“He was my best something,” Kame replies, and Ryo exhales, loud and heavy. The shirt’s got a tiny hole in the armpit, and Kame’s brow furrows. “Your shirt has a hole in it. You wear it too much.”

“That just means I love it,” Ryo says. “And I’m not scared to show it.” Kame looks over and meets Ryo’s eyes. Ryo’s looking at him like he’s trying to peel back Kame’s skin with his eyes to see the machinery that must be underneath.

Kame’s not a machine; he’s flesh and blood and a little bit of heartache.

“Oh,” Kame says, and Ryo blows air out of his nose, stirring his bangs. His whipcord thin arms wrap around himself, and bites down on his lower lip.

“I think we need beers,” Ryo says. “Wanna try and teach me the rules of baseball again?”

“I’ve been trying to for twenty years,” Kame says. “I haven’t managed it yet. Aren’t we working on a song?”

“I’m tired. More later.” Ryo stretches his neck. He does look tired, flexing his fingers back and forth like he’s used them too much. Kame eyes the clock on the kitchen wall, that he can barely make out from the sofa. He wishes he had better vision. The small hand points to the eleven, which means they’ve been at it for three and a half hours. Maybe they do need a break.

“But why baseball?”

“You like baseball. Why? Would you rather stare at that map a while longer, looking like the red-headed chick from Titanic after the boat goes down?”

“Titanic is Jin’s favorite movie,” Kame says, and Ryo scoffs.

“Tomb Raider is Jin’s favorite movie,” Ryo says, and Kame raises an eyebrow at him. Ryo chuckles dryly, standing up. “Oh, it’s the bitch brow. You must be pretty confident, then. Really? Titanic?” Ryo shakes his head. “I should revoke his man-pass.”

“You’d have to find him first,” Kame says, and the smile slips from Ryo’s face. “Who knows what his favorite movie is, these days.”

“Your best something,” Ryo says, and Kame’s throat is dry, because Kame doesn’t like the look in Ryo’s eyes, because it looks like sympathy and Kame’s never wanted that from Ryo. “Your worst ‘something’, too, maybe.”

“How about those beers?” Kame says, and the mood breaks, and Ryo chuckles.

“Just one and you’ll be drunk, lightweight!”

“Yeah,” Kame says. “Probably. Hopefully drunk enough to forget the futility of explaining baseball to a lost cause.”

And life moves on, slowly, in laughs and smiles and beer spilt on Kame’s expensive couch, and Kame thinks only once about a wedding invitation that might already be in the mail.


*


Kame never tells anyone, but he’s got one of Jin’s sweatshirts, faded and old, and when it’s really cold in January, so cold the windows ice up with frost, Kame shrugs the hoodie over his silk pajamas and closes his eyes to memories of an eighteen year-old Jin, who always threw a warm arm over his best friend’s hip, making it easier for them both to fall asleep in unfamiliar beds.


*


The last week before they start at the Tokyo Dome for Cartoon KAT-TUN II You is supposed to be the week that Jin finally gets the choreography right. It’s supposed to be the week that they all readjust to Jin’s quirks and fall into step again.

But leading up to that week, Jin gets quieter and quieter, until Kame is pretty sure Jin’s just living inside his own head, because he doesn’t react to anything anyone around him says or does.

They arrive at the hotel, and they’re staying two to a room, and Kame’s with Ueda and Nakamaru is with Jin. Junno is with Koki and they’re already cracking stupid jokes and snickering at each other.

Jin disappears into his room before dinner, and doesn’t come down. Kame lifts his brow at Nakamaru, who purses his mouth and shakes his head in response to Kame’s unvoiced query. “He says he’s not hungry,” Nakamaru says, and Kame spends dinner thinking about Jin’s sleepy, vacant eyes and the downward tilt to the corner of his lips, pushing the food around on his plate with wooden chopsticks. As soon as he can without being rude, he excuses himself, standing up from the table with as little fanfare as possible.

“Everything okay?” Ueda asks, darting a quick look at Kame’s mutilated dinner, and Kame nods.

“Jin,” Kame says, and Nakamaru glances up from his conversation with Koki to look at Kame, and then he digs a hand into his black trousers, and when his hand emerges again it’s holding a card-key.

“You might need this,” Nakamaru says. “Don’t touch my clothes.”

