Akame Fic part 1
Title: There's No Place for Make Believe (1/3)
Pairing: Akame
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Mpreg
Word count: 7,126 (19,628 total)
Disclaimer: The following is a work of fiction. I do not claim any of it actually happened and certainly made no money from its production.
Summary: Jin is granted a wish that he may or may not have wanted. He and Kame deal with its effects.
~
Jin caught the djinn on a Wednesday night in the darkness between the light of two street lamps. He had been hurrying home, chin tucked into his chest, when a flash of movement caught his eye and he reached out before his mind could think ‘djinn’.
There was no one around at that hour; the streets were empty, dark paths twisting into oblivion. Jin's breaths came out in tiny visible puffs and his hands shook slightly, a faint buzzing growing stronger in his ears as he unclenched his fist to look at the djinn.
It was small and squirmy and just the tiniest bit slimy. Jin watched as it twisted in his hand. Fingers, gnarled and tapered, no larger than his fingernails, pushed against his thumb. Its mouth flapped open in an old man’s gummy, toothless grimace.
It looked nothing like the djinns in Jin’s picture books.
Jin brought it up to eye level cautiously, tapping it once on the head when it spat at him. It subsided and settled for glaring at him with two yellow, bulbous eyes. Jin eyed it skeptically.
"You grant wishes?"
The djinn held up a finger.
"One. One wish?"
It nodded.
Money. Cars. Some freaking rest flashed through his head.
He yawned. "No. No, I’m too tired to think of anything right now. I’ll get some sleep first." He put the djinn, hissing and spitting, into the side pocket of his bag and continued home.
~
The company car came around to pick him up early the next morning, startling the pet rooster in his neighbor’s balcony awake. Jin rolled over and nearly squashed the djinn, which had climbed out of his bag sometime during the night and was sitting on his pillow, watching him sleep.
It poked him in the eye.
"Fuck!"
Jin bolted upright. The loss of his weight sent the djinn sliding into the head-shaped hollow in Jin’s pillow where it flailed about, unable to take its face out of processed Egyptian cotton. Jin watched it with something approaching horror.
"You’re real? I wasn’t dreaming?"
It was quickly turning a muddier shade of olive that clashed with Jin’s orange bed sheets.
Jin brought his sheets up to his neck, shielding his naked chest. He did not remember getting into bed last night. "But how? I didn’t rub a magic lamb or pull a sword out of a stone or…or insult a one-eyed dog." Jin bent down to examine it more closely. "Are you sure you’re real?"
The djinn made a muffled noise that was a cross between a groan and a squeak. It’s arms knocked against Jin’s pillow weakly.
It occurred to Jin that the djinn might be suffocating in his fine, thousand thread-count cotton pillowcase and he pulled it up by the scruff of its neck and deposited it on his nightstand. This time, it managed to land on the two knobby stubs that served as feet and waved its arms at Jin, gibbering the entire time.
He imagined it was scolding him for owning a murderous pillow though the djinn didn’t seem to need anything to harm it as it seemed to be doing a good job on its own. Jin wrinkled his nose at the sizable green gob it hacked up onto his glasses. "That’s disgusting."
The djinn looked at him as if it quite agreed. The blob slid down slowly with the consistency of saliva, lured by gravity. Groaning, Jin wiped it up.
"This is really not how I want to spend my morning."
His neighbor’s rooster crowed in agreement, which sent the djinn into another high-pitched fit. Jin hauled it away from his watch when it looked like the djinn was about to be sick all over its million yen surface and stuffed an unused tissue, large enough to completely smother the djinn, in its face.
It hugged the tissue to its body morosely, studying Jin with watery eyes.
They contemplated at each other in silence for a moment.
Jin scratched his head. "So, um…what are you doing here?"
It started shredding the tissue into tiny pieces.
Jin nodded. "Oh. Right. I caught you. And you can’t leave because…you have to grant a wish?" Shreds of tissue fell like a snowstorm onto his dresser. "So…I just need to make a wish."
The djinn perked up, one clawed hand poised above the tissue.
Jin cleared his throat. "Right. I wish…" He paused, frowning. What did he wish? "Um…I wish…" Certainly nothing superficial or life-changing like becoming the ruler of his own universe. And money was out of the question; Jin had paid attention in class when they’d gone over that particular fairytale.
Outside, the driver honked his horn, ruining the moment. The djinn looked thoroughly put off as if it knew that asking Jin to make a wish and get dressed at the same time was a near impossibility.
