FIC: "Legends" 1/1, PG
Jul. 27th, 2010 10:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
soundczechficTitle: "Legends" 1/1
Rating: PG (for language)
Disclaimer: I claim no affiliation with JE or its idols. This is a work of fiction.
Summary: Obligatory Jin-is-leaving-fic. Jin finds Kame in the park halfway between their childhood houses.
Notes: I didn't really want or intend to write this, but it was kind of like I had to get it out before I could continue working on the fic for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
help_haiti I was writing before ~the announcement~. It's cheesy and melodramatic because I am cheesy and melodramatic. This is almost purely cathartic. I almost didn't post this, but I figured there are probably people out there who long for cheesy catharsis as much as I do. Enjoy.
Jin finds Kame in the park halfway between their childhood houses, swaying on the swingset and smoking a cigarette. Jin thought he quit, but Kame has quit three or four times in the past seven years. It never lasts.
He wasn’t looking for him, but somehow, as Jin parks his car by the gate and switches off the ignition, he’s not surprised to find him. It’s always been like this between them, paths crossing and tangled, sometimes leading them further and further away from each other only to hurtle to a sudden, shocking collision. Kame is always just around the next corner, at the end of the next street.
The park is deserted as Jin steps out of his van and pulls his baseball cap low over his unwashed hair. The late afternoon is fading fast into the evening dark, but he slides his sunglasses into place. He hasn’t been seen in public since Johnny made the announcement; he’s been hiding in his old bedroom at his parent’s house, sleeping all day in his old single bed and eating the cakes his mother keeps baking from the stress.
It’s still hot out, despite the dying sun. Jin pushes the sleeves of his chambray shirt up his forearms as he crosses the park, scratches at the bumpy knob of his elbow. Kame is wearing faded denim shorts and a Pantera t-shirt that looks old but probably isn’t. He watches Jin coming, cigarette burning hot with his breath. His hair is messy, actually messy, not artfully dishevelled, and he’s wearing a pair of glasses that Jin dates at three or four years old.
It makes it harder, somehow, that Kame’s not wearing his idol face.
“Hey,” Jin says. A pair of dog’s leashes is loosely scrunched up in Kame’s fist. One is black and covered in psychotic yellow smiley faces. The other is baby pink and embedded with a line of large diamantes. Ran and Jelly are wrestling on the grass nearby, puffing and panting with exertion.
“Hey,” Kame says. Jin’s not sure what he expects to find in Kame’s voice; for a minute, when he’d been driving past in his car and seen that familiar figure hunched over in the swing, he’d nearly floored the accelerator and kept going, gone around the block and right back to his parent’s house, maybe. He’s been having dreams about this moment. Nightmares, mostly.
Jin eases into the swing at Kame’s side and rubs his sneakered toe in the dirt. They used to come here on the way home from work when they were kids, backpacks dumped in the grass, sharing candy bars and later cigarettes. If Jin were to turn his head to the right he’d see, painstakingly etched into the steel post, his own initials, and Kame’s, and Yamapi’s. Jin doesn’t turn his head.
“Long time no see,” Kame says. Jin peers at his face for hints of scorn, but it is blank. Kame draws on his cigarette and exhales, watching the tendrils of smoke curl into the air.
“You’re smoking again,” Jin says; disapproving, somehow, even as he reaches out and takes the smoke to bum a drag.
“I’m stressed,” Kame replies. He doesn’t take the cigarette back from Jin, just takes his deck out of his pocket and shakes a new one free. The cigarette lighter he pulls from his pocket is gold and embedded with tiny real diamonds in the shape of a turtle. Some rich old producer gave it to him. Jin remembers Kame being offended when he suggested the old geezer wanted to bang him.
“Yeah?” Jin says.
“This co-worker of mine is a total douchebag,” Kame says. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t grimace, either. Jin remembers a time when he would have known exactly what to say in this moment; exactly which wire to cut in order to defuse the bomb. Now he has no idea.
