maayacolabackup

Title: Swear
Pairing: Akame
Rating: NC-17
Genre: romance, friendship, not au in a weird way, angst
Notes: I don't usually address Jin leaving the group, because, um, I don't like to talk about things that break my heart. Anyway this is my epic Akame hate-sex piece that ended up as something completely different than what I intended because I'm a huge sap and so yeah my outline went out the window. I probably won't write Akame again, but I wanted to write this, and so I did. I think it's what I wanted, so I hope you like it. Split into 2 parts cause it's too long :(
Summary: Jin misses Kame in so many ways, but it seems impossible to scale the wall that stands between them. 10,000+ words.

Swear

Jin remembers the first time he couldn’t stand to see what Kamenashi had turned into anymore.

He and Nakamaru were goofing off during a break in practice, and gulping water in between laughs as they stretched out their tight and sore muscles. Ueda and Taguchi were being queens in the corner, icing their knees and checking their cell phones. Koki was on the phone with his mother.

Kame was standing in the corner, just watching them, standing as though he was above it all. His eyes flitted from person to person, his mouth a straight line across his face. Jin looked in his eyes and couldn’t see anything there. Not the eager boy who had made terrible jokes but was cute anyway, not the self-conscious adolescent who wasn’t sure he was good enough to be a leader, a star, but sure he wanted to grasp the opportunity with both hands, and not the man who had offered Jin his shoulder to cry on when Jin had broken up with his first girlfriend. This Kame was a shell of a person, and certainly not the Kame that Jin had thought of as one of his best friends.

Kame caught Jin’s eyes. What do you want, they seemed to say, and Jin felt cold inside.

The next day, he talked to Johnny about going to study English in LA.

***

“Jin, tell me a story,” Kame says, voice muffled by his pillow in the silence of the night.

“What kind of story?” Jin asks the younger boy, his own voice scratchy from a long day of practice with his vocal coach, lying on his back and looking up at the white ceiling.

“A happy one, please. One with a happy ending.”

Jin smiles. “A happy ending? Okay, I’ve got one.” Jin folds his hands together and rests them on his belly, mouth in a tiny smile. “Once there was a cute little boy named Kazuya, with caterpillar eyebrows—“

“Hey!”

“Do you want me to tell the story or not?”

“Yes, please,” Kame mutters, dropping his head back down with a sigh.

“Kazuya was a special little boy, who had big dreams of being a baseball star. But one day he found himself at an audition for a big huge company called…um…Jimmy’s Entertainment.”

Kame giggles then. “Jimmy’s? Really? Is that the best you can do?”

“Shut up,” Jin replies, but there’s no heat in his voice as he looks over at Kame, who is looking at him now, eyes soft. Jin thinks Kamenashi looks like an alien, but he is the cutest alien Jin has ever seen. “So Kazuya is nervous, and scared, but then an incredibly awesome boy comes into the room and sits next to him.”

“What happens next?” Kame asks, as if he doesn’t know the answer, and Jin rolls onto his side to look at him full on.

Jin, who is 16 years old, doesn’t know a thing about love, but when he thinks about Kamenashi, he thinks he might someday. “The two boys become the best of friends. In fact, when they are 90 years old, they sit together under a kotatsu and talk about the good old days, when they were famous idols, and smoke pipes together, and they still have lots of inside jokes that none of their other friends understand, and they’re together.”

Kame draws his lower lip between his teeth, nibbling on it softly, and Jin feels his heart clench. “Can we really be together when we’re 90? Can we still be friends?”

“Well, not exactly. Cause I’m older than you, so I’ll be 92, but you know—“

“Promise me.” Kame’s voice is serious, and his thick eyebrows draw together with intent. He sticks out his pinky. “Pinky promise.”

Jin grabs the pinky with his own, and they stamp their thumbs together to seal it. “Pinky promise.”

Jin, who is 16 years old, doesn’t know a thing about love.

