[JE] Hair-raising Escapades (Electronic and Otherwise) 1/2
Title: Hair-raising Escapades (Electronic and Otherwise) 1/2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Kame/Jin
Rating: PG
Genre: Kind of AU
Word count: 12,430
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: Nakamaru plays hairdresser, Koki doesn't get a stripper for his birthday, Kame's new drama role requires him to master the art of social networking and Jin gains a follower.
A/N: Will make no sense whatsoever if you haven't read the first four in the series, which starts with Be Your Own Secret Girlfriend. Click on the series: transjinder tag for all the fics in this 'verse. I haven't been to Lex in nearly two years, so if it's changed in that time, sorry. Many, many thanks to my two awesome enablers, pithetaphish and sweetpaopuwind, without whom this would never have become a series.
Hair-raising Escapades (Electronic and Otherwise) 1/2
Kame doesn't expect Jin to kiss him back. He's wrong, and he doesn't know if it's the alcohol or the intensity of the situation or Jin just being Jin and going with the flow, but for an all too fleeting moment, he receives the response he's always hoped for. It's sloppy and sweet and urgent all at once, Jin's lips sweet with mango, parting for him, welcoming him in.
And then it's over, and Jin's fingers unclench and push him away.
"You're going to bed," he tells Kame shakily, taking a step backwards. "Alone."
I'm always alone, Kame thinks. He lies in bed and listens to Jin making up the couch in the next room. Jin must be lonely too.
-----
The dull ache in Kame's head owes more to his run-in with the car doorframe than the two bottles of wine, but that's poor consolation when he wakes alone, embarrassed and sore, blinking at the sun streaming in past curtains he'd forgotten to close. He checks his watch. It's already ten, which means it's a damned good thing he doesn't have to be anywhere until three. It's going to take him that long to feel human again.
He rolls out of bed still half-dressed from the night before; even the slightest movement sets off explosions in his head and he's none too steady when his feet hit the ground. He's about as far from the perfect idol as he can get right now.
Jin's never the perfect idol - but from the sounds coming through the wall, he's making coffee, and that makes him perfect as far as Kame's concerned.
"You're still here," Kame says as he staggers into the kitchen. "And awake. I didn't expect that."
"I'm here," Jin says, "but I'm not sure about the awake part. Can I get back to you on that?"
Kame waves vaguely at him and goes in search of painkillers. "Take your time..."
It's a late breakfast of pills and black coffee for them both, accompanied by much clutching of heads. It takes a little while for the night to come back to Kame. Wine. An education in the art of being a fake girl. Bad bilingual puns. More wine. Jin wanting to leave. Koki to the rescue. No more wine. Water trickling down Kame's chin. Jin's snowflake sweater with the too-long sleeves that make him look all of three years old. A touch of lips, and fingers on hips, and a moment Kame hopes Jin won't remember.
"I might be awake now," Jin says when he's on his second cup and starting to look less like a corpse. "I've stopped seeing double."
"You were only seeing double? Lucky." Kame hadn't realised he was seeing triple until he missed his coffee cup twice. But that's worn off now and the only thing in his vision is Jin.
It's a pleasant sight, because Jin's laughing, and that always makes Kame feel like everything's right with the world - even if the laughter is at his expense. "You were so out of it last night - I'm amazed you can see at all!"
"I can see," Kame huffs, pretending to be offended. He still feels too zombie-like to be playful but he doesn't want to do anything weird that might remind Jin of last night. In fact, if they can avoid the subject altogether, that would be preferable. "Well enough to know you're not much better off."
"We were both pretty far gone." Jin shuffles his cup from hand to hand. "I'm not even sure what I was saying by the end of it."
Is that supposed to be a cue, Kame wonders? He's a good actor. He can follow directions. "I remember getting in Koki's car and that's about it," he says, hoping that's what Jin wants to hear. It's hard to read him right now.
He must be interpreting correctly, because Jin looks relieved. "Yeah, I didn't want to risk a taxi when you looked like you were going to throw up. You know it would've ended up in Friday."
"Koki would've done a lot worse if it had been in his car."
"Not if it's you," Jin says. "You could probably kill someone in Koki's car and he'd swear you were in another prefecture at the time."
"Possibly, but let's hope I never have to find out."
Kame genuinely doesn't remember much about the car ride, but he can rely on Koki to tell him if he said or did anything strange. Koki understands. Koki's seen him at his worst.
It's the part after he got home that worries him. Kissing Jin has been on his to-do list for years, but on the portion of the list that deals with things he'd like to do but knows are out of his reach, like playing professional baseball. That part of the list is mercifully short, because he's good at turning his dreams into reality. This dream, though...this one's about more than just him, and Jin doesn't need any added confusion in his life right now.
"Thanks for last night," Jin says when he's drained his cup. "It was...educational. I don't think I'll be going back for another lesson, though. Not my kind of place."
"Not enough noise, smoke, and scantily-clad girls for you," Kame says. "I could take you to a women-only club two doors down from that one but we'd both have to go in drag."
Jin smiles and lights his first cigarette of the morning - one of Kame's, because the pack's closer. "I'd rather go to Lex. At least I can relax there."
Kame finds he tends to get lost in the crowd of tall foreigners on the rare occasions when he ventures into Lex (always someone else's idea) but it's the perfect place for Jin, always a mix of different nationalities, ages and ideas. Tiny Japanese women in traditional garb dance alongside strapping Europeans in their tank tops; brash American girls cut loose next to shy Japanese guys. Jin fits right in, somewhere in the middle - mixed-up, muddled-up, shining in the heart of the world.
"You should go to places where you can relax," Kame says. "I've dragged you to enough where you can't."
"Come with me sometime and get a taste of your own medicine."
Kame salutes him with a coffee cup and goes to take a shower. Jin tastes much sweeter than medicine, and Kame wants another dose.
-----
By the time three o'clock rolls around, Kame's clean, dressed, and ready to embrace the fabulously shiny life of an idol. Jin had vanished while he was still in the shower, yelling out "Ciao!" as he left. Kame thinks he must've been a sight and hopes no one managed to snap a picture. They have to be so careful all the time, doubly so if they're spotted in the vicinity of each other's homes, and both of them woke up looking the worse for wear.
But no longer, because Kame's got a shoot for Popolo and he has to look perfect - worthy of a few fangirl screams, at least. Even though it's November they're outdoors, wearing light jackets as they model late autumn chic and try to ignore the cold breeze that blows through the park. Kame sits on the see-saw with Ueda and remembers a time when it would've been Jin on the other end.
"How's your head?" Koki asks when they have a minute to themselves. "Do you even remember last night?"
"It's okay as long as I don't move too fast," Kame says. "And yeah, I remember. Thanks for picking us up."
"No problem." Koki gives him a supportive smile, the one that always makes him feel grateful to have such a wonderful bunch of people around him. They can't get together without making fun of each other and they're not a hand-holding kind of group, but that's part of what makes them a family. "Did he have fun?"
"A little. It's not really his kind of place."
"Is it yours?"
"My place is..." Kame returns Koki's smile with a secretive one of his own, "on the pitcher's mound. Not stuck indoors somewhere."
"Then tell him he looks cute in a uniform and start recruiting for your own LGBT baseball team."
Not for the first time, Kame wonders how much Koki actually knows. He's never formally come out to any of them, except in interviews where the subject's treated as a joke, but he's never deliberately concealed it from them, either. As with his blood family, he figured he'd tell them if he ever got seriously involved enough with anyone to warrant it. They keep enough of a distance from each other that they rarely know what's going on to that extent. He finds out more from the gossip magazines than he does from his bandmates and no one's ever asked him straight out.
