FIC: "I Believe You Liar" 3/7

[soundczechfic]

The next time they see each other, Jin brings Kame a 1.5 litre bottle of Grape Fanta. He puts it on the kitchen bench next to the stack of DVDs that he also brought along, and they both stare at it, smile tugging the corners of Kame’s mouth.

“Drink it,” Jin says after a minute.

Kame laughs. “I actually hate Grape Fanta,” he confesses, sheepishly.

Jin stares at him. “Why didn’t you ever say anything?” he asks.

“Because I’m sentimental,” Kame says.

“We could have changed the tradition to melon soda or something,” Jin points out. He cracks the seal on the bottle and pours it into a tall glass, which he nudges towards Kame. “Drink it anyway.”

Kame screws up his nose as he reluctantly picks up the glass. The liquid is violently purple and still bubbling like a witch’s brew. He takes a sip and nearly gags; it’s been years since he subjected himself to this. “It’s vile,” he says.

“Drink it all,” Jin demands.

“Fine,” Kame says, retrieving a second glass from the dish rack to pour Jin a serve. “You, too.”

“Fine,” Jin says, and takes a huge, brave gulp. His face crumples the second the liquid hits his tongue, but he swallows. “That’s really disgusting,” he says. “Really, disgusting.”

Kame smiles over the rim of his glass. “You get used to it,” he says. “After the sugar burns away all your tastebuds.”

“Next time I really will get melon soda,” Jin promises. He takes another gulp of the soda as if in solidarity.

“No,” Kame says. “It has to be Grape Fanta.” He snickers. “It reminds me to try not to fight with you.”

Jin falls silent, and Kame feels a bit awkward. They agreed to meet in private this time, where they could keep their still raw wounds to themselves, away from the prying eyes of strangers or even friends. He wonders if it’s even possible for them to go back to the way things were.

No matter what, anything is better than the way things are. Or, he supposes, the way things have been. He can feel the slight change already, tentative and timid, but hopeful.

Jin picks up his stack of DVDs and wanders over to the TV, kneeling and carefully laying them out season by season. He’s forcing Kame to watch season three of Lost. Kame watched the first season and a half when it first started before getting fed up with the convoluted plot and stupid cliffhangers, all polar bears and no real answers. It had been a source of contention between them over the years, because Jin had stuck by the stupid show with his characteristic stubborn loyalty, swearing that it was getting better and better.

“Oh,” Jin says, just as Kame comes over with a couple of bottles of beer and a bowl of Cheese Supreme Doritos that he’d picked up from the American supermarket a few districts over while gripped by a fit of anxiety about this meeting. His fridge is full of food Jin might like, as if they have a week long visit planned and not just an afternoon in front of the TV.

“Oh?” Kame repeats.

Jin is staring down at the DVDs, biting his lip sheepishly. “They’re American DVDs,” he says. “They don’t have subtitles.” They both stare at the row of discs in front of them, and Jin offers, “We could watch something else?”

“I could probably follow it ok…” Kame says, even though this is an outrageous lie. He could barely follow the show’s stupid plot when it was dubbed into Japanese, let alone if everyone is talking in English.

“If you’re sure…” Jin slides a disc into the player and crawls over to the couch, curling up in the corner with his knees crossed at his chest, feet overhanging the ledge of the cushion. Kame slumps at the other end, resting his beer on his knee.

One episode in, it’s clear to Kame that this is going to be a long night, because he has no idea what the hell is going on. Jack is being interrogated by some woman Kame has never seen before, and Kate and Sawyer are in cages but Kame doesn’t know why. Then there are long, boring flashbacks and Jack spends a lot of time looking tense and yelling at some good looking old guy.

Jin keeps glancing at him sidelong, and Kame knows his boredom is showing. As the second episode starts, Jin starts translating it for him, trying and failing to squeeze his explanations into the spaces between the dialogue on screen. It’s easier to figure out what is going on, now, but Kame finds he doesn’t care any more than he did before; it’s more fun to sit there and listen to Jin than it is to watch the DVD.

After a while, Kame realises Jin has given up on accurately translating the action and he’s just started making stuff up, doing funny voices for the characters. Jack becomes a gravel-voiced Yakuza and Sayid seems to have picked up a lazy Osaka inflection, and they don’t talk about the Island or the Others but about how Kate is a babe and Jack is lame.

Kame joins in, pitching his voice high to fill in Sun’s dialogue. They skew wildly off track; according to their translation, most of the episode becomes about Nakamaru’s hair and the hunt for a better wig. This is hilarious enough to get them through three episodes, Kame slumping more and more into the couch. Jin keeps crunching his way through the Doritos. His lips and fingertips are unnaturally orange.

When they can’t bring themselves to sit through another episode, Jin channel surfs. They watch five minutes of an episode of some shoujo anime Kame doesn’t recognise, two minutes of an old Sly Stallone movie, ten minutes of Matsumoto Jun’s new drama, most of which is taken up by Jin mocking his clothes and his hair, about thirty seconds of a news report about the effects of global warming on islands in the Pacific, and then about forty minutes of MTV. The urban charts are playing and Jin is horrified that Kame hasn’t heard of about three quarters of the songs. He keeps looking at him hopefully as new songs come on, saying, “You know this one, right,” then, “HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?” when Kame just stares back at him blankly.

“I don’t have a lot of time to sit around watching MTV,” Kame says irritably. It’s almost 2am and the coffee table is littered with beer bottles and dirty dishes piled up from dinner.

“You sound like my dad,” Jin says. “What do you listen to, then?”

Kame rests his cheek on the couch. He mostly listens to stuff that friends give him, but it’s all kinds of stuff. Beyonce and Death Cab for Cutie and The Temper Trap, Usher and Big Bang and Phoenix. Lady Gaga. Justin Bieber. Mr Children. SNSD. The Beatles. The Carpenters. Kobukuro. Kanye West.