***

When Jin is in LA studying English for 6 months, he calls Yamapi every Friday night. Pi is always pissed about it, because for him it is Saturday morning. Jin thinks this is hilarious.

“Good moooorning, sunshine!” Jin chirps into the phone, and Yamapi swears at him violently.

“One day,” Pi groans, “one day I am going to castrate you, and sell your testicles to Aiba Masaki.”

Jin cackles gleefully. “You wouldn’t dare! Because you know if you did he’d make you drink some weird milkshake made out of them, and then where would you be?”

Yamapi swears again, and Jin can hear him rolling around in bed. “Ah fuck,” he says. “I can’t find my slippers.”

“They’re on the other side of the bed, dumbass. You always wake up and roll over to the left, and your slippers are always on the right.”

“Oh yeah,” Pi mutters, and he’s finally awake. “Come back home, Jin, so that I don’t have to make my own coffee in the morning. I miss my roomie.”

“Dude, you know I don’t know how to make coffee.”

“I know, but I don’t feel so guilty ordering delivery if they have to bring two coffees.”

They both laugh, and Jin realizes he misses Yamapi a lot, all the time. Yamapi was his best friend, had really SAVED him at one point, when Jin wasn’t sure he could live up to being a Johnny, that he could keep going in an industry where he had to constantly pretend to be a one dimensional human being.

Yamapi talks to Jin about inconsequential things for an hour, and Jin feels his eyes getting heavy with sleep. “Well, I’ve got to go,” Pi says finally. “I’ve got a rehearsal with Kamenashi.”

Jin’s eyes are suddenly wide open. “What now?”

“Well, we’re doing some small charity concert and we’re performing SA, you know, because it’s the best song of all time.”

“Shut the fuck up, you braggart,” Jin says, before he adds hesitatingly: “How is Kamenashi?”

Yamapi sighs. “Jin, you know my rules. If you want to know about Kamenashi’s life, call Kamenashi.”

“It’s not that easy!” Jin wails. “He’s like some evil alien robot that doesn’t feel things and he wouldn’t even answer if I called, and if he did he would just sit on the other end and judge me because I took a hiatus right after debuting with no explanation.”

Yamapi is silent on the other end for a moment. “Then why do you want to know how he is?”

“I don’t know why! I can’t help it, I just…” He’s never really talked about it with Yamapi before, how he feels about new, robot alien Kame, who’s so different from cute alien Kame in ways that Jin can’t even explain. Yamapi’s tried to ask before, but Jin’s never really tried to answer. “I just…I can’t talk to him, I can’t even look at photos of him! What am I supposed to say to him, anyway? ‘Sorry I left the country because you don’t have eyebrows anymore,’ or-“

“You left KAT-TUN right after debut because Kamenashi doesn’t have eyebrows anymore?” Yampi asks quietly, as if he’s trying to figure something out, but Jin doesn’t know what Yamapi can possibly figure out when Jin himself doesn’t even know what he’s talking about.

“THE EYEBROWS ARE AN ALLEGORY FOR HIS SOUL,” Jin replies despairingly. “I left the country because I couldn’t bear to look at the imposter with no eyebrows and no soul wandering around in Kame’s place.”

“Jin, I gotta go. We’ll talk next Friday, alright?” Yamapi’s voice is soft, and sort of…consoling. “But seriously, you should just call Kamenashi if you want to know how he is so much. But! I will tell him you said hi.”

“Don’t you dare tell him—“ the phone clicks, and Jin stares at the phone in his hand, knowing he still remembers Kame’s number by heart, if he hasn’t changed it in the year and a half since he last dialed it.

In the end, he puts the phone down and goes to bed.

When he and Yamapi talk the next week, it is about Pi’s new girlfriend wanting them to get a cat together and how Pi wants to break up with her because it’s too serious. “But Pi, we have a dog together,” Jin replies, laughing.

“I know, but we’re bros forever,” Yampi says, and laughs.

“Nothing’s forever,” Jin says back, and thinks about pinky promises in the dark.