Kame's preferences are nobody else's business - but last night, he'd tried to make them Jin's. That's something he hopes Koki doesn't know.
"I'm not sure that's the kind of image he wants to promote, but you can always suggest it tomorrow."
Koki's filming a drama special all weekend, and he's spending Saturday night - his birthday - with his family, but Kame has claimed the Friday night, if only for a little while. He's got a chocolate cake recipe from his sister-in-law that he's dying to try out, and nobody's leaving his apartment unless they've had a slice. He wouldn't normally bake the cake himself, but he really wants to do something a little more personal for Koki as a token of his thanks. Valentine's Day is far enough that the birthday boy will hopefully not get the wrong idea.
"I'm liable to end up with cake all over my face if I try," Koki says.
"He wouldn't waste perfectly good cake on you."
"Only because you'd kill him if he got any crumbs on your pristine floors."
Kame concedes that Koki might have a point, and makes a mental note to leave his vacuum cleaner in plain sight as a warning to any potential messy eaters. It's not like it's going to be a full-blown party, merely an hour or two snatched from their schedules to get together and celebrate, but he's looking forward to it. It's been a while since all six of them have met up and the pirate ship Queen KAT-TUN is missing her princess.
-----
Nakamaru's used to receiving drunken phone calls from Jin at all sorts of hours, depending on where in the world he happens to be at the time, and mostly they cover the same sort of ground. Girls, or lack thereof. Badly-disguised homesickness. The future of rap music. Strange new English slang. Why wearing argyle only attracts old ladies.
He's not, however, used to receiving phone calls about braids. Moreover, Jin sounds entirely sober, if somewhat agitated.
"You remember when we were suffering in Hokkaido for Cartoon KAT-TUN?"
"I suffer whenever I'm sent anywhere with you," Nakamaru says. "Sunshine or snow."
"I make your life more challenging. Think of it as me doing you a favour."
"Your kind of favours, I don't need." Nakamaru sighs, resigning himself to not finishing his essay before he has to leave for Kame's place. "So what about Hokkaido?"
"Remember the girls who plaited my hair?"
"The same ones who wanted to cut my hair?"
"Those girls, yeah," Jin says. "You watched the whole time; do you remember how they started off? I've been thinking I'd like to do that with my hair again."
It's not a look Nakamaru could manage to pull off himself - even if he had enough hair - but it works for Jin. It works for Kame, too, but Kame's not happy unless he changes his hair every five minutes and it takes time to style it that way.
Time Nakamaru has, if he leaves the essay till tomorrow and goes to Jin's place for some emergency hairdressing. "Fine, I'll do it."
"You'll do it?"
"Sisters," Nakamaru says darkly, and Jin understands. "I'll come over now, but you owe me a couple of hours of study time, all right? I've got an exciting English text on deforestation that I'm sure you can't wait to get your hands on."
He says "deforestation" in English, and Jin repeats it slowly back to him. "Defenestration?"
"No, deforestation. I'm not studying the science of throwing things out of windows!"
"You'll get a better grade without me," Jin says, nonchalant as ever. "But come over anyway."
That's probably true, because Jin's study habits are nothing if not irregular, but Nakamaru's going to hold him to it anyway. "Just make sure you've got enough hair accessories."
Fifteen minutes later Jin answers the door with damp hair, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. The shirt's plain, and it's just a regular V-neck, but it clings like a second skin and Nakamaru has a moment of confusion trying to figure out if it's a girl's top or not. Maybe it just looks that way because it's Jin wearing it, he's not sure. It might look totally masculine on Koki.
"Are you going to come in or do I have to stand here and freeze in the doorway while you make up your mind?"
Startled, Nakamaru steps inside and arranges his boots neatly by the door. "Don't bully the guy who's here to help you, or I'll leave you half-done."
"Then I'll tweet about my incompetent hairdresser with the big nose and everyone on the Internet will know-"
"All right!" Nakamaru holds up his hands in defeat. The last thing he needs is Jin's army of Twitter followers sending him hate mail. "Your hair had better be clean."
"I washed it half an hour ago." Jin breaks into a smirk. "I think I've got some gloves around here somewhere if you don't trust me, though."
Trust isn't an issue; never has been, no matter how it looks on TV. Nakamaru will always say he's afraid Jin will push him into swimming pools and off buildings, but the truth is that Jin will never deliberately do anything to hurt him. Their relationship is all about give and take, and when Jin takes too many liberties, Nakamaru turns and punches him. It's a good system. They might both be closer to thirty than twenty but they're still a pair of elementary school kids when they squabble and bully each other, and Jin knows exactly how much he can get away with before he gets pushed back.
Not that this ever stops him from pushing in the first place. He needs the attention, only sometimes the attention he gets is not the kind he wants.
What he's getting now is to his liking, though. Nakamaru makes him throw a towel over his shoulders so he doesn't end up with a million loose hairs clinging to his shirt, and there's an awkward moment while they try to figure out the best angle of approach. They're the same height, so Jin has to sit down for this, eventually settling himself on the floor, in front of the couch and between Nakamaru's legs. A pile of hairbands, some slides and a rat-tail comb sit next to them on the coffee table.
"This is going to hurt a bit," Nakamaru says. "Unless you want very loose braids."
"I can take it," Jin assures him. "I've survived worse for work."
They both have. Nakamaru grimaces, thinking of the torture he's undergone over the years in the name of entertainment. It's hard having a reputation as a coward, and part of it is Jin's fault. Revenge is easy to come by, though - the shirt leaves Jin's ticklish collarbones exposed.
It takes a few minutes to comb out the tangles from Jin's damp hair. He manages to hold himself still throughout, though Nakamaru suspects it won't last. Jin will turn his head to talk, and he'll feel the pull on his scalp. There's no way he can remain silent the entire time.
It's a slow business. Nakamaru isolates a chunk of hair at the front, separating it out into three sections and braiding it till he reaches the end, tying it off with an elastic band. He'll bunch them all together later.
One down; many more to go. Good thing Jin's hair isn't too much past his shoulders right now, and he's not doing all of it - the lower half's staying loose.
"Can I see?"
"There's not much to see yet," Nakamaru says. "The longer you stop to preen, the less time we've got."
"I don't preen; I just want to check you're doing it right."
"How would you know if I wasn't?"
Jin shuts up.
It's a strange situation. Nakamaru's grateful that Jin hasn't made the obligatory joke about having a man between his legs, but maybe he's saving it for afterwards because he knows it'll only make things awkward to say it now. It's already uncomfortable, touching Jin like this - too close, too intimate. Even in Johnny's, men don't make a habit of this, not once their slender childish bodies thicken with maturity and they grow up enough to know some things are better left to the girls.
But maybe that's not how Jin sees himself now. Or maybe he's still the same spoilt brat, convincing people to do him favours and making them love him for his cheek. They're all weak against Jin, which is why, despite his better judgement, Nakamaru volunteered himself for this. They still see each other socially from time to time, but they haven't been alone for ages, not since before Jin "came out". They need the time. Nakamaru can't make sense of this if he doesn't have it, can't make those mental adjustments that will allow him to magically understand how Jin's brain works.
Another couple of braids down the line and Jin's still silent. It's not one of those comfortable silences, either, where neither of them needs to talk because they have this perfect harmony. It's not even one of those painful silences, like the kind they used to have before Jin left for LA the first time and couldn't talk to anyone.
This one's just...awkward. It's a bump in the road - though not an insurmountable one - and they don't have Kame to drive them straight over it this time. Kame doesn't stop, goes full speed ahead. Nakamaru's more cautious.
"Can you tilt your head to the right a bit?" he asks. It's a poor attempt at conversation but a necessary one. "I'm trying to get these to go round the side."