“Stuff,” he says. The song on the TV ends and a new one begins, Jin’s own face filling the screen along with the screech of violins. Gold, gold, gold, yellow gold, gold, gold. Kame smiles crookedly. “I bought this CD.”

Jin is peering at the screen, slightly red-faced. He looks at Kame, perhaps slightly warily. “Yeah?”

“I pre-ordered it online,” Kame says. “Limited edition.” He elbows Jin. “Maybe you could sign it for me.”

Jin’s slightly red face explodes into a full-on blush and he blurts, “You never came to any of the shows.” He scratches his nose. “Everyone else came. Except Ueda.”

Kame stares at him, a bit taken aback. He’d considered it, of course, but he’d never really thought… “Everyone else was invited,” he says.

“I didn’t want to invite you,” Jin mumbles, “but I thought you might come.”

On screen, Jin bobs around in his yellow hoodie. Kame says, “I didn’t think you wanted me to.”

“I didn’t either,” Jin says, “… but maybe I did.”

Kame slumps on the couch. He can’t apologise, but he says, “Okay.”

They lapse into quietness again, and Jin switches the channel to Animal Planet, which is mercifully showing a documentary about baby tigers, all fuzzy and orange and uncontroversial. They both moan over how cute they are for a while, and then Jin yawns and looks at all the beers.

“Is it ok if I crash here?” he asks, scratching behind his ear. “I’ve had too much to drink.”

Once upon a time he wouldn’t have asked, he’d have just gotten up and stumbled into Kame’s room and passed out on his bed, hogging all the blankets and pillows so Kame had to burrow close to him for warmth. Kame wonders if they’ll ever get to that point, rather than this careful awkwardness, circling each other at arm’s length.

“Yeah,” Kame says. “There’s a spare room.”

He finds Jin some clean towels and a toothbrush. Jin picks the toothbrush up from the top of the pile and stares at it. It’s a Pocket Doltz, one of a box of fifty that the company had sent over to him not long after the ad was released. He’d given away a dozen, maybe, and the rest have just been sitting there. He’d been tempted to give Jin a pale pink one, but he’d settled on gold.

“This is a really fancy hotel,” Jin says, still staring at the toothbrush. “Are there mints on my pillows, too?”

“Shut up,” Kame says. “Goodnight.”

He turns to leave, and Jin says, “Hey,” so he pauses in the doorway.

“This was fun,” Jin says, standing there awkwardly in his thin white t-shirt and boxers, clutching his toothbrush and his towels.

“Yeah,” Kame says.

“Goodnight,” Jin says, and Kame slips out of the room and goes to bed.

—

Jin isn’t entirely sure how to bring up the subject with Josh, who had never really known a time when Jin considered Kame anything but an uptight, shallow loser he was forced to work with. Josh is peripherally aware that they used to be tight, but Jin has gone out of his way to avoid filling in the details and Josh never seemed that interested anyway.

It’s weird, now, to sit across from him and say, “I want you to try and get on with Kamenashi.”

Josh blinks. “I thought he was like your sworn nemesis or something,” he says, sipping his mocha frappe through a straw.

Jin makes a sheepish face and pushes his fries around on his plate. “I might have misread the situation.”

Josh starts to laugh. “Why do I think that’s like a total understatement?” he asks wryly. Jin makes a face and throws a fry at him. “Whatever, man,” Josh says. “You know I got your back no matter what.”

Jin grunts and bumps his fist against Josh’s, then shoves a handful of fries in his mouth all at once, chewing with his mouth open because it grosses Josh out.

“So what happened?” Josh asks, when Jin’s swallowed his disgusting mouthful of food.

Jin shrugs, unsure how to answer without betraying Kame in the process. Peter might have thought it was obvious, but Jin’s pretty sure Kame would freak out if Jin just went around blurting out his secrets all over the place. Jin has kept some of Kame’s secrets since they were kids, never sharing them even at the height of his own animosity. He’s not about to start blurting them out now.

“It was just a misunderstanding,” Jin says. “A really stupid misunderstanding.”

Josh’s eyebrows lift, but he says, “Ok, it’s a secret.” He steals one of Jin’s fries. “I’ll do my best, but I dunno, I probably didn’t make the greatest first impression.”

Jin shoves the plate away, stuffed. “He’ll try,” he says. “He always tries.”

—

A few days after Jin crashed in the guest room at Kame’s house – in a bed that had soft, warm sheets that smelled like lavender – he gets an email at 5am with a photo of Kame’s manager fast asleep on the train, mouth hanging wide open and glasses askew.

5AM and I’m on the shink already, Kame says. I want to go back to bed.

i just got in bed, Jin types. It is Sunday morning. sucker!!!

Motherfucker!, Kame replies in English, which surprises Jin into a bark of laughter that makes Kusano grumble and shift on the other side of the bed. Jin can’t remember the last time he slept in his bed alone.

i know u r but what am i? Jin says, rolling onto his side, away from Kusano.

A motherfucker, Kame says. Jin imagines him sitting in his reserved seat on the shinkansen, hair morning-messy and eyes hidden by sunglasses.

u r the motherfucker, Jin counters.

No, Kame says.

YES, Jin says.

I don’t do pussy, Kame says, and then, less than twenty seconds later, when Jin is still laughing, Typing that really grossed me out.

LOL LOL LOL, Jin types. LOL LOL LOL LOL LOL!

I woke manager up laughing, Kame says. He’s grumpy.

that guy is always grumpy, Jin says. he needs to get laid.

GROSS, Kame says. GROSS, GROSS, GROSS.

mb u could offer him sexual favours, Jin says.

You’re disgusting, Kame says.

but he wants u, Jin is trying to muffle his laughter in his pillow, but Kusano gets up and grabs a pillow, giving him a dirty look and stomping out of the room, probably to crash in the other room with Josh and Ken.