Kame laughs, even as he slips the key into the front pocket of his flannel shirt. “As if,” Kame says, and grins easily, even as he’s mentally already halfway down the hallway to Jin’s room. “I’m terribly allergic to argyle.”

“Similar to my plaid flannel allergy, probably,” Nakamaru says, and Kame shrugs, and rocks uneasily from foot to foot.

“Oh go on, Kame,” Koki says. “Check on Jin before you freak out.”

There’s no one in the elevator to awkwardly ask for Kame’s autograph. There’s no one in the hallway, either, and Kame’s grateful he doesn’t have to worry about the fact that he’s left his sunglasses downstairs. He hopes Koki will notice and pick them up for him. He should send a text, but he’ll do it in a bit. He’s just…Kame doesn’t know why, but he’s worried. About Jin.

Kame doesn’t bother to knock; just slides the key-card into the door and when the little light turns green, quietly turns the handle.

The room is dark. Kame can barely make out the shape of Jin in the dark, a lump under the duvet that doesn’t move, doesn’t shift. If Kame narrows his eyes, he can see the slight up and down motion that tells him it’s not a corpse lying there, but it’s such a shallow movement that Kame wonders if he’s imagining it.

Kame doesn’t hesitate, not really. He just takes off his shoes and lies down on the bed on top of the covers, pressing his chest to Jin’s back, and dropping an arm over where he thinks Jin’s waist is. Now that he’s this close, he can feel the rise and fall of Jin’s chest, but Jin still doesn’t move or acknowledge Kame’s presence.

Jin isn’t asleep, though. When Jin’s asleep, he’s not this still. His body sprawls out, limbs stretching across every available surface, mouth open and soft snores that sound more like sniffles emerging from his boneless frame. Jin’s not curled up in the dark, still wearing his hoodie, wrapped up in a blanket like he’s trying to hide from the world.

“Jin, what’s wrong?” Kame says, and he whispers, because it seems wrong to break the silence. Kame also feels a little like he’s trespassing. “Is everything…okay?” Kame’s not sure why he asks that question, because it’s obvious that everything isn’t okay.

Jin doesn’t answer. But his hand does creep out from under the covers, just enough so that his fingertips brush Kame’s. Kame scoots himself a little closer, the metal studs of his jeans digging uncomfortably into his thighs, and Jin feels rather amorphous in his arms. Kame presses his cheek to what might be Jin’s back, and he can feel the beating of Jin’s heart now, so slow it’s like Jin’s pumping blood to the rest of his body through molasses.

Suddenly, Jin turns, spinning in Kame’s embrace, and Jin is facing him now. The duvet falls away, slightly, and now Jin’s legs shift against Kame’s legs, and it’s denim on denim. Kame doesn’t move his arm away- Jin, the same Jin who flinched from his touch only a week ago, doesn’t seem to want him to. Instead he slides one leg between Kame’s two, and presses his face into the hollow of Kame’s throat. Kame wishes there was enough light to see Jin’s face, but maybe it’ll be easier to get an answer in the dark.

“Jin?”

“I don’t know,” Jin says, and his voice is dry and crackling, like he hasn’t used it for days. And maybe he hasn’t—Jin’s been so withdrawn, responding in nods to all questions asked and sitting on the floor with his knees drawn up to his chest whenever left to his own devices.

“You don’t know what?” Kame asks, and he runs his hand up and down Jin’s spine, feeling the ridges. Jin shivers in his hold, and Kame wonders if Jin is cold, or if maybe Jin’s uncomfortable.

“I don’t know what’s wrong,” Jin says, and he presses himself closer to Kame, like it’s normal, like there was never a distance between them of Jin’s making, and it’s still there, that energy like gravity that pulls Kame toward Jin. “Is it bad, for me to touch you like this?”

“No,” Kame says fervently. “No.”

“Are you sure?”

“What do you need me to do?” Kame asks, and he’s adrift. All he knows to do is continue the steady pass of his hand across the vertebrae of Jin’s back, and let Jin bury his face in Kame’s shoulder as he tries to shut out the world.

“Nothing,” Jin says. “Just… stay. Even if you don’t want to, just stay.”

“Stay?” Kame asks, and he wants to tell Jin that it’s never Kame that goes away, it’s Jin. Kame’s always stayed. It’s always Jin who leaves.