Jin threw on a pink cardigan and grabbed his keys. He was nearly at to his door when he hesitated and turned to look at the djinn. The djinn stared back, Jin’s necktie clamped between its mouth.
It squawked when Jin scooped it up and dumped it into his pocket.
~
He did not get a chance to think about wishes the next couple of days. Between recording KAT-TUN’s newest single, shooting the promotional video, and making sure he did not fall flat on his face every time there was a camera, Jin was lucky to have a chance to think about not having time at all.
The only person busier than him was Kame. Kame, who swept into the studio and ran out just as quickly. Kame, who had closed door meetings with management and fell asleep on Taguchi’s Gameboy and had a pinched, starved look that scared the Juniors even though Kame had been cramming a thirty-hour schedule into twenty-four since before their debut and knew how to pull it off with a smile. Theoretically. It didn’t make much sense to Jin until Ueda flipped the calendar over to October and said, "winter drama season’s coming up."
Ueda had been remarking on casting seasons ever since Nakamaru had shot that movie and Koki won another acting award, hinting at his own bare resume until Koki had exclaimed, "Well, you should have taken that acting class along with the rest of us six years ago, but, no, you were too busy being mysterious and skulky".
"Skulky is not even a word," Ueda had complained to Jin as Jin fiddled with his guitar and tried to think of a note that sounded good after A sharp.
He perked up at that comment. "It is a word. You used it just now."
"That doesn't count. Don't be stupid."
Jin set down his guitar.
"I didn’t mind so much when it was just you and Kame. Or just Kame. A lot," Ueda confided much later while they were laying, panting, on the dressing room floor after their ‘discussion’ as management called it. Jin’s thigh hurt where it had met Ueda’s foot. He was certain he was going to have a horrible purple bruise on his shoulder that he'd need to cover up with lots of fake fur. "But Junno? And Nakamaru?"
"It’s his third flop, if that helps any."
Ueda kicked him in the shin. The next day, he arrived at work with a newly penned song: Mopping the Floor with Gin and Tonic - a ballad in three parts.
Jin remembered that as Ueda pinned October’s bulldog above Koki’s vanity mirror and backed away slowly, blocking the djinn as it tried to stick its head out. In his pocket, he was engaged in a battle of dexterity against it, pushing its head down while avoiding the sharp teeth.
Ueda didn't notice. He looked into the mirror and pushed a lock of hair to the side. The light caught him on the cheekbones, on his nose, glancing off his forehead and sloping over his lips.
Jin froze at the sight, fingers tumbling to an awkward halt. The djinn caught a thumb between its hands and bit down.
~
The djinn was - the best word Jin could come up with was teething, which brought to mind puppies and babies and things small and cute and young which the djinn was decidedly not.
There were tiny marks on his headboard: five sharp dots in a row flanked by deeper circles where the djinn’s fangs had sprouted out the second day, ripping a hole in Jin’s shirt. He had taken to carrying the djinn everywhere with him because it was rather like an ancient, hairless hamster and got into everything if given half the chance.
That was not to say, however, that taking it to work was any better; it detested bright light and loud sounds and Junno's cologne, which it had tried to shove down a poodle's throat. Jin had found bitemarks on the poodle's neck as well but the djinn had looked so sorry and the poodle so confused that Jin's mind quickly wandered to how a poodle had gotten into the dressing room in the first place.
Jin's bitemark stopped bleeding after the djinn laved over Jin's thumb with its tongue, washing away any blood that might have sprung up. It stayed red and fresh - not scabbing over or growing hazy and indistinct at the edges - and throbbed at times to the beat of his heart.
Jin didn't mind that much because it never bled when he scratched at it.
~
The dressing room was empty save for their costumes, headless and empty on racks behind the low, square table covered with Koki’s drawings and Junno’s script. Jin sat the djinn down on the table and watched it shred tissue, the DoCoMo sign still barely visible among torn plastic. Outside, the sky shone a cold, steel gray. Jin shivered and pulled his coat tighter around himself, following the fall of paper with lidded eyes. The djinn sat in a growing hill of shavings, happily shredding away.
Jin closed his eyes for a moment.
"Really," Kame said an hour later, unwrapping a hideous crocheted scarf from around his neck. The tip of his nose was still pink from outside. There was a tiny hint of frost in his breath. "Were you that bored? Why did you come so early anyways?"
"Um," Jin said, blinking sleep away.
The hill had turned into a mountain and, sometime when Jin had drifted off to half-formed thoughts of cherry-red lips, became a mountain range. The djinn was hibernating beneath one of the peaks.
