Fic: Jin and Kazuya
Fic: Jin and Kazuya (Written for nanaenam for the help_japan fic auction)
Genre: Humor
Word Count: About 2,000
Rating: PG 14
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimer applies; AkanishixKamenashi is a fandom OTP ;)
Summary: Jin is being a drama queen.
A/N: This isn't much but Nana-chan actually won the bid and she deserves another fic. Acknowledgements (and apologies) to fionnakreuz for having to do a concrit for a half-assed angsty unfinished fic and watanabe_je for putting up with two weird fics before I see the light.
Jin and Kazuya
Jin thought that defining moments in his life would come with the special effects befitting a Johnny's idol. There would be explosion and fire and an extravaganza of colors and rock music heavy on guitar riffs. He realized though that such special effects were only true on stage during Johnny's concerts. In real life, his life-altering moments were rather ordinary.
Like the time he realized he was in love with Kazuya.
It was one very late night, or more like very early morning and they had just finished shooting for their drama. Just like most of their days then, they were tired, stressed and hungry. Days when the few precious time they weren't working were spent either sleeping or having sex or eating, priority in that order. But that night, they were too tired to sleep and no matter how they earnestly made out, neither could get hard. It was cup noodles then.
While Kazuya prepared the noodles, they chatted about everything and nothing in particular while waiting for the noodles to cook in the plastic cup.
Jin was in the middle of slurping the noodles when he looked up and saw that Kazuya had not started eating but instead was blowing on the steaming cup and was looking at him with eyes glinting and crinkling at the corners. It was at that moment - while they were eating seafood flavored Nissin's cup ramen - that Jin realized he was in love with Kazuya. And with as much clarity, he knew Kazuya felt the same for him.
Despite that epiphanic night though it still took them months before they acknowledged their feelings. For one, neither wanted to ruin what they already had. They were friends and they were having sex. There were no strings attached. It was as good as it could get. Except that he was Jin and it was his nature to rock the boat.
And he was also the king of sappy ideas. Subscribing to the adage that absence makes the heart grow fonder, he packed his bags and went to Los Angeles. He forgot that where he was sentimental, Kazuya was pragmatic.
The whole time he was in LA, Kazuya went about his life. And because Jin had always driven everyone batty and Kazuya's always working his jazzy fingers to the bone, nobody thought anything was wrong. Not until Jin got tired of waiting and he called Kazuya and demanded that he be missed in no uncertain terms that things started to move. It helped that it was after his long monologue on love and fear and uncertainty and love that he realized he misdialed and that all along he was talking to Koki. And that Koki's a romantic fool beneath his tough guy facade not to mention Koki's complete inability to keep anything to himself.
It immensely helped that Tatsuya had no patience for the circuitous and in no time flat had the whole band in New York. And there in the city that doesn't sleep, Jin and Kazuya finally decided that they were Jin and Kazuya.
Then it was three years later. Through out, their relationship had been good. There were periods of fights and near break-ups including a couple of actual break ups that both lasted for two weeks where Jin mostly composed crappy songs about love lost when he's not drunk off his ass and Kazuya, when not working his butt off, cleaned everyone's bathrooms with a toothbrush. Other than that, it had been good. But it was just that. Good. And Jin was bothered.
Jin thought maybe it was because they spent so much time together as band mates and as a couple. And if Jin must pick between the choices, he'd choose the latter without batting an eyelash.
It was time anyway so he decided to go solo and he told Kazuya first.
“It's just there's this side of me - the one that possesses me when I'm on stage - you know?”
“Aquaneesha...yeah,” Kazuya said, looking more interested on moving and re-moving the lounge chair on the veranda.
“Yes,” Jin said. “For me to become a real artist, I need to stop being Johnny's puppet and let that other part of me come to the fore,” he explained.
Jin thought that maybe Kazuya didn't hear him or didn't want to listen to him whine for the umpteenth time because Kazuya just kept taking photos of the veranda. But then Kazuya said, “So you're saying you don't want to be Pinocchio and wants to be Little Mermaid.”
Jin wanted to be pissed because it was a crappy symbolism, not to mention that it sounded dumb, but it was precisely his point. So he said, “Yes.”
Kazuya simply nodded and said, “Okay. I'm thinking of buying a new couch.”
Jin was deeply troubled. For one, he didn't understand how Kazuya could be snapping pictures of the veranda one moment and the next be talking about the couch. He didn't get the connection. And second, he liked the old couch. Whatever position they preferred and whoever got to top, on that couch he knew exactly how to angle their bodies and put whose limbs where for maximum pleasure without tearing ligaments.
He thought maybe Kazuya was telling him something. He had read in one magazine while he was having his scalp treated in a salon that relationships hit a snag some time around the fourth to fifth year. That the usual signs of discontent manifested quite innocently. Like expressing a need for a vacation. Or a shift in career. Or new furnitures.