“Yes,” Jin says, and it sounds like he’s forcing the words out, and Kame’s quiet so he doesn’t accidentally interrupt. “If you’re here, I won’t get lost in the dark.”

“Do you want me to turn on the light?” Kame asks, and Jin sighs, and his lips are warm, and his breath is hot, even through the material of Kame’s shirt.

“What’s the point?” Jin says, and it’s bleak. Kame doesn’t know that he’s ever heard Jin sound like this. Jin is always so full of something, even if it’s anger or boredom or disdain. But the man wrapped around Kame, clinging to Kame and struggling to even speak… Jin is empty, and it’s scary. Kame doesn’t know how to fill Jin up again, or make Jin fill himself up again. “It’ll still be dark.”

“Jin,” Kame starts, and Jin just grabs softly at a piece of Kame’s flannel, and his grip isn’t tight, but it’s a little bit desperate anyway. “I’ll stay,” Kame says, and Jin doesn’t say anything else.

Kame doesn’t either. Nakamaru comes in much later, and he looks surprised to see Kame still there. He’s holding another key, and Kame wonders if he got it from the front desk. He feels a little guilty that he’d essentially locked the man out of his own room.

Nakamaru, from what Kame can make out in the dark, doesn’t seem upset, he just quietly goes about his evening ablutions, settling into his twin bed. He turns on his bedside lamp for a moment, and Jin, who Kame thinks might be dozing, flinches into Kame, and Nakamaru tilts his head at Kame.

Kame looks back at him with wide eyes, and Nakamaru must see his hopeless confusion, because he bites at his lip and stares at Jin in distress.

Jin is so still and silent, and Nakamaru knows as well as Kame that Jin’s noisy by nature. Jin’s a film not a portrait photograph.

Nakamaru just turns out the bathroom light, because there’s nothing either of them can do.

Kame sleeps like that, with the cotton of Jin’s hoodie mashed into his cheek and bits of Jin’s hair sneaking into his mouth.

When he wakes up in the morning, sticky and hot, Jin hasn’t moved. Kame has to pee, has to shed his flannel shirt that clings to him with sweat, and the whole left side of his body is asleep, in that way that makes you feel like you’ve got dead limbs, and when Kame tries to move there’s that almost painful tingle as his arm starts coming back to life.

Jin doesn’t react when Kame lifts his arm, and Kame slips from the bed, retreating into the bathroom. He washes his face while he’s in there, and when he comes back out about ten minutes later, Jin’s right where Kame left him. Kame doesn’t think Jin is asleep, but he can’t be sure.

“Jin, I’m going to my room to shower,” Kame says, and the sunlight from the window filters across Jin’s face, reflecting in his hair. Jin blinks at Kame twice, and doesn’t speak. “Is that okay?”

Jin doesn’t move at all for three days. He doesn’t eat, he doesn’t drink; he just lies there, motionless, more of a statue than a man. He doesn’t listen to music, doesn’t react when people touch him, just blinks lazily when Kame speaks and covers his face when the sun comes out.

Kame’d had plans. To see some local sights before they head back to Tokyo, to sleep until noon. To trick Koki into watching that silly kids’ movie that just came out at the theater that he’s been seeing the adverts for all over the trains and venues.

But instead, Kame tries to make Jin drink water, tries to trick Jin into opening his eyes, into speaking to Kame again.

Kame doesn’t understand, but he’s not going to leave Jin like this. He can’t. That’s not what friends do. That’s not what… whatever-Kame-and-Jin-are-to-each-other do either.

So Kame stays, and runs fingers through Jin’s greasy hair, and on the third day, Jin gets up. He goes to the bathroom, and closes the door. Kame hears the shower turn on, and when Jin emerges, half an hour later, he looks like himself.

“Jin,” Kame says. “Why didn’t you get up?”

“I didn’t want to,” Jin says, and he looks at Kame, and a little of that emptiness is still there, but it’s pushed back, behind the part of Jin that Kame’s always known, the part that seems so full. “I don’t know.”

“Jin, maybe you should—“

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Jin says. “It’s over. I’m up.” His voice is so hoarse, and Kame’s not sure if Jin’ll be able to sing.