***

“Hey, Jin, do you think we’ll debut together?” Kame asks, and Jin is silent.

“I dunno. Yamashita,” and Jin thinks he might be getting close enough to Yamashita to call him Yamapi soon, “didn’t get to debut with 4Tops, so I’m not sure.”

“I hope we do,” Kame says, sitting across from Jin on the other side of the couch, eating vanilla ice-cream, only their ankles touching. “I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to debut with more.”

“Me either,” Jin says, and it’s true. Kamenashi isn’t his only friend, but there is something special between them, an energy Jin doesn’t understand that makes his heart beat faster and his face turn red for no reason at all just because Kamenashi is smiling. “But with or without me, you’re going to be a big star.” Jin also thinks this is true. Kamenashi is prickly and sometimes unapproachable and sometimes bratty, but he’s also soft in all the right places, and Jin knows he has that special something that makes a star.

“But we’re better together,” Kame says, and Jin smiles. “So let’s support each other.”

“I’ll always support you.” Jin looks into Kamenashi’s eyes, “even if we’re separated. Even though you only like vanilla ice-cream, and it’s disgusting.”

“Swear it?” Kame asks, holding out his pinky. “Swear you’ll always have vanilla ice-cream. And that you’ll support me.”

“Mmmhmm.”

***

When Jin gets back from LA, there is no one waiting at the airport. Only Pi knows he is coming home, and Pi is at a photo shoot until 8 PM, so Jin is greeted only by his manager, who looks at him like he died last week. “Oh god, your hair. Your skin. Oh god, how can we fix this in only two days?”

Jin grins, and as always, he’s forgiven. “Sorry?”

“Alright, alright, let’s get you home.”

As they leave the airport, the paparazzi are everywhere.

Jin arrives at his and Pi’s apartment, and the first thing he does is open the fridge. There are two onigiri and a note on a pink glitter post-it. “Welcome home, fatass. Get some sleep, Ryo and Yuu are coming over at 10:30.” Jin looks at his watch. 4:15. Plenty of time.

He goes over to the answering machine and clicks it without even thinking.

“Jin you fucking douchebag,” he hears Koki yell at top volume. “We’re backstage at a show during break and it’s all over the fucking news that you were spotted arriving in Japan today. What the hell? Anyway,” and he hears tussling. “Hey, Jin, welcome home!” Nakamaru. “Jin, it’s been a while.” Hisashiburi. Ueda. “JIIIIIIIIN CALL USSSSSSS,” Taguchi gleefully exclaims into the receiver.

Jin is happy to hear from them. He’s talked to almost all of them over the past 6 months, through email, and occasional short phone calls. They were all pissed when he left, but something in his eyes must have given away that he needed to leave more than he needed anything, because they had been quick to forgive.

All of his band mates except… “Akanishi, welcome home.” Okaeri.

Except the one he had escaped from.

***

Jin feels nervous around Kamenashi all the time now. Every time their fingers brush when they’re looking over lyric sheets, every time they bump into each other during a dance rehearsal.

He doesn’t like the loss of control, the feeling that his heart is going to beat right out of his chest if he doesn’t hold onto it hard enough. He can’t even look at Kamenashi anymore, and Kamenashi has noticed.

“Jin did I…do something?”

Jin can’t stand that wounded look in his eyes, and know he did it. He can’t stand how much he wants to…he doesn’t even know what he wants, although he’s starting to get a vague idea that it might not be what he’s supposed to want from Kamenashi.

They might be debuting, and he has to think about the group, and about songs and dances, and not about how soft Kamenashi’s hair looks with all those pretty layers or how husky and pretty Kame’s voice turned out after all the cracking had stopped.

Kamenashi places an hand on Jin’s arm, tentatively. “Jin?” and Jin realizes he’s been staring, eyebrows furrowed.

All of a sudden he can’t take it. “Don’t touch me,” he hisses, and Kamenashi recoils, as if Jin has slapped him. “Just stop…touching me.”

Jin resolves not to look at Kame anymore.