“Yeah,” Jin says. They are quiet for a while and he drifts back and forth on his swing, conscious of Kame’s silence; wary of a brewing storm. If it happens he’ll just be still and take it like a man, he decides.
It doesn’t come. Kame is silent for so long that Jin eventually prods, “Kamenashi?”
“Mm?” Kame throws his cigarette butt to the ground and stubs it out with a twist of his toe. He balances the dog leashes on his knee and grasps the chains of the swing in each hand.
“Aren’t you going to… I don’t know, yell at me, or something?”
Kame rests his chin on his fist. There are dark bags under his bloodshot eyes. Jin can’t look at his face for too long. The sight of his exhausted eyes makes him sick.
“What would that accomplish?” Kame asks after a while. He drops his gaze and reaches into his pocket for another cigarette. He gets one out but then just rolls it between his fingers, staring at it, then slides it behind his ear for later.
“It might make you feel better,” Jin says.
Kame snorts. “I doubt it.”
Jin sighs, pulling at a loose thread in the knee of his jeans. “It might make me feel better.”
“It’s not my job to make you feel better anymore,” Kame says. He picks the leashes up off his knee and starts slowly winding them around his hand, around his wrist, like Jin’s seen Ueda do with his boxing bandages.
“You’re mad,” Jin says.
Kame shakes his head. Jelly runs over and rolls onto her back by their feet. Kame slips his sandal off and rubs her belly with one bare foot. There’s a crown shaped tag on her collar.
“Kame,” Jin prods. He’s sat in this swing peering up at Kame’s cloudy face a dozen times, a hundred. Once when they were very young they’d met here suddenly after not having spoken for months. Jin remembers the relief he’d felt as he prodded Kame into giggles, even though he’d been the one to initiate the fight in the first place. It was almost always him who started things. Kame can’t hold a grudge properly when offered the slightest hint of conciliation. Jin can only hold a grudge as long as it’s not reciprocated; the second it seems like the other person might really hate him back he can’t take it anymore. He knows this about himself, but it doesn’t stop him from feuding with nearly everyone he knows and feeling devastated when they take his bait.
“What do you even care?” Kame asks. He reaches down and picks up Jelly, cradling her to his chest and shuffling his fingers through her messy caramel fur. “You’ve been telling anyone who will listen that I’m just some guy you work with for years. Now I’m not even that.” He meets Jin’s eyes, revealing a wavering thread of hurt beneath his nonchalance. “What does it even matter what I think?”
“I don’t know,” Jin admits. “It just does.” He scuffs his feet in the dirt. "I mean, we're stuck with each other, right?"
Kame is hard and still, impenetrable; Fortress Kamenashi. "Not anymore," he says.
"Jesus, come on," Jin spits. Jelly begins to struggle in Kame's lap and he lets her go, watching as she bounds over to Ran. "Everyone else might be buying this gracious adult shit, but I'm not some reporter shoving my mic in your face and asking for a soundbite. There has to be something you want to say to me." The blankness on Kame's face is faltering; the walls of his fortress tumbling down. "I mean, unless this is what you wanted all along."
Kame lashes out and shoves him so suddenly and forcefully that Jin tumbles backwards off his swing and lands on his ass in the dirt. He barely ducks in time to avoid getting brained by the swing as it shudders and jerks with the force of his ejection. Kame is on his feet, body coiled and rising like an angry cobra.
"Fuck you," he hisses. "God, fuck you. What is it you want from me, exactly? You're going. I'm trying to let you go. Am I happy about it? No, you fucking asshole, but I'm not going to sit here and let you feel like a hero for comforting poor abandoned Kamenashi. Just leave me alone, already."
He tries to storm off, but he's got to stop and collect the dogs and they evade him long enough for Jin to scramble to his feet and grab his elbow. Kame doesn't fight him, just stands there, the ridiculous pink leash dangling uselessly in his fist.
"It's not like that," Jin says. "You think I'm anyone's idea of a hero, right now?"
Kame looks at him, really looks at him for the first time, and the anger that Jin expects isn't there. "Yes," he says, voice breaking, but able, somehow, to stand there and look at Jin with his grief stripped bare. "You're chasing your dreams. That's my idea of a hero, even if I want to punch you in the face."