Jin can always sing, though, even when he’s so sick he’s dizzy, so Kame’s not entirely sure why he’s worried about that.

Maybe because it’s easier to worry about that than all of this. Maybe because this is a different type of sick than Kame’s ever encountered in Jin. He can’t blackmail Jin into taking cough medicine, and tell him he’ll get everyone else sick if he doesn’t rest. Kame doesn’t know the fix.

Jin looks at Kame, sitting down next to him on the bed, normal as you please, like he hasn’t frightened Kame down to his bones. He reaches out with his right hand toward Kame’s, and Kame lifts his own hand up to meet it. “Jin,” Kame says, and Jin’s name on Kame’s lips is more than an address. It’s everything Kame’s thinking, and Jin understands it. Even as everything changes; even with everything that stands between them, things Kame can’t begin to comprehend, they still have that. A connection that lets them sing back to back, Jin’s voice perfectly catching Kame’s and soaring high above it.

Jin links their fingers together, palm flat against palm. “Kizuna,” Jin says, and he closes his eyes and breathes in. “Thank you.”

Kame studies Jin, and Jin’s unguarded posture. He hasn’t seen it since Jin came back from Los Angeles with that giant padlock on his heart. “You’re welcome,” Kame says, and there’s a clenching feeling in his gut that this won’t be the last time.

But Kame thinks it’s okay to pretend for a while.

Between them, right now, it isn’t quiet, because the air is filled with unsaid words that ring loudly in Kame’s ears.


*


“I had my interview with Kita, today,” Ueda says, and it sounds like he’s writing as he’s talking. Maybe music, maybe weird little poems on napkins like he does sometimes, about things that don’t make sense to anyone but him. “I think he might be in love with you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Kame says. “Am I really that good?”

“You know you are,” Ueda says, sounding impatient even though Kame doesn’t really think he is. “I think there’s just Koki left, now, and then we’re all done except for the recording of the song.”

“We all need to get together and rehearse,” Kame says. “But our schedules never match.”

“Some of us are a little too famous,” Ueda says, and Kame laughs.

“Yes,” Kame agrees. “Koki should stop getting those drama roles, shouldn’t he?”

“Definitely,” Ueda says, and Kame can imagine him tossing his hair over his shoulder as he speaks. “Of course it’s Koki I’m talking about. It’s just Koki who’s too busy to practice.”

“Sorry,” Kame says. “My hours on set are crazy right now. We’re filming every night and I’m stumbling home at ten in the morning and sleeping until four, when I get up and do it all over again.”

“Hey, it’s fine,” Ueda says. “We’ll figure it out. We can’t be that rusty.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Kame says with a chuckle. “I couldn’t hit any notes at all when I was playing around with Ryo.”

“It’s like riding a bike,” Ueda says. “You never forget how to sing with your boyband.”

Kame laughs aloud into the phone, and Ueda laughs too. “Alright. Call me on Monday, and I should have my schedule for filming by then.”

“Great,” Ueda says. “A wedding and a show in one week. Wow, just like the old days, isn’t it?”

“It is,” Kame says, and there’s a pleasant hum in his belly; the one that tells him he’s content.


*


“Jin has sad eyes,” Kame’s mother says. “Not all the time, but sometimes… he has sad eyes.”

“Ueda thinks he’s just getting cocky,” Kame replies, and Kame’s mother looks at him, all slow blinks like the kind Kame does too, when he thinks the person he’s talking to is saying something beneath their intelligence.

“Cocky?” Kame’s mother says, and she puts a hand on Kame’s shoulder. “Does that sound right to you?”

“No,” Kame admits. Jin is like a snake that needs to shed his skin, uncomfortable and hot and avoidant. Jin won’t even look in the mirror sometimes. Jin knows he can sing but he’s eager about it, like a puppy. He just wants to sing all the time because he likes it, not because he’s better at it than everyone else. And even though they’re in the midst of debuting—filming PVs where the make-up artists fawn over Jin’s pretty face, Jin doesn’t seem to relish it. It makes him more itchy then pleased, Kame thinks. Jin just looks like he’s trying to stay afloat.

“Jin has sad eyes, Kazuya. Such sad eyes.”

When Kame thinks about it, he knows his mother must be right.


*


Kame’s lips are dry.