Kame set down his bag. It made a thud as it hit marble counter: full of hairdryers and makeup kits and tweezers.
"What time is it?" Jin asked, screwing his eyes shut against the sudden flood of light
"Early."
"Where is everyone?"
Kame shrugged, bringing out a curler. There had been a time when they laughed about lipgloss and mascara and hairgel together. Now, Jin watched Kame curl his hair in silence, fingers twisting, dividing and arranging hair with practiced ease.
He must have drifted off again because the next thing he was aware of; Kame’s hair fell in loose curls around his face and a blanket was covering him. He threw it off.
Kame glanced at him, right eye squeezed shut as he applied foundation. "Did you memorize the lyrics?"
"Yes. There’s not that much --"
"Because this is a live performance. I don’t want us to --"
"I'm not going to go onstage and freeze."
Kame shook his head. "I just want to know if you know the lyrics."
"I know the lyrics," Jin said.
Kame nodded, switched over to eyeliner. "Are you sure?"
"Yes." Jin sighed in exasperation.
The mountain of tissues shuddered before falling still, a few shreds falling on yellow hardwood floor. Jin froze, hoping beyond hope that Kame had poked his eye with his eyeliner or at least hadn't noticed the (huge, so very humongous) pile of tissues.
Kame, obviously mistaking Jin's fear of discovery for a fear of upsetting Kame's stringent demands on hygiene at work, set down his brush and said, "It's alright. I’ll help you clean it up." He reached out toward it.
The mountain shifted again. Jin could see the faint outline of an ear below a suddenly thin layer of gossamer white and grabbed Kame before he could think. Kame froze, staring wide-eyed first at him and then at where Jin’s hand encircled his wrist.
Kame was in a decent mood. Anything less than that and he would have reacted to the piles of tissues -- not blow up so much as retreat within himself like he carried around a mental turtle shell all the time -- and he would have certainly pushed Jin away. Kame didn't like to be touched anymore, at least not by Jin. Jin suspected it had to do with that fight about hogging the camera (which had really been over something else entirely; what, Jin wasn't too sure) and how they had grunted at each other when they'd met the following week in lieu of a proper apology with wine and a trail of rose petals like Ryo had suggested.
Jin let his hand drop, tucking it inside his pocket, trying to ignore the ghost warmth of Kame's skin, the sharpness of his bone. "I’ll clean it up."
"Why can’t I do it?"
"No reason."
"Then I’ll --" Kame bent closer.
"Don’t!" Jin said. He shifted under Kame’s stare. "It’s…look. It’s a secret."
"It’s a pile of paper."
"Tissue," Jin corrected automatically. It was the wrong thing to say; Kame looked like he wanted to kick him. "It’s a…special pile of tissues. I can't tell you."
Kame’s face shuttered closed, and Jin wondered, for a desperate moment, what it would be like for him to reach out and hug Kame again, perhaps ruffle some of that carefully coiled hair. It was a fleeting thought, perhaps suicidal. He did nothing.
Kame eventually turned away. "Fine. Just…make sure it's gone by the time I come back. I don’t want to see it again," he said, voice oddly stilted.
Jin blinked. "Are you angry? Look, it’s just a pile of tissues. I’ll buy you a whole pack after work if you want."
"I don’t care about your tissues, Akanishi," Kame said. "Or your odd hamster tendencies or your secrets."
He stomped out.
The djinn poked its head out and watched Kame slam the door shut before turning back to blink up at Jin, wide-eyed with something approaching reproach.
"Alright," Jin agreed. "That could have gone better."
~
That night, he dreamt that Kame was crying.
He was standing in a great plain of nothingness, darkness as far as the eye could see. The only sound - around him, below him, inside him - was that strange choked crying, as if sobs were being ripped from Kame’s chest unwillingly. Jin knew it was Kame with an absolute certainty that only came in dreams. He knew it was a dream because Kame never cried in real life.
His thumb throbbed where the djinn had bitten him.
The pain turned into a hand that turned into a girl with flaxen hair and luminous blue eyes. Jin walked beside her until he could no longer hear Kame’s crying and felt pervasive, bone-deep relief.
"I wish I had a daughter," he told her, smiling gently.
Bulbous eyes stared back. Moonlight fell in broken patches on his bed sheet.
It took Jin a second to realize he was awake. The djinn sat on his pillow watching him, smiling a toothy grin. Alarm swam lazily to the top, hampered by layers of fog.
Jin struggled to form words. "I mean. In the future. Not right now."
