bumblebees. re: akame.
bumblebees.
akame.
6,100 words.
16½ pages.
soundtrack: 'still believe' and 'sad song' by kim jung hoon. soft and melodic instrumentals.
It was a sunny day in Anaheim, California.
Kame wiped the dusty film off his Dior sunglasses and sighed, stretching his arms out in front of him and resting his head helplessly on his knees.
Here he sat upon his luggage, outside the door of room 204, trying not to give in to the temptation of flinging his bag aside and booking it. Running, running, running away as fast as he could from this pale apartment complex; dashing over the neatly trimmed hillsides and kicking up gravel that lined the edges of a nearby motel with open vacancy and a tiny little pool out in the back. But he had already done that.
He had already done that three times.
Every few seconds a surge of unpleasant chemicals would suddenly rise up from his heart into his mouth and he would choke, whimper, curse under his breath and intertwine his hands behind his baseball cap. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to do this. He needed to do this, he had to do this. He had to get it over with. He had to start again. He had to find himself, that part he lost 7 months ago, that part that was pulled away bit by bit like a loose thread at the edge of his sweater until suddenly it had all gone and he was as bare as he hoped he’d never be.
He knew where it was, knew where that part had been all along, but he could never quite reach it. And every night he would think about that piece of himself laying thousands of miles away in another place, another time, another world. He would dream about pulling it back into him - all at once, or maybe over the course of a few months, but in some sort of eventual process - and never letting it go. Now was his chance. He could be a coward, a little bit of an asshole, a selfish jerk - or he could rip himself open in the sunlight and let him see, glimmering, the biological parts that made him work. See, Jin? It’s a heart. It’s beating just like any other. It’s not me that meant to hurt you. I’m just living, just breathing, just beating, that’s all. I’m sorry. I can work harder next time.
It took all of his effort to wrestle the demons to the floor, the ones who kept convincing him to escape - shove them aside and push himself up onto his feet, adjust his bag and step up to that heavy steel door. And then he raised his fist, trembling, and his throat cinched up and he began to feel a high-pitched whine emanating from the deepest part of his stomach - no, no, he was imagining it - and to push his clenched fist as deliberately and heavily through the air as a wooden bat cracking a soft baseball into the stratosphere, higher and higher, until he could no longer see it and the sun was blinding him and he -
The door opened.
“…Kamenashi?”
Time stopped. The world, the Earth, in all her beautiful and glorious power, in the billions and billions and billions of years she had existed and faithfully and mechanically twirled as gracefully around the sun as a fluttering ballet dancer, for the first time suddenly and without warning halted and painfully nudged forward the frame of a small Japanese boy of 21 into the warm body directly in front of him. And all at once, against his will, Kamenashi Kazuya - calm, collected, refined Kamenashi Kazuya - broke like the thin skin of a budded flower and burst into a fit of deep sobs and quiet, strange, animal-like wails that were stifled against the dark skin of the man he was leaning against in the tiny little complex doorway.
It was several long, uncomfortable seconds before Kame quieted and then without warning began again, clutching the elbows of the man fitfully, helplessly, pleadingly. The instant he would seem to recover he would begin all over again, so completely and utterly speechless at the beauty that for months he had craved and tried to remember - tried to conjure and to clone, to recreate in the bubble that was his life, and failed. His missing piece.
The scent of its body, the light touch of its bangs against Kame’s forehead, the warmth that rose from its chest and burned Kame’s cheek with such vibrant and shocking realness; he could not begin to approach it in a composed, collected, humanlike way. Only the most disturbing of behavior: childlike cries, body racked with sobs and hiccups yet not a single sad tear - could begin to describe those first few seconds of relief and love and joy that he felt when he laid his eyes on his piece. His piece that up and left him back in a small, lonely world eons away so many months ago. The spark that had fed him, nurtured him, kept him alive and well and held him and touched him and soothed him and belonged to him.
“Kamenashi? Are you okay?”
Kame shuddered several times, quieting himself, coming back into a reality more similar to his life long, long ago than it had been a minute before. He looked up, embarrassingly, shamefully into the concerned face of the other and quivered - his own eyes still hidden behind dark, lightless designer sunglasses.
Akanishi Jin rested his hand lovingly against the small of Kame’s back and led him into the dim apartment. “Come in, please.”
The cold response was maddening, but it was as painful to Kame as blades of sharp, late-summertime grass against the soft bare foot of a child. Perhaps, in those 7 months of excruciating loneliness that only someone separated from their very emotional lifeline and driving force can possibly feel, Kame had grown accustomed to hurtful words and bland responses. Or perhaps he had always been used to it, expectant of it, but shielded to the idea that he deserved or warranted it. Shielded by a stouter body with wider hips and a goofy laugh and Great Gatsby smile that stretched endlessly from either corner of his face. A body that he wrapped himself up in every night for so many years, warm and impenetrable, blocking every barbed bit of malice that tried to worm its way into his ears.
He suddenly wished, regretfully, that he had never done what he had a year and a half before to drive that body away from his bed and into another. What they had both done selfishly to each other - when Jin made Kame afraid to hurt. I’m tired of you crying all the damn time, Jin whined, in that r-trilling, angry yakuza accent. Me too, Kame thought. He put his hands in his pockets and sat quietly the whole ride home, apologized profusely: nothing new there.
They were so immature. Years had gone by and instead of becoming wiser, calmer, solidified and sure of themselves, they had slipped. Two happy, clumsy boys had grown like wild cattails - at first straight (very much so) and determined, light and careless - until somewhere along the line they got too tall, too big, and their heavy bodies sank slowly down, trembling, into the water’s edge: the last remnants of springtime fuzz floating away.
They couldn’t live without each other. That’s what Kame used to think.
Because now, closely inspecting the clean-shaven body of his other half, smelling so lightly and sweetly of expensive American cologne, Kame began to wonder if maybe he had been the only one hurting. The only one writhing in bed at night - tossing, turning - and piling it with body pillows as large as they came, higher and higher until he was certain there was no room left for another body next to him, the one that was never there anyways. But it always felt emptier. Always.
Maybe he was the only one who would withdraw his spent body from a pretty girl and turn to the other side sickeningly, racked with guilt. He never liked girls. He found them annoying, money-hungry, selfish, unattractive. He never liked girls. But for Jin, he tried to.
Maybe he was the only one who ached.
And yet, as Jin flipped on the lights in the stark living room, and Kame removed the glasses covering up his puffy pinkish eyes, he recalled something Jin had told him once months ago.
--
“We’re all lonely for something we don’t even know we’re lonely for.” he said pointedly, stirring his steaming paper cup of coffee in rhythmic circles with his wrist. “Don’t you ever get the feeling you’re missing somebody you’ve never even met?”
It was such a disturbing thing, coming from Jin. That was the day Kame knew things had changed. That Jin, like a seasonal bird staying around until the weather got warmer back home, was going to be leaving him.
--
It was a nice place. Bland, lacking the décor of their - pardon, Kame’s - old apartment, but nice. He felt so uncultured, a tiny Japanese boy who thought he’d come from a kingdom of vast riches stepping into a “cheap” living space in which one room was nearly half of the home he currently lived.
A small fireplace mantle with some picture frames - nobody he knew, he thought a little sadly - and one of those large inspirational posters of a gigantic humpback whale splashing in the ocean. Why a whale, he did not know. The picture itself was blank, but taped crudely to the horizon point of the water’s edge was a quickly jotted note in familiar kindergarten print:
It is never too late to be who you might have been.
Kame, though primitive his English was, wondered quite stupidly for a moment if Jin knew what it meant. But of course he did, he’d written it himself, hadn’t he? Perhaps there was a difference between knowing what it meant and believing in what it meant. And then, from behind him, a shudder - and Kame turned around.
