FIC: "I Believe You Liar" 5/7

[soundczechfic]

Toward the end of September, Kame and Pi arrange a trip up to the beach house of a mutual acquaintance when they both happen to have three days off at the same time. Jin is brought along like a small child. He is woken very early one morning and bundled sleepily into the backseat of Pi’s SUV with a juice box and Kame’s PSP. Josh is already sitting in the front seat, looking bleary eyed and a bit confused. Later, Kame tells Jin that they brought him along just to keep Jin occupied.

Kame sits in the back seat with Jin, drinking coffee and reading the paper. Jin keeps slumping more and more until he’s curled up across the seats with his face pressed into Kame’s thigh, hidden beneath Kame’s broadsheets. Whenever Kame carefully turns the page the thin paper rustles against Jin’s hair, so he swats at it irritably until Kame folds it and puts it away. After that he sits with his arm draped over Jin’s shoulder, fingers occasionally pleasantly brushing the shell of Jin’s ear. At first, Jin pretends to be asleep. Then he really sleeps.

He wakes to the slamming of car doors and bolts upright, gazing around in bewilderment. He is alone in the car but when he looks out the back window, he sees Kame and Pi lifting their surfboards from the roof racks. Josh is smoking and squinting up into the sun.

Jin yawns expansively, stumbling from the backseat and standing, for a minute, on legs that feel like jelly. He bums Josh’s smoke and watches as Kame wipes down the dust from his surfboard, talking to Pi and laughing. His skin burns golden in the sun.

“What time is it?” Jin asks.

“11,” Josh says. “Dude, you slept forever.”

Jin has a confused impression of dreams about icecream and cities full of puppies and waking occasionally to the feel of a gentle hand in his hair. “I was really sleepy…”

“Fucking lazy ass,” Josh chides, taking his cigarette back and sucking out the last drag before stamping it out beneath his sandalled toe.

“Shut up,” Jin says absently, distracted by the flex of Kame’s muscles as he lifts the surfboard over his head and carries it over to them. He remembers a time when he could wrap one hand almost all the way around Kame’s bicep. Right now he is actually bigger than Pi. Still smaller than Jin, though. Sort of.

“Good morning, sleepyhead,” Kame says in an annoying sing song voice as he pulls the keys out of the pocket of his cut-off jeans and jangles them. The shorts are frayed around his knobbly knees, one of which still has a bandaid on the injury sustained when Jin accidentally tripped him the other day. Jin swats his hand away when Kame reaches out to ruffle his hair.

Kame laughs and throws him the keys. “Pi and I are gonna head into the surf,” he says. “Let yourselves in. You guys take the front room. Pi and I are gonna share the back.”

Jin frowns, wondering who decided this. “You haven’t even taken your bags in.”

Kame grins. “That’s what we brought Josh for,” he says, waving as he picks up his board and jogs back to Pi’s side. They disappear out the front gate and onto the beach, all happy and laughy and annoying.

The front room looks like it belongs to a ten year old boy, with bunk beds and walls covered in posters from some sports anime Jin doesn’t recognise. Not only does he not recognise the anime, he doesn’t even recognise the sport, but the creepy kid in the centre of all of them is holding a weird red ball. Jin dumps his backpack on the bottom bunk. Josh sighs as he takes the top.

Jin goes back out for Kame’s Louis Vuitton overnight bag, scowling as he takes it into the room in the back and finds a master bedroom replete with a plush looking king sized bed and an ensuite bathroom with a gigantic spa. He doesn’t understand why he has to share the kiddy room with stupid Josh who farts and snores in his sleep and Pi gets to share the honeymoon suite with Kame, who lies still and quiet and never makes the bed too hot.

He spends most of the day sitting on the beach watching them surf and scribbling lyrics in his notebook while Josh wanders around the town with his little handheld movie camera, making some boring documentary for his friends back home. Every now and then Kame or Pi will come in close to the shore and wave at him enthusiastically, trying to coax him into the choppy waves, until Jin eventually rolls up his jeans and wanders in until the water licks around his knees. Kame paddles back into the shallows and floats in circles around him, occasionally splashing him with water and laughing at his shrieks, until Jin reaches out and shoves him off the board and Kame plunges spluttering into the sea. He emerges seconds later, whipping his hair off his face with the kind of exaggerated fabulousness he usually reserves for dramas.

“Dick,” he complains, but then his face splits into a dazzlingly wide grin and he blindsides Jin with a wet, salty hug.

—

Jin helps Kame do the grocery shopping so he can make curry for dinner. They get carried away and end up with enough food for about thirty people; fat fillets of pork and fresh shrimp, a slab of European beer and a few bottles of wine, an expensive melon, about half a kilo of olives, a sad-looking bag of pastries for breakfast, pre-prepared karaage, fruit, vegetables, potato chips, and a frilly pink-frosted birthday cake from the display case by the cash register. The cashier, a geriatric old lady with thick glasses and frizzy white hair, asks whose birthday it is. Jin tells her it is Kame’s and she gives them free taiyaki to eat on the short walk home.

Pi helps Kame cook their dinner. Josh tries to help at first too, but Kame keeps watching his movements like one of the insane megalomaniacal chefs from a movie and he eventually gives up, throwing down his onion in frustration and stomping over to sit at the breakfast bar with Jin.

“Kamenazi,” he hisses under his breath, face going blank and innocent when Kame shoots him a dirty glare.