Jin accidentally tilts to the left instead; without thinking, Nakamaru taps him on the shoulder to make him move. Unfortunately his eyes are on the hair so his aim's a little off, and it's not until he hears Jin squawk and scramble away that he realises he's brushed the forbidden zone.
"Don't!" Jin half-laughs, half-gasps, hands crossed protectively over his collarbones. "You know that tickles!"
He's a ridiculous sight, kneeling on the carpet with partially braided hair, a little kid squirming to get away from tickling fingers, and Nakamaru can't suppress a laugh as he makes his apology. It was an honest mistake, after all. Jin reluctantly crawls back into position, though not without the odd suspicious glare, and the session resumes.
It's easier now they've shared a laugh. Jin hits a remote and kicks off one of his weird and wonderful playlists, covering everything from Eminem to Miss Saigon, and they sing along where they can, fake it where they can't. Nakamaru thinks his impromptu beatbox remix of 'Bass Go Boom' sounds much better than the original. Jin almost clocks him in the jaw, flinging his arms high as he wails his way through 'A Whole New World'.
They duet on 'Lose Yourself' and Nakamaru is reminded of stage lights and grey suits, Jin's American friend lurking on the side. A simpler time, in some ways.
'Lose Yourself' is followed by 'Love Yourself', and Jin sings loud enough to make up for all the concerts where he never got to perform it - concerts he'd thought they'd have, all six of them together, until business got in the way.
"I didn't realise you liked it so much," Nakamaru says.
"It's not such a bad way to go out. Better than the next song you released. What was with that?"
"We thought we'd better pick something you wouldn't want to sing in a million years, so you wouldn't feel bad about us releasing it without you."
Jin turns around, wincing because Nakamaru's still holding a clump of his hair. "Really?"
It's a joke, but Nakamaru doesn't have it in him to extinguish the stars in Jin's eyes. "Nobody said it outright, but I think that's what we were all thinking back then. I know I was."
"You're all a bunch of saps," Jin says happily, turning back before his hair is ripped out by the roots.
"I don't think you're in any position to talk." Nakamaru braids another few turns. "I've seen your Twitter."
"I'm just trying to be in tune with my largely female fanbase. Girls like to hear things about love, right?"
Nakamaru shrugs. "The ones I meet always seem to be more interested in food." He really has to stop letting Massu set him up. "Aren't you supposed to be the expert in how girls think?"
"If I knew how to understand girls, I wouldn't have been single for the best part of a year."
"No, I meant because you're...uh..."
"Oh." Jin drags the word out. "But I don't think any differently to how I always have; it's not like I've suddenly gained this mysterious insight into what makes women tick."
"But you must've started thinking differently somewhere along the line." Nakamaru's desperate to understand this now. Maybe if Jin can present him with a neat, logical explanation for it all, he'll finally be able to wrap his head around it and stop burying his head in the sand. Jin and logic are not the best of friends, because he has his own unique view of the universe and it works the way he wants it to, but there has to be something there that he can rationalise. "You didn't always want to be a girl, did you?"
"I don't want to be a girl now, thanks. One of my exes used to punch me in the stomach when her cramps got really bad, so I could be a good boyfriend and share her pain. Can you picture me dealing with that once a month? Or childbirth?"
Nakamaru tries to picture it but it's too horrible to contemplate. "You don't have the guts to be a real girl. But even if you had surgery, you wouldn't have to deal with any of that."
"I know, but that still doesn't mean I want to change who I am."
It's on the tip of Nakamaru's tongue to ask, "Who are you?", because he's not sure he knows anymore, but it's not like he doesn't know Jin either. This isn't some stranger sitting before him with his hair half-done. This is a friend he's known for years, watched rise from cocky, confident brat set on stardom right through to the more reserved but no less determined man he's become. They've all changed a lot since they first met - mellowed, matured with experience - but he doesn't think he's changed at the core, and maybe Jin hasn't either.
"Would you?" he asks, knowing it's a clumsy question. "If you could? If you could make that part of you not exist?"
Jin scratches the back of his head, accidentally catching one of the bands with his ring and pulling it loose so the plait begins to unravel. "I don't...I don't know. If you'd asked me a few days ago I'd have said yes immediately. My life would be so much easier if I didn't have to deal with all these feelings I have no clue what to do with.
"But I guess everyone's got their own problems, and if I didn't have this, I'd have something else."
"A few days ago? Has something changed?"
Jin turns around just enough to give him an odd smile - bashful, but full of secrets. "I'm learning some interesting things."
He won't elaborate. They return to singing without pausing to make conversation, and Nakamaru strives to finish his task before they have to leave for Kame's. Work goes faster when Jin keeps still. Nakamaru braids from the front and sides, leaving the lower half of Jin's hair free, then takes the collection of tiny braids and pulls them together with shiny brown hair clips - one on each side, and one looped at the top. It's not exactly how he remembers it, but then he tries not to remember that trip if he can help it because it really was tough work in freezing conditions. It's close enough; it'll do. It's not like anyone's going to care, since it's just going to be the six of them and nobody's likely to take much interest in Jin's hair.
Except Jin himself, of course, but even he seems satisfied, smiling as he looks in the mirror. "Good job. Thanks for that; I owe you one."
"You owe me two hours of study time," Nakamaru corrects him. "And you're welcome."
"On that forest thing. Sure, whatever."
Nakamaru sighs and hopes his grades can survive Jin's assistance. If he hurries home now he can maybe put in another half-hour on his essay.
Jin has other ideas. "Let me show you something."
He crosses the room and flips open his laptop, bringing it out of standby. There are a dozen tabs open in the browser but Jin navigates instead to a folder of pictures, which he has to open with a password. Magazine photos, screencaps from old skits, even the odd backstage photo taken when they were messing around at concerts. The pictures are from different times, different places. The one thing they all have in common? Jin, dressed as a girl.
"You keep a folder of pics of yourself in drag?" Nakamaru can't hide his surprise. He can see why it's locked, though.
"You asked me when I started thinking differently," Jin says. "Well, these are the reason."
"This was all for work; we all did it. Even I did it, and I make a horrible girl." Nakamaru thinks he's been scarred for life by that awful Tokimeki Memorial shoot they had to do - though seeing Jin as Hermione Granger comes a close second.
"That's why it was okay back then - we all had to do it. It was embarrassing, but..." Jin pauses to take a deep breath and let it out slowly, like he's trying to give himself time to think, so Nakamaru doesn't rush him, just nods his head and makes noises in the right places. "I didn't care. It was dumb and embarrassing and I got paid.
"And then...you remember Jimmy Mackey? We went to a bar the night before he left for America, and of course he asked how work was going. So I told him, and he...he just gave me this look, like I must've been out of my mind but he was too nice to say so outright."
Nakamaru remembers Jimmy, can picture him towering over the rest, being one of the biggest dorks despite looking so much older thanks to his American blood. It's been a long time since he saw him last, though, outside of photos from mutual friends.
"I asked him what was with the look," Jin continues, "so he asked didn't I find it weird that we were still dressing up like girls for work, even though we weren't little kids anymore. And I didn't know how to answer him, because I hadn't even thought about it. It was just work, and it had never occurred to me to say, 'No, I don't want to wear dresses anymore'."
"You put up a fight about everything else," Nakamaru says fondly. KAT-TUN's history is littered with protests and acts of rebellion.
"That made me think maybe I should be worrying about it, because yeah, past twenty, legally a man, and still dressing up like a girl? And not finding it strange at all?"
"You made a very pretty girl," Nakamaru says. "Everyone thought so."