"I didn't want it to be like this," Jin says.
"I know," Kame says. "But it is like this."
"Talk to me," Jin says. "I'm a grown up, I can take it. Just tell me." His hand slips from Kame's elbow down to his wrist, feeling the bones beneath his wooden beaded bracelets. "Tell me, I deserve it."
Kame tugs his arm away, but he doesn't leave. "I'm not mad," he says.
"Right," Jin sighs. "You're just practically beating the shit out of me because you're so happy--"
"I'm terrified," Kame says, and Jin stops, heart plummeting.
"Oh." Jin scratches his nose, distressed; somehow the idea of Kame being angry had been bearable, but the idea that he's afraid is excruciating. “Kame—“
"What if I can't hold it together? What if everyone starts fighting again, or the fans decide they've had enough and dump their fanclub memberships, or go off and become psycho Arashi fans, or our music suddenly sucks, or Johnny just decides we’re over and we disappear entirely?" he takes a breath, barely able to keep up with himself.
"Kamenashi--" Jin tries to interrupt, but Kame's already started again, words tumbling out of him now.
"What if you go off and get really famous and become a total cokehead? What if the letters accusing me of running you out of town never stop coming? What if they're right?" he heaves a breath. "What do I do if this is all we're ever remembered for?"
Jin's heart seizes at that too; their perfect empire, crumbling into shit. It surprises him how much he still cares; he's spent so long trying to make his break for freedom that he's forgotten that there was a time when this band meant everything to him.
He reaches out and grips Kame's elbows, steps into his space. "Listen to me," he says. "Look at me."
Kame does. They're so close that Jin could kiss him without even moving.
"I know you won't let any of that stuff happen to KAT-TUN," Jin says. "You're Kamenashi."
Kame grimaces. "Kamenashi's tired," he says. Jin ignores him.
"You certainly didn't run me out of town, don't be a fucking idiot." Jin shakes him. "But I couldn't go if you weren't here. Don't ever think I don't know that."
"Jin," Kame chokes.
"It's going to be all right," Jin says.
"I don't want to be KA," Kame whines. "It's stupid."
"You can do it," Jin promises.
"I don't want to," Kame moans, and Jin hugs him for the first time in years. Kame doesn’t hug him back, just stands there in the boa constrictor of Jin’s arms, all stiff spine and rigid shoulders.
"I promise I won't be a cokehead," Jin whispers, and Kame finally laughs into his shoulder and punches him in the back, grabs a fistful of Jin’s t-shirt and holds on tight for a while.
"Get off me, you pervert," Kame says eventually, voice muffled into Jin's shirt. "When the blogs are overrun by stories about our passionate lover's embrace in a public park tomorrow, I hope you know you have no-one to blame but yourself."
"Gross," Jin says, but he clings a moment longer. Truthfully, Kame isn't the only one who is terrified; Jin is scared shitless. Johnny could change his mind at any moment and Jin will be left alone and jobless in the mess of his shattered dreams.
“It’s gonna be ok,” Kame says, probably sensing Jin’s anxiety. He claps Jin on the back and then unfolds himself from Jin’s embrace, taking a step back, and then another, back to the respectful distance they’ve been keeping for years. Jin wants to step back into his space and feel the heat of his body.
Kame holds up his pinky. “Let’s make a promise,” he says.
“What kind of promise?” Jin asks suspiciously. He holds his hand up anyway, pinky hesitantly nearer to Kame’s. He pauses and hovers as he waits for Kame’s explanation, a little afraid he’s about to bind himself to some kind of sentimental KAT-TUN anniversary tour in 25 years or something.
Kame hooks his finger around Jin’s and says, “Let’s both be legends,” he says. “Let’s make all this shit worth it.”
Jin stares back at him and sees the gawky child he once was; remembers, vaguely, making a similar pact right here in this park when they were nothing more than dumb kids; they’d be famous, they’d said. They’d be living gods.