Of course, he can’t stop, but Kame has definitely stopped looking at him.

And one week later, Kamenashi comes in with perfectly arched eyebrows, and the rest of the guys are full of goofy jibes and teases. Jin swallows tightly, and it burns.

***

Jin’s first rehearsal with the guys since his return has him looking much different than when he stepped off the plane two days ago. His hair is neatly layered, and highlighted, his split ends gone. His skin’s been exfoliated, and his nails buffed. He looks like an idol again, and with every correction and improvement Jin feels the metal bars of his cage rebuilding themselves around him.

Everything is fine, at first, but then they are rehearsing and Kame’s tongue is sharp. Koki slaps him on the back. “It’s the first day back, Kame, relax,” and Kame’s eyes blaze.

“He’s been relaxing for six months, and it’s time to take things seriously again,” Kame snaps back at him, and Koki removes his hand.

“I am taking this seriously, asshole,” Jin replies, his breathing labored as he prepares to run through the sequence again, concentrating on where he messed up so he won’t do it the next time.

“You never take anything seriously,” Kame snarls, and Nakamaru is biting his lip and looking back and forth between Jin and Kamenashi like they’re about to brawl. Jin feels something grab in his chest and he thinks it must be rage.

“You don’t know me anymore, Kamenashi. What makes you think I don’t take anything seriously?”

“If you did,” Kame says, “You wouldn’t have—“ He shakes himself. “Nevermind. Not now. Let’s do it again.”

Ueda offers Jin a bottle of water, silently. “Thanks,” Jin says quietly. Koki looks over at him. I know you’re taking this seriously, his eyes say, and Jin quirks a smile at him. Jin is determined to prove that he is better than Kame thinks he is, and to wipe that disdaining sneer off of his cold mouth.

But Kame snaps less through the next hour, and then practice is over. Soon, only Jin and Kame are left in the practice room, Jin still looking in the mirror and reviewing a part from the chorus that still isn’t flowing to the correct timing. He does it over and over, and he can feel Kame’s gaze on his back.

“I’m sorry,” Kamenashi says at last. “I can see that you’re serious.” He picks up his bag. Jin is surprised. Kame hasn’t spoken to him unless he had to in a long time.

“What were you going to say?” Jin asks, pushing his luck.

“Pardon?”

“Earlier,” Jin replies. “What were you going to say?”

Something…breaks. Kame drops his bag again, and walks over to Jin, slowly, like he’s not sure if he wants to.

“If you took things seriously,” Kame says then, and Jin thinks tell me tell me tell me “You never would have broken your promise to me.”

Jin is silent. Kame continues, and it’s the most emotion Jin has seen out of Kame in over two years. “Can you see us, as we are now,” Kame’s voice catches in his throat. “Under a kotatsu when we’re 90?”

And there it is. Jin feels the weight of that pinky promise, hanging on his shoulders like the mantle of a king.

“The worst part is,” Kame says, and Jin can believe this is Kame, the same Kame who has been looking at him with nothing but ice and disdain. Kame’s eyes are a little wild, and his hands are clenched, and it’s nothing extreme if you don’t know Kame, but even after all this time apart Jin does, and Kame might as well be screaming. “I don’t even know what I did to make you—“

“No, no, no,” Jin says. “I don’t want to talk—“

“Of course you don’t!” Kame hisses, his eyes no longer sad but filled with rage. He’s too close, Jin thinks. Too fucking close. Jin can feel his angry breath. “You won’t ever explain. You’re such a selfish prick—“

“Stop!” Jin cries, and tries to move back but behind him there is a mirror and he can’t move. It’s too hot. He hates the way Kame makes him feel even now. Kamenashi is a complete and total asshole, and one moment of vulnerability isn’t going to change who he is now to Jin, the boy he used to love but now can’t stand; arrogant, rude, cold and-- He can’t move away, and something shifts in Kame’s eyes, and Jin thinks it might be something he’s felt before, there in Kame’s eyes. “I fucking hate you,” Jin whispers, and Kame’s eyes narrow. “I hate you too.”