Jin snorts. "You realise it doesn't help when I hear things like that?"
"Thanks to me you look pretty now, too."
"Oh great and powerful Nakamaru-sama, thank you so much for laying hands on this most unworthy of hair and-"
"Not that you weren't before." Nakamaru has to interrupt Jin before he really gets going. "So that's what made you like this? A throwaway comment from a friend?"
"It sounds kind of stupid when you put it that way." Jin stares straight ahead, like he's talking to some projection on the wall. "It didn't make me anything except self-conscious. I thought there had to be something wrong with me, and I was right."
"That's not it."
"Right, right; Kame's always telling me it's not weird, it's perfectly natural, doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. Sometimes I believe him."
"He usually knows what he's talking about; you should trust him."
"I do." Jin's eyes blink back into focus. "I need him to be right about this. About me. If he's not...I mean...you think it's weird, don't you?"
"I think everything you do is weird, but that doesn't mean I think it's wrong for you."
"Idiot." But Jin says it with affection, so Nakamaru knows he's not being serious. "Come on, let's find you something to wear that doesn't make you look ninety years old."
-----
When Nakamaru turns up in a tight leather jacket, ripped jeans and a large white shirt with a scantily-clad blonde woman on the front and nary a diamond in sight, Kame decides there's no way he dressed himself. When Jin walks in right behind Nakamaru, Kame knows he was right.
"He didn't want me to look ninety years old," Nakamaru says, sounding resigned to his fate. "You try stopping him."
Kame offers him mock sympathy and a stiff drink. The latter is gratefully accepted; the former, not so much.
Jin's attire is something of a sight too. Kame's not sure if he's trying to make a statement but if so, it's a fairly bold one. He's wearing pale blue jeans with patterns embroidered down the side seams and on all the pockets in rainbow bright colours, tucked into knee-high black boots, shiny with silver buckles. Nothing Kame hasn't seen before, but the top hiding beneath the black puffer jacket is new - black, with spaghetti straps, underneath a translucent silver and pink mini-jacket that seems to float around Jin's shoulders. The same colour scheme pervades his accessories and make-up: the dark pink lipstick plumps his lips more than usual, and silver sparkles dance across his cheekbones under long black lashes, matching the hoops twinkling in both ears and the charm bracelet of music notes hanging from his left wrist.
And as for the hair...
"You guys got me a stripper!" Koki holds up a beer in triumph, grinning when he catches sight of Jin. "Aww, you shouldn't have..."
Jin smirks, flips him off and goes to help himself to a drink.
Ueda looks disappointed when he sees it's only Jin, though he perks up after taking a couple of incriminating cell phone photos of Nakamaru, who is trying hard to keep his jacket closed across the model's assets. Junno looks amiable enough but it's hard for Kame to tell what he thinks of Jin's appearance.
When everyone's sitting comfortably with a drink, Kame brings out the birthday cake on a tray. He's proud of the cake. The three layers are sandwiched together with chocolate cream and the whole thing is topped off with a flat layer of chocolate icing, decorated with sprinkles around the edges and 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY KOKI' piped in white icing in the centre. He's not quite sure how to cut it, admittedly, much less fit a slice in his mouth, but there are candles to attend to first, twenty-six of them arranged in a ring. (They would've been a heart, but he didn't want to give Koki ideas.)
When they sing 'Happy Birthday', Kame's the only one singing in tune, Junno's singing the NEWS song, Nakamaru's adding voice percussion, Ueda's flat and Jin's singing falsetto. Koki looks on from his spot on the couch, lording it over them with a self-satisfied smile till he's allowed to blow out the candles.
He manages twenty-five. Jin leans forward and blows out the twenty-sixth.
"Hey!"
"Just lending a helping hand to a friend who's now too old and too feeble to blow out all his candles in one go..."
"You're older than I am," Koki says. "What does that say about you?"
"That you should both quit smoking before you run out of puff," Ueda says.
Kame laughs at Koki and Jin's matching appalled faces and begins removing the candles so he can slice the cake. He stacks them carefully in a tub; Jin's idea of helping is to pluck them from the cake and throw them in without looking. Kame resolves to leave his slice for last.
Koki gets the first slice, of course, and Kame is almost embarrassed by his effusive praise. Koki's always doing things like that; he's come a long way from the scrappy little kid who hated Kame, hated KAT-TUN, and hated being their second 'T'. Kame's no stranger to having guys declare they love him on television, but the one he wants to hear it from barely speaks about him in public, and the rest...he can never be quite sure how they mean it. Koki's a good friend with a very obvious crush, but Kame doesn't think he has any plans to seriously pursue it.
At least, he hopes not, because he'd hate to have to break Koki's heart.
Ueda says he's only going to have a small slice at first, but ends up eating three. Nakamaru's trying to gain weight and declares himself owner of any leftovers. Junno asks if Kame takes requests, since his birthday is at the end of the month.
Jin picks daintily at his with a small fork, taking tiny, lady-like bites, until Koki calls him on it and he admits he's trying to avoid getting crumbs down his top, because he's practically glued into it as it is and it would be a nightmare to get them out.
"I'm sure we could help," Koki offers with a leer that would be more convincing if he didn't have icing all around his mouth.
"If you're going to do that, wait till I've gone," Ueda says. "If I wanted to see shirtless men, I'd go to the gym."
"Trust me," Nakamaru says, "you can't get him out of that top without a pair of scissors. It took both of us to get him into it in the first place!"
"Nobody's taking scissors to this." Jin crosses his arms across his chest, still holding the fork. "I bought it in America and I like it!"
"You went to America to have breast implants?" Junno says. "I don't think you can get those out with a pair of scissors..."
Kame's still holding his own fork when he points to Jin. "He means the shirt, which I have no idea how he's going to remove. Crowbar, maybe."
"Oh please," Jin says, smirking. "I had the same stripping lessons you did. I just don't do it much anymore."
"Good tactic," Kame says. "Now your fans scream if you so much as take your hat off - and you don't even do that much."
"They don't need to see my face to enjoy the singing and dancing." Jin shovels a large chunk of cake in his mouth and Kame knows there will be no more talk about the direction in which Jin's chosen to take his career.
"Dancing!" Koki snaps his fingers. "That's what we should be doing."
"You have filming tomorrow," Kame reminds him. "That's why we're just sitting around eating cake."
"If I turn up on set like this, I won't be able to move. Let's go dance it off for a while. It's not that late."
"I know, but-" Kame tries, but Koki interrupts him.
"Jin'll back me up; he's always ready to go to a club."
"Um..." Jin looks helplessly at Kame. "Can I borrow a shirt? I didn't bring a change with me."
"You should go like that," Koki says. "You're perfectly dressed for it."
"Not a chance." Jin shakes his head. "I can't go out in public like this. Why do you think I drove here?"
It finally clicks in Kame's head that Jin's only drinking soda. It makes sense, though. He's carrying that tiny handbag again and there's no way he managed to squeeze a change of clothing in there.
"Do you really think anyone's going to notice in a club?" Kame says. "If you run into anyone you know, just tell them you came straight from work or something."
Junno tries to help. "You could be one of your own dancers?"
"I'm not cute enough to be one of my dancers!"
Kame begs to differ but can't say so. "You've got five of us to hide behind, at least?"
"Yeah, but three of you wouldn't be any good for it," Jin says, and everybody laughs. "Does this mean you're actually volunteering yourself to go clubbing?"
"Don't make it sound like I never go." Kame has a social life, it just takes a backseat to work, and unlike Jin, who hates to be alone, Kame actually enjoys it. "We have different tastes, that's all."
"But since this is my night to celebrate, we're going to somewhere I like," Koki says.