He squeezes his finger around Kame’s and murmurs, “I promise.”
Rating: PG (for language)
Disclaimer: I claim no affiliation with JE or its idols. This is a work of fiction.
Summary: Obligatory Jin-is-leaving-fic. Jin finds Kame in the park halfway between their childhood houses.
Notes: I didn't really want or intend to write this, but it was kind of like I had to get it out before I could continue working on the fic for
help_haiti I was writing before ~the announcement~. It's cheesy and melodramatic because I am cheesy and melodramatic. This is almost purely cathartic. I almost didn't post this, but I figured there are probably people out there who long for cheesy catharsis as much as I do. Enjoy. Jin finds Kame in the park halfway between their childhood houses, swaying on the swingset and smoking a cigarette. Jin thought he quit, but Kame has quit three or four times in the past seven years. It never lasts.
He wasn’t looking for him, but somehow, as Jin parks his car by the gate and switches off the ignition, he’s not surprised to find him. It’s always been like this between them, paths crossing and tangled, sometimes leading them further and further away from each other only to hurtle to a sudden, shocking collision. Kame is always just around the next corner, at the end of the next street.
The park is deserted as Jin steps out of his van and pulls his baseball cap low over his unwashed hair. The late afternoon is fading fast into the evening dark, but he slides his sunglasses into place. He hasn’t been seen in public since Johnny made the announcement; he’s been hiding in his old bedroom at his parent’s house, sleeping all day in his old single bed and eating the cakes his mother keeps baking from the stress.
It’s still hot out, despite the dying sun. Jin pushes the sleeves of his chambray shirt up his forearms as he crosses the park, scratches at the bumpy knob of his elbow. Kame is wearing faded denim shorts and a Pantera t-shirt that looks old but probably isn’t. He watches Jin coming, cigarette burning hot with his breath. His hair is messy, actually messy, not artfully dishevelled, and he’s wearing a pair of glasses that Jin dates at three or four years old.
It makes it harder, somehow, that Kame’s not wearing his idol face.
“Hey,” Jin says. A pair of dog’s leashes is loosely scrunched up in Kame’s fist. One is black and covered in psychotic yellow smiley faces. The other is baby pink and embedded with a line of large diamantes. Ran and Jelly are wrestling on the grass nearby, puffing and panting with exertion.
“Hey,” Kame says. Jin’s not sure what he expects to find in Kame’s voice; for a minute, when he’d been driving past in his car and seen that familiar figure hunched over in the swing, he’d nearly floored the accelerator and kept going, gone around the block and right back to his parent’s house, maybe. He’s been having dreams about this moment. Nightmares, mostly.
Jin eases into the swing at Kame’s side and rubs his sneakered toe in the dirt. They used to come here on the way home from work when they were kids, backpacks dumped in the grass, sharing candy bars and later cigarettes. If Jin were to turn his head to the right he’d see, painstakingly etched into the steel post, his own initials, and Kame’s, and Yamapi’s. Jin doesn’t turn his head.
“Long time no see,” Kame says. Jin peers at his face for hints of scorn, but it is blank. Kame draws on his cigarette and exhales, watching the tendrils of smoke curl into the air.
“You’re smoking again,” Jin says; disapproving, somehow, even as he reaches out and takes the smoke to bum a drag.
“I’m stressed,” Kame replies. He doesn’t take the cigarette back from Jin, just takes his deck out of his pocket and shakes a new one free. The cigarette lighter he pulls from his pocket is gold and embedded with tiny real diamonds in the shape of a turtle. Some rich old producer gave it to him. Jin remembers Kame being offended when he suggested the old geezer wanted to bang him.
“Yeah?” Jin says.
“This co-worker of mine is a total douchebag,” Kame says. He doesn’t smile, but he doesn’t grimace, either. Jin remembers a time when he would have known exactly what to say in this moment; exactly which wire to cut in order to defuse the bomb. Now he has no idea.
“Yeah,” Jin says. They are quiet for a while and he drifts back and forth on his swing, conscious of Kame’s silence; wary of a brewing storm. If it happens he’ll just be still and take it like a man, he decides.