When Josh is no longer butchering Kame’s vegetables, the collective mood lifts. Pi starts singing along to the radio and Kame joins in, their warbling so far off key that Jin finds it difficult to believe they have sold a few million records between them. Josh hums along even though he only knows half the words, but Jin is quiet, pushing the lid of his beer bottle around the bench. He stares at Kame with his salty hair tied up and his skin still streaked with sand in odd places, around his elbows and knees and ears. His movements are clean and efficient as he chops the apples and drops them into the bubbling pot, even as Pi dances obnoxiously around him, bumping their hips together. He dissolves in giggles but doesn’t stop slicing. He’s so beautiful it makes Jin sick.

A realisation is slowly dawning.

—

They eat sitting around the coffee table, hunched over obscenely gigantic bowls of curry. Kame made it insanely spicy the way Jin likes it. Josh’s face is all red and sweaty and he keeps snuffling, scowling when Jin laughs at him. Jin eats two servings and Josh’s leftovers, then collapses, bloated with happiness. He’s too lazy to get up and get more beer, so he starts drinking Kame’s wine, complaining loudly about the taste.

Across the table, Kame is flushed and glassy eyed, though Jin isn’t sure if it is from the wine or the lava-like curry. His feet occasionally nudge Jin’s leg beneath the table, until Jin traps one with his knee. Kame’s toes wriggle against his kneecap, but he doesn’t pull it away.

Somehow, the conversation has turned to Kame’s love life. Josh has been grilling him about whether he’s ever slept with anyone scandalous, and seems disappointed by the results. Jin doesn’t really join in the conversation, but he doesn’t help change the subject, either. He’s been kind of curious but reluctant to bring up the conversation himself; when Josh starts listing specific people that he thinks Kame might have seduced, Jin just peers across the table expectantly.

After Kame denies sleeping with about a dozen different Johnny’s, rockstars, and TV personalities, he starts laughing and says, “Seriously, I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that I’m out cruising for famous conquests all the time. My love life is nowhere near this interesting.”

“Gay dudes fuck around a lot,” Josh insists, clutching his beer. “I’ve seen Queer As Folk. I know what goes on.”

“Those guys don’t have to worry about turning up in Friday,” Kame rolls his eyes. “I don’t sleep around. It’s too dangerous.”

“Booooooorrrrrrring,” Josh says, but Jin is sort of relieved. He doesn’t think he’d be able to cope if he heard that Kame had slept with some guy in a band and then he had to go and sit next to him on a music show and act like everything is normal.

“I think it’s sensible,” Jin says, clutching his red wine tightly. “And wise. No-one is going to buy the cow if you give away the milk for free.”

Kame sighs and rests his chin on his knees. “It’s been a long time since anyone good even offered to buy the cow…” he whines.

Pi slings his arm around Kame’s neck. “I’ll buy your cow,” he offers graciously.

Kame wrinkles his nose. “Preferably someone who isn’t… you know… heterosexual.”

“Someone who wants to drink his milk,” Josh says, laughing at his own disgusting joke.

Jin bristles, scandalised, whining, “That’s gross.”

“He can’t just let anyone drink his milk,” Pi says, his hand on the back of Kame’s head. “He’s a very handsome young man.”

“NO-ONE IS DRINKING KAME’S MILK,” Jin says angrily.

“We know,” Josh replies with an obnoxious little smirk. “Isn’t that the problem?”

“Can we please stop talking about my milk,” Kame says dryly.

“Stop sexually harassing him,” Jin insists.

“We’re just trying to help our poor lonely single friend,” Pi says.

“You’re single too!” Jin exclaims.

“I’m not lonely, though,” Pi says. “I got milkmaids all over town.”

“This is a really disgusting analogy,” Kame says with a screwed up face.

“What happened to that artist guy?” Pi asks, and Jin wonders if Pi knows about all the boyfriends Jin doesn’t or if he just happened to run into Kame with Hitoshi somewhere; Jin had been under the impression that Kame and Pi don’t talk that much, but sometimes Pi pulls out random facts that make it seem like maybe they do.

“Same as always,” Kame says, drawing his one knee up to his chest and playing with the loose threads on his cut off jeans. “All my relationships end the same way.”

He sounds sad, which is devastating after seeing his radiant smile earlier. Jin pours another half glass of red wine and pushes it towards Kame, who picks it up and dangles it between his stumpy fingers.

“They found out you blew Matsumoto Jun backstage at Music Station?” Josh asks hopefully.

Kame rolls his eyes. His voice lifts a little, mimicking a whining lover. “Kazuya, I just don’t think you’re as invested in this as I am.” He scoffs and sips his wine. “They always expect too much from me.” He screws up his nose. “I think I’m a shitty boyfriend.”

Under the table, Jin wraps his hand around Kame’s foot, running his thumb over his ankle. Kame doesn’t acknowledge the contact.

“I’m a horrible boyfriend too,” Pi agrees.

“I’m an awesome boyfriend,” Jin says, stuffing olives in his mouth as he talks.

“Yeah,” Josh says. “But you have the world’s worst taste in women.”

“Fuck off,” Jin replies indignantly. “They’re not all bad.”

“Uehara-san is nice,” Kame says quietly. Jin wonders when Kame met Takako; if they talked about him. He probably wasn’t such an awesome boyfriend to her. He’d been younger then.

“They’re mostly nice,” Pi explains to Kame. “They’re just not usually into him at all. He follows them around like a little puppy and they end up totally blowing him off.”

“They do not,” Jin says angrily. He crosses his arms. “It’s not me, it’s them.”

“Uh huh,” Josh hums, clearly already growing bored with the conversation.

“They just have to be single right now,” Jin quotes. “Because they’re still growing as individuals.”

“Blah, blah, blah,” Pi drones. “Can we eat that cake already?”

“Yeah,” Kame says, levering himself off the floor. He disappears into the kitchen while Josh starts talking about gay sex again. He’s kind of obsessed with the subject. Jin listens with one ear; the other is fixated on the kitchen, where he can hear Kame opening and closing drawers. He wonders what he’s doing.