Kame has a bad feeling about this.
Part 2
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Kame/Jin
Rating: PG
Genre: Kind of AU
Word count: 12,430
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit
Summary: Nakamaru plays hairdresser, Koki doesn't get a stripper for his birthday, Kame's new drama role requires him to master the art of social networking and Jin gains a follower.
A/N: Will make no sense whatsoever if you haven't read the first four in the series, which starts with Be Your Own Secret Girlfriend. Click on the series: transjinder tag for all the fics in this 'verse. I haven't been to Lex in nearly two years, so if it's changed in that time, sorry. Many, many thanks to my two awesome enablers, pithetaphish and sweetpaopuwind, without whom this would never have become a series.
Hair-raising Escapades (Electronic and Otherwise) 1/2
Kame doesn't expect Jin to kiss him back. He's wrong, and he doesn't know if it's the alcohol or the intensity of the situation or Jin just being Jin and going with the flow, but for an all too fleeting moment, he receives the response he's always hoped for. It's sloppy and sweet and urgent all at once, Jin's lips sweet with mango, parting for him, welcoming him in.
And then it's over, and Jin's fingers unclench and push him away.
"You're going to bed," he tells Kame shakily, taking a step backwards. "Alone."
I'm always alone, Kame thinks. He lies in bed and listens to Jin making up the couch in the next room. Jin must be lonely too.
-----
The dull ache in Kame's head owes more to his run-in with the car doorframe than the two bottles of wine, but that's poor consolation when he wakes alone, embarrassed and sore, blinking at the sun streaming in past curtains he'd forgotten to close. He checks his watch. It's already ten, which means it's a damned good thing he doesn't have to be anywhere until three. It's going to take him that long to feel human again.
He rolls out of bed still half-dressed from the night before; even the slightest movement sets off explosions in his head and he's none too steady when his feet hit the ground. He's about as far from the perfect idol as he can get right now.
Jin's never the perfect idol - but from the sounds coming through the wall, he's making coffee, and that makes him perfect as far as Kame's concerned.
"You're still here," Kame says as he staggers into the kitchen. "And awake. I didn't expect that."
"I'm here," Jin says, "but I'm not sure about the awake part. Can I get back to you on that?"
Kame waves vaguely at him and goes in search of painkillers. "Take your time..."
It's a late breakfast of pills and black coffee for them both, accompanied by much clutching of heads. It takes a little while for the night to come back to Kame. Wine. An education in the art of being a fake girl. Bad bilingual puns. More wine. Jin wanting to leave. Koki to the rescue. No more wine. Water trickling down Kame's chin. Jin's snowflake sweater with the too-long sleeves that make him look all of three years old. A touch of lips, and fingers on hips, and a moment Kame hopes Jin won't remember.
"I might be awake now," Jin says when he's on his second cup and starting to look less like a corpse. "I've stopped seeing double."
"You were only seeing double? Lucky." Kame hadn't realised he was seeing triple until he missed his coffee cup twice. But that's worn off now and the only thing in his vision is Jin.
It's a pleasant sight, because Jin's laughing, and that always makes Kame feel like everything's right with the world - even if the laughter is at his expense. "You were so out of it last night - I'm amazed you can see at all!"
"I can see," Kame huffs, pretending to be offended. He still feels too zombie-like to be playful but he doesn't want to do anything weird that might remind Jin of last night. In fact, if they can avoid the subject altogether, that would be preferable. "Well enough to know you're not much better off."
"We were both pretty far gone." Jin shuffles his cup from hand to hand. "I'm not even sure what I was saying by the end of it."
Is that supposed to be a cue, Kame wonders? He's a good actor. He can follow directions. "I remember getting in Koki's car and that's about it," he says, hoping that's what Jin wants to hear. It's hard to read him right now.
He must be interpreting correctly, because Jin looks relieved. "Yeah, I didn't want to risk a taxi when you looked like you were going to throw up. You know it would've ended up in Friday."
"Koki would've done a lot worse if it had been in his car."
"Not if it's you," Jin says. "You could probably kill someone in Koki's car and he'd swear you were in another prefecture at the time."
"Possibly, but let's hope I never have to find out."
Kame genuinely doesn't remember much about the car ride, but he can rely on Koki to tell him if he said or did anything strange. Koki understands. Koki's seen him at his worst.
It's the part after he got home that worries him. Kissing Jin has been on his to-do list for years, but on the portion of the list that deals with things he'd like to do but knows are out of his reach, like playing professional baseball. That part of the list is mercifully short, because he's good at turning his dreams into reality. This dream, though...this one's about more than just him, and Jin doesn't need any added confusion in his life right now.
"Thanks for last night," Jin says when he's drained his cup. "It was...educational. I don't think I'll be going back for another lesson, though. Not my kind of place."
"Not enough noise, smoke, and scantily-clad girls for you," Kame says. "I could take you to a women-only club two doors down from that one but we'd both have to go in drag."
Jin smiles and lights his first cigarette of the morning - one of Kame's, because the pack's closer. "I'd rather go to Lex. At least I can relax there."
Kame finds he tends to get lost in the crowd of tall foreigners on the rare occasions when he ventures into Lex (always someone else's idea) but it's the perfect place for Jin, always a mix of different nationalities, ages and ideas. Tiny Japanese women in traditional garb dance alongside strapping Europeans in their tank tops; brash American girls cut loose next to shy Japanese guys. Jin fits right in, somewhere in the middle - mixed-up, muddled-up, shining in the heart of the world.
"You should go to places where you can relax," Kame says. "I've dragged you to enough where you can't."
"Come with me sometime and get a taste of your own medicine."
Kame salutes him with a coffee cup and goes to take a shower. Jin tastes much sweeter than medicine, and Kame wants another dose.
-----
By the time three o'clock rolls around, Kame's clean, dressed, and ready to embrace the fabulously shiny life of an idol. Jin had vanished while he was still in the shower, yelling out "Ciao!" as he left. Kame thinks he must've been a sight and hopes no one managed to snap a picture. They have to be so careful all the time, doubly so if they're spotted in the vicinity of each other's homes, and both of them woke up looking the worse for wear.
But no longer, because Kame's got a shoot for Popolo and he has to look perfect - worthy of a few fangirl screams, at least. Even though it's November they're outdoors, wearing light jackets as they model late autumn chic and try to ignore the cold breeze that blows through the park. Kame sits on the see-saw with Ueda and remembers a time when it would've been Jin on the other end.
"How's your head?" Koki asks when they have a minute to themselves. "Do you even remember last night?"
"It's okay as long as I don't move too fast," Kame says. "And yeah, I remember. Thanks for picking us up."
"No problem." Koki gives him a supportive smile, the one that always makes him feel grateful to have such a wonderful bunch of people around him. They can't get together without making fun of each other and they're not a hand-holding kind of group, but that's part of what makes them a family. "Did he have fun?"
"A little. It's not really his kind of place."
"Is it yours?"
"My place is..." Kame returns Koki's smile with a secretive one of his own, "on the pitcher's mound. Not stuck indoors somewhere."
"Then tell him he looks cute in a uniform and start recruiting for your own LGBT baseball team."
Not for the first time, Kame wonders how much Koki actually knows. He's never formally come out to any of them, except in interviews where the subject's treated as a joke, but he's never deliberately concealed it from them, either. As with his blood family, he figured he'd tell them if he ever got seriously involved enough with anyone to warrant it. They keep enough of a distance from each other that they rarely know what's going on to that extent. He finds out more from the gossip magazines than he does from his bandmates and no one's ever asked him straight out.
Kame's preferences are nobody else's business - but last night, he'd tried to make them Jin's. That's something he hopes Koki doesn't know.