The djinn looked at him.
"Not, give me a baby right this second."
Its eyes glowed yellow in the dark.
"Oh, and," Jin mumbled, barely able to keep his eyes open. "It would be great if you can do something about Kame’s attitude."
His thumb throbbed in rhythm with his heart
He fell asleep to the sight of sharp fangs and dreamt of nothing.
~
Jin did not wake up the next day to a baby girl with his eyes and nose. There was no djinn gnawing on his bedpost either, which had to have been a sign that a wish of some sort had been granted.
"Maybe everything was a bad dream," he said outloud and calmly bandaged the red teethmarks on his thumb before throwing away a pile of shredded paper on his nightstand.
His toothbrush looked like it had been chewed on by a rat. Jin brushed his teeth slowly, catching the skin of his palm on the tiny indentations on its handle, alarm growing within him with every circle of the toothbrush. By the time he finished shaving, he was hyperventilating, seeing babies out of the corners of his eyes.
He was a mess by the time he arrived at work.
"You might want to avoid the dining hall," Nakamaru said, eyeing the candy wrapper that had lodged in Jin’s hair sometime between the second and third false alarm. "Kame’s in a mood. Word is, they’re going to be making a decision about the drama any day now."
Jin flipped through the mail in his cubby - memo, memo, skin care advertisement, memo - oh, spa coupon. Jin threw the rest in the trash.
"There was a memo in there!" Nakamaru sputtered, ignoring the fact that they had all been memos. "It was about our next single for Kame’s drama."
Jin frowned. "The one he hasn’t been cast for yet?"
"Yes. Don’t remind him," Nakamaru got into the elevator after Jin. "He’s --"
"-- in a mood," Jin finished for him. "He’s always in a mood."
"Well, this time he seems determined to eat Johnny to bankruptcy. I don’t think the chefs can make enough cream puffs to keep up with him."
Nakmaru looked genuinely distressed about it. Jin patted him on the shoulder and said, "Don’t worry. I’m sure he’ll let you have a cream puff if you ask him nicely enough."
"That’s not the point!"
Jin hummed and walked to their rehearsal room, looking up just in case a cradle was going to fall from the ceiling.
~
Jin had not realized how many places a baby could fit into before then; there was his locker, the space beneath the make up chair, the space above the make up chair, the silver buffet trays, the sofa in their dressing room, and, most importantly, the stalls in the men's room.
There was nothing worse than finding a baby with a full bladder.
The bathroom Jin began frequenting had dim, flickering lights and two rusted, half-functional sinks. It was situated in the farthest corner of the building, at the end of a hallway that served no real purpose, as if left over from before Johnny built his glass and metal building. Nobody went there. Jin was hoping that all the peeling paint would make it impermeable to the djinn's magic.
On the fourth day, he opened a stall to reveal, not a wrinkled baby, but Kame on his knees before the toilet bowl.
He glared at Jin, managing to be intimidating even when his face was vaguely green. "Do you mind?"
Jin stared. Kame must have been cold -- kneeling on the tiles with all the holes in his designer jeans. Oddly, it was the only thing Jin could think about.
"Well?" Kame asked. He was then sick into the toilet.
Jin watched him retch and fidgeted, stepping one foot forward and then one foot back. "Do you need any help?" Kame probably didn’t want him there at all.
"Go away."
Jin wrung his hands as Kame heaved, certain that there was some procedure to be followed when somebody's stomach was trying to crawl out of their throat. He ought to hold Kame's hair out of the way, but it was already pinned up in a ponytail, or pat his back, but then Kame might end up face first in vomit. Ueda would know what to do. Nakamaru might too. Or...
"How about I get Johnny?"
"Go away."
Kame looked so miserable that Jin complied.
He began to feel bad about it almost as soon as he left. Sure, Kame had been kind of a bastard but he had also been throwing up in an abandoned bathroom and Jin thought that would make anybody just the slightest bit inhospitable. What if Kame slipped and hit his head and drowned in a few centimeters of toilet water? He would kill himself in shame at that kind of undignified death and come back as a ghost to haunt Jin.
Jin almost ran back to save him.
As the minutes ticked by, he became more worried that something had happened to Kame. There was no sign of Kame in the dining hall despite the abundance of cream puffs and pickled plums that Jin could have sworn Kame had professed an undying hatred towards just the other day.
Jin sat down with a sigh. As he hung onto the back of his chair and watched Koki attempt to fit an entire pie in Nakamaru’s mouth, the second part of Jin’s wish came back to him, startling in its clarity.