“Like, Petey told me that in the states he gets laid every day, sometimes,” Josh is saying. “Being into dudes is awesome.”

The lights go out and Jin cranes his head to see Kame coming back into the room, face aglow in the light of a dozen mismatched birthday candles. He settles the cake in the middle of the coffee table amongst the scattered debris of their dinner. They all stare at it and then Kame says to Jin, “Aren’t you going to blow out the candles?”

“It’s not my birthday,” Jin says. “You do it.”

“Let’s all do it together,” Kame says. They all blow out the candles while Kame hums happy birthday. He cuts huge slices and they eat them in the dim blue light of the moon filtering through the windows. Pi gets more beer. For a while they’re so quiet that Jin can hear the gentle roar of the ocean outside, and then Josh starts talking about Pete’s sex life again.

“He told me I should try it but I was like, no way, man.” He shoves a giant spoonful of cake into his mouth. A bit of strawberry frosting sticks to his upper lip. “I’ve never even kissed a guy.”

“I have,” Pi says.

“What?” Jin sits up straight, staring at him. Pi is sprawled out lazily, his red t-shirt rumpled and slightly torn at the hem. Jin finds it hard to imagine him sidling up to a guy and kissing him, pressing himself into a muscular body and holding tight. “When?”

Pi’s eyes slide askance and meet Kame’s in a way that makes the hair on the back of Jin’s neck stand on end. He lifts his beer bottle and clinks necks with Kame’s.

“Thanks for taking care of me,” he says, and Jin’s heart grinds to a halt.

He stuffs the rest of the cake in his mouth. It tastes like poison.

—

Jin ends up in the top bunk because Josh got too drunk to climb up there. Thankfully, Josh doesn’t talk about gay sex in his sleep, but he does snuffle and snore gently. Every time he rolls over, Jin’s bed moves. Jin irritably tosses from side to side.

He has been lying awake for hours. He keeps thinking about Kame and Pi in the room down the hall. He wonders, irrationally, what they are doing. His brain supplies images he doesn’t want to seriously consider; Pi spooned up against Kame’s back, naked skin rippling together, Kame’s soft, raspy sigh. He wonders if that’s why they chose the master room.

At 3:17AM, he climbs angrily out of the top bunk, stomping on Josh’s wrist in the process. Josh whines in his sleep and draws his fist protectively to his chest, burrowing into the blankets. Jin stumbles into the kitchen in his sweats and old Wu Tang t-shirt, purposely making a lot of nose because he’s hoping to wake up Kame and Pi. If they’re asleep and not doing weird things in the dark.

Kame is already sitting at the kitchen bench, though. He’s wearing a soft-looking grey t-shirt and a mustard-coloured scarf, reading a magazine with his hands wrapped around a mug of tea.

“Shh,” he hisses as Jin stomps through the door. “You’ll wake the others.”

“Why are you awake?” Jin asks suspiciously.

“Pi snores,” Kame says, turning the page. “I can’t sleep.”

“Why don’t you go in there and shut him up with your tongue down his throat?” Jin asks before he can stop himself. His face is hot so he crosses to the fridge and pulls out a bottle of water.

Kame is staring at him with one infuriatingly lifted eyebrow, page paused mid-turn. “Huh?”

“Nothing,” Jin says. He leans against the sink, tearing at the label of his water.

Kame scowls. “You’ve obviously got something to say.”

“You kissed Pi.” Jin feels embarrassingly juvenile and lame, but the knowledge is sitting on his stomach like bad fast food, clogging his arteries and straining his breath.

“It was just once,” Kame says, finally turning the page. He smoothes his hand over it until it lies flat and glossy. “We were drunk and he was curious.”

“I thought you said you wouldn’t be an experiment,” Jin says, his outrage at the injustice finally outweighing his embarrassment.

“I didn’t think you remembered that,” Kame says.

Jin shrugs, scuffing his bare foot along a floorboard.

“I said I wouldn’t be your experiment,” Kame points out reasonably. His voice drops an octave in a way that makes Jin want to stamp his feet with fury. “I’ll be Pi’s experiment any time he wants.”

Stop, Jin wants to say, but instead he whines, “What’s so good about Pi?”

“He’s so hot,” Kame says. “Like a charming prince. As long as he doesn’t talk.”

STOP. Jin thinks.

“He’s got a fat face and stupid eyes,” Jin says. “I’m way hotter than he is.”

“I also didn’t spend the better part of my adolescence trying to get over my self-destructively unrequited feelings for him,” Kame says. He doesn’t look at Jin, just keeps turning the pages of his magazine as if he’s reading them when he clearly is not. “I’m not putting myself through that again.”

“It would just have been a kiss,” Jin says.

“Right,” Kame says. Jin doesn’t know why he’s pushing this when he should just go to bed and leave Kame be. “When I lost you the first time it just about killed me. In all seriousness. And I’m stronger now but–“ He breaks off, swiping his hand across his face. “I don’t think I’ll ever be self-actualised enough to take that on the chin.”

He pushes his stool away from the bench and stands up. “So just drop it, would you?” He starts to leave the kitchen.

Jin crosses the floor and grabs Kame’s arm and says, “I’m sorry.”

“I know,” Kame murmurs. They just stand there with Jin’s hand still wrapped around Kame’s wrist and then Kame stretches to press his warm lips to the curve of Jin’s cheek. “You’re my best friend, idiot.”

“Mine, too,” Jin stutters after a minute. “You’re mine too.” He shakes Kame’s arm. “I won’t try to make out with you again.”

“Thanks,” Kame says dryly. “I appreciate that.”