Reeling from the painful twinge in his chest, that aching he hadn’t felt in the many months he’d been gone, Jin rushed forward and squeezed Kame tightly against his own body - and all it took was the hot breath against Kame’s earlobe and neck, the vibration of Jin’s tiny, repressed sob coursing through his tiny frame, and the barely audible whisper of, “Oh, Kame…” before Kame felt a fire rekindled from the depths of his belly and a wanting that was pleasantly, innocently satisfied by the pressure of Jin’s deep, solid hips against his groin.
It was now Kame’s turn to soothe, but as he held Jin in his arms and peered over the crescent of his shoulder looking at the bare, bland walls stretching across every corner of the room, he was completely devoid of the capacity to comfort the crumbling man. He had never had to hold Jin and tell him it would be all right.
In all the years they had known each other, suffered together, spilled sweat and blood and tears on every stage they danced so furiously on, it had never been Kamenashi Kazuya tucking locks of hair behind Jin’s ears and shushing him, cooing, rocking him in his arms.
Jin had always been the strong, goofy one with the gangly legs and the enormous appetite, stealing bits of food off Kame’s plate and saying smugly in response to particularly nosy fans, “He’s a growing boy, but I am growing larger.”
But inexperienced though he was, there was a part of his childhood (pre-Jin) that Kame remembered quite fondly, that he withdrew from his memory banks at this particular instant. It was a story they’d heard from Johnny’s boys time and time again, the old ’my parents never held me’ line that was common enough in normal Japanese children, let alone sons of financially burdened families forced to go into JE, perhaps in avoidance of dependency on an education they‘d never have a chance to earn. Kame certainly wouldn’t have.
But there was one thing his Mother had done right that night he came back from rehearsal, sobbing and unable to tell her why - the only caring thing he could ever remember her doing. And so Kame rocked back and forth, slowly and rhythmically, the only way to apologize with his heart he knew how. And as he had hoped, Jin calmed, his breath softer and deeper; and together they swayed for several minutes in a comfortable silence, a pocket of space in the world occupied by two lonely little things bleeding out the hurt in the warmth of each other’s arms.
♬ As time goes by, I try to not lose sense of it,
With a chance encounter, our true feelings came flooding out,
My heart was touched by his compassion,
Our meeting was the miracle I've been longing for… ♫
But the Hallmark moment passed the second Jin’s soft hands found their way to Kame’s belt buckle. “No, no…n-not now…” Kame breathed, pushing the fumbling hands away. Jin grinned stupidly and slapped Kame’s wrists, unbuttoning the dark jeans and easing them off his bony hips.
“No, no, no…” Kame breathed, “Please, Jin, no, not now, let me expla-”
Jin bent down on his knees, used Kame’s soft trembling hands to smooth his bangs back, took his thin creamy legs and spread them apart gently -
“Kame!” Jin laughed, his hand grazing against what felt like a tiny prickling scar, “What have you been sleeping in, raspberry bushes-”
Kame watched as Jin’s face fell, the last part of his sentence melting away into nothingness.
Busaiku.
Fuckin’ ugly.
That was the only word Jin saw carved angrily into the skin before Kame stumbled backwards and held his jeans at his knees desperately, squeezing his thighs as tightly together as he possibly could.
“Kame, what is that-”
“You were gone for so long,” Kame hiccupped, his eyes burning. “I didn’t know…know where you were, who to - who to talk to, ‘What should I do?’ and I didn’t know, I couldn’t…I…”
But Kame couldn’t explain it properly. Mountainous piles of words and feelings and tears were piled up from his belly to his throat, suffocating him, and the instant one teetered and fell out of his lips a thousand more tripped afterwards and he’d try to catch them and throw the ones out his mouth that made sense. But it was going too fast and too many words rolled out at once and he began to realize that he was choosing the same ones over and over again - I didn’t know, I didn’t know, you were gone, I didn’t know - and missing the ones that did matter - I love you, I need you, I can’t sleep alone at night, Yamashita won’t stop calling, the smallest shirt I could find is 3x too big, my fridge is empty, I lost my watch, do you get NHK here?
Jin stared at the floor. He tried to reach out to touch Kame but gave up halfway, his hand hanging mid-air, extended to someone too far beyond his grasp.
--
He didn’t intend to do it. Mark himself, that is - he’d done it with a ballpoint ink pen a million times before. It wasn’t like it was hard to hide - the costumes he was assigned to wear were never particularly revealing, anyhow, and more often than not covered him from the nape of his neck down the full length of his body to his shoes, and frequently, full sleeves. He’d sit backstage in the fitting room, perhaps half-an-hour before show time, doodling innocently over his body.
From his ankles to his knees wound wide, archaic swirls that curled tentatively into vines and monkey tails, spider’s webs and leafy tree branches sprouting sakura blossoms speckled by fat bumblebees dripping with honey. And from their bottoms dotted trails that curled into loop-de-loops and sharp inclines up past his kneecaps, where they turned into the strings of fat, shining, rubber balloons floating up his thighs and bending into heart-shapes the closer they rose toward his buttocks.
That was when Jin would buy him fancy obento for lunch every day and ask Kame to double-tie his shoes because he “didn’t know how” (which Kame now suspected was just a way to get him on his knees, several years before he realized the connotations).
But the second that he made that phone-call -- the second he said, “Oi, Kame - we gotta talk”, that’s when Kame knew. That’s when he scribbled out the hearts, burst the balloons, erased the bees’ flying path, rubbed their fat bodies into blurry blue smears, ripped the blossoms from those pretty, pretty sakura, broke the beautiful fragile webs with one fell sweep of his pinky finger and desperately scrubbed away the swirls until his legs were burning, burning, burning. And he’d scratch them, furiously, scratch away the skin raw until it was a deep, angry pink and the tingling of the pain made his head swim in a disturbingly sensual buzz.
“Oi, Kame, we gotta talk.”
Bye-bye, bumblebee.
“Is that so? What about?” he said coolly.
“Things.”
“Nn.”
“I’m serious.”
“Did I say you weren’t?”
Jin paused. “…I’ve had enough of this bullshit.”
“What bullshit?”
“All of it.”
“All of what?” Kame demanded somewhat irritatingly.
“What I told you at 24hrTV, remember? You remember it, don’t you?”
“I remember.”
“Well, that. This. Fucking Johnny’s. I‘m done. I need air. I need space.”
Kame waited for it.
Those words he didn’t want to hear. The gentle, willowy breeze that blew in through his window carrying a world full of broken pieces he couldn’t fix raining down around him.
“I’m leaving.”
Somewhere deep in the cavity of his chest, a stone dropped, plummeted past the shelves of his ribs and sank all the way through his stomach to some tiny, faint little core of himself hidden past the skin and bones and blood, and settled indefinitely and with an awful surety.
“Where to?” he tried to ask brightly. His body felt heavy.
“America.”
“They’ll follow you, you know.” he said of the fan girls.
“They’ll never know. I’m not going to tell them.”
“Well, somebody’s thought out everything, Genius Sensei Akanishi-san.” Kame joked.
He was trying to be funny and lighten the mood. He was really, really trying.
He could almost hear the airy shrug on the other line.
“I just thought I’d let you know.”
“I would have found out anyways.”
“You did it for me.”
“Eh?”
“Seishun Amigo, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
A tiny little spider crept across Kame’s floor in light of the moon. He watched it quietly from his bed, fingering the toe of one of his socks idly.
“When I first told you…back at 24hrTV, and I wasn’t sure…”
“Nn.” Kame said, after several long seconds.