It doesn’t come. Kame is silent for so long that Jin eventually prods, “Kamenashi?”
“Mm?” Kame throws his cigarette butt to the ground and stubs it out with a twist of his toe. He balances the dog leashes on his knee and grasps the chains of the swing in each hand.
“Aren’t you going to… I don’t know, yell at me, or something?”
Kame rests his chin on his fist. There are dark bags under his bloodshot eyes. Jin can’t look at his face for too long. The sight of his exhausted eyes makes him sick.
“What would that accomplish?” Kame asks after a while. He drops his gaze and reaches into his pocket for another cigarette. He gets one out but then just rolls it between his fingers, staring at it, then slides it behind his ear for later.
“It might make you feel better,” Jin says.
Kame snorts. “I doubt it.”
Jin sighs, pulling at a loose thread in the knee of his jeans. “It might make me feel better.”
“It’s not my job to make you feel better anymore,” Kame says. He picks the leashes up off his knee and starts slowly winding them around his hand, around his wrist, like Jin’s seen Ueda do with his boxing bandages.
“You’re mad,” Jin says.
Kame shakes his head. Jelly runs over and rolls onto her back by their feet. Kame slips his sandal off and rubs her belly with one bare foot. There’s a crown shaped tag on her collar.
“Kame,” Jin prods. He’s sat in this swing peering up at Kame’s cloudy face a dozen times, a hundred. Once when they were very young they’d met here suddenly after not having spoken for months. Jin remembers the relief he’d felt as he prodded Kame into giggles, even though he’d been the one to initiate the fight in the first place. It was almost always him who started things. Kame can’t hold a grudge properly when offered the slightest hint of conciliation. Jin can only hold a grudge as long as it’s not reciprocated; the second it seems like the other person might really hate him back he can’t take it anymore. He knows this about himself, but it doesn’t stop him from feuding with nearly everyone he knows and feeling devastated when they take his bait.
“What do you even care?” Kame asks. He reaches down and picks up Jelly, cradling her to his chest and shuffling his fingers through her messy caramel fur. “You’ve been telling anyone who will listen that I’m just some guy you work with for years. Now I’m not even that.” He meets Jin’s eyes, revealing a wavering thread of hurt beneath his nonchalance. “What does it even matter what I think?”
“I don’t know,” Jin admits. “It just does.” He scuffs his feet in the dirt. "I mean, we're stuck with each other, right?"
Kame is hard and still, impenetrable; Fortress Kamenashi. "Not anymore," he says.
"Jesus, come on," Jin spits. Jelly begins to struggle in Kame's lap and he lets her go, watching as she bounds over to Ran. "Everyone else might be buying this gracious adult shit, but I'm not some reporter shoving my mic in your face and asking for a soundbite. There has to be something you want to say to me." The blankness on Kame's face is faltering; the walls of his fortress tumbling down. "I mean, unless this is what you wanted all along."
Kame lashes out and shoves him so suddenly and forcefully that Jin tumbles backwards off his swing and lands on his ass in the dirt. He barely ducks in time to avoid getting brained by the swing as it shudders and jerks with the force of his ejection. Kame is on his feet, body coiled and rising like an angry cobra.
"Fuck you," he hisses. "God, fuck you. What is it you want from me, exactly? You're going. I'm trying to let you go. Am I happy about it? No, you fucking asshole, but I'm not going to sit here and let you feel like a hero for comforting poor abandoned Kamenashi. Just leave me alone, already."
He tries to storm off, but he's got to stop and collect the dogs and they evade him long enough for Jin to scramble to his feet and grab his elbow. Kame doesn't fight him, just stands there, the ridiculous pink leash dangling uselessly in his fist.
"It's not like that," Jin says. "You think I'm anyone's idea of a hero, right now?"
Kame looks at him, really looks at him for the first time, and the anger that Jin expects isn't there. "Yes," he says, voice breaking, but able, somehow, to stand there and look at Jin with his grief stripped bare. "You're chasing your dreams. That's my idea of a hero, even if I want to punch you in the face."