It hadn’t been so much a second part as a completely different wish. Perhaps the djinn could only grant one wish and had chosen to give Kame odd cravings and make him nauseous and…
"Oh shit."
~
Jin cornered Kame the next morning in the hallway between the elevator and KAT-TUN’s dressing room. Kame was swathed in layers of multi-colored sweatshirts and looked unimpressed by the hand Jin put out to stop him.
"Look," Jin began. "I need to tell you something."
He had practiced the speech for two hours last night, proclaiming it to the wind outside on his balcony until his neighbor’s rooster had had enough of "I’m really, really sorry. Please don’t kill me" and proceeded to crow whenever Jin opened his mouth. Looking at Kame’s rumpled features, Jin wondered if he shouldn’t have practiced some more.
Kame frowned at his hesitation. "Well, go on then."
"You know the other day..."
"Nothing happened the other day," Kame said quickly, shooting panicked looks over his shoulder.
There was a staff member -- sound crew, Jin thought -- sitting in the concave window at the end of the hall. He had a pair of earphones stuffed in his ears.
"I mean in the bathroom."
"Lots of things happen in the bathrooms here. You shouldn't talk about it."
Jin frowned. Kame was messing up his perfectly planned speech. "I mean about you --"
"I've got to go. I'm really, really busy."
"I know why you were throwing up," Jin yelled after Kame.
Kame hushed him and pulled him into the adjourning room, looking about frantically. Two young Juniors had been practicing in front of the full-length mirrors, but they scampered at a glare from Kame.
"Akanishi," Kame said as soon as the door shut behind them. "It’s not what you think. Did you tell anybody about this? Because I'm not sick or trying to lose weight or anything like that and you should tell management, whenever you see them next, that I'm perfectly healthy and I can do this drama. I am ready to shoot another drama and -- you know, it might be better if you don't mention me -- you know. Throwing up. It was a one time thing. There is nothing wrong with me. Tell them that."
Jin blinked. "But that's lying."
"Akanishi..."
Jin put his hands on Kame's shoulders in what he hoped was a reassuring gesture. "I know it's not your fault. It's my fault. I am so sorry." He smiled weakly. "Please don't kill me?"
"You gave me stomach flu?"
"No. I got you pregnant."
Kame smiled politely. "I’m sorry. I could have sworn I heard you say you got me pregnant."
"I did." Jin swung around to face the windows, unable to look at Kame. A crow outside flew away, knocking leaves turned orange and yellow off the branch. "I think I got you pregnant. There was this djinn, you see, and I made a wish. And now --"
The door slammed shut. Jin turned around to find himself all alone in the room.
~
"Alright," Kame said, tugging on the sleeves of his sweater. "I believe you."
Jin blinked at him over the latest issue of a gravure magazine (that he would later deny ever buying) and tried to focus his mind away from C-cup breasts. Kame flushed and placed one hand over his stomach.
Oh. "Oh." Jin put his magazine away. "What. What changed your mind?"
"Does it matter? I believe you."
"I just -"
"It doesn’t matter, Akanishi." Kame answered for him, fiddling with the microphone in his back pocket.
They were standing on unpolished warehouse ground just outside the wooden frames of Utaban’s set; from that angle, Jin could only see the beams and planks holding the walls up. The light crew was almost finished setting up.
"Later," Kame promised him.
Later was all Jin could think about. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Kame even as he got on the red-seated unicycle, clay pot stacked with bananas balanced on his head, and attempted to turn a full circle while playing the ukulele. Kame was beside him, on a pink-seated unicycle, waiting to take the bananas from Jin’s head.
It was pointless really, this transporting of bananas, but one couldn’t tell from the frown on Kame’s face, the tongue poked out in concentration as he struggled for balance, the masked frustration when he crashed.
Afterwards, Jin found Kame holed up in the break room and handed him a bottle of water. "Too bad about the prizes."
Kame accepted it with a grimace, took off the cap with a vicious twist. "My balance is shot. It’s this --" He looked over his shoulder then leaned in, lowering his voice. "You know. I could have done it otherwise."
Jin agreed. "Right. So, I’ve been thinking."
Kame snorted. "That’s a surprise." He shifted uneasily in the chair.
Jin looked down at his shoes - pointed and bright silver. "Maybe you’ll need help later on. When you - you know," he plowed on, gaining strength as he continued. "And I’m not going to be the kind of guy who gets a g- somebody pregnant and leaves her. Him.""
Kame shook his head.