“Well, I’m glad you listened. And I’m glad you told me to go. I really, really am. I can’t wait to get out of here, to start over, to sleep…oh god, fucking SLEEP, Kame. SLEEP. I was so scared, you know, such a big risk, but then you talked me into it, Kame, and I was so happy for once…”
Kame, I’ve been thinking.
Yes, Jin?
I think I want to leave JE.
What?
I think I want to leave JE, I said. I think. I’m not sure -
What on earth -
No, just listen, listen. Please. Because I’m tired and you’re the only one who ever really listens to me.
“So there’s a press conference tomorrow -”
“Yeah. I could have guessed.”
“You wanna come?”
Kame sighed through his nose, something he did when things were not quite right somewhere, Jin had learned.
“Nah. Just another media gathering. Bright lights, lots of pictures, bed head, droopy eyes… I don’t really have much to say.”
“You can say how great it was working on Gokusen 2 together, maybe.”
Kame laughed. It was a breathy, soft sort of thing paired with a tiny little chuckle that came from somewhere in his throat. It was lovely.
“When are you leaving?”
“A couple days. Sooner than later.”
“Gone for long?”
“Half a year. A year. Maybe longer.”
A year. Kame cupped his throat in his hand and rubbed it, carefully, soothingly.
“I suppose that‘s long enough.”
“Well…anyways. If you can make it. To the conference, I mean-” said Jin.
“Yeah.” Kame blew his lips out. “Sure. Maybe. I’ll see.”
The spider was so small. What a poor, poor creature. He wondered where its family was. This was something Jin would think about, he smiled to himself.
Hah. Jin. You don’t like bugs, do you, Jin? You used to make me kill them for you. But Kame, Kame, you’re the brave one! You can do it! And you’d pump your fist, and even though I hated those things I would hit them with a shoe (your shoe, of course) and make fun of you the rest of the day. What a silly little fear, I’d say, why Jin, you’re nothing but a coward.
He realized he was imagining up a conversation again. It happened too often these days. A staff member would kick his chair, “Get up, we have to start shooting again,” and Kame would leap up on his feet and think about being shaken softly awake by a smooth pair of hands, hushed whispers in his ears, a hot towel over his eyes as he shuffled back to set.
He’d smile. Just work a little bit harder, Kame. They’ll treat you better when the ratings go up. Ganbarimasu.
“I guess it’s ‘bye.” Jin said absently.
“Well, you know. Work hard. Tell them I said, ‘come back with lots of new things for KAT-TUN.’”
“Eh?”
“The press. Tell them you’re going to learn a lot, come back with new things, mature. That sort of thing.”
“Do you really have to do this?” Jin pleaded.
Kame stopped. “What?”
“Never mind. Sure, sure. Whatever. Ganbarimasu! I got it.”
“Have fun.” He said softly.
“Sure.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Click.
Kame set the phone down on his other pillow. Deep in the back of his throat something tightened, painfully, like he was stuck in a choke-hold, and his windpipe seemed to shrink, smaller and smaller as the tissue swelled achingly and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe at all. Just barely.
He hugged one end of his body pillow to him, quietly, rocking. The spider crept into a tiny crevice in the baseboard and disappeared.
A slow, soft, familiar melody played somewhere outside his window - light little taps on ivory keys that conjured up the image of a boy with a bowl cut leaning against his doorway, giggling.
One sad, shy, little sob. Barely audible.
He wished that little spider was listening. He wished it would come out so he didn’t feel so alone.
--
Next thing he knew Jin was standing up, adjusting Kame’s jeans wordlessly.
He tugged the belt-loops on either side once, twice, thrice to make sure they were snug and then patted him on the chest, bending down to heave Kame’s duffel bag onto his bare shoulder and drag his luggage into the Guest Bedroom down the hall.
--
“How’s it taste?” Jin asked, pausing to gulp at his lukewarm can of coca-cola.
Kame, chewing as he sorted through the foods on his plate absently, nodded.
“It’s pretty good.” He picked several noodles and tossed them around over and over again with his fork like a picky child.
“Sorry it’s Hamburger Helper.” Jin laughed.
“Ham-a-what?” Kame asked quizzically.
“Hamburger Helper.”
He paused before repeating, albeit in rather drawn out syllables, “Ham-bah-gah He-ru-pah?”
“Something like that.” Jin smiled, not bothered enough to correct. Besides, he liked Kame being imperfect. He liked those mistakes he tried to cover up in dance routines, his accent so terrible he did not dare speak a word of English unless absolutely ordered to for fear of sounding stupid, the way his bottom dimpled and the wrinkles that slithered up his collarbone when he squeezed his shoulder close to his body. Kame tried so hard to be perfect he completely ignored his perfections altogether.
“It’s…” Kame tilted his head down at his plate and pouted. “..Interesting.” he finally settled on.
“It’s pretty cheap here. Which is nice.” Jin said, taking another sip. “I only spend about $10 a day, sometimes. It gets pretty rough.” He swirled his drink, cast an absent glance at a dirty pair of tennis shoes in the corner.
Kame shuddered. He hated coke. Diminutive as he was, the boy was perhaps one of the pickiest eaters on the planet, and certainly the pickiest eater Jin had ever known. Being a health nut was one thing - this is too fat, this is too greasy, this has too many bad carbohydrates, this will dehydrate the body, etc. But Kame, as in everything, was a special breed. And his tastes - delicate, refined, eclectic, always changing - were as well.
This gyoza is too salty, he’d frown bitterly, pushing away his plate.
Boiled too long, he’d say of the miso soup.
Not steamed well, and there’d be no salmon for the evening.
I just don’t like the taste, that was Jin’s favorite. When the food did not even warrant a competent excuse not to consume it, something must be terribly wrong.
He could almost feel his own teeth eroding underneath the warm, fizzling coke. What were these? Disgusting, greasy noodles lathered in oily sauce with chunks of beef so fatty that when he chewed them they popped like disgusting, fat pimples and he could barely keep it down.
Kame picked at it gingerly. “Do you really…I mean, are you that low on money?”
Jin choked and had to cover his mouth with his hand to stifle himself. The upset coke fizzled angrily.
“…was it that funny?”
“No, no, I…just…your face when you said that…” Jin laughed, looking up over the edge of his folded napkin.
“Like what?”
“Like a mad little girl, that’s all.”
“Ha, ha, very fu-” Kame stopped himself, blinded by the brilliant glint of gold on Jin’s ring finger.
--
Jin had pretty, pretty hands. He always had.
Growing up, always comparing himself to others around him - that was Kamenashi Kazuya and his ‘body issues’. Even as a junior, Jin would watch as his best friend admired his figure in front of the doublewide dance studio mirrors for hours - he would turn, twirl, cock his head and smile, then finger the edges of his shirt and pull it up slowly over his head, trying to look as un-awkward as possible when it bunched up just below his chin and refused to budge until Kame tugged for several seconds and it flung off, messing his hair.
You look perfect, Jin would tell him. You’re so thin, Kame! I wish my hips were as skinny as yours.
Shut up, Stupid, Kame would reply plainly.
But it’s true! Look at me, look at you. He’d stand up next to Kame, side-by-side, and frown. Your body is so tiny. You’re like a little bird. I’m just a big fat chicken, that’s what I am. I’m so gangly. Why are my arms so long? And my legs are crooked, too.
Kame would blink and smile, so softly and delicately, and he’d look up with half a mind to say royally, “Well, I’m not an expert, you know, but there is some to be improved upon…”
But he couldn’t.
Kame had a keen sort of eyesight. Jin could never quite explain it, try as he might to others around them, but it was almost like he could see things that could be. He was like a record producer searching out the next big act - underneath the frump and the sag and the dirt lay the playdough recipe for a celebrity, a mega-hit with perfect skin and teeth and abs and flyaway hair. Things years down the road, the way things would turn out in the end, Kame could see them. He could see what was inside of people, of moments, of feelings. He could see potential.