—

Kame is busy finishing up Dream Boys and filming special material for Going, so he barely sees Jin for weeks at a time. He thinks that is probably good, because lately Jin keeps doing things that confuse him and he needs to get his head together.

Jin doesn’t have much to do right now. He seems to spend the first few hours of the day laying around on his computer and leaving links to stupid youtube videos on Caoimhe’s wall. Kame watches them on his iPad in the van as he’s shuttled between jobs. They all have titles like Surprised Kitty, Polar Bear vs Walrus, or The Biggest Snake in the World. If they’re really cute he clicks the little thumbs up button to like them. When they’re really gross he forwards the links to Nakamaru. Jin gets really angry because he only ever ‘likes’ things and doesn’t type actual replies, but he’s too lazy to painstakingly type things out on the iPad so he just ‘likes’ Jin’s angry comments, too.

When he doesn’t have to see him face to face, it’s easier to remember that Jin is straight and totally not into Kame in the way that Kame is into him. Even if the way that he looks at Kame sometimes implies otherwise. Even if he has psycho little jealous fits when he finds out Kame kissed someone else, or gets angry that Kame refuses to be the first guy to kiss him. Even if his fingers sometimes linger on Kame’s elbow or wrist when they should automatically fall away. He’s not available to Kame in the way that Kame wants him.

This isn’t new information. Kame’s had years to come to terms with it, and mostly he has. It’s just sometimes, when he’s alone and tired he looks bleakly into the future and wonders if it is possible that he could ever love somebody as much or even more than he already loves Jin.

It seems impossible. Sometimes when he gets home late at night he sits on his balcony and makes wishes on the faint Tokyo stars that he will meet someone who can make him forget how much he wants Jin. A nice guy who likes kids, with warm eyes and good hair. A guy who will love him back.

The weak twinkling of the stars fades, and Kame is left sitting in the morning light, still hopelessly in love with Jin.

—

When Kame meets Naoki, the Giants’ new shortstop, he wonders if the stars are listening after all. Maybe. It’s not like he’s struck senseless by love at first sight, but when Naoki awkwardly catches up with him in the parking lot as he’s about to get into his manager’s van and shyly asks if he’d like to get a drink and maybe some dinner some time, Kame is charmed enough to say yes.

Naoki is a little over six feet tall and has formidable shoulders and a silly grin. When he gets his phone out to enter Kame’s number into his contacts, a jewel-encrusted Miffy phone charm swings free. Kame bites his lip, trying not to laugh because the poor guy is already fumbling a bit, looking like he still can’t quite believe he asked Kame out, let alone that Kame said yes.

He touches Naoki’s elbow as he says, “See you soon, then,” smiling in the shy way he has perfected after years on Shounen Club.

Naoki stutters as he says, “See you,” then grins so wide that Kame’s own smile, his real smile, breaks out honest and genuine.

Kame hums under his breath the whole ride home.

—

When Kame tells Jin that he has lined up a Tuesday night date with some baseball guy in a trendy Italian restaurant, Jin does not know what to do with this information. His mouth opens and closes uselessly like a mute.

“But what about—“ he bites the words off. He’d been about to say, but what about me?, which frightens him. This is the first time even he has seen Kame in like a month, and now some guy just waltzes in and thinks he can take Kame’s first free evening like it’s nothing, like there aren’t a billion people lining up and waiting patiently for just a moment of Kame’s time? Jin thought they were going to hang out and watch the new episode of Fringe tonight before Jin went out, and now Kame is abandoning him at a moment’s notice.

Kame turns from the wardrobe, where he is going through his collection of totally identical jeans to figure out which pair of ripped stonewash jeans are the right pair to sweep this guy off his feet. As if it matters.

“Huh?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Jin says, reminding himself not to be a selfish dick. Kame looks pretty happy about this. He must like the guy. Jin takes out his phone and opens the browser. “What’s this guy’s name again?”

Kame turns back to the wardrobe, finally selecting a pair of jeans. He lays them carefully on the bed next to where Jin is sitting. “Saito Naoki,” he says. “He just transferred from the Marines.”

Jin types the name into google and a bunch of images of a smiling guy with a shaved head come up. Jin stares at them, trying to picture this guy standing with Kame, greeting him when he gets home late at night. With a kiss on the cheek, maybe. A hug.

He scrolls down the page and hits a cache of half naked photos of this guy promoting a trendy underwear label, all gleaming muscles and rock hard abs. Reflexively, Jin touches his stomach and feels the softness there.

“He’s okay, I guess,” Jin says, angrily closing the browser. Kame lays a white t-shirt down on top of the jeans and pulls a pair of checked flannel shirts out of the closet, eyeing them critically. Jin likes the red one better because the blue one makes Kame look puffy. He shoves his phone in his pocket and says, “The blue one.”

Kame makes a face and puts the blue one back in the closet. He hangs the red one on the doorknob and pulls a flouncy black scarf from the closet, draping it over the shoulders.

He starts pulling his jewellery off. “What are you doing tonight?”

Jin flops onto his back on Kame’s bed, staring up at the tasteful light fittings. “Well we were supposed to be watching Fringe.”

“Sorry,” Kame says, pulling his sweater over his head and discarding it, not really sounding all that regretful. “Can’t you watch it with Josh?”

“He’s stupid,” Jin says. “I’ll wait and watch it with you.”

“Okay,” Kame says. He stops and stares down at Jin for a moment, looking dishevelled in his white wife beater and faded jeans. “What’s Kusano doing?”

Jin shrugs. “I’m tired,” he says. “I think I’ll just go home and go to bed.”

He does. He tells Kusano he’s not feeling well when he calls to ask him out, then turns off his phone so he doesn’t have to explain himself anymore. The truth is he really does feel sick. He lays in bed with his face buried in the pillow, still wearing all his clothes, and tries not to think about Kame sitting at a secluded table with that beefcake; tries not to think about why it upsets him so much.