“Stop licking them so much, then,” Jin says, scratching at his nose, and Kame wants to laugh, because they’re both so hopelessly nervous.

“We’re going to be okay,” Kame says, and Jin shuffles back and forth in place, looking anywhere but at Kame. “It doesn’t have to ruin us.”

Jin laughs, and it’s rough and grates in Kame’s ears in a way Jin’s voice hardly ever does, because Jin’s voice is usually crawls like honey down Kame’s spine. “I’m not like you,” Jin says. “I can’t pretend.”

Jin’s eyes are glassy, and Kame wonders if he’ll cry.


*


Koki grabs Kame around the waist when Kame walks up to him, and Kame laughs and tries to squirm out of Koki’s grip. “Careful, Koki, or your wife might get jealous.”

“Oh, she knows my carnal passion for you is too much to resist,” Koki replies, and Kame snorts, pushing an elbow lightly into Koki’s stomach to make him let go. “Everyone knows I love Kame-chan best.”

“But, Koki, if everyone knows, there’s no thrill in it anymore!” Kame says dramatically. “I’ll have to find a new secret man-lover to satisfy my lust for excitement and adventure.”

“Kame-chan, I’m wounded,” Koki says, although with the grin on his face, Kame thinks Koki is anything but heartbroken. “I thought what we had was special.”

“You know,” Kame says, “we don’t really get paid for fanservice anymore.”

“My love for you is real,” Koki replies, and straightens his rings on his fingers. Koki’s wearing too many belts for Kame’s aesthetic tastes, but that’s Koki in a nutshell, and Kame wouldn’t really change anything about him. “I never need to be paid to molest you.”

“Ah, I’m flattered, Koki, really I am,” Kame says, forcing his lips into a straight line as he tries to contain his laughter. “But unfortunately, you’re not my type.”

Koki presses a heavily jeweled hand to his heart, and pulls a face like he’s aghast. “Kame-chan, what could possibly stand between us? I’m older than you, we’ve known each other for years, and I’m devilishly handsome…”

“I’m sorry,” Kame says. “It’s not you, it’s me.” Koki looks at Kame closer, eyes sparkling with mirth. “I can’t date married men with tattoos.”

“That exact combination, huh?” Koki asks, and they both dissolve into giggles. Hanging out with Koki is always like leaping head first into a swimming pool of youth, Kame thinks, because he feels like a kid splashing playfully in the shallow end, sputtering at the cool water. “Damn, I guess I’m out of luck.”

“You really are,” Kame says, and Koki’s vest is made of crushed velvet, and Kame wonders if any of them will ever really get too old to keep pulling the same tricks. Kame hopes not. “I hope you don’t take it too hard.”

“Naw,” Koki says, shoving his hands in his pockets as he and Kame start walking. “The missus was starting to get a bit jealous. Probably because I’ve been cutting your pictures out of the newspapers and making a collage.” Kame chokes, and Koki smirks at him. “That totally counts as a laugh. I win.”

“Were we competing?” Kame asks wryly, licking his lips. Kame looks up the street, but he doesn’t see any people who look like they might be following him looking for a scoop. It’s pretty early on a Wednesday morning, so Kame thinks it’s a little bit safer than usual.

“We’re always competing, Kame-chan. Or you are, anyway.”

“Not true,” Kame rebuts.

“You wouldn’t even let your six year old niece win at hide-and-seek. Because then you would have lost.”

“I taught her the value of victory.”

“You made her buy you things when she lost,” Koki says, and he sounds amused, but Kame doesn’t get what’s so funny. You have to work for victories, he thinks, and there’s no reason not to learn that at an early age. Kame’s life has been a long competition that Kame’s been trying not to lose. “You’re sick.”

Sometimes there are detours from the goal, but overall Kame’s done pretty well for himself. “My niece goes to the best university in Japan. A healthy sense of competition has served her well.”

“Fine, fine,” Koki says, raising his hands in a placating manner, waving them in front of his face. “You’re not some sort of freak because you have to win everything.”

“It’s Darwinian,” Kame says, stretching his arms above his head. The shoulders of his jacket are a bit tight. Kame has been playing more baseball as the weather gets warmer. “Survival of the fittest.”

“It’s hide-and-seek,” Koki says, and Kame looks at him.