And when Kame looked at Jin, he didn’t see baby fat. He didn’t see gangly arms, crooked legs and a stupid personality. He saw big, beautiful hips, huge stages and elaborate costumes that hugged those shapes so well. That Great Gatsby smile, so goofy and childish now - oh, it’d be so gorgeous in just a few years. You just wait, Jin. You’re so droopy now, but you’ll see. They’ll love you.
I wish I was as Skinny as you, Kame. You’re so pretty.
So was what appeared to be Jin’s standard of beauty. Kame didn’t care.
He’d live up to it someday.
--
Those pretty, perfect hands. Things hadn’t changed.
“Still got your birthmark?” Kame smiled, nodding to Jin’s hand.
Jin stared at it, then glanced back to Kame. “Hm?”
“Remember? We always joked that if you went to a foreign country you’d go get surgery and have it removed.” he rocked his fork gently back and forth on his napkin.
“Oh, god,” Jin laughed. “You’re like an elephant. Always remembering that weird crap from when we were kids.”
Kame chuckled. “They were good times.”
“Remember that one time!” said the suddenly excited Jin, “When we were still back dancing for Tsuyo and Koichi --”
“‘Domoto Demons’.” Kame snorted.
“How - did you -” Jin buried his head in his arms, giggling. “‘‘Kinki Kan’t-Hold-A-Tune’…”
“They‘re not the only ones…” Kame dodged Jin’s playful slap from across the table.
“So MEAN!” Jin laughed, open-mouthed. “They hated us, man.”
“I wonder why.” Kame replied dryly, smirking.
“I’m just sayin’,” Jin took another bite of his hamburger helper, leaning back in his chair and pointing at Kame with his fork. “There was a reason those names got passed around.”
Kame laughed. “You and your big fat mouth, that’s what.”
“Ueda has the big fat mouth, thank you very much.” Jin said, half his mouth full of noodles. “Dick-sucking lips, that’s what.”
“That’s what what.” Kame giggled.
“That’s what what what? That’s what what! Bloody bloody hell, that’s what! Bother!” Jin said it quickly, in a sort of mock English accent, using his index finger as a moustache. It was one of those moments, those memories from long ago, laying in a windy tent on the beach with nothing else to do but realize each other’s hidden comedic talents. Kame bounced up and down in his chair like a little kid, smacking his thigh, laughing so hard together Jin had to desperately stable the plastic vase centerpiece in the middle of the table.
When they had finally quieted, Jin leaned back and sighed, rubbing his eyes and chuckling. “Ah. I missed you, Kame.” He picked up their plates - one nearly licked clean, the other barely touched. It was still warm. He didn’t mind. He was used to it by now.
Kame rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah, yeah. Me too.”
“How long will you be staying?” Jin called out from the kitchen, just loud enough to be heard over the running water.
Kame shrugged. He looked at his watch. 5PM. The sun was filtering through the blinds in golden bars.
Several minutes later Jin came back and stood at the sliding glass door. He smelled like liquid soap.
“Thanks.” Kame said, blowing out his lips.
“Nn. No problem.” He didn’t have to ask what Kame meant.
Kame picked idly at a piece of denim lint stuck on the top of his jeans. It is never too late to be who you might have been. Who might’ve Jin been? What did he want to be? Not a singer, not a dancer, Kame knew. Not a Johnny’s. Never again and never first and foremost a Johnny’s. They had discussed this at length one too many times, and Kame - logical, optimistic, well-to-do busybody Kame - never had the right answer. Then again, there was only one answer he had ever tried. Please don’t go. He had meant it.
But that horizon - the edge on the brink of human existence, the barely visible path ahead that Jin could see himself walking so many months ago - was it one that had included Kame?
That’s when he felt the touch of a warm hand caressing his chin, brushing his thumb over Kame’s smooth bottom lip, and the sweet cologne rolling off of Jin’s skin as he leaned forward to get a better look into Kame’s delicate, enraptured face.
“You have such long eyelashes,” he whispered, lovingly, enviously. Kame batted them without intending to. And then Jin leaned in closer, and Kame opened his soft mouth so faintly and shyly, so differently, Jin thought. Their lips barely brushed, pursing together into peckish baby kisses planted at the sides of each others’ mouths so sweetly and innocently, so 16 years old again in the changing room supply closet.
And Kame stood, pulling Jin back up with him while the baby kisses floated away like shining balloons, melting into deep, syrupy slow sucking as he felt Jin push him against the door and the blinds crinkle, the dying sun shimmering in the glow of Jin’s face, and their lips broke apart as they stared silently at one another.
Kame opened his mouth to speak - to say no, perhaps, to decline, to insist this was wrong and this would ruin them, that it would only make things worse in the end - but Jin knew better. Akanishi Jin had been kissing shy, scared, timid little Kamenashi Kazuya for 9 years, and he knew better than to let the jerk open that big fat beautiful mouth of his.
So Jin shoved his hips into Kame’s - hard, he later admitted - and the defenses were shot. Kame’s hands flew up weakly beside his face, and Jin held them trembling to the glass, locking him up against the glowing light and sucking wet lines down his thin, soft neck. There was something different about the way Kame’s skin tasted, the way Jin’s lips ran all over his throat - the way Kame was shuddering just to try and breathe, the way Jin ground his groin into Kame’s so rhythmically.
He felt like he was being pushed over tremendous ocean waves, dizzied, blood rushing absolutely everywhere, the shocking pulse in his loins that sent electric tremors of that feeling through his body, and he was lost and moaning and Jin breathing so wetly on his porcelain collarbone.
“Jin…” he whispered, gasping bubbily. “Let me -” He fumbled for Jin’s zipper.
“No, it’s my turn now,” Jin teased, sucking on Kame’s bottom lip as he reached down to Kame’s stomach, letting his hands run over his ribs as he pulled up the boy’s shirt, Kame quivering with each finger that bumped over his soft ribs like fingernails across the bars of a birdcage. He wrapped his slender leg around Jin’s hip, pulling him into the pocket they now shared -
He thought he imagined the pounding on the door, at first.
“Shit,” Jin hissed and shoved Kame away from him roughly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck I forgot, SHIT, HOLD ON I’LL BE RIGHT THERE!, fuck…”
The incessant banging echoed through the room again and Kame - innocent, defenseless, unexpected Kame - stood dimwittedly in the mess of tangled blinds, rubbing away the trails of saliva as Jin ran to greet the pretty girl at the door.
She had a lovely, bubbly, happy voice. She had blonde hair. She had tits. Kame might say they were nice, nice to someone like Jin, probably. Her eyelashes were dark and wispy, the kind Jin liked, too. He pushed his shirt back down over his goose-bumped skin and hid in the kitchen until he heard the creak of the door a second time. Jin grabbed his coat and gave a sharp, short little wave as he walked out. The look on his face was a little bit sad, a little bit remorseful, but more than anything - sorry.
It’s never too late to be who you might have been.
Kame walked into the bathroom, sat in the shower and texted Yamapi. “We should go out to lunch sometime when I get back. Miss you.” He buried his head in his arms, listening to the dull hum of the empty house, and cried.
--
dedicated to someone very special to me.
comment if you like. tell me. what did you like? what was nice? what made your heart hurt, your spine tingle? ask me questions. i had a reason for every word i ripped out of my soul and put to paper. you can always email me at astromechafic@gmail.com too, if you'd like. i'll respond to every one i get. thank you, as always. ♥
akame.
6,100 words.