"I didn't want it to be like this," Jin says.
"I know," Kame says. "But it is like this."
"Talk to me," Jin says. "I'm a grown up, I can take it. Just tell me." His hand slips from Kame's elbow down to his wrist, feeling the bones beneath his wooden beaded bracelets. "Tell me, I deserve it."
Kame tugs his arm away, but he doesn't leave. "I'm not mad," he says.
"Right," Jin sighs. "You're just practically beating the shit out of me because you're so happy--"
"I'm terrified," Kame says, and Jin stops, heart plummeting.
"Oh." Jin scratches his nose, distressed; somehow the idea of Kame being angry had been bearable, but the idea that he's afraid is excruciating. “Kame—“
"What if I can't hold it together? What if everyone starts fighting again, or the fans decide they've had enough and dump their fanclub memberships, or go off and become psycho Arashi fans, or our music suddenly sucks, or Johnny just decides we’re over and we disappear entirely?" he takes a breath, barely able to keep up with himself.
"Kamenashi--" Jin tries to interrupt, but Kame's already started again, words tumbling out of him now.
"What if you go off and get really famous and become a total cokehead? What if the letters accusing me of running you out of town never stop coming? What if they're right?" he heaves a breath. "What do I do if this is all we're ever remembered for?"
Jin's heart seizes at that too; their perfect empire, crumbling into shit. It surprises him how much he still cares; he's spent so long trying to make his break for freedom that he's forgotten that there was a time when this band meant everything to him.
He reaches out and grips Kame's elbows, steps into his space. "Listen to me," he says. "Look at me."
Kame does. They're so close that Jin could kiss him without even moving.
"I know you won't let any of that stuff happen to KAT-TUN," Jin says. "You're Kamenashi."
Kame grimaces. "Kamenashi's tired," he says. Jin ignores him.
"You certainly didn't run me out of town, don't be a fucking idiot." Jin shakes him. "But I couldn't go if you weren't here. Don't ever think I don't know that."
"Jin," Kame chokes.
"It's going to be all right," Jin says.
"I don't want to be KA," Kame whines. "It's stupid."
"You can do it," Jin promises.
"I don't want to," Kame moans, and Jin hugs him for the first time in years. Kame doesn’t hug him back, just stands there in the boa constrictor of Jin’s arms, all stiff spine and rigid shoulders.
"I promise I won't be a cokehead," Jin whispers, and Kame finally laughs into his shoulder and punches him in the back, grabs a fistful of Jin’s t-shirt and holds on tight for a while.
"Get off me, you pervert," Kame says eventually, voice muffled into Jin's shirt. "When the blogs are overrun by stories about our passionate lover's embrace in a public park tomorrow, I hope you know you have no-one to blame but yourself."
"Gross," Jin says, but he clings a moment longer. Truthfully, Kame isn't the only one who is terrified; Jin is scared shitless. Johnny could change his mind at any moment and Jin will be left alone and jobless in the mess of his shattered dreams.
“It’s gonna be ok,” Kame says, probably sensing Jin’s anxiety. He claps Jin on the back and then unfolds himself from Jin’s embrace, taking a step back, and then another, back to the respectful distance they’ve been keeping for years. Jin wants to step back into his space and feel the heat of his body.
Kame holds up his pinky. “Let’s make a promise,” he says.
“What kind of promise?” Jin asks suspiciously. He holds his hand up anyway, pinky hesitantly nearer to Kame’s. He pauses and hovers as he waits for Kame’s explanation, a little afraid he’s about to bind himself to some kind of sentimental KAT-TUN anniversary tour in 25 years or something.
Kame hooks his finger around Jin’s and says, “Let’s both be legends,” he says. “Let’s make all this shit worth it.”
Jin stares back at him and sees the gawky child he once was; remembers, vaguely, making a similar pact right here in this park when they were nothing more than dumb kids; they’d be famous, they’d said. They’d be living gods.
He squeezes his finger around Kame’s and murmurs, “I promise.”