"Look, I’m her father," Jin pleaded.
"So am I."
"I’m her other father."
It was important that Kame understood that. Jin had gone to sleep afraid that Kame would whisk her away, ever to be seen again until she knocked on his door twenty years later, with daddy-issues and love-issues and trust-issues all because Jin had been a deadbeat, absent father.
"All I want is to be a good father."
"You should have thought of that before you got me pregnant."
Jin ran a hand through his hair, the image of a wrung out tattooed drug-addict daughter keeping his anger down. "And I'm taking responsibility. Isn't that what you're always telling me to do? Be a little more responsible? You can't keep her from me. That's not fair to me. It's not fair to her."
He met and held Kame's glare. Kame looked away first. "You made a wish?"
"Yeah. To a djinn."
Kame sighed. "So what do we do now?"
"Well, you could move in with me. My apartment's large enough and you can have the bedroom if you want; I'll sleep in the living room. It'll just be like sharing a hotel room during our concerts, and that way, I can take care of you in case you get too big and can't go out or get out of bed or...or..."
Kame was breathing faster and faster, his water bottle crushed beneath his hands. Jin eyed him in concern.
"We don't have to, you know."
"I got the role," Kame said finally, words forming slowly as if struggling through molasses. "I have a drama to shoot." He looked at Jin as if asking him to understand. Jin didn't.
"I’m…sorry," Jin said. He didn't know what else to say.
Kame looked at him in surprise.
~
Kame moved into Jin’s apartment on a Wednesday with a suitcase full of clothes and a fruit basket the size of a large dog. "Present from management," Kame said in explanation and dumped it next to Jin’s shoe rack.
Jin suspected the change in their living arrangements had very little to do with his powers of persuasion and everything to do with his apology, which made no sense because nobody moved in just because the other person said sorry. Nobody sane, and Kame was often times the sanest in the room. It was another example of how Jin didn't get Kame at all.
Despite that, Kame settled in Jin’s apartment surprisingly fast, slotting into the gap that had been unperceivable until it had been filled. The toilet, Kame decided, was to be cleaned twice a month, the living room whenever they were no longer able to find the remote. He brought his own set of kitchenware after an inspection of Jin’s cupboard had turned up a rusted tin cup and miscellaneous plates - all chipped and stocked half of the fridge with energy drinks and protein shakes. It was like living with a highly critical mom
Their first disagreement (if it could be called as such) was that first night when they realized Jin only had one bedroom and one bed.
"I’ll buy another one," Jin insisted, trailing after Kame as he rummaged through Jin’s medicine cabinet. "It’s not like I can’t afford it."
"You can’t. What if somebody sees you?"
"It’s just a bed." Jin leaned on the doorframe, idly kicking his feet.
Kame threw two bottles in the trash. "And why would you need another bed?"
"For you to sleep in?"
"Exactly!" Kame emerged from the bottom drawer brandishing a bottle of perfume that they had stopped producing years ago. There was a cobweb in his hair. "They’re going to think you’re keeping some slutty, disease ridden bimbo in your apartment."
Jin shrugged. "If you care so much about it, I’ll tell them it’s not a girl. It’s you. And I wouldn’t need an extra bed if I’m living with my lover."
The new bed arrived the next day.
They placed it - after much maneuvering and a stubbed toe on Jin’s part - beside the balcony, sandwiched between Jin’s white sofa and the sliding glass door. When Jin slept with his head facing the television, he could see the red crown of his neighbor’s rooster, bobbing up and down as it paced the length of its kingdom.
Kame kept mainly to Jin’s bedroom - his bedroom. Jin only saw him when they both happened to need the bathroom at the same time and then it was a confusing jumble of elbows and hairspray. It was better that way; Jin didn’t know what to say to Kame and Kame didn’t seem to want to say anything to him. Jin figured that things would work themselves out by the time the baby was due.
It was more peaceful than what Jin could find at work now that Kame’s stomach had begun to curve outward and he applied for a leave of absence, the reason for which was a complete secret. Naturally, that meant all kinds of rumors surfaced as soon as he left - all within the company, as his absence wasn’t made public notice.
It was all nonsense. The closest to the truth was the one that Kame had gotten his forty-year-old rumored girlfriend pregnant - or perhaps that Kame wanted to get a sex change, Jin wasn’t quite sure which.
"Now the Juniors are convinced somebody staked him." Koki kicked his feet up and groaned. "They’re talking about taking a wanted ad out against the slayer."