Jin doesn’t know why he moves closer, only that now they are kissing. Kame’s mouth is hard and unforgiving underneath his own. Jin presses his lips into Kame’s even more fiercely, and suddenly, those lips soften, just the slightest bit. Kame’s tongue slides its way effortlessly forward, tangling with Jin’s, and the wet heat between their mouths pulls groan from them both. Jin bites down on Kame’s lip, hard enough to draw blood. He tastes metal, and then even more when Kame bites him back. (Even this moment is a competition. Everything is between them now. Jin is just as determined to win this one as he was all the others.) Jin pulls Kame closer to him to deepen the kiss, and feels Kame’s cock hard and hot, press against his left thigh. Jin pushes that thigh into Kame’s arousal, hard, and Kame releases a hoarse cry, muffled by Jin’s mouth, before pulling away roughly, shoving Jin into the wall.

Their eyes meet for just a moment, and Kame’s eyes are dark with a mix of desire and rage. Jin feels himself get harder even as he takes a step back.

Kame growls then, his face contorted with…something, before he tears his eyes away and flees the room. Jin watches him leave, and his own senses start returning, leaving him wondering what the hell just happened.

***

Jin and Kamenashi haven’t talked in six months. Jin misses Kamenashi, but Kamenashi is changing. Kamenashi, who used to have a ready smile, only smiles for the camera now. Off set, he is demanding and frigid. “It’s like someone switched his humanity off,” Koki says one day. Ueda smacks him on the back of the head, but they’ve all been thinking it, and Jin wonders with a pain in his gut if it’s all his fault somehow.

“He’s a total dick,” he finds himself saying, and Koki nods. Nakamaru sighs and grabs his bag.

“Well, we’re a group now,” Nakamaru says. “And we know there’s Kame inside there somewhere.”

“How deep is it buried, then?” Jin rejoins, and Taguchi sends him a look of faint disapproval. “Don’t look at me like that Junno!”

“He was one of your best friends,” Taguchi replies. “What happened?”

Jin is uncomfortable. “I don’t know,” Jin says.

Kamenashi is so different Jin doesn’t miss him actively anymore. He sometimes reminisces about Old Kame, but he doesn’t miss the sweaty palms and rapid heartbeat he couldn’t control and didn’t understand. He does miss the warmth of Kamenashi’s ankle touching his own, and the quiet trust in Kamenashi’s eyes when he looked up at Jin as if Jin had all the answers, even though he had to have known that Jin didn’t have ANY answers.

Sometimes, though, when Jin looks at Kame, and Kame looks back at him with one manicured eyebrow lifted in idle curiosity, Jin can feel a slow burn in his gut, and feels himself get a little hard when he thinks about punching Kame in the face until his eyes soften and his face is as awkward and alien as it was when he was 14.

***

“Jin, tell me a story,” Kame says, and Jin sighs.

“Once there was a turtle that had to go on a long journey far away from his friends to find a magical flower. The turtle was scared to go alone, but he knew couldn’t ask his friends to help, because it might be dangerous. But the turtle realized that traveling without his best friend, Jin, was terribly lonely.”

Kame smiles. “That would be lonely.”

“But Jin, when he found out the turtle had left without him, hurried to find him. He traveled two days without sleeping to catch up to the turtle. When he finally found him, he was very cross. Jin looked at the turtle and said ‘where are you going without me?’ The turtle, who was very surprised to see his friend, answered: ‘To find the magical flower! But it’s very dangerous, so…’”

Jin crooks a smile at Kame, and continues the story. “’Then why’d you leave without me, stupid? How am I supposed to watch your back?’”

***

Jin doesn’t bring up the kiss, and neither does Kame. But Kame’s stone face has returned, and it makes Jin sick inside. He doesn’t know what he wants more, to kick Kamenashi’s stupid face or throw him down on the floor and…and something.

But Jin is in a terrible mood, and as he and Yamapi order take-out, Yamapi asks him about it.