Gross.

he is hot for kamenashi, Jin says. wants ur hot body.

Stop, Kame says.

he wants to plow ur juicy boyhole, Jin types.

Nothing for a minute, and then, Maybe he wants me to plow his.

Jin screws up his nose. that is disgusting, Kame.

I can taste his sweet lovejuice, Kame says.

STOP BEING DISGUSTING, Jin says.

I’m going to take him for a ride on the Kamenashi Express.

Jin just stares down at the phone, feeling prudish, now, even though he knows Kame is just totally unwilling to lose whatever stupid game they’re playing. He feels backed into a corner, because he can’t help picturing Kame sleeping with that gross old man but he doesn’t want to lose either. He tries to think of something he can say, but just as he’s about to give up, Kame mails again.

That’s as far as I can take it, he says.

i think u secretly want him, Jin replies, back on solid ground.

I wouldn’t sleep with that guy if you paid me a billion dollars, Kame says. He smells like cauliflower.

poor guy, Jin says. He rolls into the bed, stretching out. He’s starting to get really tired.

I think his taste runs more towards trashy girls, Kame says. Like yours.

fuck off! Jin says. im into sophisticated n intelligent women.

Ok, Kame types, condescension dripping from those two letters.

i am! Jin insists.

I’ll remind you of this next time I see you doing body shots off a swimsuit model, Kame says. Jin only has a vague memory of the last time he did bodyshots off anyone, but it could have been any one of the times he made Kame come out to a club with his friends and then ignored him all night. He wonders if Kame felt jealous, or if all that was over.

dont discriminate against swimsuit models, Jin says. she mighta been a swimsuit model + a lawyer.

Uh huh, Kame says, clearly unconvinced.

Jin feels sluggish and sleepy, but he still manages to type, or a doctor. swimsuit-sensei.

Your ideal woman, Kame says, then a second later, Gotta go.

mail me later, Jin says, and then falls asleep.

—

Jin had thought, when they agreed to try to be friends again, that they would eventually have to accept that things could never be how they were and settle into whatever scraps were left over after the complete demolition of their relationship. It only takes a couple of days of exchanging emails for him to realise that things probably could be how they were, given a little time, and that’s a bit terrifying.

Jin is someone who takes friendship extremely seriously, so he is not altogether surprised to realise that he has apparently missed Kame all this time; that some pitiful little voice inside has been pining for years, emitting such a low and constant whine that he hadn’t even noticed it until it came to an abrupt stop.

His mother notices right away. He goes to his parent’s place for dinner and he’s only been sitting on the couch playing with the dogs for a few minutes when she says, “Did something good happen?”

He doesn’t know why he feels shy, but his cheeks go a bit pink as he says, “Why?”

“You’re in a good mood,” she says.

“Am I?” Jin asks. He scratches his nose and then picks up the squeaky thing, squeezing it to make the dogs go mental. Diversion is key.

“Did you meet a girl?” she asks, undeterred. That’s enough to sour his mood a bit; he’s gone off Kelly altogether because she keeps asking him about when Kame is coming back to the club, and so far nobody has stepped in to fill her place. Jin likes being in love. It’s a bit sad to be left without any prospects at all.

“No,” he says.

Then she says, “Have you really been hanging out with Kazuya?” and Jin squirms.

“A bit,” he says, playing it cool, trying to ignore the stupid sappy look on his mother’s face; she’s smiling so wide he can barely see her eyes, but he’s pretty sure they’re a bit misty. “It’s not a big deal.”

It is a big deal.

“Right,” she says.

“It’s not,” he insists.

“I know!” she replies, but she’s still got that look on her face that makes him want to puke.

“You’re making it weird,” he complains, picking up Pin and burying his face in his fur. The dog keeps trying to turn around and lick Jin’s face, but he can’t reach so he settles for licking Jin’s sleeve instead.

“Bring him over soon,” she says, “It has been such a long time.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jin promises, reluctantly, and is relieved when she heads back into the kitchen and leaves him alone.

—

Kame has been in Fukuoka for three days, hanging out with the Softbank Hawks as they prepare for a tough game against the Carps. The producers are looking for a kind of day-in-the-life, behind-the-scenes vibe, so all Kame really has to do most of the time is sit around and chat to the players in their down time. This leaves him with nothing to do most of the time, and he finds himself spending most of it emailing Jin. Jin keeps sending him stupid photos of his friends and his food, the sort of mundane messages you send when you’re really just trying to keep in touch. It’s easier, somehow, to communicate like this; when they don’t have to see each other face to face.

He’d always thought that if they really tried to fix things between them, they’d find they were now so different that they couldn’t really make it work. The kids they had been might have been the perfect combination, but that now, as adults, they would surely struggle to find common ground. Maybe the best they’d ever be able to do would be to look back together with the shared warmth of nostalgia.

Reading Jin’s stupid emails, though, Kame starts to have hope that maybe underneath all the differences, beneath their strange adult faces, they’re still the same people underneath. They are rearranging themselves to click into place, the perfect fit.

For Kame, who honestly thought he might die from the wounds that were inflicted the last time they were torn apart – wounds that were self-inflicted, but gaping wide open and gushing blood anyway – the prospect is terrifying, and he wonders, sometimes, if he is unwise to put himself in this position again.

Then Jin emails him just to tell him that the curry he is eating is delicious, and Kame thinks, fuck it, and sends back a picture of his burger in reply.

—

Jin surprises himself by offering to pick Kame up at the station when he gets back into town. It’s not even like Jin didn’t have anything to do – he actually had to cancel plans with Jimmy to do it, and he hasn’t seen that guy in like five months. It’s not like Kame didn’t already have a ride, either. Jin assumes that his manager was going to arrange a driver anyway. Could still arrange a driver, if Jin were to call and cancel.