16½ pages.
soundtrack: 'still believe' and 'sad song' by kim jung hoon. soft and melodic instrumentals.
It was a sunny day in Anaheim, California.
Kame wiped the dusty film off his Dior sunglasses and sighed, stretching his arms out in front of him and resting his head helplessly on his knees.
Here he sat upon his luggage, outside the door of room 204, trying not to give in to the temptation of flinging his bag aside and booking it. Running, running, running away as fast as he could from this pale apartment complex; dashing over the neatly trimmed hillsides and kicking up gravel that lined the edges of a nearby motel with open vacancy and a tiny little pool out in the back. But he had already done that.
He had already done that three times.
Every few seconds a surge of unpleasant chemicals would suddenly rise up from his heart into his mouth and he would choke, whimper, curse under his breath and intertwine his hands behind his baseball cap. He didn’t want to do this. He didn’t want to do this. He needed to do this, he had to do this. He had to get it over with. He had to start again. He had to find himself, that part he lost 7 months ago, that part that was pulled away bit by bit like a loose thread at the edge of his sweater until suddenly it had all gone and he was as bare as he hoped he’d never be.
He knew where it was, knew where that part had been all along, but he could never quite reach it. And every night he would think about that piece of himself laying thousands of miles away in another place, another time, another world. He would dream about pulling it back into him - all at once, or maybe over the course of a few months, but in some sort of eventual process - and never letting it go. Now was his chance. He could be a coward, a little bit of an asshole, a selfish jerk - or he could rip himself open in the sunlight and let him see, glimmering, the biological parts that made him work. See, Jin? It’s a heart. It’s beating just like any other. It’s not me that meant to hurt you. I’m just living, just breathing, just beating, that’s all. I’m sorry. I can work harder next time.
It took all of his effort to wrestle the demons to the floor, the ones who kept convincing him to escape - shove them aside and push himself up onto his feet, adjust his bag and step up to that heavy steel door. And then he raised his fist, trembling, and his throat cinched up and he began to feel a high-pitched whine emanating from the deepest part of his stomach - no, no, he was imagining it - and to push his clenched fist as deliberately and heavily through the air as a wooden bat cracking a soft baseball into the stratosphere, higher and higher, until he could no longer see it and the sun was blinding him and he -
The door opened.
“…Kamenashi?”
Time stopped. The world, the Earth, in all her beautiful and glorious power, in the billions and billions and billions of years she had existed and faithfully and mechanically twirled as gracefully around the sun as a fluttering ballet dancer, for the first time suddenly and without warning halted and painfully nudged forward the frame of a small Japanese boy of 21 into the warm body directly in front of him. And all at once, against his will, Kamenashi Kazuya - calm, collected, refined Kamenashi Kazuya - broke like the thin skin of a budded flower and burst into a fit of deep sobs and quiet, strange, animal-like wails that were stifled against the dark skin of the man he was leaning against in the tiny little complex doorway.
It was several long, uncomfortable seconds before Kame quieted and then without warning began again, clutching the elbows of the man fitfully, helplessly, pleadingly. The instant he would seem to recover he would begin all over again, so completely and utterly speechless at the beauty that for months he had craved and tried to remember - tried to conjure and to clone, to recreate in the bubble that was his life, and failed. His missing piece.
The scent of its body, the light touch of its bangs against Kame’s forehead, the warmth that rose from its chest and burned Kame’s cheek with such vibrant and shocking realness; he could not begin to approach it in a composed, collected, humanlike way. Only the most disturbing of behavior: childlike cries, body racked with sobs and hiccups yet not a single sad tear - could begin to describe those first few seconds of relief and love and joy that he felt when he laid his eyes on his piece. His piece that up and left him back in a small, lonely world eons away so many months ago. The spark that had fed him, nurtured him, kept him alive and well and held him and touched him and soothed him and belonged to him.
“Kamenashi? Are you okay?”
Kame shuddered several times, quieting himself, coming back into a reality more similar to his life long, long ago than it had been a minute before. He looked up, embarrassingly, shamefully into the concerned face of the other and quivered - his own eyes still hidden behind dark, lightless designer sunglasses.
Akanishi Jin rested his hand lovingly against the small of Kame’s back and led him into the dim apartment. “Come in, please.”
The cold response was maddening, but it was as painful to Kame as blades of sharp, late-summertime grass against the soft bare foot of a child. Perhaps, in those 7 months of excruciating loneliness that only someone separated from their very emotional lifeline and driving force can possibly feel, Kame had grown accustomed to hurtful words and bland responses. Or perhaps he had always been used to it, expectant of it, but shielded to the idea that he deserved or warranted it. Shielded by a stouter body with wider hips and a goofy laugh and Great Gatsby smile that stretched endlessly from either corner of his face. A body that he wrapped himself up in every night for so many years, warm and impenetrable, blocking every barbed bit of malice that tried to worm its way into his ears.
He suddenly wished, regretfully, that he had never done what he had a year and a half before to drive that body away from his bed and into another. What they had both done selfishly to each other - when Jin made Kame afraid to hurt. I’m tired of you crying all the damn time, Jin whined, in that r-trilling, angry yakuza accent. Me too, Kame thought. He put his hands in his pockets and sat quietly the whole ride home, apologized profusely: nothing new there.
They were so immature. Years had gone by and instead of becoming wiser, calmer, solidified and sure of themselves, they had slipped. Two happy, clumsy boys had grown like wild cattails - at first straight (very much so) and determined, light and careless - until somewhere along the line they got too tall, too big, and their heavy bodies sank slowly down, trembling, into the water’s edge: the last remnants of springtime fuzz floating away.
They couldn’t live without each other. That’s what Kame used to think.
Because now, closely inspecting the clean-shaven body of his other half, smelling so lightly and sweetly of expensive American cologne, Kame began to wonder if maybe he had been the only one hurting. The only one writhing in bed at night - tossing, turning - and piling it with body pillows as large as they came, higher and higher until he was certain there was no room left for another body next to him, the one that was never there anyways. But it always felt emptier. Always.
Maybe he was the only one who would withdraw his spent body from a pretty girl and turn to the other side sickeningly, racked with guilt. He never liked girls. He found them annoying, money-hungry, selfish, unattractive. He never liked girls. But for Jin, he tried to.
Maybe he was the only one who ached.
And yet, as Jin flipped on the lights in the stark living room, and Kame removed the glasses covering up his puffy pinkish eyes, he recalled something Jin had told him once months ago.
--
“We’re all lonely for something we don’t even know we’re lonely for.” he said pointedly, stirring his steaming paper cup of coffee in rhythmic circles with his wrist. “Don’t you ever get the feeling you’re missing somebody you’ve never even met?”
It was such a disturbing thing, coming from Jin. That was the day Kame knew things had changed. That Jin, like a seasonal bird staying around until the weather got warmer back home, was going to be leaving him.
--
It was a nice place. Bland, lacking the décor of their - pardon, Kame’s - old apartment, but nice. He felt so uncultured, a tiny Japanese boy who thought he’d come from a kingdom of vast riches stepping into a “cheap” living space in which one room was nearly half of the home he currently lived.
A small fireplace mantle with some picture frames - nobody he knew, he thought a little sadly - and one of those large inspirational posters of a gigantic humpback whale splashing in the ocean. Why a whale, he did not know. The picture itself was blank, but taped crudely to the horizon point of the water’s edge was a quickly jotted note in familiar kindergarten print:
It is never too late to be who you might have been.
Kame, though primitive his English was, wondered quite stupidly for a moment if Jin knew what it meant. But of course he did, he’d written it himself, hadn’t he? Perhaps there was a difference between knowing what it meant and believing in what it meant. And then, from behind him, a shudder - and Kame turned around.