“Dude, what is up? You’ve been looking like deranged raccoon all week.”

“Kamenashi is a bitch and I hate him forever,” Jin says promptly, then takes a swig from the coke he’s been nursing for the past hour while staring at the tv with his jaw clenched.

“Ohhhhh kay,” Yamapi says. “Is this about his eyebrows? Because I don’t understand that.”

Jin eyes Yamapi, wondering if he should try to explain at all or if Yamapi is just going to make fun of him about that either way. “It’s not really the eyebrows at all,” Jin says impatiently, and Yamapi looks at him full on, ready to listen.

Jin likes that Yamapi knows him so well, knows when he’s about to say something serious, and knows when Jin needs him to listen. Yamapi can read the tone of Jin’s voice like it’s his own, and over the past ten years Jin likes to think he can read Pi just as well.

“When Kame…when Kame had those bushy brows, and that bizarre alien face, when he didn’t look so polished, so…statue-like,” Jin says, then pauses. “That person, that person was everything to me.”

Yamapi is still. “When he laughed…he had a laugh that made me feel like I was going to fill up with helium and just float away, and sometimes I wanted him to get away from me because I felt all paralyzed and edgy, and his face was so ugly but I couldn’t stop staring at it, and he made terrible jokes that no one thought were funny… I never understood it, but I LIKED it even when I was confused and didn’t know what to do. And then he was gone. Like when he waxed off his eyebrows he wasn’t that person anymore and I hate looking at him and knowing what he was and what he isn’t.”

Yamapi looks down at his own cup of soda, and licks his lips. “So it’s like that,” he says, and Jin doesn’t understand.

“Like what?”

“You were in love with him,” Yamapi says gently, like he’s trying to soften the blow.

Jin barks a laugh. “That isn’t love,” he says, “Love is wanting to kiss someone all the time because you can, love is roses, and thinking the person beside you is beautiful all the time, and thinking that the other has no flaws and is perfect and shits rainbows.”

Yamapi looks at Jin as if he has been dropped on the head repeatedly as a baby. “I’m sorry, Jin, but I don’t think you understand love at all.”

The take-out comes, and Jin and Yamapi fight over the controller until they’re both winded and watching Power Rangers in English. “I love you, Pi.”

Yamapi smiles. “I know. But I bet my laugh doesn’t fill you up with helium.” Jin buries his head in his hands.

“I don’t know why I tell you anything.”

***

Kamenashi’s hands are soft as they play in Jin’s hair. “I don’t understand why I can’t go with you guys though.”

Jin is going out to see a movie with Yamapi and Ryo. “Because it’s just gonna be us this time. I don’t have to take you with me everywhere,” Jin replies.

Kame pouts. “Are you ashamed of being my friend?” he asks. Kame knows he’s not super popular with the others, because he’s small and shy and eccentric. Right now, his caterpillar brows are furrowed.

“No,” Jin says, “It’s not that at all.” I don’t want them to like you, he thinks. I want to keep your light all to myself.

***

Jin doesn’t know what he used to feel about Kamenashi, but right now all he wants is to make him bleed.

“You’re doing it wrong, Akanishi. Get your shit together,” Kame says, even though Koki and Ueda had both messed up the choreography as well. “Are you stupid? We don’t have hours for you to learn 2 minutes of choreo, seriously.”

“Take a chil pill, Kame,” Nakamaru says from his position on the floor, head between his knees as he attempts to recover some air. “Like, seriously, a chill pill.”

“Grow up,” Kame yells. “I’m not being a friend right now, I’m being a leader, because we don't have one. We have to get this perfect. Get up.”

Jin’s breath stops, and a red haze covers his eyes. “You dick,” he says, and the others, who had been gearing up to argue as well, look at Jin with some alarm. He wonders how he must appear, fists clenched and face red with exertion and fury. “’I’m not being a friend right now,’ is it? You haven’t been anyone’s friend in years,” he grinds out.