He doesn’t. He actually shows up early and has to drive around the block a few times, joining the steady stream of taxis pulling out of the station. Eventually he gets a message from Kame letting him know he’s just stepped off the train and he pulls around to the gate where they had agreed to meet, parking illegally by the curb. A young employee comes over to furiously try and wave him on, but when he rolls down the window and asks her to just let him stay for a moment, her cheeks flush pink and she stutters her agreement, bowing. Jin supposes the news will be out within hours; Akanishi chaffeurs Kamenashi around Tokyo.

A second later, Kame strides briskly out the door, duffel bag slung over his shoulder. He throws the duffel in back and grins as he climbs in the front seat. Jin feels himself grinning back, stupidly.

“Yo,” Kame greets as they pull away, stripping off the hat and glasses that do nothing to hide his identity anyway.

“‘Sup?” Jin asks. He remembers riding around with Kame less than two months ago, feeling tense and angry at the sight of his profile out of the corner of his eye; feeling, somehow, betrayed by his stylish haircut and the frenzied collection of bangles and bracelets on his wrist. He’s a bit sheepish to realise that all the things he thought he hated about Kame are somehow acceptable, now that he knows there aren’t a million things that Kame hates about him.

“I’m starving,” Kame says, slouching really low in the seat, knees propped up against the dash, feet kind of dangling below. He reaches out to skip the song – to skip Lil Wayne! – and Jin slaps his hand away but Kame somehow darts in with the other hand and presses the button, much to Jin’s indignation. Chamillionaire takes over and Kame surprises Jin by singing along, loudly and badly.

“How do you even know this song?” Jin asks. “I thought you have better things to do than sit around watching MTV.” He makes his voice sound whiny and nasal, a pretty good approximation of Kame.

“Koki is always playing it,” Kame says, not at all bothered. He digs through his bag and pulls out a bottle of water. Jin pulls up at the lights.

“Does he still hate me?” he asks after a moment. It comes out before he can think about it and then just sits there, a bomb about to explode.

Kame is still, water bottle open and halfway to his lips. It just hangs there. “Yeah,” he says, after a minute. “I think so.” He sips the water, twists the lid back into place. “We don’t talk about it.”

Jin tries to swallow this with his chin up, but something inside him cracks with a dismal pop. “Fucker,” he says, a bit sadly.

Kame looks out the window, like he’s trying really hard not to comment. He runs his hand through his hair and Jin says, “What?”

“It’s not like you’ve done much to try and get him to forgive you,” Kame says. “Have you even tried to talk to him about it?”

“I was just gonna give him some time,” Jin says.

“You wussed out,” Kame replies. He keeps turning the water bottle over and over in his hands, the contents sloshing around inside.

“Yeah,” Jin agrees. “Are you?” he asks. “Angry about it.”

Kame doesn’t reply for a long time. He keeps looking out the window, face strange and strained. Jin waits and waits and then says, “Kamenashi?”

Kame sighs. “Why are you doing this?” He makes a scrunchy face. “Are you trying to pick a fight?”

“No!” Jin says defensively. “Aren’t we supposed to. I don’t know. Talk about it at some point? Isn’t that what people do?”

Kame sighs. “Why?” he asks. “I don’t want to.” He squeezes his bottle and the plastic caves in a little on one side. “We’ve been doing so well.”

They drive in silence for a while and Jin finally confesses, “Too well. It freaks me out.” He flexes his fingers on the steering wheel, focusing on the contraction of each muscle. “It seems too easy.”

Kame laughs and twists in his seat, cheek lying against headrest. “Easy? It took us five years to get to this point. It’s not even like we’re swapping friendship bracelets and becoming blood brothers for life.” His face grows sober. “Look, if you want to rethink this whole thing…”

Jin shouts, “NO,” then makes a face and says, “I just want to know if it’s going to come back to haunt me at some point.”

“At some point,” Kame says, “but not right now.” He smiles at Jin, a little shyly. “I’d rather be happy than angry.”

“At some point,” Jin repeats.

“Yeah,” Kame says, looking forward. “Maybe.”

—

They go to an izakaya near Kame’s place to eat. All the private rooms are taken, so they settle into a secluded table in the corner, where it’s dark and shadowy and people will only notice them if they’re really looking. Even though they’re still supposed to be trying to get caught, it seems they have both been overtaken by the same reluctance to be seen. Whatever is happening between them is still private and fragile, and Jin is worried about what will happen in the face of too much public scrutiny. For the same reason, when Josh mails to ask where he’s at, Jin pretends he hasn’t seen it. They just need a little more time, first. To find their feet.

Food is a comfortingly familiar ritual. Kame is still insane about tiny, insignificant details of the meal; he refuses to touch the mini spring rolls Jin orders because they’re a bit soggy and “look like baby’s fingers”. Jin still finds himself trying to force feed Kame, even though he longer seems to need to. It’s kind of delightful to see Kame stuffing his face with karaage. The little plates pile up on their table faster than the staff can clear them.

Kame is just telling him about what his brothers are up to when a shadow falls over the table, and Jin glances up to see a stout, plain man staring down at them. He’s wearing a crisp white shirt and a black tie with a black cardigan.

“Can we get some more beer?” Jin says, but the guy just stares at him and Jin scratches the back of his ear awkwardly.

“Kazuya,” the guy says, and Jin looks at Kame to see the slight stiffness in his posture, his carefully pleasant face. Barely anyone calls Kame that; only his family and Taguchi, and occasionally Jin when he was feeling particularly affectionate. Way back when.

“Oh,” Kame says. He bows slightly. “Hi.” He gestures between Jin and the interloper. “Akanishi, you remember Hitoshi-san.”

No, Jin wants to say, but instead he says, “Ah, of course…” He nods at the guy, noting the slight sheen of sweat at his temple and the serious set of his jaw. “Long time no see.”

