and so the nakame anniversay special comes to an end <3
◄ #31-40
#41 - Wait
Kame is 18 when he leans in and is pushed back by a hand on his chest and for an aching, terrifying moment, he thinks he’s read all the signs wrong until Nakamaru catches his hand before he can run away and mumbles, face red and troubled, not yet; the yet sticks with Kame until ten years later when Nakamaru closes the space between them and, at once, it explodes into now.
#42 - Talk
On nights like these, when Nakamaru is tugged into Kame’s hammock with Kame’s back nestled against his chest and the summer breeze rocks them to and fro, the leaves rustling like whispering children, and they gaze off into the night, thoughts drifting into the endless sky as their fingers intertwine, their pulses beating steadily until they somehow become one-on nights like these, there’s not much to be said and everything to be felt.
#43 - Search
Nakamaru wraps the towel around his waist and reaches out for-it’s not there, and normally, one would check the floor or one’s bag before stepping out of the shower in wet, angry strides but Nakamaru has learned and lived and he’s a man on a mission when he flings open the shower curtain to an adjacent stall and-a soapy, startled Kame has him suddenly forgetting all about his missing underwear.
#44 - Hope
In the darkest part of him, the part which he denies and shuns and keeps locked in silence, Nakamaru feels a strange sort of delight when Jin departs for L.A. and the space next to Kame is suddenly empty; it isn’t mean or hateful because Jin is a friend and Nakamaru was never the type to carry ill will, but the feeling is there all the same, feeble and reluctant and bursting into existence when it’s him who Kame smiles at, him who Kame depends on, and in the longing, hollow of his chest, Nakamaru knows this feeling could destroy him-but he hopes anyway.
#45 - Eclipse
“I have something important to tell you,” Kame says, cornering him by the stair well with a face ready for war, “that sweater you left back in the dressing room?-yes, your favourite-well there was this prank with a soda can Ueda was planning for Taguchi and I may have gotten involved and we may have spilled a little on your sweater,” Nakamaru releases an outraged squawk which doesn’t deter Kame in the least, “but the important part is that I like you-like really like you-and I think we should make out.”
#46 - Gravity
Kame is already in the room when he steps inside, sending him a casual wave before he walks to the other side of the room, pulls out a magazine as he takes a seat, and waits; he keeps his head lowered and it doesn’t take long before he hears the chair screech on the other end and footsteps pad over until the couch sinks next to him, and while Nakamaru doesn’t understand his own pull, he can’t stop grinning at how Kame doesn’t even seem to be aware of it.
#47 - Highway
“You’re speeding,” Nakamaru says from the passenger seat and Kame tells him shut up, I am not even though he totally is and it’s amazing to be able to drive on his own for the very first time, even with Nakamaru making strangled noises every time Kame makes a turn, and Kame laughs and promises, “I won’t let you die, you know; you’re safe with me” and Nakamaru returns it with a promise to never step into the same car with him again.
#48 - Unknown
Becoming four is more terrifying then when they became five and Kame doesn’t know what to expect-from himself, from the fans waiting on the other side of the curtain, from the three other people standing next to him-but he knows one thing and just before they explosions sound, cueing them to climb the stage, Kame turns to Nakamaru and says with unshaken certainty, “I couldn’t go on without you.”
#49 - Lock
You let people read you like a book Kame tells him and Nakamaru can’t decipher whether it’s a compliment or not, replying with a self-deprecating I don’t have many secrets to keep and the ones I do aren’t very interesting and Kame smiles, sweet and sharp, striking before Nakamaru can do so much as blink, and leaves him with the sting of swollen lips and a memory to be locked away.
#50 - Breathe
The movie shooting leaves him exhausted, his muscles sore and his sleep cycle wrecked, like he was taken by the ocean and tossed against a rocky shore night after night, and the pieces of him that remain are sundried and brittle, choked; he’s too far from home and the comforts of the familiar and when the night stretches and he can no longer take it, he opens his laptop and dials a number and waits-and the moment Nakamaru’s blurry-eyed face takes up the screen, the knot in Kame’s chest loosens, not in increments, but at once.
♥
We made it! Thank you all for sticking this out with me. <3