Kame’s eyes narrow. “Oh, are you giving friendship lessons, now, Jin? Fuck you, you lazy, self-absorbed, abandon-your-teammates-on-a-whim, hypocritical bastard.”

Jin doesn’t remember the motion, exactly, but he feels the sting in his hands, and sees Kame on the floor, hand to his nose as blood spurts out. He looks at Kame, on the floor, bleeding, looking up at him in wrath, and feels a sudden burst of arousal.

Later, when the blood’s been cleaned up and Jin and Kamenashi have finished getting lectured by their manager for correct behavior among band mates, (“And if it happens again, I’ll take it to Johnny,”) they are gathering their things to leave and Jin realizes they are alone, and he’s free to pummel Kamenashi into oblivion.

“You’re such a child,” Kamenashi says then. “Who solves things with their fists when they’re older than 11, anyway?” His voice is snide, and Jin just hates him. “But then again, you’ve never stopped acting like you were 11.”

Jin hates all of him.

Jin especially hates everything about Kame’s mouth: his too-thin lips and its naturally disapproving set, and the bullshit that is always coming out of it. He hates the memory of how warm and wet it becomes under the press of his lips, and the sexy noises that emerge from it when Jin’s tongue slips inside.

And as Kame bitches at him, for something Jin doesn’t understand or get, Jin can’t help but grab the neck of the smaller man’s shirt and drag that mouth up to his own.

Kame yelps in surprise, but melts under the assault of Jin’s determined mouth. Jin kisses him with everything, their tongues battling and yet tender, the kiss loving and yet not. It’s Jin who ends the kiss, this time, breaking away and leaving them both panting for air. Jin feels desperately hot, and wants nothing more than to seize Kamenashi’s lips again and again.

“This is fucked up,” he says instead.

Kame looks up at him, lips bruised and swollen. “What else is new?”

***

That night, Jin can’t sleep. He closes his eyes, and can see nothing but Kame’s bruised lips and Kame’s piercing eyes.

***

“We don’t need you, you know,” Kame says after a brutal practice, as Jin massages a sore point between his eyes.

His face is inscrutable. “KAT-TUN doesn’t need you; we did fine without you, and as soon as you came back the dynamics got all screwed up. Why didn’t you just stay in America? None of us want you here.”

Jin looks at him, mouth gaping, as the others come back in.

It hurts, Jin thinks. It hurts.

Jin remembers a Kamenashi who didn’t want to debut without him.

“I can’t think of anyone else I’d want to debut with.”

Ankles touching.

The next week, Jin tells the group about the Yellow Gold Tour 3011, in America.

Koki stops answering his calls.

In March, 2010, Jin decides he can’t do it anymore—can’t pretend that he can go back to seeing Kame every day.

***

It’s Friday night so he calls Yamapi. “Hey Yamapi.”

“I really hate you, you know that?”

“Naw,” he says, “You love me, we are bros.”

“I’m busy right now,” Pi says quickly. “Can’t talk.”

“What could you possibly—“ Jin hears a voice, a woman’s voice, whispering. “I see. Call you later.”

“Bye.”

The phone call ends.

When Jin thinks about how he wakes up alone every morning, he tries to imagine his ideal woman.

Disturbingly, all he can imagine is Kamenashi laying next to him, shirtless and taking a long slow drag off a cigarette, one eyebrow lifted in disdain.

“Fuck me,” Jin whispers aloud to himself. “I am in serious need of therapy.”

Later, in the shower, Jin tries to deny the face behind his eyelids is Kamenashi’s as he makes long, slow pulls at his cock. He tries to deny that Kame’s bruised lips and the taste of Kame’s blood in his mouth is what finally pushes him over the edge as he comes all over his hand.

He fucks one of his female backup dancers in the restroom the next day to make himself feel better.

It doesn’t help, because he has to bite back from screaming ‘Kame!’ as he comes inside of her.

***

“Jin, can you…tell me a story?” Kame asks, and Jin is surprised. Kame hasn’t asked for a story in months. “A love story, please.”