He spends an hour telling himself that he’s just jealous because he doesn’t have a girl right now, but then he remembers Kame’s delighted, excited smile as he’d waved goodbye when Jin dropped him at the restaurant earlier, and it’s like a smack in the face. He clutches his stomach and curls in on himself and thinks, fully articulated for the first time, Am I gay for Kame?

He rolls onto his back and stares at the ceiling for a while, weighing up the evidence. Intense jealousy over his love interests, check. Insane need to know his whereabouts at every moment of the day, check. Bizarre fixation on his smile and the way his eyes sparkle in the sun, check. Inappropriate desire to snuggle into his lap on long car trips, check. Drunken attempts to casually initiate a make out session, check. Shit.

Jin is an idiot.

He closes his eyes and lays his hand over his heart, testing himself. He thinks of Kame at concerts, his lewd facial expressions and slutty dancing, and feels relief when there is no response. Then, unbidden, he remembers Kame singing and laughing and dancing around the kitchen with Pi and his heart goes nuts.

“Oh, god,” he groans. “Oh, god.”

Panicking, he pulls the covers over his head and curls into a ball in the centre of the bed, mind racing as fast as his heartbeat. He’s so stupid. Kame waits around for him forever and it takes him all this time to even consider the very obvious possibility that he might like Kame back. And now Kame is out on a date with a future member of the baseball hall of fame. Jin doesn’t know how the hell he’s supposed to compete with that. He doesn’t even know how to pitch a baseball. Honestly he doesn’t even know what a shortstop does, just that Kame seemed really excited about it.

“Kame,” he whines into his fist, imagining Kame’s eyes sparkling across the table and the way he might wedge his foot between Saito’s. The way he’ll flirt with him and maybe let him come up and stay the night, if Saito drives him home. If he plays his cards right.

Jin hopes Saito is a really lousy date.

—

It’s a good date. Naoki is charming in a kind of befuddled, easily embarrassed way that is delightful for Kame, who really enjoys embarrassing people. Whenever he talks through his eyelashes or pitches his voice in a certain way Naoki’s cheeks flush bright red and he gropes desperately for his water glass. It’s a bit like dating a really hot version of Nakamaru. Except in certain moments he can be disarmingly smooth, like when he reaches out and strokes a finger along the inside of Kame’s wrist when they’re having a conversation about his fastball.

Kame has his undivided attention. He’d like to return it, except he keeps getting inconsequential emails from Jin and even after he stops reading them he keeps feeling his phone buzzing in his pocket, reminding him that Jin is out there somewhere begging for his attention.

When Naoki excuses himself to the men’s room, Kame pulls his phone out and skims through Jin’s emails – they’re all about some new album Jin is listening to, or the crappy pizza he had delivered for dinner – before he replies, What the hell are you doing, I’m on a date!

It is barely ten seconds before Jin replies, as if he has been clutching his phone in preparation for Kame’s reply.

don’t abandon ur friends just bc ur in a relationship now it says.

Kame blinks down at it and then hastily shoves the phone back into his pocket, resolving to find out what the hell Jin’s problem is later. Naoki slides back into his seat and says, “Is everything alright?”

Kame shakes the memory off and leans his chin on his hand, smiling as he says, “I was lonely here by myself.”

Naoki flushes red and Kame finds himself grinning with delight.

Later, Naoki drives him home and Kame is kind of relieved when he says that he’s got training early in the morning and can’t come up for the coffee Kame offers. It really was a good date and Kame wants to see him again, but Jin’s bizarre email keeps coming back to him and he’s worried his preoccupation will show when they’re alone together.

In the safety of the car with its dark-tinted windows, Kame leans in and kisses him, tasting, with some displeasure, the tomato and basil sauce that had accompanied his spaghetti. Other than that, Naoki is a good kisser; his hands are large and reassuring where they wrap warmly over Kame’s biceps, and he doesn’t push too much or try to treat Kame like he’s a girl.

Kame waves from the footpath as he drives away. He’s already fishing his phone out of his pocket as he rides the elevator up to his floor and steps out, ready to call Jin and coax him out of whatever gloomy mood he has fallen into.

He doesn’t have to, though. There’s a hooded figure slumped against his door, easily recognisable even in the miles of fleecy grey fabric. Alarm spears through him and he hastily crosses the hall, relieved when Jin sees him and stumbles to his feet.

“Hey,” Jin says, scratching the back of his head. “How was it?”

“Fine,” Kame frowns. “What’s wrong?”

Jin makes a face. “Nothing,” he says. “I just thought I’d drop by. See how it went. You’re out late, it must have been good.”

It’s only 11PM. Kame unlocks his door and ushers Jin inside, looking around, hoping that none of his neighbours had seen the hobo camped outside his door. “It was good,” Kame says. Jin is already punching in the security code for the alarm. “He’s nice.”

“Good,” Jin says, “That’s good,” but he’s still wearing his hood and his eyes are downcast and he doesn’t look like he thinks it is good at all.

“What’s going on?” Kame asks. “You’re being weird.”

Jin makes this weird screeching, yelling noise of pure frustration, turning around and scrubbing his hands over his face. He flees into Kame’s kitchen and pours himself a glass of water, drinking the whole tumbler in one gulp. His distress makes the air around them crackle and pop. Kame reaches out and grabs his shoulders, says, “Jin, what is it?”

Jin says, “I think…”, reaches out blindly, grabs Kame’s hands, and kisses him clumsily on the mouth. For a minute, it’s timid and disjointed, overwhelmed by Jin’s obvious terror, but then he slides his hands up into Kame’s hair and kisses him properly, lips sliding mint-flavoured and butter-soft over Kame’s own.