Reeling from the painful twinge in his chest, that aching he hadn’t felt in the many months he’d been gone, Jin rushed forward and squeezed Kame tightly against his own body - and all it took was the hot breath against Kame’s earlobe and neck, the vibration of Jin’s tiny, repressed sob coursing through his tiny frame, and the barely audible whisper of, “Oh, Kame…” before Kame felt a fire rekindled from the depths of his belly and a wanting that was pleasantly, innocently satisfied by the pressure of Jin’s deep, solid hips against his groin.
It was now Kame’s turn to soothe, but as he held Jin in his arms and peered over the crescent of his shoulder looking at the bare, bland walls stretching across every corner of the room, he was completely devoid of the capacity to comfort the crumbling man. He had never had to hold Jin and tell him it would be all right.
In all the years they had known each other, suffered together, spilled sweat and blood and tears on every stage they danced so furiously on, it had never been Kamenashi Kazuya tucking locks of hair behind Jin’s ears and shushing him, cooing, rocking him in his arms.
Jin had always been the strong, goofy one with the gangly legs and the enormous appetite, stealing bits of food off Kame’s plate and saying smugly in response to particularly nosy fans, “He’s a growing boy, but I am growing larger.”
But inexperienced though he was, there was a part of his childhood (pre-Jin) that Kame remembered quite fondly, that he withdrew from his memory banks at this particular instant. It was a story they’d heard from Johnny’s boys time and time again, the old ’my parents never held me’ line that was common enough in normal Japanese children, let alone sons of financially burdened families forced to go into JE, perhaps in avoidance of dependency on an education they‘d never have a chance to earn. Kame certainly wouldn’t have.
But there was one thing his Mother had done right that night he came back from rehearsal, sobbing and unable to tell her why - the only caring thing he could ever remember her doing. And so Kame rocked back and forth, slowly and rhythmically, the only way to apologize with his heart he knew how. And as he had hoped, Jin calmed, his breath softer and deeper; and together they swayed for several minutes in a comfortable silence, a pocket of space in the world occupied by two lonely little things bleeding out the hurt in the warmth of each other’s arms.
♬ As time goes by, I try to not lose sense of it,
With a chance encounter, our true feelings came flooding out,
My heart was touched by his compassion,
Our meeting was the miracle I've been longing for… ♫
But the Hallmark moment passed the second Jin’s soft hands found their way to Kame’s belt buckle. “No, no…n-not now…” Kame breathed, pushing the fumbling hands away. Jin grinned stupidly and slapped Kame’s wrists, unbuttoning the dark jeans and easing them off his bony hips.
“No, no, no…” Kame breathed, “Please, Jin, no, not now, let me expla-”
Jin bent down on his knees, used Kame’s soft trembling hands to smooth his bangs back, took his thin creamy legs and spread them apart gently -
“Kame!” Jin laughed, his hand grazing against what felt like a tiny prickling scar, “What have you been sleeping in, raspberry bushes-”
Kame watched as Jin’s face fell, the last part of his sentence melting away into nothingness.
Busaiku.
Fuckin’ ugly.
That was the only word Jin saw carved angrily into the skin before Kame stumbled backwards and held his jeans at his knees desperately, squeezing his thighs as tightly together as he possibly could.
“Kame, what is that-”
“You were gone for so long,” Kame hiccupped, his eyes burning. “I didn’t know…know where you were, who to - who to talk to, ‘What should I do?’ and I didn’t know, I couldn’t…I…”
But Kame couldn’t explain it properly. Mountainous piles of words and feelings and tears were piled up from his belly to his throat, suffocating him, and the instant one teetered and fell out of his lips a thousand more tripped afterwards and he’d try to catch them and throw the ones out his mouth that made sense. But it was going too fast and too many words rolled out at once and he began to realize that he was choosing the same ones over and over again - I didn’t know, I didn’t know, you were gone, I didn’t know - and missing the ones that did matter - I love you, I need you, I can’t sleep alone at night, Yamashita won’t stop calling, the smallest shirt I could find is 3x too big, my fridge is empty, I lost my watch, do you get NHK here?
Jin stared at the floor. He tried to reach out to touch Kame but gave up halfway, his hand hanging mid-air, extended to someone too far beyond his grasp.
--
He didn’t intend to do it. Mark himself, that is - he’d done it with a ballpoint ink pen a million times before. It wasn’t like it was hard to hide - the costumes he was assigned to wear were never particularly revealing, anyhow, and more often than not covered him from the nape of his neck down the full length of his body to his shoes, and frequently, full sleeves. He’d sit backstage in the fitting room, perhaps half-an-hour before show time, doodling innocently over his body.
From his ankles to his knees wound wide, archaic swirls that curled tentatively into vines and monkey tails, spider’s webs and leafy tree branches sprouting sakura blossoms speckled by fat bumblebees dripping with honey. And from their bottoms dotted trails that curled into loop-de-loops and sharp inclines up past his kneecaps, where they turned into the strings of fat, shining, rubber balloons floating up his thighs and bending into heart-shapes the closer they rose toward his buttocks.
That was when Jin would buy him fancy obento for lunch every day and ask Kame to double-tie his shoes because he “didn’t know how” (which Kame now suspected was just a way to get him on his knees, several years before he realized the connotations).
But the second that he made that phone-call -- the second he said, “Oi, Kame - we gotta talk”, that’s when Kame knew. That’s when he scribbled out the hearts, burst the balloons, erased the bees’ flying path, rubbed their fat bodies into blurry blue smears, ripped the blossoms from those pretty, pretty sakura, broke the beautiful fragile webs with one fell sweep of his pinky finger and desperately scrubbed away the swirls until his legs were burning, burning, burning. And he’d scratch them, furiously, scratch away the skin raw until it was a deep, angry pink and the tingling of the pain made his head swim in a disturbingly sensual buzz.
“Oi, Kame, we gotta talk.”
Bye-bye, bumblebee.
“Is that so? What about?” he said coolly.
“Things.”
“Nn.”
“I’m serious.”
“Did I say you weren’t?”
Jin paused. “…I’ve had enough of this bullshit.”
“What bullshit?”
“All of it.”
“All of what?” Kame demanded somewhat irritatingly.
“What I told you at 24hrTV, remember? You remember it, don’t you?”
“I remember.”
“Well, that. This. Fucking Johnny’s. I‘m done. I need air. I need space.”
Kame waited for it.
Those words he didn’t want to hear. The gentle, willowy breeze that blew in through his window carrying a world full of broken pieces he couldn’t fix raining down around him.
“I’m leaving.”
Somewhere deep in the cavity of his chest, a stone dropped, plummeted past the shelves of his ribs and sank all the way through his stomach to some tiny, faint little core of himself hidden past the skin and bones and blood, and settled indefinitely and with an awful surety.
“Where to?” he tried to ask brightly. His body felt heavy.
“America.”
“They’ll follow you, you know.” he said of the fan girls.
“They’ll never know. I’m not going to tell them.”
“Well, somebody’s thought out everything, Genius Sensei Akanishi-san.” Kame joked.
He was trying to be funny and lighten the mood. He was really, really trying.
He could almost hear the airy shrug on the other line.
“I just thought I’d let you know.”
“I would have found out anyways.”
“You did it for me.”
“Eh?”
“Seishun Amigo, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Yeah. I guess you’re right.”
A tiny little spider crept across Kame’s floor in light of the moon. He watched it quietly from his bed, fingering the toe of one of his socks idly.
“When I first told you…back at 24hrTV, and I wasn’t sure…”
“Nn.” Kame said, after several long seconds.