"I'm not sure that's the kind of image he wants to promote, but you can always suggest it tomorrow."
Koki's filming a drama special all weekend, and he's spending Saturday night - his birthday - with his family, but Kame has claimed the Friday night, if only for a little while. He's got a chocolate cake recipe from his sister-in-law that he's dying to try out, and nobody's leaving his apartment unless they've had a slice. He wouldn't normally bake the cake himself, but he really wants to do something a little more personal for Koki as a token of his thanks. Valentine's Day is far enough that the birthday boy will hopefully not get the wrong idea.
"I'm liable to end up with cake all over my face if I try," Koki says.
"He wouldn't waste perfectly good cake on you."
"Only because you'd kill him if he got any crumbs on your pristine floors."
Kame concedes that Koki might have a point, and makes a mental note to leave his vacuum cleaner in plain sight as a warning to any potential messy eaters. It's not like it's going to be a full-blown party, merely an hour or two snatched from their schedules to get together and celebrate, but he's looking forward to it. It's been a while since all six of them have met up and the pirate ship Queen KAT-TUN is missing her princess.
-----
Nakamaru's used to receiving drunken phone calls from Jin at all sorts of hours, depending on where in the world he happens to be at the time, and mostly they cover the same sort of ground. Girls, or lack thereof. Badly-disguised homesickness. The future of rap music. Strange new English slang. Why wearing argyle only attracts old ladies.
He's not, however, used to receiving phone calls about braids. Moreover, Jin sounds entirely sober, if somewhat agitated.
"You remember when we were suffering in Hokkaido for Cartoon KAT-TUN?"
"I suffer whenever I'm sent anywhere with you," Nakamaru says. "Sunshine or snow."
"I make your life more challenging. Think of it as me doing you a favour."
"Your kind of favours, I don't need." Nakamaru sighs, resigning himself to not finishing his essay before he has to leave for Kame's place. "So what about Hokkaido?"
"Remember the girls who plaited my hair?"
"The same ones who wanted to cut my hair?"
"Those girls, yeah," Jin says. "You watched the whole time; do you remember how they started off? I've been thinking I'd like to do that with my hair again."
It's not a look Nakamaru could manage to pull off himself - even if he had enough hair - but it works for Jin. It works for Kame, too, but Kame's not happy unless he changes his hair every five minutes and it takes time to style it that way.
Time Nakamaru has, if he leaves the essay till tomorrow and goes to Jin's place for some emergency hairdressing. "Fine, I'll do it."
"You'll do it?"
"Sisters," Nakamaru says darkly, and Jin understands. "I'll come over now, but you owe me a couple of hours of study time, all right? I've got an exciting English text on deforestation that I'm sure you can't wait to get your hands on."
He says "deforestation" in English, and Jin repeats it slowly back to him. "Defenestration?"
"No, deforestation. I'm not studying the science of throwing things out of windows!"
"You'll get a better grade without me," Jin says, nonchalant as ever. "But come over anyway."
That's probably true, because Jin's study habits are nothing if not irregular, but Nakamaru's going to hold him to it anyway. "Just make sure you've got enough hair accessories."
Fifteen minutes later Jin answers the door with damp hair, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black T-shirt. The shirt's plain, and it's just a regular V-neck, but it clings like a second skin and Nakamaru has a moment of confusion trying to figure out if it's a girl's top or not. Maybe it just looks that way because it's Jin wearing it, he's not sure. It might look totally masculine on Koki.
"Are you going to come in or do I have to stand here and freeze in the doorway while you make up your mind?"
Startled, Nakamaru steps inside and arranges his boots neatly by the door. "Don't bully the guy who's here to help you, or I'll leave you half-done."
"Then I'll tweet about my incompetent hairdresser with the big nose and everyone on the Internet will know-"
"All right!" Nakamaru holds up his hands in defeat. The last thing he needs is Jin's army of Twitter followers sending him hate mail. "Your hair had better be clean."
"I washed it half an hour ago." Jin breaks into a smirk. "I think I've got some gloves around here somewhere if you don't trust me, though."
Trust isn't an issue; never has been, no matter how it looks on TV. Nakamaru will always say he's afraid Jin will push him into swimming pools and off buildings, but the truth is that Jin will never deliberately do anything to hurt him. Their relationship is all about give and take, and when Jin takes too many liberties, Nakamaru turns and punches him. It's a good system. They might both be closer to thirty than twenty but they're still a pair of elementary school kids when they squabble and bully each other, and Jin knows exactly how much he can get away with before he gets pushed back.
Not that this ever stops him from pushing in the first place. He needs the attention, only sometimes the attention he gets is not the kind he wants.
What he's getting now is to his liking, though. Nakamaru makes him throw a towel over his shoulders so he doesn't end up with a million loose hairs clinging to his shirt, and there's an awkward moment while they try to figure out the best angle of approach. They're the same height, so Jin has to sit down for this, eventually settling himself on the floor, in front of the couch and between Nakamaru's legs. A pile of hairbands, some slides and a rat-tail comb sit next to them on the coffee table.
"This is going to hurt a bit," Nakamaru says. "Unless you want very loose braids."
"I can take it," Jin assures him. "I've survived worse for work."
They both have. Nakamaru grimaces, thinking of the torture he's undergone over the years in the name of entertainment. It's hard having a reputation as a coward, and part of it is Jin's fault. Revenge is easy to come by, though - the shirt leaves Jin's ticklish collarbones exposed.
It takes a few minutes to comb out the tangles from Jin's damp hair. He manages to hold himself still throughout, though Nakamaru suspects it won't last. Jin will turn his head to talk, and he'll feel the pull on his scalp. There's no way he can remain silent the entire time.
It's a slow business. Nakamaru isolates a chunk of hair at the front, separating it out into three sections and braiding it till he reaches the end, tying it off with an elastic band. He'll bunch them all together later.
One down; many more to go. Good thing Jin's hair isn't too much past his shoulders right now, and he's not doing all of it - the lower half's staying loose.
"Can I see?"
"There's not much to see yet," Nakamaru says. "The longer you stop to preen, the less time we've got."
"I don't preen; I just want to check you're doing it right."
"How would you know if I wasn't?"
Jin shuts up.
It's a strange situation. Nakamaru's grateful that Jin hasn't made the obligatory joke about having a man between his legs, but maybe he's saving it for afterwards because he knows it'll only make things awkward to say it now. It's already uncomfortable, touching Jin like this - too close, too intimate. Even in Johnny's, men don't make a habit of this, not once their slender childish bodies thicken with maturity and they grow up enough to know some things are better left to the girls.
But maybe that's not how Jin sees himself now. Or maybe he's still the same spoilt brat, convincing people to do him favours and making them love him for his cheek. They're all weak against Jin, which is why, despite his better judgement, Nakamaru volunteered himself for this. They still see each other socially from time to time, but they haven't been alone for ages, not since before Jin "came out". They need the time. Nakamaru can't make sense of this if he doesn't have it, can't make those mental adjustments that will allow him to magically understand how Jin's brain works.
Another couple of braids down the line and Jin's still silent. It's not one of those comfortable silences, either, where neither of them needs to talk because they have this perfect harmony. It's not even one of those painful silences, like the kind they used to have before Jin left for LA the first time and couldn't talk to anyone.
This one's just...awkward. It's a bump in the road - though not an insurmountable one - and they don't have Kame to drive them straight over it this time. Kame doesn't stop, goes full speed ahead. Nakamaru's more cautious.
"Can you tilt your head to the right a bit?" he asks. It's a poor attempt at conversation but a necessary one. "I'm trying to get these to go round the side."