If the kiss with Naoki earlier was good, then kissing Jin is like a religious experience; he’d longed for this for so long that he’d almost convinced himself that it would be a total anti-climax if it ever happened. It’s not, though. It’s like standing in Tokyo Dome for the first time and hearing the crowd scream his name. He’s worried that when Jin lets him go he might spontaneously combust, his heart growing, five, ten, a million sizes until he just explodes.

“What?” he gasps in the space between their kisses. He pulls the hood off Jin’s head, sliding his hand up the back of his neck and into the luxurious, impossible curls. The other settles on the waist of Jin’s hoodie, pulling the fabric tight across Jin’s back.

Jin rests his forehead against Kame’s, eyes closed. His hands are still in Kame’s hair, holding him in place. Keeping him close.

“I think you were wrong,” Jin says.

Kame twists the fist at Jin’s side. “About?”

“My feelings.” Jin nuzzles his face into Kame’s temple. “For you…”

Kame will never admit it, but in that moment, he has to kiss Jin again just to stop himself from turning into a blubbering mess.

—

Jin wakes early the next morning. For once, he’s alone in his bed; Kusano sometimes comes back and crashes at Jin’s even if Jin doesn’t go out with him, but he must have picked up a girl or something because Jin is all alone in the whole apartment. It’s a rare experience, but he’s glad because it means he doesn’t have to face anyone right away and explain the bright red hickeys that he finds on his neck, or the dumb, lovestruck look that seems to have permanently imprinted itself on his face. He hums as he showers and draws little hearts on the condensation on the glass. It’s nice to have some privacy to act like a total girl for a while.

They’d spent about an hour making out pressed up against Kame’s fridge before Kame had gently pushed him away with both hands on his chest, smoothed his hands through his hair, and told him he had to go home. Jin had been momentarily offended, but then he’d looked at the desperate, needy look in Kame’s eyes and he’d understood. There was a promise in Kame’s there that Jin was not at all ready to let him deliver. It’s exciting, though, the idea that Kame is all riled up for him. That when Jin is ready, Kame will be there. Waiting with that look in his eyes.

Ages ago, Josh instituted a 24 hour rule for Jin after he meets girls. He has to wait at least that long before he mails them, otherwise they’ll think he’s a desperate loser and won’t want to sleep with him. He’s pretty sure the rule doesn’t apply to Kame, but he hesitates before contacting him anyway, unsure of what exactly last night meant for them. Is Kame his boyfriend now? Is Kame still going to go out with that baseball guy again? Does Kame know he’s serious about this?

He composes a series of increasingly lame messages to Kame, discarding them miserably because he doesn’t sound cool or smooth at all. That baseball guy probably writes suave emails about how beautiful and precious Kame is, but thinking like that still makes Jin squirm with embarrassment, even if it is true. He doesn’t know how to transition from being Kame’s on-and-off bff to being the guy that feasibly wants to get in his pants in the not-too-distant future. Is he supposed to be different?

In the end, he decides to wait it out and let Kame set the tone. Kame has always been the one to reach out and show him the path when he would otherwise charge clumsily forward and end up in a mess. Once Kame emails him, he’ll know how to respond.

He waits for hours. The mail never comes.

—

He tortures himself for almost 30 hours. He hasn’t exactly told anyone about his sudden revelation about Kame, and it seems like it might jinx an outcome that is already looking pretty shaky, if Kame’s total lack of communication is anything to go by. There’s nobody to whine to or help him analyse Kame’s actions; Josh notices he’s being weird, but just keeps telling him to quit moping around and be a man, which is hardly helpful. Josh probably thinks he’s met some girl and he’s being shifty about it. A few times, Jin almost blurts out, I MADE OUT WITH KAME AND HE NEVER CALLED ME, but he stops himself just in time.

He starts to wonder if Kame decided that Saito was the way to go after all. It’s not like Kame to be fickle, but Jin did kind of dick him around and Saito is built like a Greek god. He spends a few miserable hours running Saito’s name through Google again and learning everything there is to know about him, until Josh finally snaps and turns the router off at the wall because Jin’s supposed to be helping him with a new song for Hey Say Jump.

Finally, he snaps and calls Kame from his bathroom, hoping that Josh’s music is loud enough to drown out the call.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he whines the second Kame answers the phone.

A pause, and then Kame says coolly, in marked contrast to his warm farewell from the other day, “Doing what?”

“Why haven’t you called me?” Jin sits on the lid of the toilet with his arm wrapped around his waist.

Another beat, and then Kame says, “Hold on a minute,” and Jin hears the muffled sounds of him excusing himself and retreating to some place quiet. “Why haven’t you called me?” He sounds really annoyed. “You’re the one that suddenly decided he was a little bit gay out of nowhere. When you didn’t call I assumed you’d changed your mind.”

Jin winces.

Kame continues, “I was trying to give you some space.”

“I don’t want space,” Jin blurts, horrified. “I didn’t change my mind!” He clutches the strings of his hoodie so tight that the hood starts to bunch painfully behind his neck. “I just didn’t– I don’t know, you’re the smart one. I didn’t know what was going on with us.” His voice gets small. This might be the most embarrassing conversation he’s ever had in his life. “I need you to be all bossy about it.”

Kame is quiet for a minute, but when he speaks he sounds warmer than he did before, a bit soft and indulgent like the parent of a spoiled child. “What do you mean, what’s going on with us?”

Jin bites his lip. “Are you going to see Saito again?”

“No,” Kame says. “I called him and told him I didn’t think it would work out.”

“Oh,” Jin says.

“I didn’t think that making out with my best friend barely ten minutes after our first date was exactly the best start for a relationship,” Kame says, like Jin is the biggest moron in the world.