“Hello,” the guy says, a bit more curtly than Jin really feels he deserves, then looks at Kame. “How have you been?”

“Oh, you know,” Kame laughs nervously. “The usual…”

The guy just keeps staring at Jin. He prickles uncomfortably, shoving a prawn in his mouth just to have something to do. He tries to think back to when he has met this guy before, but comes up with nothing; maybe he met him when he was drunk some time and said something terrible to him. Probability: high.

“How have you been?” Kame asks the guy – Hitoshi – after a moment of strained silence.

“Fine,” Hitoshi says, still curt, and then, “I should let you get back to your dinner.”

“It was nice seeing you,” Kame says lamely.

“Yes,” the guy says, his stark expression unchanged. “Take care, Kazuya.”

He just nods at Jin, and then he disappears, back into the restaurant, maybe down the stairs and out onto the street. Jin watches him go, then turns his gaze back to Kame, who has folded his arms on the table and buried his face in them.

“That was awkward,” Kame says, voice muffled in his sleeves.

“Who was that?” Jin asks, pouring Kame another glass of beer. “Your accountant?”

Kame peeks up from his arms and says, “That’s my ex,” he says. “You’ve met him before. Twice.”

Jin blinks. He probably should have guessed as much from the conversation, but it is impossible to believe that that guy, that plain, boring little guy with his pudgy face and his lousy salaryman haircut could ever interest someone like Kamenashi Kazuya.

“I don’t remember,” Jin says.

“Well,” Kame says, sitting up, finally, and picking up his beer stein, throwing back half of it in one gulp. “He certainly remembers you.”

“You know, if that’s your ‘type’, then I don’t know if I’m flattered about your feelings for me anymore,” Jin snipes, wondering a second too late if he is breaking an unspoken agreement not to talk about Kame’s unrequited love; it might be a subject they’re better off avoiding.

Kame just narrows his eyes, though, glaring at Jin witheringly. “He’s a very talented artist,” he says defensively. “Don’t be so superficial.”

“He looks like a salaryman.” Jin tries to imagine them together; Kame’s delicate beauty is a total mismatch to that guy’s stubborn ordinariness. His brain will not supply the appropriate imagery.

“He’s cute,” Kame says. “In his own way.”

Jin sips his beer. “Why does he hate me so much?”

Kame makes an awkward face. “He was always jealous of you, I guess.” He keeps pushing the piece of salmon he’s supposed to be eating around on his plate. “He probably wasn’t very happy to find us together.”

Jin rolls up his sleeves, resting his elbows on the table. “You told him?”

“No,” Kame says. He shoves the salmon in his mouth, finally, and they are silent while he chews and swallows. Then he says, “We were together for a little under two years. He could tell… something, I guess.” He puts his chopsticks down and pushes his plate away abruptly. “I don’t think he could tell how hopelessly unrequited it was.”

Jin’s heart throbs in that way it does whenever he remembers how badly he has let Kame down; he spent much of their lives suffocating Kame with his zealous overprotection, so it is a bit brutal, now, to realise that he is the one who has inflicted the most damage.

“Or how over,” Kame adds after a minute. “No matter what I told him, he’d never believe me.”

They look at each other, and Jin says, “You’ll tell me, right?”

Kame raises his eyebrows, waiting for Jin to continue his thought.

“If it’s ever… not over. You’ll tell me.” The silence between them is uncomfortable in that way that serious emotional things always are when you have too much time to think them through. “You won’t just disappear on me again.”

They stare at each other for a long moment and then Kame says, “It’s over.”

“Kame,” Jin says, unhappily.

Kame smiles at him easily and says, “Honestly, Akanishi, I was just a stupid kid.”

Jin swallows, remembering that serious kid with his old man’s ways. “No, you weren’t.”

“I know,” Kame says, half smile lifting his lip, “but let’s pretend I was.”

—

Kame is surprised by how much time Jin clears for him. When they’d been hanging out for professional reasons, Jin had haggled over every moment; he’d pretty much always had somewhere better to be, and he’d made Kame work for every minute they spent together.

Now, Jin is being generous with his time, dropping by to have coffee when Kame can make a break in his schedule, sometimes waiting until the very early hours of the morning to eat dinner with Kame on his way home from work. They get caught by paparazzi in conbinis and coffee shops, always alone and ill-concealed, and their names are all over the news again. They have always been more powerful in combination than they could ever be alone. A blurry photograph of them looking in the window at a pet store knocks a story about Ryo’s drunken appearance in Tower Records to the third page. The Ryo story isn’t true, but according to Jin, he’s still kind of pissed off that his bad behaviour is considered less consequential than “AkaKame coo over cute animals”.

Kame finds himself saving the stories he sees, tucking them into the box in his cupboard that still holds the t-shirt they made in Okinawa and the dog-eared script from Gokusen 2 that Jin had defaced with scribbled cartoons, a ton of faded polaroid photographs and the movies they’d made of themselves in Jin’s childhood bedroom when they were first learning to harmonise.

Sometimes, at the very beginning of their feud, Kame would get those movies out and watch them and drink himself into a stupor, the sight of Jin’s grinning face like a bomb exploding in his heart. You can do it, chibi Jin kept saying, because Kame would rewatch it over and over like a deranged lunatic. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.

Sometimes, it felt like he couldn’t.

He imagines if things ever fall apart between them he’ll dig these articles out in the same way; obsessively cataloguing the blurry smiles on Jin’s faces, the places where their bodies touch in each photo. Reminding himself that for a little while, he’d really stood there next to Jin, elbows bumping. Feeling happy. Feeling like himself again, maybe for the first time in five years.

For now he puts them in the box with the other artefacts of his happiness and tries not to think about how terrified he is of the possibility of needing them again.