Jin accidentally tilts to the left instead; without thinking, Nakamaru taps him on the shoulder to make him move. Unfortunately his eyes are on the hair so his aim's a little off, and it's not until he hears Jin squawk and scramble away that he realises he's brushed the forbidden zone.
"Don't!" Jin half-laughs, half-gasps, hands crossed protectively over his collarbones. "You know that tickles!"
He's a ridiculous sight, kneeling on the carpet with partially braided hair, a little kid squirming to get away from tickling fingers, and Nakamaru can't suppress a laugh as he makes his apology. It was an honest mistake, after all. Jin reluctantly crawls back into position, though not without the odd suspicious glare, and the session resumes.
It's easier now they've shared a laugh. Jin hits a remote and kicks off one of his weird and wonderful playlists, covering everything from Eminem to Miss Saigon, and they sing along where they can, fake it where they can't. Nakamaru thinks his impromptu beatbox remix of 'Bass Go Boom' sounds much better than the original. Jin almost clocks him in the jaw, flinging his arms high as he wails his way through 'A Whole New World'.
They duet on 'Lose Yourself' and Nakamaru is reminded of stage lights and grey suits, Jin's American friend lurking on the side. A simpler time, in some ways.
'Lose Yourself' is followed by 'Love Yourself', and Jin sings loud enough to make up for all the concerts where he never got to perform it - concerts he'd thought they'd have, all six of them together, until business got in the way.
"I didn't realise you liked it so much," Nakamaru says.
"It's not such a bad way to go out. Better than the next song you released. What was with that?"
"We thought we'd better pick something you wouldn't want to sing in a million years, so you wouldn't feel bad about us releasing it without you."
Jin turns around, wincing because Nakamaru's still holding a clump of his hair. "Really?"
It's a joke, but Nakamaru doesn't have it in him to extinguish the stars in Jin's eyes. "Nobody said it outright, but I think that's what we were all thinking back then. I know I was."
"You're all a bunch of saps," Jin says happily, turning back before his hair is ripped out by the roots.
"I don't think you're in any position to talk." Nakamaru braids another few turns. "I've seen your Twitter."
"I'm just trying to be in tune with my largely female fanbase. Girls like to hear things about love, right?"
Nakamaru shrugs. "The ones I meet always seem to be more interested in food." He really has to stop letting Massu set him up. "Aren't you supposed to be the expert in how girls think?"
"If I knew how to understand girls, I wouldn't have been single for the best part of a year."
"No, I meant because you're...uh..."
"Oh." Jin drags the word out. "But I don't think any differently to how I always have; it's not like I've suddenly gained this mysterious insight into what makes women tick."
"But you must've started thinking differently somewhere along the line." Nakamaru's desperate to understand this now. Maybe if Jin can present him with a neat, logical explanation for it all, he'll finally be able to wrap his head around it and stop burying his head in the sand. Jin and logic are not the best of friends, because he has his own unique view of the universe and it works the way he wants it to, but there has to be something there that he can rationalise. "You didn't always want to be a girl, did you?"
"I don't want to be a girl now, thanks. One of my exes used to punch me in the stomach when her cramps got really bad, so I could be a good boyfriend and share her pain. Can you picture me dealing with that once a month? Or childbirth?"
Nakamaru tries to picture it but it's too horrible to contemplate. "You don't have the guts to be a real girl. But even if you had surgery, you wouldn't have to deal with any of that."
"I know, but that still doesn't mean I want to change who I am."
It's on the tip of Nakamaru's tongue to ask, "Who are you?", because he's not sure he knows anymore, but it's not like he doesn't know Jin either. This isn't some stranger sitting before him with his hair half-done. This is a friend he's known for years, watched rise from cocky, confident brat set on stardom right through to the more reserved but no less determined man he's become. They've all changed a lot since they first met - mellowed, matured with experience - but he doesn't think he's changed at the core, and maybe Jin hasn't either.
"Would you?" he asks, knowing it's a clumsy question. "If you could? If you could make that part of you not exist?"
Jin scratches the back of his head, accidentally catching one of the bands with his ring and pulling it loose so the plait begins to unravel. "I don't...I don't know. If you'd asked me a few days ago I'd have said yes immediately. My life would be so much easier if I didn't have to deal with all these feelings I have no clue what to do with.
"But I guess everyone's got their own problems, and if I didn't have this, I'd have something else."
"A few days ago? Has something changed?"
Jin turns around just enough to give him an odd smile - bashful, but full of secrets. "I'm learning some interesting things."
He won't elaborate. They return to singing without pausing to make conversation, and Nakamaru strives to finish his task before they have to leave for Kame's. Work goes faster when Jin keeps still. Nakamaru braids from the front and sides, leaving the lower half of Jin's hair free, then takes the collection of tiny braids and pulls them together with shiny brown hair clips - one on each side, and one looped at the top. It's not exactly how he remembers it, but then he tries not to remember that trip if he can help it because it really was tough work in freezing conditions. It's close enough; it'll do. It's not like anyone's going to care, since it's just going to be the six of them and nobody's likely to take much interest in Jin's hair.
Except Jin himself, of course, but even he seems satisfied, smiling as he looks in the mirror. "Good job. Thanks for that; I owe you one."
"You owe me two hours of study time," Nakamaru corrects him. "And you're welcome."
"On that forest thing. Sure, whatever."
Nakamaru sighs and hopes his grades can survive Jin's assistance. If he hurries home now he can maybe put in another half-hour on his essay.
Jin has other ideas. "Let me show you something."
He crosses the room and flips open his laptop, bringing it out of standby. There are a dozen tabs open in the browser but Jin navigates instead to a folder of pictures, which he has to open with a password. Magazine photos, screencaps from old skits, even the odd backstage photo taken when they were messing around at concerts. The pictures are from different times, different places. The one thing they all have in common? Jin, dressed as a girl.
"You keep a folder of pics of yourself in drag?" Nakamaru can't hide his surprise. He can see why it's locked, though.
"You asked me when I started thinking differently," Jin says. "Well, these are the reason."
"This was all for work; we all did it. Even I did it, and I make a horrible girl." Nakamaru thinks he's been scarred for life by that awful Tokimeki Memorial shoot they had to do - though seeing Jin as Hermione Granger comes a close second.
"That's why it was okay back then - we all had to do it. It was embarrassing, but..." Jin pauses to take a deep breath and let it out slowly, like he's trying to give himself time to think, so Nakamaru doesn't rush him, just nods his head and makes noises in the right places. "I didn't care. It was dumb and embarrassing and I got paid.
"And then...you remember Jimmy Mackey? We went to a bar the night before he left for America, and of course he asked how work was going. So I told him, and he...he just gave me this look, like I must've been out of my mind but he was too nice to say so outright."
Nakamaru remembers Jimmy, can picture him towering over the rest, being one of the biggest dorks despite looking so much older thanks to his American blood. It's been a long time since he saw him last, though, outside of photos from mutual friends.
"I asked him what was with the look," Jin continues, "so he asked didn't I find it weird that we were still dressing up like girls for work, even though we weren't little kids anymore. And I didn't know how to answer him, because I hadn't even thought about it. It was just work, and it had never occurred to me to say, 'No, I don't want to wear dresses anymore'."
"You put up a fight about everything else," Nakamaru says fondly. KAT-TUN's history is littered with protests and acts of rebellion.
"That made me think maybe I should be worrying about it, because yeah, past twenty, legally a man, and still dressing up like a girl? And not finding it strange at all?"
"You made a very pretty girl," Nakamaru says. "Everyone thought so."
Jin snorts. "You realise it doesn't help when I hear things like that?"
"Thanks to me you look pretty now, too."