“Maybe if the tigers were better at hide-and-seek they wouldn’t be going extinct,” Kame informs Koki pointedly, and Koki’s surprised laugh is so sharp and clear in the air that Kame wonders if it’s like a siren’s call that will bring paparazzi to them like moths to a flame.

“You’re too much, Kame,” Koki says, and his eyes are so bright. Koki’s always been most attractive like this, in Kame’s opinion. The glowering image had never suited Koki, Kame thinks, because Koki is so light at heart. “I hope you won’t turn shopping into a competition.”

Kame gives Koki a once-over. “I choose everything,” Kame says. “Deal?”

“Deal,” Koki agrees, and he looks a little relieved to have the decisions for what the groomsmen are going to wear taken out of his hands. “I’m not the go-to guy for suits.”

“Well, if we ever need someone to dress us all up to infiltrate a seedy hip-hop night club, Koki, we’ll all know who to call,” Kame says consolingly, and Koki nudges him with a hard shoulder.

“Don’t be mean, Kame-chan,” Koki says, but he’s grinning and Kame knows he’s taken the joke in the spirit it was given. “I haven’t said a thing about your eyeliner, and it’s been a struggle.”

“I’m playing a rock and roll has-been for a movie,” Kame says. “I sort of like the eyeliner.”

“Of course you do,” Koki says, and holds the door for Kame, and they both enter the shop.

Koki, thankfully, knows Kame so well that he’s come prepared for hours of trying on suits. He manages to contain his eyerolls, too, which is more than Kame would have been able to say for Ueda. Kame had chosen his model well.

“This one will do,” Kame says to the beleaguered shop assistant, Makino, who looks almost shocked that Kame’s made a decision. He’s got six discarded options for bowties hanging across his left arm, and six different shades of grey, the same jacket, across his right.

“Seriously?” he asks, his voice a squeak.

“Do you think I should keep looking?” Kame asks, purposefully making his voice unsure just to tease.

“No, sir, I mean, whatever you—“

“Kame-chan, don’t troll the man. He’s had a hard morning,” Koki says, hopping off the stool. “He likes this one, and we’ll need five of them. One of us is a bit taller than the rest of us, but Kamenashi here is the widest in the shoulder. We’ll come in for fittings after you get the order.”

“Yes, sir,” Makino says, and disappears into the back of the shop, presumably to make the orders.

“Don’t ruin my fun,” Kame says to Koki, and Koki sighs.

“I’m getting a little hungry,” he says, and Kame realizes neither of them have eaten yet today. “Do you have time for lunch?”

“Yes,” Kame says, and absentmindedly scrawls his signature across the order form that Makino brings out to him, pausing halfway through as he remembers to carefully check the order. It’s fine, and he finishes with a flourish. “Where should we go?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Koki says. “I’m not on any projects right now.” Koki clears his throat. “Plus, I’ve got to talk to you.”

“Sounds serious,” Kame remarks as he gathers his things. Koki’s layering his chains back around his neck, making sure all the charms are straight and that none of the links are tangled. “Something wrong?”

“No,” Koki says mysteriously, and Kame frowns at him. “Oh relax, we’ll talk over lunch.”

They choose a pizzeria, and Kame tells himself not to think about how many calories are in each slice as they order, and it’s delicious. The cheese is greasy, but not too greasy, and Kame’s sure he won’t regret the choice later. People don’t really talk about his weight, anymore, but anyone who’s ever been a Japanese pop star carries that lingering… discomfort around food, even when they’ve developed a healthy attitude toward it. Well, maybe not Koki, Kame thinks, as he watches the other man devour his fifth slice, hands covered in tomato sauce.

Some things, Kame figures, just aren’t fair.

“So what did you want to talk about?” Kame asks as he cuts another piece off his slice of pizza with his fork and knife. “Problems at home? Juri and the others doing okay?”

“Ah, yeah, everything’s fine on the home front, Kame-chan,” Koki says, setting his slice down, half-eaten.

That’s how Kame knows it’s important. Koki folds his hands together in front of himself, eyes trained on Kame’s face. He looks sort of like a man about to fight a hungry bear, instead of like a man sitting across from a lifelong friend who eats his pizza with a fork and knife. “Then what?”

“He’s coming,” Koki says, after a moment, and Kame tilts his head to the side.