—

Kame has always been late with birthday gifts. Always. Even before their careers really blew up, he’d been totally hopeless at giving gifts on time. For most people, the gifts would trickle in weeks or sometimes months after their birthday, always almost nonsensically considerate and lavish considering their lateness.

Jin’s gifts had always been on time, though. Jin knows that it is probably because of the fuss he would kick up if Kame had been late, but he doesn’t care. Kame had always gone out of his way to look after him. Right up until the troubles started.

On Jin’s 27th birthday, he arranges to have the day off work because he’s honestly almost suicidally depressed at the idea of turning 27; it sounds like such a strange, adult age, like he should have the mess that is his life all sorted out by now, maybe with a wife and a second kid on the way. 27 year old Akanishi Jin should be so much more than Jin feels he is. He should have a short haircut and a sensible beige sedan and pick his kids up from kindergarten while the wife cooks dinner. Jin doesn’t have any of those things and refuses to acknowledge that the things he does have aren’t so bad either.

When the doorbell chimes at 9:30am, he almost doesn’t answer it, but that is what stupid childish Akanishi Jin would do, not the actions of the cool, mature man he is determined to turn into overnight, so he drags himself out of bed and answers the door in his dressing gown, the sight of Kame dealing a fresh blow to his self esteem; out of all of his friends, Kame is the most mature, the kind of friend that a respectable adult should have. Kame is carrying coffee and fruit and pastries from an expensive French patisserie in the fancy suburb he lives in. He’s wearing a designer blazer and a silk scarf and it looks like he just shaved. Jin runs a hand through his sleep-matted hair sheepishly as Kame pushes his sunglasses up onto his head and grins hello.

“Happy birthday,” Kame says. He hands Jin the food and then leans out of the doorway for a moment, reappearing with a gigantic cardboard box. Kame needs both his arms to carry it. It’s all squished at the corners and there are bits of packing tape stuck on it at random intervals, along with labels like MASTER BEDROOM CUPBOARD and STUDY ROOM in hastily scrawled permanent marker. In one corner, Jin’s own name is written in tiny English letters.

“What is that?” Jin asks as Kame drops it on the coffee table with a heavy thud. The top of the box is taped up and Kame pulls his car keys out of his pocket and uses them to slice it open in one neat, efficient movement. Then he reaches out and takes one of the coffees from Jin’s hand and sits cross legged in front of the box, gesturing for Jin to do the same.

“It’s every gift I’ve bought but not given you since 2005,” Kame says, in a kind of matter-of-fact way that makes it almost seem as if that isn’t totally insane.

Jin flips the top of the box open as he sits next to Kame, their knees bumping together. He sifts through the contents; some are elaborately wrapped with ribbons and gift cards, others are just in the plastic bags they probably came in. Some are labelled with the year or occasion for which they were intended, carefully printed on post-its in Kame’s neatest handwriting; Jin Birthday ’07 or Congratulations Jan ’10.

It’s bizarre because it isn’t as if Kame hasn’t given him gifts for the past five years; he has usually eventually gotten something for his birthday, or even Christmas, even if it showed up a month late or seemed kind of generic, as if Kame had bought identical gifts in bulk for a dozen different people. The idea that he’d been collecting these gifts the whole time doesn’t make sense. Why go to all the effort of buying them and never actually give them to him?

“Sometimes it was because we weren’t talking, so it seemed weird to give you a gift,” Kame says, when Jin asks. “Sometimes it seemed like whatever I bought was too much, and you’d think it was creepy…” He rests his chin on his hand as Jin pulls out a box that is wrapped in handmade gold filigree paper, with a slick black satin ribbon. “Sometimes I just happened to see things you’d like and I’d get it for you and then not know how to give it to you. ‘Hey, Akanishi, I know I’m dead to you now but I really think you’ll like these cufflinks’. It seemed sort of pathetic, so I just… kept them.”

“Which isn’t pathetic at all,” Jin comments.

“Shut up and open your ridiculous backlog of gifts,” Kame says dryly, sipping at his coffee.

The box contains all sorts of gifts; at least four designer t-shirts in varying styles and sizes, an expensive watch, the cufflinks Kame mentioned, which are jewel-encrusted and shaped like dollar signs. There are souvenirs from different places Kame has been, France and Korea and different cities in Japan. There’s a GPS system voiced by Snoop Dogg that is practically useless to him because it was designed for navigation in the US. A coffee table book about vintage pornography. A sophisticated electronic dictionary. A Giant plushie from Doraemon that looks like it came from a UFO catcher. An autographed Usher CD. Various necklaces. A book about Barack Obama. T-shirts from the KAT-TUN tours in which Jin did not participate. An antique metronome. A handmade leather wallet with Jin’s name stamped into the front. A copy of the very first magazine they ever appeared in together. A package of some obscure herbal medication that claimed it would boost your immune system. A bedazzled phone in the shape of a skull. An expensive looking bottle of French wine from the year of Jin’s birth. A round-faced signet ring emblazoned with an ornate gold A. A fluffy black coat that is at least four years out of style. A handful of photographs. Gift vouchers for golfing lessons. A purple beanie almost identical to the one stuffed in the back of his drawer. So much evidence that Kame hasn’t ever really left him behind.

“This is so creepy,” Jin tries to say as he sifts through the bounty, but his voice cracks on the words and he realises with surprise that he is getting choked up, lump rising insistently in his throat.

“Shut up,” Kame says self-consciously. Jin reaches out a bit desperately and hugs him before he can really think about it, arms gracelessly looping around his neck and holding tight. For a minute, Kame’s muscles are taught within the overbearing pressure of Jin’s headlock, but then he relaxes and claps a hand on Jin’s back in the manly, non-committal way that bros are supposed to. It surprises Jin, because Kame never hugged him like a bro before. He squeezes tighter and Kame breaks, fists his hand in the back of Jin’s t-shirt, breath hitching.