“Oh,” Jin says, feeling relief spread through him. “Oh.”

“As for what we are…” Kame sounds happy now, and just the sound is enough to make Jin shiver. “Let’s just see how it goes.”

“What does that mean?” Jin asks.

“We’re not in a hurry,” Kame says, and for a minute Jin is worried that that means Kame is going to stall this thing indefinitely until he’s satisfied that Jin is like, ~ready~ or some shit. He opens his mouth to protest, but then Kame adds, “Can you pick me up tonight?”

“Oh,” Jin says. “Yeah.”

—

In the first few weeks that they’re seeing each other, they spend a lot of time at Kame’s place, eating dinner late at night and making out on his gigantic 10-seater couch. As the days pass, the weirdness of the idea that Kame is a guy starts to pass and Jin is able to start thinking about the idea of sex in specific terms, instead of in that weird abstract fog that had descended upon him whenever he thought about it before.

He thinks about taking Kame to bed and slowly stripping the clothes away from his skin; of pressing kisses up his stomach and the inside of his wrists. He even thinks about what it will be like to blow him, in idle moments when he’s feeling brave. The thought makes him shiver with equal parts fear and fascination.

It would have been better if Jin had realised earlier, when they were young. Then they could have been awkward, nervous virgins together, and Jin wouldn’t have to feel like such a gigantic loser. Kame would be thin and fragile and he’d stammer Jin’s name as Jin stroked his skin. A shy, desperate boy, who wouldn’t know what he was doing any better than Jin did. Would know even less, probably, because at least Jin had been with a whole bunch of girls back then.

Now, Jin has to deal with this solid, confident man, who always seems like he has his part of the situation firmly under control. Jin is infatuated with him, the easy shift of his muscular thighs in his jeans, the firm shoulders rounding into strong arms. The way he’ll sort of gently nudge Jin until he’s right where he wants him, and then hold him there, stern and demanding. It’s really hot, but Jin feels sort of unprepared. Inadequate.

Jin wants to be good for him. He’s just not entirely sure how. He goes to a fancy bookstore and reads American magazines with headlines like 101 tips to please your man and How to drive him wild! but most of the stuff in them seems embarrassing, not to mention impossible for him because he’s not a woman and doesn’t have boobs. He stares a bit wistfully at the lone issue of The Advocate in the top corner, but he probably shouldn’t risk reading it in public like this. Besides, the headlines on the cover are all about serious social issues and shit and all he really wants is some tips on giving head.

He goes home and watches some porn on the internet but he’s so traumatised by what he sees that it doesn’t help at all. They all feature pimpled, skinny young boys being leered at and abused by gross old dudes with moustaches and leather vests. It kind of reminds Jin of being a junior. He hopes Kame isn’t in to this kind of thing.

In the end he has to talk to someone about it, and there is really only one person available to him at this point. He emails Kame: im worried that when we do it ill be totally crap bc i dont know what im doing.

It takes what feels like forever for Kame to reply, but it’s really only about twenty minutes.

That’s hot, Kame says, then a minute later, My sweet little virgin .

SHUT THE FUCK UP Jin replies, but he does feel better.

—

They see a movie, and Kame can’t help but compare it to the last movie they saw together, six months ago now, and feel a little smug with happiness. They go to a deserted little cinema in a district Kame has never been to before, which is still showing the last Harry Potter movie even though it came out like four months ago. It’s 11 o’clock at night and the only people in the theatre are an adolescent couple who sit in the back row making out before the lights have even gone down, a rowdy group of teenage boys who sit with their feet all over the seats, and a lonely looking old man in the front row.

Jin buys their tickets and their popcorn and leads Kame domineeringly towards the back of the theatre, close to the wall where they are less likely to be seen. He seems to be enjoying being in charge of this excursion, probably because he feels so out of control in every other aspect of the their relationship right now. He keeps asking if Kame is warm enough and offering to go get him a soda instead of the bottle of water Kame chose. After a while, Kame gives up refusing and lets him go, and Jin comes back with a gigantic Diet Coke and a bag of stale chocolates, which he offers sheepishly to Kame as if he has suddenly become aware that he is being ridiculous.

“Sit down, retard,” Kame says, though he has to admit that he’s kind of enjoying the attention. He snuggles into the coat that Jin draped over him before he left, nuzzling his face against the collar and smelling Jin’s shampoo and the faint smokiness of tobacco. “The movie is gonna start.”

Jin eases into his chair just as the lights go down. That familiar music plays and Kame feels a tremor of excitement that is mostly nostalgia. He and Jin saw the first few movies together, and the others he mostly saw on DVD. He fumbles around until he can take Jin’s hand and draw it under his coat blanket. After a few minutes Jin slumps and leans his head on Kame’s shoulder, occasionally whispering questions because he apparently hasn’t seen the movies they didn’t see together at all. Mostly he’s quiet, and his hand slips out of Kame’s and settles on his thigh under the coat, fingers skimming bare skin through the ragged holes in the denim. It’s distracting, but Kame can’t bring himself to make him stop.

They’re probably not as safe as the dark makes it seem, but Kame feels peaceful anyway. Halfway through the move Jin starts nuzzling his ear and kissing his cheek, and Kame thinks, fuck it, and turns so they can make out like the kids in the back row.

—

They dress as Shuuji to Akira for Halloween.

“You have to be the fat one,” Jin says, holding Akira’s costume out to Kame. Kame grabs it, telling him to shut up without venom. Josh is Nobuta, in a voluminous skirt and tangled wig, ‘UGLY’ scrawled on the back of his blazer in yellow paint. When they decided what to wear, Josh hadn’t seen Nobuta, but he marathoned the DVDs one night when he was supposed to be doing prep work for his real job. He keeps going on about how good it was and how Kame and Pi should do more dramas together. Jin tells him to shut the fuck up in case he puts ideas in Johnny’s head.