“Well, I’m glad you listened. And I’m glad you told me to go. I really, really am. I can’t wait to get out of here, to start over, to sleep…oh god, fucking SLEEP, Kame. SLEEP. I was so scared, you know, such a big risk, but then you talked me into it, Kame, and I was so happy for once…”
Kame, I’ve been thinking.
Yes, Jin?
I think I want to leave JE.
What?
I think I want to leave JE, I said. I think. I’m not sure -
What on earth -
No, just listen, listen. Please. Because I’m tired and you’re the only one who ever really listens to me.
“So there’s a press conference tomorrow -”
“Yeah. I could have guessed.”
“You wanna come?”
Kame sighed through his nose, something he did when things were not quite right somewhere, Jin had learned.
“Nah. Just another media gathering. Bright lights, lots of pictures, bed head, droopy eyes… I don’t really have much to say.”
“You can say how great it was working on Gokusen 2 together, maybe.”
Kame laughed. It was a breathy, soft sort of thing paired with a tiny little chuckle that came from somewhere in his throat. It was lovely.
“When are you leaving?”
“A couple days. Sooner than later.”
“Gone for long?”
“Half a year. A year. Maybe longer.”
A year. Kame cupped his throat in his hand and rubbed it, carefully, soothingly.
“I suppose that‘s long enough.”
“Well…anyways. If you can make it. To the conference, I mean-” said Jin.
“Yeah.” Kame blew his lips out. “Sure. Maybe. I’ll see.”
The spider was so small. What a poor, poor creature. He wondered where its family was. This was something Jin would think about, he smiled to himself.
Hah. Jin. You don’t like bugs, do you, Jin? You used to make me kill them for you. But Kame, Kame, you’re the brave one! You can do it! And you’d pump your fist, and even though I hated those things I would hit them with a shoe (your shoe, of course) and make fun of you the rest of the day. What a silly little fear, I’d say, why Jin, you’re nothing but a coward.
He realized he was imagining up a conversation again. It happened too often these days. A staff member would kick his chair, “Get up, we have to start shooting again,” and Kame would leap up on his feet and think about being shaken softly awake by a smooth pair of hands, hushed whispers in his ears, a hot towel over his eyes as he shuffled back to set.
He’d smile. Just work a little bit harder, Kame. They’ll treat you better when the ratings go up. Ganbarimasu.
“I guess it’s ‘bye.” Jin said absently.
“Well, you know. Work hard. Tell them I said, ‘come back with lots of new things for KAT-TUN.’”
“Eh?”
“The press. Tell them you’re going to learn a lot, come back with new things, mature. That sort of thing.”
“Do you really have to do this?” Jin pleaded.
Kame stopped. “What?”
“Never mind. Sure, sure. Whatever. Ganbarimasu! I got it.”
“Have fun.” He said softly.
“Sure.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.”
Click.
Kame set the phone down on his other pillow. Deep in the back of his throat something tightened, painfully, like he was stuck in a choke-hold, and his windpipe seemed to shrink, smaller and smaller as the tissue swelled achingly and he couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe at all. Just barely.
He hugged one end of his body pillow to him, quietly, rocking. The spider crept into a tiny crevice in the baseboard and disappeared.
A slow, soft, familiar melody played somewhere outside his window - light little taps on ivory keys that conjured up the image of a boy with a bowl cut leaning against his doorway, giggling.
One sad, shy, little sob. Barely audible.
He wished that little spider was listening. He wished it would come out so he didn’t feel so alone.
--
Next thing he knew Jin was standing up, adjusting Kame’s jeans wordlessly.
He tugged the belt-loops on either side once, twice, thrice to make sure they were snug and then patted him on the chest, bending down to heave Kame’s duffel bag onto his bare shoulder and drag his luggage into the Guest Bedroom down the hall.
--
“How’s it taste?” Jin asked, pausing to gulp at his lukewarm can of coca-cola.
Kame, chewing as he sorted through the foods on his plate absently, nodded.
“It’s pretty good.” He picked several noodles and tossed them around over and over again with his fork like a picky child.
“Sorry it’s Hamburger Helper.” Jin laughed.
“Ham-a-what?” Kame asked quizzically.
“Hamburger Helper.”
He paused before repeating, albeit in rather drawn out syllables, “Ham-bah-gah He-ru-pah?”
“Something like that.” Jin smiled, not bothered enough to correct. Besides, he liked Kame being imperfect. He liked those mistakes he tried to cover up in dance routines, his accent so terrible he did not dare speak a word of English unless absolutely ordered to for fear of sounding stupid, the way his bottom dimpled and the wrinkles that slithered up his collarbone when he squeezed his shoulder close to his body. Kame tried so hard to be perfect he completely ignored his perfections altogether.
“It’s…” Kame tilted his head down at his plate and pouted. “..Interesting.” he finally settled on.
“It’s pretty cheap here. Which is nice.” Jin said, taking another sip. “I only spend about $10 a day, sometimes. It gets pretty rough.” He swirled his drink, cast an absent glance at a dirty pair of tennis shoes in the corner.
Kame shuddered. He hated coke. Diminutive as he was, the boy was perhaps one of the pickiest eaters on the planet, and certainly the pickiest eater Jin had ever known. Being a health nut was one thing - this is too fat, this is too greasy, this has too many bad carbohydrates, this will dehydrate the body, etc. But Kame, as in everything, was a special breed. And his tastes - delicate, refined, eclectic, always changing - were as well.
This gyoza is too salty, he’d frown bitterly, pushing away his plate.
Boiled too long, he’d say of the miso soup.
Not steamed well, and there’d be no salmon for the evening.
I just don’t like the taste, that was Jin’s favorite. When the food did not even warrant a competent excuse not to consume it, something must be terribly wrong.
He could almost feel his own teeth eroding underneath the warm, fizzling coke. What were these? Disgusting, greasy noodles lathered in oily sauce with chunks of beef so fatty that when he chewed them they popped like disgusting, fat pimples and he could barely keep it down.
Kame picked at it gingerly. “Do you really…I mean, are you that low on money?”
Jin choked and had to cover his mouth with his hand to stifle himself. The upset coke fizzled angrily.
“…was it that funny?”
“No, no, I…just…your face when you said that…” Jin laughed, looking up over the edge of his folded napkin.
“Like what?”
“Like a mad little girl, that’s all.”
“Ha, ha, very fu-” Kame stopped himself, blinded by the brilliant glint of gold on Jin’s ring finger.
--
Jin had pretty, pretty hands. He always had.
Growing up, always comparing himself to others around him - that was Kamenashi Kazuya and his ‘body issues’. Even as a junior, Jin would watch as his best friend admired his figure in front of the doublewide dance studio mirrors for hours - he would turn, twirl, cock his head and smile, then finger the edges of his shirt and pull it up slowly over his head, trying to look as un-awkward as possible when it bunched up just below his chin and refused to budge until Kame tugged for several seconds and it flung off, messing his hair.
You look perfect, Jin would tell him. You’re so thin, Kame! I wish my hips were as skinny as yours.
Shut up, Stupid, Kame would reply plainly.
But it’s true! Look at me, look at you. He’d stand up next to Kame, side-by-side, and frown. Your body is so tiny. You’re like a little bird. I’m just a big fat chicken, that’s what I am. I’m so gangly. Why are my arms so long? And my legs are crooked, too.
Kame would blink and smile, so softly and delicately, and he’d look up with half a mind to say royally, “Well, I’m not an expert, you know, but there is some to be improved upon…”
But he couldn’t.
Kame had a keen sort of eyesight. Jin could never quite explain it, try as he might to others around them, but it was almost like he could see things that could be. He was like a record producer searching out the next big act - underneath the frump and the sag and the dirt lay the playdough recipe for a celebrity, a mega-hit with perfect skin and teeth and abs and flyaway hair. Things years down the road, the way things would turn out in the end, Kame could see them. He could see what was inside of people, of moments, of feelings. He could see potential.