Jin holds on a moment longer than is strictly socially acceptable, feeling a dizzying rush of relief; it’s a bit like the feeling of returning home after a too-long absence, looking around and realising almost everything is more or less the same as you left it, even if it feels like it should be totally different. In Jin’s arms, Kame’s shoulders are much broader than Jin remembers, firm muscles where Jin remembers pointy, fragile bone, but he still just sits there and lets Jin hug it out. He still feels different than anybody else.

Jin coughs as he pulls away, feeling his cheeks flush pink and his breath stutter. “Thanks,” he says sheepishly. “I mean, it’s ok. I guess.” He pokes the pile of presents and a baby blue Tiffany’s box tumbles to the floor. “Did you even get me a new present?”

Kame scowls, but his eyes are bright and he looks happy, which makes Jin feel like he might cry again. He reminds himself that he was feeling mopey and emotional before Kame even got here and that he’s not just turning into some kind of sentimental loser because Kame collected thousands of dollars worth of gifts for him like a deranged stalker.

“You’re so spoiled,” Kame says, but he digs into his blazer pocket and hands Jin a long white envelope. Inside are season tickets for box seats at the soccer.

“I bet you didn’t even have to pay for these,” Jin says. “You’re so stingy.”

“I guess I’ll just give them to Nakamaru then,” Kame says, reaching out to try and pull the tickets out of Jin’s hands. Jin squawks and grips them with almost superhuman strength, wrestling them away and clutching them protectively to his chest.

“They’re mine,” Jin hisses. “You gave them to me.”

“Fuck, that hurt,” Kame complains, blowing on his finger where Jin has apparently gouged a hole in it in his panic.

“Sorry,” Jin says, not feeling particularly apologetic. Just then, Josh wanders out of the spare room, hair sticking up on one side of his head and face all creased from the sheets. He is bleary eyed and stumbling.

“You’re so noisy,” he moans, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “I’m trying to sleep, dude.”

Kame is suddenly all tense and coiled like a wary cat, self consciously swiping his hair out of his eyes and adjusting the cuff of his shirt. It’s the first time he’s seen Josh since they made up and Jin feels a bit nervous too. He doesn’t want to examine why.

“It’s my birthday,” Jin says. “Kame got up early and brought me breakfast.”

“Good for Kame,” Josh yawns, collapsing on the couch. His skinny white ankles peek out the bottom of his sweats.

“Kame’s actually already been at work for four hours,” Kame says wryly.

Josh finally blinks into focus and sees the explosion of gifts on the coffee table. He just stares at it for ages and then shrugs and picks up the old porno book, murmuring, “Sweet!” without asking for an explanation.

They all sit in silence for a while while Josh leafs through the book, and Jin wonders how it is possible that the happy atmosphere he’d felt a few minutes ago could have dissipated so quickly. He keeps looking between his friends and trying to figure out how to build a bridge between them; it reminds him a bit of the very earliest days when he started hanging out with Pi, when they’d all sit around Jin’s house and Jin would kill himself trying to force them to talk to each other and not just to him. Obviously, in the long run, that worked out, but Jin’s not quite sure how to get Kame and Josh to go from politely awkward silence to sharing their deepest darkest secrets without orchestrating a revival of his feud with Kame and Jin isn’t sure he wants to go that far. Or that it would work if he did. Josh isn’t exactly a good listener.

Jin is still trying to think of a way to kickstart a conversation all three of them will enjoy when Kame looks at his watch, drains the rest of his coffee, and says, “I have to get back to work.”

Jin’s head snaps up. “Huh?” he says, but Kame is already rising gracefully to his feet. Jin tries to stand as quickly and ends up smacking his shin on the coffee table. “You’re not staying?”

Kame blinks at him, looking at bit guilt-stricken at the disappointed whine Jin can hear in his own voice. He picks up the satchel he’d left by the end of the couch and says, “I’ve got a full day.”

“But it’s my birthday,” Jin says childishly. He follows Kame to the door and resists the urge to tug on his sleeve plaintively.

“Bye,” Josh calls from the couch, still absorbed in a 1950s centrefold.

“Can you at least come out tonight?” Jin asks. “We’re hitting the clubs.”

“I’ll try,” Kame says.

“Kameeeeee,” Jin whines.

“Okay, okay,” Kame says. “I’ll call you when I get off. It’ll probably be late.”

“It’s okay,” Jin says, grinning. “I’ll probably be drunk.”

Kame rolls his eyes.

—

By the time Kame joins the party, Jin is already totally wasted and hanging affectionately from anyone who can support his body weight. At first, he doesn’t seem to notice that Kame has arrived, and whenever Kame tries to attract his attention someone moves between them to wish him a happy birthday. Kame gives up and goes to get a beer instead.

Apparently, he just missed Pi, according to Ryo, who slings an arm around Kame’s neck and murmurs too close to his face, his breath beery and humid on his cheek. Then he says, “Be my wingman,” and manhandles Kame over to the other end of the bar where two blonde girls in vaguely matching minidresses are looking out over the dancefloor.

Ryo slurs something in English that Kame doesn’t understand but assumes is offensive based only on the politely appalled looks on the girl’s faces. He smiles at them apologetically and says, in halting English, “I am sorry, he is drunk.”

The girls have to lean in close to introduce themselves in equally halting Japanese. Ryo keeps trying to shift his weight off Kame’s shoulder and onto the taller girl’s, but Kame locks an arm around his waist to keep him from moving and he eventually subsides, resting his chin on Kame’s shoulder. Occasionally he whispers into his ear, messages that Kame is supposed to pass on, but Kame ignores them because it’s all stuff like, “ask if they’re up for a threesome” and “are her boobs real?” and Kame isn’t all that keen on getting slapped.