"Oh great and powerful Nakamaru-sama, thank you so much for laying hands on this most unworthy of hair and-"
"Not that you weren't before." Nakamaru has to interrupt Jin before he really gets going. "So that's what made you like this? A throwaway comment from a friend?"
"It sounds kind of stupid when you put it that way." Jin stares straight ahead, like he's talking to some projection on the wall. "It didn't make me anything except self-conscious. I thought there had to be something wrong with me, and I was right."
"That's not it."
"Right, right; Kame's always telling me it's not weird, it's perfectly natural, doesn't mean there's something wrong with me. Sometimes I believe him."
"He usually knows what he's talking about; you should trust him."
"I do." Jin's eyes blink back into focus. "I need him to be right about this. About me. If he's not...I mean...you think it's weird, don't you?"
"I think everything you do is weird, but that doesn't mean I think it's wrong for you."
"Idiot." But Jin says it with affection, so Nakamaru knows he's not being serious. "Come on, let's find you something to wear that doesn't make you look ninety years old."
-----
When Nakamaru turns up in a tight leather jacket, ripped jeans and a large white shirt with a scantily-clad blonde woman on the front and nary a diamond in sight, Kame decides there's no way he dressed himself. When Jin walks in right behind Nakamaru, Kame knows he was right.
"He didn't want me to look ninety years old," Nakamaru says, sounding resigned to his fate. "You try stopping him."
Kame offers him mock sympathy and a stiff drink. The latter is gratefully accepted; the former, not so much.
Jin's attire is something of a sight too. Kame's not sure if he's trying to make a statement but if so, it's a fairly bold one. He's wearing pale blue jeans with patterns embroidered down the side seams and on all the pockets in rainbow bright colours, tucked into knee-high black boots, shiny with silver buckles. Nothing Kame hasn't seen before, but the top hiding beneath the black puffer jacket is new - black, with spaghetti straps, underneath a translucent silver and pink mini-jacket that seems to float around Jin's shoulders. The same colour scheme pervades his accessories and make-up: the dark pink lipstick plumps his lips more than usual, and silver sparkles dance across his cheekbones under long black lashes, matching the hoops twinkling in both ears and the charm bracelet of music notes hanging from his left wrist.
And as for the hair...
"You guys got me a stripper!" Koki holds up a beer in triumph, grinning when he catches sight of Jin. "Aww, you shouldn't have..."
Jin smirks, flips him off and goes to help himself to a drink.
Ueda looks disappointed when he sees it's only Jin, though he perks up after taking a couple of incriminating cell phone photos of Nakamaru, who is trying hard to keep his jacket closed across the model's assets. Junno looks amiable enough but it's hard for Kame to tell what he thinks of Jin's appearance.
When everyone's sitting comfortably with a drink, Kame brings out the birthday cake on a tray. He's proud of the cake. The three layers are sandwiched together with chocolate cream and the whole thing is topped off with a flat layer of chocolate icing, decorated with sprinkles around the edges and 'HAPPY BIRTHDAY KOKI' piped in white icing in the centre. He's not quite sure how to cut it, admittedly, much less fit a slice in his mouth, but there are candles to attend to first, twenty-six of them arranged in a ring. (They would've been a heart, but he didn't want to give Koki ideas.)
When they sing 'Happy Birthday', Kame's the only one singing in tune, Junno's singing the NEWS song, Nakamaru's adding voice percussion, Ueda's flat and Jin's singing falsetto. Koki looks on from his spot on the couch, lording it over them with a self-satisfied smile till he's allowed to blow out the candles.
He manages twenty-five. Jin leans forward and blows out the twenty-sixth.
"Hey!"
"Just lending a helping hand to a friend who's now too old and too feeble to blow out all his candles in one go..."
"You're older than I am," Koki says. "What does that say about you?"
"That you should both quit smoking before you run out of puff," Ueda says.
Kame laughs at Koki and Jin's matching appalled faces and begins removing the candles so he can slice the cake. He stacks them carefully in a tub; Jin's idea of helping is to pluck them from the cake and throw them in without looking. Kame resolves to leave his slice for last.
Koki gets the first slice, of course, and Kame is almost embarrassed by his effusive praise. Koki's always doing things like that; he's come a long way from the scrappy little kid who hated Kame, hated KAT-TUN, and hated being their second 'T'. Kame's no stranger to having guys declare they love him on television, but the one he wants to hear it from barely speaks about him in public, and the rest...he can never be quite sure how they mean it. Koki's a good friend with a very obvious crush, but Kame doesn't think he has any plans to seriously pursue it.
At least, he hopes not, because he'd hate to have to break Koki's heart.
Ueda says he's only going to have a small slice at first, but ends up eating three. Nakamaru's trying to gain weight and declares himself owner of any leftovers. Junno asks if Kame takes requests, since his birthday is at the end of the month.
Jin picks daintily at his with a small fork, taking tiny, lady-like bites, until Koki calls him on it and he admits he's trying to avoid getting crumbs down his top, because he's practically glued into it as it is and it would be a nightmare to get them out.
"I'm sure we could help," Koki offers with a leer that would be more convincing if he didn't have icing all around his mouth.
"If you're going to do that, wait till I've gone," Ueda says. "If I wanted to see shirtless men, I'd go to the gym."
"Trust me," Nakamaru says, "you can't get him out of that top without a pair of scissors. It took both of us to get him into it in the first place!"
"Nobody's taking scissors to this." Jin crosses his arms across his chest, still holding the fork. "I bought it in America and I like it!"
"You went to America to have breast implants?" Junno says. "I don't think you can get those out with a pair of scissors..."
Kame's still holding his own fork when he points to Jin. "He means the shirt, which I have no idea how he's going to remove. Crowbar, maybe."
"Oh please," Jin says, smirking. "I had the same stripping lessons you did. I just don't do it much anymore."
"Good tactic," Kame says. "Now your fans scream if you so much as take your hat off - and you don't even do that much."
"They don't need to see my face to enjoy the singing and dancing." Jin shovels a large chunk of cake in his mouth and Kame knows there will be no more talk about the direction in which Jin's chosen to take his career.
"Dancing!" Koki snaps his fingers. "That's what we should be doing."
"You have filming tomorrow," Kame reminds him. "That's why we're just sitting around eating cake."
"If I turn up on set like this, I won't be able to move. Let's go dance it off for a while. It's not that late."
"I know, but-" Kame tries, but Koki interrupts him.
"Jin'll back me up; he's always ready to go to a club."
"Um..." Jin looks helplessly at Kame. "Can I borrow a shirt? I didn't bring a change with me."
"You should go like that," Koki says. "You're perfectly dressed for it."
"Not a chance." Jin shakes his head. "I can't go out in public like this. Why do you think I drove here?"
It finally clicks in Kame's head that Jin's only drinking soda. It makes sense, though. He's carrying that tiny handbag again and there's no way he managed to squeeze a change of clothing in there.
"Do you really think anyone's going to notice in a club?" Kame says. "If you run into anyone you know, just tell them you came straight from work or something."
Junno tries to help. "You could be one of your own dancers?"
"I'm not cute enough to be one of my dancers!"
Kame begs to differ but can't say so. "You've got five of us to hide behind, at least?"
"Yeah, but three of you wouldn't be any good for it," Jin says, and everybody laughs. "Does this mean you're actually volunteering yourself to go clubbing?"
"Don't make it sound like I never go." Kame has a social life, it just takes a backseat to work, and unlike Jin, who hates to be alone, Kame actually enjoys it. "We have different tastes, that's all."
"But since this is my night to celebrate, we're going to somewhere I like," Koki says.
Kame has a bad feeling about this.
Part 2