“Who? Santa? It’s May, Koki, we’ve got a bit of time before—“ It sinks in as he’s speaking; a slow realization. Koki’s looking at Kame nervously, and Kame wants to smile at him reassuringly but his face feels a little frozen. “What?” He says instead, and Koki swallows, taking a gulp of his soda and looking down to study the linoleum floor.

“Jin RSVPed. For the wedding. Nakamarad got it in the mail yesterday,” Koki says, and Kame wonders if Koki’s been wondering how to broach this to him all day.

“Did you draw the short straw?” Kame asks, and Koki smirks.

“Naw, I volunteered,” Koki replies. “After all, you're my secret gay lover, not anyone else’s.” Koki leans forward. “Unless you’d finally like to come clean on—“

“I wasn’t sleeping with Jin,” Kame bites out, and then catches himself, looking around the restaurant nervously to see if anyone might have heard. He glares at Koki, and then digs through his bag for his sunglasses, which he removes from the case and slides over his eyes to block out  Koki’s entertained gaze.

“I was going to say ‘Ramirez’,” Koki says dryly. “Or one of your other baseball boyfriends. Trust me, I’d have known if you were sleeping with Akanishi. Both of you would have been less stressed out all the time. And we wouldn’t have had to be in the middle of the intense stares you both traded even when you guys weren’t talking to each other.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Kame says, taking a sip of his iced green tea. “And even if I did, you must be kidding that it would have made anything better.”

“Maybe not for your image,” Koki answers, after a moment. “And maybe there might have been risks, what with the way the public was sort of obsessed about your relationship. But,” Koki stops, and sighs. “But I’m not really talking about KAT-TUN. There are other things in this world besides your reputation, you know.”

“Of course there are,” Kame says. “But to give this all up for—“

“Your heart?” Koki frowns. “Yeah. Who would do a silly thing like that?” Koki drums his fingers on the table, and Kame remembers the last time he ever saw Jin, and Jin asked Kame if Kame would ever come with him.

“I don’t know,” Kame says, but maybe he does.


*


The third postcard comes in the middle of summer, when it’s hot enough that Kame doesn’t want to take the stairs. Kame doesn’t even want to check the mail, because the time he spends checking the mail is time spent not under cool water in the shower.

Still, he’s expecting more letters from Sakamoto, who’s on holiday in America right now, and Kame’s been looking forward to those letters, which always come accompanied with cheesy photos of Sakamoto in a Tokyo Giants' cap, and he always scribbles Hayato in the corner, with little bunny ears, and Kame’s nephew is a big fan. So is Kame, for that matter, because he likes the younger man’s smile and he’s an awesome player.

Kame’s freshly showered when he looks through the mail. It’s wedged in between a Coach keychain Kame ordered and the much-anticipated letter from Sakamoto.

Paris, Kame thinks. It’s a weird postcard, with the Eiffel Tower in the background, and a weird, slightly disproportionate elephant frolicking in the front, and peeks of what Kame thinks might be the Louvre on the left-hand side. And maybe weird is the wrong word. It’s fantastical, or maybe whimsical, and it’s got Jin written all over it. He can imagine Jin picking out this postcard, lips puckered in a thoughtful frown, bypassing downsized replicas of the Mona Lisa, and sensible cityscapes showcasing the Arc de Triomphe, and picking up this quirky card with a weird cartoony elephant because he knows Kame’d have picked a boring one.

Kame’s always liked that about Jin. Jin, when he’s happy, is full of spontaneity; the kind of guy who thinks Paris is best represented in large cartoons and fractured snapshots. As Kame studies the image, trying to see, in his mind, Jin picking out this postcard, wandering the streets, stopping at small cafes and munching on bits of pastries as he peers into shop windows, he realizes that maybe it is. He’s seeing Paris through Jin’s eyes, as easy as this.

Kame’s always wanted to live in Paris. He said so, in an interview once, and he’d meant it. He’s dreamed of casual mornings and satin robes and expensive coffee. He wonders if Jin’s doing all that. He wonders if Jin has a girlfriend, the kind who blow-dries her hair in the morning as Jin looks out across the city from an upper-level balcony, breathing in river-scented air.

Then Jin’s eyes, as he pulls back from kissing Kame long and slow in the winter snow, flash across the postcard, burning up from the Eiffel Tower, and Kame figures he doesn’t.