Kame keeps glancing around plaintively, hoping to see one of Jin’s seemingly endless platoon of friends who can either take Ryo off his hands or adequately converse with these girls in English, but help is not forthcoming. Then, suddenly, a shove and Ryo’s dead weight on his left arm is joined by an equal load on his right, and Jin’s voice is in his ear.

“KAME,” he shouts, body sprawled along Kame’s side and his hand in Ryo’s hair, holding the group of them together like a deformed three headed beast. “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?”

“Right here,” Kame replies. “For ages.”

When he twists his head, Jin’s face is millimetres away, cheeks flushed and eyes sparkling. His hair is sweat-soaked and sticking up on one side. He’s a mess. It makes Kame’s heart skip a beat.

“Well, you’re here now,” Jin says, not seeming to process that Kame has been here the whole time. He shoves at Ryo’s shoulder and says, “Get off, dumbass.” To Kame, he says, “Come on,” as if he has been unforgivably dawdling.

“Ok,” Kame says, and then Jin is tugging him around by the wrist, introducing him to about a billion drunken gaijin, half of whom Kame had already met anyway. Jin is mostly introducing him in English, and Kame doesn’t understand much of it, but he gets the gist that Jin is exhibiting him as one of his oldest and best friends, a guest of honour; the idea makes Kame almost embarrassingly happy. He smiles at them a bit self consciously, glad that the music is too loud in this part of the club to even try to converse. He has always been great with strangers, but these aren’t strangers, really. Their opinion matters to him, even if only in relation to Jin’s.

Jin introduces him to Peter twice, but pulls him away before they can do much more than say hello; as they walk away, he keeps warning Kame that Peter wants to get in his pants and seems determined to protect his virtue, which he finds kind of hilarious.

“You can do better,” Jin hisses, arm slung protectively around his neck.

—

A little after 4am, Kame herds Jin and all his drunken friends home, not trusting them to make the four block walk home on their own without getting beat up or arrested. Jin hangs on Kame the whole way back, singing happy birthday to himself at the top of his lungs. When they get to his building, Kame has to dig through his pocket to get his key out because Jin is being uncooperative. He keeps giggling and slapping Kame’s hand away, accusing him, without bite, of trying to cop a feel.

“Do you need to puke?” Kame asks, holding him up as he toes his sneakers off just inside the door.

“‘M’not that drunk,” Jin insists, but his hand mashes Kame’s hair into his face as he tries to stand upright again, so Kame doesn’t really believe him. Behind them, the five or so guys that followed them back from the club spill into the apartment and make themselves at home; this, Kame can tell, is something of a routine to them.

Jin stumbles into his room and collapses on the bed. As he falls, he nudges Kusano, who is already curled up half asleep. “Get off,” Jin slurs. “Kazu and I are gonna have a slumber party.”

Kame, who had been unaware he was expected to stay over, says, “Huh?” but then Jin grabs his arm and pulls and Kame falls onto the bed just as Kusano is crawling off it.

“Like old times.” Jin nuzzles into his pillow, then calls for Kusano to shut the door as he leaves.

For a minute, Kame just sits totally still. ‘Like old times’ means something totally different for him than it does for Jin; for Jin, they’d always just been two totally platonic friends sleeping squished together in a tiny bed, sometimes whispering secrets in the dead of night in a not at all gay way. For Kame, it had required an almost draconian control of his libido, a self-denial more appropriate for a medieval monk than a seventeen year old boy. He’s not a horny teenager anymore, but he’s also not a saint, and for a minute he wants to tell Jin that and storm out in a huff.

Then Jin rolls onto his back and burps loudly, and Kame thinks his libido might not be such a problem after all.

“Turn off the lights,” Jin whines, tugging his belt free of the loops and tossing it across the room. As Kame gets up and switches the lights off Jin squirms out of his jeans and under the covers, still wearing his hoodie. In the dark, Kame steps out of his own jeans and flannel shirt, slipping into bed in his boxers and undershirt. After a few minutes, Jin sits up and pulls his hoodie and t-shirt over his head, throwing it on the floor. In the moonlight filtering through the window, Kame can see the smooth skin on his arms and his pale, vulnerable looking chest. He looks untouched. Kame closes his eyes and buries his face in his pillow, pulling the covers all the way to his chin.

They lie in the dark and Kame listens to the reassuring puff of Jin’s breath, deep and steady with a slight wheeze from all the chain smoking. Just as he’s about to sleep, Jin speaks, so quietly that at first Kame thinks he dreamed it.

“I think I grew up kind of crap.”

He sounds more sober than he did twenty minutes ago, but emotional in that way that only exhausted drunk people get. Kame opens his eyes, blinking until they adjust, and sees Jin with his eyes wide open staring at him.

Kame looks back at him. “Why?”

Jin shrugs, sniffing, as if he can somehow make this earnest 4am exchange vaguely casual. “I haven’t done anything I wanted to do by now.”

Kame frowns. “You’ve done plenty,” he says. “I’d hardly call being the first Johnny to make it to the States a lack of accomplishment.”

“That’s work stuff,” Jin says dismissively. He starts pulling at the stitching on the corner of Kame’s pillow, tugging the threads free. “I thought I’d have a family by now.”

Kame doesn’t say anything.

“I thought I’d find a cute wife and I’d retire and open a club or something, and we’d have like two kids by the time I was thirty. And we’d be happy.” He sniffs. “I never found her though.”

“You will,” Kame says confidently, though it hurts him a bit to do so.

“Yeah?” Jin asks.

“Yeah,” Kame says. In the dark, Jin fumbles until he finds Kame’s hand lying beside his pillow. His fingers wrap around the outside of Kame’s and squeeze.

“I missed you,” Jin murmurs.

Kame can’t say anything, his throat feels so swollen and bare. He curls his head until their joined fingers nudge against his temple. After a few minutes, Jin shifts and their knees bump together. Kame falls asleep like that, listening to Jin wheeze.

Part Four