“Okay,” Jin thinks for a minute. “Once there was a beautiful prince named Kazuya.”

Kamenashi laughs, and Jin smiles a bit too. “’You have to get married, Prince Kazuya,’ his dad says one day, and so they hold a fancy ball. Kazuya is bored at the ball, until he sees the beautiful Princess Jinnifer. They dance all night and fall in love.”

“Do they get married?” Kame asks wistfully.

“Of course,” Jin says, “And they live happily ever after.”

“We should get married someday, Jin,” Kamenashi says jokingly. “We’ll have the coolest wedding ever. And a baseball themed wedding cake.”

Jin laughs, but inside he feels hollow. He images an old Kamenashi sitting across from him under a kotatsu and knows he might not be joking.

***

The day after the press conference announcing Jin’s permanent leave from KAT-TUN- he hasn’t spoken to Koki in months and it makes him want to cry every time he thinks about it- he goes to the jimusho for the first time since he left for his tour. He corners a junior. “Tanaka Koki,” he growls, and the junior points vaguely in the direction of the meeting rooms.

He hears Koki’s voice before he can open the door. “That fucker thinks he can just leave and-" his voice is almost screaming. Jin halts, his hand hovering by the door.

“It’s my fault,” Kamenashi says quietly, and Jin’s heart freezes. “It’s actually all my fault.”

“I know you guys didn’t really get along,” Nakamaru says, placating, “But it’s probably not your fault, Kame.”

“I told him-" Kame’s voice sounds tight, like he doesn’t want to admit what he’s about to confess. “I told him KAT-TUN was fine with five. Better with five. That we all thought so. That he’d fucked everything up by coming back and he should have just stayed in America. Then he went to Johnny and got sent on a solo tour.”

Koki is breathing hard. “Are you telling me that I’ve been ignoring one of my best friends because you’re an absolute dickface, who is so wrapped up in some personal drama that happened six years ago that you ruined our band? Fuck Kame, now I want to punch you in the face.”

Jin can recognized the sound of Kame trying not to cry even now, and clearly the others can see that something isn’t right, because they don’t add to the condemnation. “I fucked up,” Kame says in a choked voice. “I really…”

Jin thinks maybe this isn’t a good time, and leaves the group to themselves.

One week later, he finds an unmarked bag outside his door. Inside is a turtle plushie, and a small card. How am I supposed to watch your back? It says.

“What the fuck did you send this for?” he says, quietly into the phone.

“Don’t you know?” Kamenashi says, and there’s something hollow and sad in his voice that Jin doesn’t understand.

“No, I don’t.” Jin says. You said you didn’t need me.

“Oh,” Kame says, and Jin hangs up on him.

Then Koki calls, and Jin is so shocked he almost forgets to answer.

“Hello?” he says hesitantly into the phone.

“Jin,” says Koki’s nervous voice. “How are you?”

“Koki,” Jin says, and he’s embarrassed that he’s starting to cry. “Koki.”

“Are you crying? Don’t cry, that is so gay.” Koki mutters, sounding like a relieved wreck on the other side of the phone. “Let’s get lunch next week.”

Jin thinks about his schedule, full to bursting, about the meetings he’s got for a new movie he might be starring in with Keanu fucking Reeves, a Hollywood movie, about the recording sessions and the lyric sessions and Josh visiting to get an apartment, and says “Sure, anytime.” He can move his schedule around if he has to—he knows what a big chance this is, bigger than any Hollywood film.

“Nakamaru and Ueda are coming too. Taguchi has got something else family related going on and…well, yeah. Nakamaru and Tatsuya can come too, right?”

Jin bites his lip, trying to stop himself from letting out a sob. “Yeah,” he breathes. “Yeah. I’d love that.”

Koki laughs on the other end of the line. “It’ll be good to see you again.” Then he’s quiet for a moment. “And…I’m sorry. For not letting you explain, I guess.”

For the first time in a long time, Jin doesn’t feel like he’s in a cage.

Part 2