And when Kame looked at Jin, he didn’t see baby fat. He didn’t see gangly arms, crooked legs and a stupid personality. He saw big, beautiful hips, huge stages and elaborate costumes that hugged those shapes so well. That Great Gatsby smile, so goofy and childish now - oh, it’d be so gorgeous in just a few years. You just wait, Jin. You’re so droopy now, but you’ll see. They’ll love you.
I wish I was as Skinny as you, Kame. You’re so pretty.
So was what appeared to be Jin’s standard of beauty. Kame didn’t care.
He’d live up to it someday.
--
Those pretty, perfect hands. Things hadn’t changed.
“Still got your birthmark?” Kame smiled, nodding to Jin’s hand.
Jin stared at it, then glanced back to Kame. “Hm?”
“Remember? We always joked that if you went to a foreign country you’d go get surgery and have it removed.” he rocked his fork gently back and forth on his napkin.
“Oh, god,” Jin laughed. “You’re like an elephant. Always remembering that weird crap from when we were kids.”
Kame chuckled. “They were good times.”
“Remember that one time!” said the suddenly excited Jin, “When we were still back dancing for Tsuyo and Koichi --”
“‘Domoto Demons’.” Kame snorted.
“How - did you -” Jin buried his head in his arms, giggling. “‘‘Kinki Kan’t-Hold-A-Tune’…”
“They‘re not the only ones…” Kame dodged Jin’s playful slap from across the table.
“So MEAN!” Jin laughed, open-mouthed. “They hated us, man.”
“I wonder why.” Kame replied dryly, smirking.
“I’m just sayin’,” Jin took another bite of his hamburger helper, leaning back in his chair and pointing at Kame with his fork. “There was a reason those names got passed around.”
Kame laughed. “You and your big fat mouth, that’s what.”
“Ueda has the big fat mouth, thank you very much.” Jin said, half his mouth full of noodles. “Dick-sucking lips, that’s what.”
“That’s what what.” Kame giggled.
“That’s what what what? That’s what what! Bloody bloody hell, that’s what! Bother!” Jin said it quickly, in a sort of mock English accent, using his index finger as a moustache. It was one of those moments, those memories from long ago, laying in a windy tent on the beach with nothing else to do but realize each other’s hidden comedic talents. Kame bounced up and down in his chair like a little kid, smacking his thigh, laughing so hard together Jin had to desperately stable the plastic vase centerpiece in the middle of the table.
When they had finally quieted, Jin leaned back and sighed, rubbing his eyes and chuckling. “Ah. I missed you, Kame.” He picked up their plates - one nearly licked clean, the other barely touched. It was still warm. He didn’t mind. He was used to it by now.
Kame rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. “Yeah, yeah. Me too.”
“How long will you be staying?” Jin called out from the kitchen, just loud enough to be heard over the running water.
Kame shrugged. He looked at his watch. 5PM. The sun was filtering through the blinds in golden bars.
Several minutes later Jin came back and stood at the sliding glass door. He smelled like liquid soap.
“Thanks.” Kame said, blowing out his lips.
“Nn. No problem.” He didn’t have to ask what Kame meant.
Kame picked idly at a piece of denim lint stuck on the top of his jeans. It is never too late to be who you might have been. Who might’ve Jin been? What did he want to be? Not a singer, not a dancer, Kame knew. Not a Johnny’s. Never again and never first and foremost a Johnny’s. They had discussed this at length one too many times, and Kame - logical, optimistic, well-to-do busybody Kame - never had the right answer. Then again, there was only one answer he had ever tried. Please don’t go. He had meant it.
But that horizon - the edge on the brink of human existence, the barely visible path ahead that Jin could see himself walking so many months ago - was it one that had included Kame?
That’s when he felt the touch of a warm hand caressing his chin, brushing his thumb over Kame’s smooth bottom lip, and the sweet cologne rolling off of Jin’s skin as he leaned forward to get a better look into Kame’s delicate, enraptured face.
“You have such long eyelashes,” he whispered, lovingly, enviously. Kame batted them without intending to. And then Jin leaned in closer, and Kame opened his soft mouth so faintly and shyly, so differently, Jin thought. Their lips barely brushed, pursing together into peckish baby kisses planted at the sides of each others’ mouths so sweetly and innocently, so 16 years old again in the changing room supply closet.
And Kame stood, pulling Jin back up with him while the baby kisses floated away like shining balloons, melting into deep, syrupy slow sucking as he felt Jin push him against the door and the blinds crinkle, the dying sun shimmering in the glow of Jin’s face, and their lips broke apart as they stared silently at one another.
Kame opened his mouth to speak - to say no, perhaps, to decline, to insist this was wrong and this would ruin them, that it would only make things worse in the end - but Jin knew better. Akanishi Jin had been kissing shy, scared, timid little Kamenashi Kazuya for 9 years, and he knew better than to let the jerk open that big fat beautiful mouth of his.
So Jin shoved his hips into Kame’s - hard, he later admitted - and the defenses were shot. Kame’s hands flew up weakly beside his face, and Jin held them trembling to the glass, locking him up against the glowing light and sucking wet lines down his thin, soft neck. There was something different about the way Kame’s skin tasted, the way Jin’s lips ran all over his throat - the way Kame was shuddering just to try and breathe, the way Jin ground his groin into Kame’s so rhythmically.
He felt like he was being pushed over tremendous ocean waves, dizzied, blood rushing absolutely everywhere, the shocking pulse in his loins that sent electric tremors of that feeling through his body, and he was lost and moaning and Jin breathing so wetly on his porcelain collarbone.
“Jin…” he whispered, gasping bubbily. “Let me -” He fumbled for Jin’s zipper.
“No, it’s my turn now,” Jin teased, sucking on Kame’s bottom lip as he reached down to Kame’s stomach, letting his hands run over his ribs as he pulled up the boy’s shirt, Kame quivering with each finger that bumped over his soft ribs like fingernails across the bars of a birdcage. He wrapped his slender leg around Jin’s hip, pulling him into the pocket they now shared -
He thought he imagined the pounding on the door, at first.
“Shit,” Jin hissed and shoved Kame away from him roughly. “Fuck, fuck, fuck I forgot, SHIT, HOLD ON I’LL BE RIGHT THERE!, fuck…”
The incessant banging echoed through the room again and Kame - innocent, defenseless, unexpected Kame - stood dimwittedly in the mess of tangled blinds, rubbing away the trails of saliva as Jin ran to greet the pretty girl at the door.
She had a lovely, bubbly, happy voice. She had blonde hair. She had tits. Kame might say they were nice, nice to someone like Jin, probably. Her eyelashes were dark and wispy, the kind Jin liked, too. He pushed his shirt back down over his goose-bumped skin and hid in the kitchen until he heard the creak of the door a second time. Jin grabbed his coat and gave a sharp, short little wave as he walked out. The look on his face was a little bit sad, a little bit remorseful, but more than anything - sorry.
It’s never too late to be who you might have been.
Kame walked into the bathroom, sat in the shower and texted Yamapi. “We should go out to lunch sometime when I get back. Miss you.” He buried his head in his arms, listening to the dull hum of the empty house, and cried.
--
dedicated to someone very special to me.
comment if you like. tell me. what did you like? what was nice? what made your heart hurt, your spine tingle? ask me questions. i had a reason for every word i ripped out of my soul and put to paper. you can always email me at astromechafic@gmail.com too, if you'd like. i'll respond to every one i get. thank you, as always. ♥