Jin thought that giving each other space would be good but he didn't mean it literally and certainly not so much space that it would mean a 16-hour time difference because it just didn't work that he was going “Yeah, babe. Just a little more and I'm there” and he would hear Kazuya on the other end of the line saying “Huh? Oh yeah. That's good baby,” then yawned because it was 3:15 in the morning in Seoul while he just woke up horny at 11:15 in the morning in Los Angeles.
He knew the giving each other space didn't work because the day he got home was the day the new couch was to arrive. Jin immediately jumped on the old couch and refused to get off no matter that the delivery guys were looking oddly at him.
“He wasn't breastfed when he was a baby so you have to understand,” Kazuya told the delivery guys before pinching Jin's ear and dragging him off and away from the couch.
Jin's heart and ear throbbed as he watched the old couch being hauled away. When the door closed and the old couch was gone, Jin's heart fell on the floor and broke into smithereens.
He told Yucchi that maybe he and Kazuya were hitting a snag in their relationship.
Yucchi said, “After four years, the brain gets immune from the love-related chemical, phenylethylamine or PEA -- a naturally occurring trace ammine in the brain that is a natural amphetamine and also releases the neurochemical dopamine - and in that phase of the relationship, the brain produces endorphins, brain opiates that are like morphine and calm the mind, kill pain, and reduce anxiety. Which is why divorce rates peak around the fourth year of marriage.”
Jin didn't understand a thing except the last part. He and Kazuya were on their fourth year.
It didn't help that, after Yucchi's lengthy discourse, Junno interjected, “Well, see? Nothing to worry about. You can't get divorced because you're not married.”
He turned to Ryo and lamented, “I think Kazuya's bored with me.”
“Can't blame him. I've been with you five minutes and I'm bored,” Ryo said and yawned.
“You think maybe he found someone else?” Jin asked.
“For sure. One of those beefy baseball guys,” Ryo said and Jin was reminded why he never wanted to talk to Ryo about Kazuya. Kazuya was, at that time, in a baseball camp in Guam.
He was about to turn to Yamapi, his best friend for life who Jin knew would always be sympathetic but Yamapi was on stage because it was open mic karaoke night and dedicated a song to him before launching into “You Lost That Loving Feeling.”
Jin thought divorce should be applicable to friends.
Jin felt the distance between him and Kazuya grow.
One time, he was being smug and thinking he's so cool having just twitted “Can I fart?” and when he looked up, he found Kazuya was silently reading “From A Welfare State To A Welfare Society: The Changing Context of Social Policy in a Postmodern Era”. It didn't help he and Kazuya were sitting on opposite sides of the new couch that's annoyingly long Kanjani8 can sit between them. He hated that couch.
Jin was on it when he saw his dreams crumble in front of his eyes. He can play the guitar, he composes songs and he can even wear weird glasses. It could've been Akame Unplugged but, no, Kazuya decided to do the duet with Suga Shikao on national TV. Tears rolled down his eyes.
Jin had thought that defining moments in his life would come with the special effects befitting an international star like him. There would be heavy rain outside and Mozart's Requiem playing on the background while the camera panned down from his anguished face to his hand clutching a bloodied knife he had thrust in his heart. He realized though that no such thing would ever happen in his life.
Like that time he braced himself for the end of his one great love.
Jin didn't know if it was late at night or very early in the morning when Kazuya came home. All he knew was that his head was hurting like shit from having cried himself to sleep on the couch while he listened to Barry Manilow sing Even Now and Brian McKnight croon One Last Cry and all the other songs listed on Best Breakup Songs-Editors Pick!
He laid there pretending to be asleep as Kazuya plodded around the apartment. He couldn't hold back the sobs though when Kazuya went to the bathroom and he thought it would be the last time he would hear the sound of the tub being filled and the last time he would smell the scent of lavender pervading the apartment.
An hour later, Kazuya came out of the bathroom then Jin heard cabinets in the kitchen being opened and closed and Jin thought Kazuya was probably packing the kitchen stuff Kazuya bought from the television shopping network.
A few minutes passed and Jin felt the couch dip. When he peeked through his swollen puffy eyes, he found Kazuya sitting on the couch, looking tired and beat and generally spaced out. Jin thought - feared - that Kazuya was contemplating how to “break it to him gently.”
But then, Kazuya laid down. Not on the empty half of the couch where he could very well comfortably fit. Kazuya squeezed between him and the couch's backrest then draped an arm and a leg over him.
“Love you,” Kazuya said then pecked him on his lips and in a matter of minutes was snoring.
Jin sniffed back the last of his tears thinking no dramatics would ever happen in his life because Kazuya smelled of seafood-flavored Nissin's cup ramen and Jin knew that, no matter what, he and Kazuya would always be Jin and Kazuya.
THE END