"What?" Nakamaru said. He dropped the string of popcorn he’d been looping. Ueda picked it up and added it to his own.
"Didn’t I tell you? There’s this rumor among the ten year olds that Kame’s a vampire." Nakamaru looked vaguely distressed and Koki hurried to reassure. "It’s made him really popular. They all want to see him turn into a bat."
"Who’s telling them this stuff? Akanishi, stop eating the popcorn," Nakamaru added without turning his head.
Jin sulked and went back to handing the puffs to Ueda one at a time.
"This is going to be one ugly Christmas tree," Ueda said. "And I think we have rats."
Nakamaru looked alarmed again. "Is it in the tabloids already?"
"Not that kind of rat. Yamada lost his hamster in here a week ago. Those things multiply like crazy." Ueda draped another string of popcorn on the two-foot tall plastic tree and stepped back to eye it. "Whose idea was it to use real food? I need to hurt him."
Koki shifted away from Ueda. "What I want to know is who’ll get Kamenashi’s role. We already recorded parts of the theme song."
"Oh." Jin reached into his pocket, pulling out a wrinkled slip of paper. "I forgot. I’m meeting with management today."
~
Jin composed what he was going to say in his head as he walked home in the cold, bag of groceries bumping against his shin every other step. He had delayed the inevitable as long as he could but day had turned into night and there was only so many times he could read the back of a ramen package.
The apartment was dark by the time Jin returned. Jin toed off his shoes then froze. Muffled sounds like sobs filtered into his senses mixed with the sweet stench of decaying fruit and Jin thought for a wild moment that somebody had told Kame the news while he’d been walking circles outside. The fruit basket sat untouched by the shoe rack.
Kame’s door was ajar. Jin pushed it open carefully, afraid of what he was going to find on the other side. It took him a while to make sense of what he was seeing under dim, filtered moonlight, and he clutched the doorframe hard once he did, knees nearly collapsing beneath him.
Kame arced up and moaned, hand down his pajama bottom moving in a lazy rhythm. His other hand encircled his throat and traveled down to his uncovered chest, then lower still until it too disappeared beneath faded red cotton.
Jin couldn’t tear his eyes away from the movement within those pants.
They were low enough that Kame’s hips were exposed, forming a V that began where his stomach, barely rounded, ended. He was sweating a lot. His hair curled and stuck in damp strands to his neck. His chest - Jin’s pulse quickened - moved with the shuddering gasps he took.
Kame moaned again, panting, his hips moving with a renewed sense of urgency. Jin’s hand traveled on its own volition down to his pants and, when he touched his own interest beneath layers of denim and silk, broke him out of whatever spell that had been cast on him.
Kame shuddered.
Jin bolted, uncertain whether he had banged anything in his haste to get away or if Kame had heard him over the rush of his climax; Jin need to put some distance between himself and Kame, half-naked in the dark, pleasuring himself - pleasuring Jin with an odd twist of his hips and both hands shoved down his pants.
Jin groaned, pummeling his pillow with closed fists. He had seen Kame sweatier, more wanton and more naked than that before yet his cock, hot and thick between his thighs, throbbed like an untried schoolboy’s.
And what would it have been like if Kame had opened his eyes and caught Jin looking? If he had walked over, movement just the slightest bit awkward because of extra weight to his middle, and sunk down on his knees before Jin, offering to --
No.
Jin closed his eyes and tried to envision women. Soft, curvy women, which made him twist in his bed, sheets twining around his legs, because it was having the opposite effect of making his erection go away.
He wanted - he wanted whatever this was gone.
Then his mind wandered to Kame again and his cock became harder still and he screamed in frustration, muffling the sound in his pillow.
~
"Akanishi, we’re out of toilet paper."
Jin struggled awake. His eyes refused to open and his mouth felt like he’d eaten his pillow sometime during the night. The faint image of a naked chest flashed in his mind. He twitched.
Kame was standing in front of him in those same red pajama pants, holding a depleted roll. "It was your turn to buy them."
Jin mumbled and waved toward the bag of groceries sitting on the coffee table. His last conscious memory of the previous night was the certainty that his penis was going to fall off. It had not, Jin felt with some relief, actually done so.
"Stop touching yourself. At least wait until I’m out of the room," Kame grumbled, calling Jin a variety of names under his breath as he rummaged through the plastic bag, settling on a combination of ‘pervert’, ‘playboy’, and ‘insatiable freak’.
"I don’t see any --" Kame paused.
"What?" Jin asked, almost asleep. He frowned at the silence and forced his eyes open. "What?"