Kame knows not to expect anything on the back of the card. This is only the third but the other two, coming at sixth month intervals, carried no greeting.

This one, though. Scrawled in rounded letters, the kind Jin’s perfected over the years until Kame can tell his Roman letters apart from anyone else’s no matter what, is the phrase ‘Il n'y a qu'un bonheur dans la vie, c'est d'aimer et d'être aimé’.

Kame looks it up, later, on Goo, and it turns out to be a quote from a “A Letter to Lina Calamatta,” a book by George Sand, a famous French writer famous for both her lovely prose and her wild lifestyle. Kame wonders how Jin knows about her—if he saw the quote somewhere, or if he saw a film about her, or if he’d looked this quote up just to make Kame’s palms sweat when he read the postcard.

It means: “There is only one happiness in life, to love and to be loved.”

Kame wonders, most of all, what that means to Jin. Because Jin…Jin has always loved. And, Kame knows better than anyone, Jin has always been loved.

Three

Comments

[natsukashi-yume.livejournal.com]

The image of Koki leaving his chains hanging on a coat rack.. LOL Ahhh, and all the smushy middle-aged kokame, oh my goooodddd. I love middle-aged KT... and you're right, more like family, less like friends. ♥

"He thinks about that large map, and wonders how anyone can possibly find someone else in a world so big." gorgeous.

"He makes so much noise, but inside, he’s quiet." How do you catch these moments? These little nuggets of truth that no one really talks about but everyone notices... and only one someone puts it in words it finally makes sense. /incoherent admiration

"It’s like Jin’s locked away a part of himself, and Kame misses it fiercely, misses it like it’s one of his lungs, and now he breathes slow and labored and there’s never enough air." more gorgeous, sharp pain while breathing gorgeous.

"he can see all that quiet in Jin’s eyes."

"It’s like poison in his blood, to think of a world in which he and Jin aren’t more than strangers who used to care." gorgeous like broken glass.

"“I can’t be here,” Jin says. “I’ll never be able to be myself here.”" T__________T <- and by this I mean real, genuine saline tears from my actual eyes.

"Jin used to touch as often as he breathed. Now there’s space between Jin and everyone else that feels forced, like Jin is holding himself back." This has that moment of... this is definitely real and has happened in real life feel to it. It's SO Jin, and captures that turning point so beautifully.

"Jin might have risen in the East, but he set in the West. Jin set over there in America, and the Jin that Kame knew never really came back." eviscerating me.

"I’m not really concerned about all the ways you and Akanishi managed to avoid admitting you had a thing for each other." preach Ryo. except I AM CONCERNED. I'M BLOODY WELL CONCERNED.

"Kame doesn’t have a best friend. Kame has people he holds dear; people he holds so close that he can’t imagine his life without them." real fucking tears and so much empathy. ARE YOU SPYING ON MY THOUGHTS? ♥♥♥

Also, “Your shirt has a hole in it. You wear it too much.” Kame, darling, your distraction methods are becoming slightly transparent.

"Kame’s not a machine; he’s flesh and blood and a little bit of heartache." #cyborgninaritai?

Kame's best something and his worst something. gutted.

"Is it bad, for me to touch you like this?" I already sense this is my canon fic. This is everything I've ever really looked for in akame. This is so heartbreakingly real. I can't.

"“Stay?” Kame asks, and he wants to tell Jin that it’s never Kame that goes away, it’s Jin. Kame’s always stayed. It’s always Jin who leaves." my heart.

"Between them, right now, it isn’t quiet, because the air is filled with unsaid words that ring loudly in Kame’s ears." it hurts to breathe.

"“It doesn’t have to ruin us.”" portents of doom T________T

*clings to much needed dose of kokame silliness*

"absentmindedly scrawls his signature across the order form that Makino brings out to him, pausing halfway through as he remembers to carefully check the order. It’s fine, and he finishes with a flourish." for some reason find this exceedingly hot. kame the responsible yet devil-may-care shopaholic.

The postcards are so lovely... surprising and heartwarming and melancholy all at once.

"And, Kame knows better than anyone, Jin has always been loved." My heart trembled.

[buzzbird.livejournal.com]

Goosebumps and tears in my eyes.

/reads on

[maiamcw.livejournal.com]

yessssss <3