He remembered too late that he had put his script in the bag right before figuring out the speech he was going to say, the words to which escaped him at the moment.
"It’s not. They decided. I didn’t," Jin said instead, sitting up, looking quiltily at Kame who was staring at the script. It felt inadequate in the face of Kame’s silence.
"I didn’t mean to. They just handed it to me and you know how management gets. I didn’t have a choice. I thought --" Jin mumbled. "I thought this might be what you want."
Kame put down the script, fingers brushing the cover as he released it. He straightened it, then began lining up all the packages Jin had bought - smallest to largest - then stacked them into three neat piles when he realized the coffee table wasn’t long enough.
Jin pushed his bangs out of his eyes and peered up at Kame worriedly. "Are you mad?"
"You didn't buy what you were supposed to."
"I’m…sorry?" He was sorry a lot those days.
Kame didn’t seem to hear him. He gave the coffee table one last look before turning around suddenly as if caught by some impulse, grabbing his coat off the sofa as he passed.
Jin lunged after him. "Wait." His legs caught on his comforter and he went down with a bang. "Where are you going?" he asked from the ground.
Kame paused in wrapping a scarf around his neck. "Out." He pocketed Jin’s keys. "We’re out of toilet paper."
~
There was a corner shop just a block from Jin’s apartment - a five-minute walk at best. Further out was a Seven&I ten minutes by car, twenty on foot; Jin tested it out both ways when he couldn’t think of anything else to do.
Kame had been gone for three hours.
Jin wouldn’t have cared too much but Kame was - Jin couldn’t imagine him out in public, mixing with people who weren’t in the industry, even when Kame wasn't pregnant. It was like asking the djinn to get along with Jin’s toothpaste. He paced around his living room, occasionally stubbing his toe on his coffee table, phone in hand, uncertain of who to call. He had just decided on the police -- never mind how angry Kame was going to be when he found out (he wouldn't get a chance to find out if he was laying in a ditch somewhere, dying) -- when his cell phone rang.
"Kame?" Jin demanded immediately.
There was a pause. "No," his manager said. "But you can come pick him up. He’s in my office. I’ll tell him to expect you in thirty minutes."
Jin made it there in ten.
Kame was standing by the sidewalk, hopping up and down slightly to ward off the cold, and got in as soon as Jin opened the door.
He shoved a bag into the backseat. "Toilet paper," he explained, breath coming in visible puffs.
Jin nodded like he understood and pulled back onto the road.
Kame shivered and wrapped his jacket tighter around himself. "Do you mind?" he asked and turned on the radio without waiting for Jin’s response. A holiday ballad filled the air. Kame hummed along to it, head lulling back, turned out to the window. His breath fogged up the glass.
Jin drove with half an eye on the road, half -- most -- on Kame, whose cheeks were pink like the Santa Claus in the song, a faint smile on his lips.
"What did you talk about?" Jin asked, trying for casual.
"Work," Kame said, doodling on his window with a finger. "Nothing that would interest you." He glanced at Jin. "Don’t worry, you still have the role."
Jin had been a little worried; management always did like Kame better.
"Is it the hormones?" he asked.
"What?"
"The hormones. Are you having mood swings or something?"
"Hush." Kame capped off his Christmas tree with a lopsided star. He began drawing a person - or a reindeer, Jin couldn’t quite tell. "You’re the one who got me in this mess." He didn’t sound nearly as upset as he used to.
Jin swerved to avoid a crow, head full trying to keep up with this latest development. He knew that Kame had always been susceptible to work: taciturn during Gokusen, sensitive during Sapuri, two-fac -- no, Jin didn't really know what Kame had been like during that drama and it wasn't fair of him to guess. He did feel slight resentment at how their manager had, in the span of three hours, been able to make Kame happier than he'd been in months.
But that wasn't fair either because it wasn't like they were close friends, which brought to mind --
"So…um. Who are your friends?"
Kame’s finger slipped, taking an ear off his reindeer. "That has nothing to do with anything."
"No. I just." Red light; Jin slammed on the brakes. "I was going to call your friends to ask them if they’d seen you but then I realized I don’t know who they are. It would be nice. In case, next time."
He was aware of Kame studying him intently. Jin fidgeted, shooting Kame looks out of the corner of his eyes. He wished the light would change already.
"I wouldn’t want you finding me if I’m upset at you," Kame said finally.
The light turned green.
"That…makes sense."
Kame nodded and went back to drawing a fat man with a large bag.
Onward to part 2