They go to a private party at a club. Kusano is dressed as Rilakkuma in a costume he bought at Don Quixote’s, and Ryo has lazily dressed as an Eito Ranger - Black Ranger, though. Yoko’s costume hangs comically on Ryo’s tiny frame. Pi shows up really late dressed as Zorro, with Keiko trailing behind him in a flamenco dress. Jin wonders when they got back together.

There are loads of hot chicks around dressed as slutty nurses/angels/schoolgirls. Jin sees Kame looking at him askance when he chats to a girl he vaguely recognises from this thing he went to with Josh once. When she disappears to refresh her champagne, he leans over and says to Kame, “What?”

“I didn’t realise you were acquainted with so many naughty schoolgirls,” Kame says, trying to make it sound like he’s joking but unable to hide the genuinely pissy look on his face.

Jin tugs Kame’s blue tie. “I’m friendlier with a naughty schoolboy.”

“And everyone thinks I’m the lame one.” Kame rolls his eyes and pulls his tie out of Jin’s hands irritably, but he can’t hide his pleased little smile from Jin. When the girl comes back Kame is friendlier and ends up talking to her for longer than Jin did, because he finds out she is from the UK and works for some designer Kame knows pretty well. He asks her about a billion questions about London and Jin wonders why he still hasn’t visited when his interest obviously has not waned.

Eventually, Josh comes over, black wig slightly askew, and harasses Jin into dancing. He seems to think that the fact that Jin has been sitting in a corner with Kame all night instead of trying to hook up with any one of the hot girls in the club is an indication that Jin is in a crappy mood. Jin lets him think that, because otherwise he can’t explain why.
He dances with a big group of people because he’s worried about what Kame will think, but when he looks over Kame is talking to Peter and doesn’t seem worried at all. Jin catches his eye and tries to beckon him over, but Kame turns him down with a slight shake of his head, until Seishun Amigo starts playing over the PA system. Jin glances in surprise at the DJ booth, where Josh had been talking to the DJ.

Jin reaches Kame just as Pi does.

“Shuuji!” Pi says, grabbing his arm. “It’s our song!”

“I’m Akira,” Kame says, shaking his tie for Pi to see.

“I’m Shuuji,” Jin says, grabbing Kame’s other arm and tugging. “It’s our song.”

It seems to be everyone’s song; Jin looks out on the dance floor to see all the locals dressed as Doraemon and Ultraman doing the Seishun Amigo dance with varying levels of drunken accuracy while the foreigners look on in polite confusion.

“Do you even remember the choreography?” Kame complains in his ear as Jin drags him onto the floor.

“Yes,” Jin says, “It’s like the easiest dance in the world.”

He’s a beat behind Kame and Pi as they move through the steps, but that’s still better than Josh, who gives up halfway through and just does the NOBUTA POWER! pose over and over, interspersed with the Macarena. Ryo appears behind Pi and they end up with five thumbs in the centre when there should only be two.

After that, Kame stays on the dancefloor with Jin, but he’s careful not to dance alone with Jin too obviously, even though it is apparently totally alright to dirty dance with Pi or let Josh-Nobuta booty-dance against him like a filthy whore.

They wouldn’t usually attract too much attention at a place like this, which is habitually full of celebrities, but apparently the Akanishi / Kamenashi / Yamashita combination is enough to grab the attention of even this jaded crowd, and Jin starts to notice that people are staring at them more than usual, that a few people might have taken photos. He starts to feel uneasy and he steps back from where he’d been hovering at Kame’s shoulder, so Ryo is standing between them. He wonders if his friends catch the longing glances he keeps sending Kame, who is doing some kind of ridiculous two-step with his arm wrapped across Pi’s shoulder. When Usher comes on, Jin just wants to push Pi away and pull Kame up against him, the way he might have risked if Kame was his girlfriend. Fuck Johnny’s rules. He hates that he has to be even more careful than usual, just because Kame is a guy, or whatever. Who cares? Seriously, who the hell cares?

After a while, Jin can’t take it anymore and he leans over and tugs the sleeve of Kame’s blazer. Kame turns to look at him and Jin knows that he understands with a single glance. He breaks away from Pi and surges against Jin for a minute, hand on his arm, just long enough to murmur in his ear. To anyone else they probably look like two good friends trying to hear each other over the music, but Jin still feels an illicit thrill as Kame says, “Do you wanna get out of here?”

“Yes,” Jin says. God, yes.

—

“I wanted to dance with you,” Jin says, after Kame has locked them safely inside his apartment and fetched them both drinks.

Kame looks at him. Jin looks ridiculous and overgrown in the familiar school uniform, but beautiful, as always, all messy hair and moist lips over the white collar and loosened tie. He picks up the remote and turns the stereo on. A slow beat fills the air. Something Jin was listening to the other day, while Kame showered. Kame doesn’t know where it came from.

“We could dance here,” Kame says, drawing up to Jin and taking him by the hips.

Jin moves with him for a minute, hands sliding up his back, but then he buries his face in Kame’s neck and laughs, “It’s embarrassing here.”

Kame laughs too, because Jin’s mouth on his neck is ticklish, and because he’s happy. “We could do other stuff,” he says, and hooks his fingers into Jin’s tie, tugging it loose.

Jin’s ears are bright pink as he stammers, “Right,” and kisses Kame, giggling happily when Kame stands on his toes for a better angle. Kame likes that Jin is a bit taller than him, but not so tall that he feels like a midget. Jin likes that he’s taller because it makes him feel manly and smug, and less gay. He says that isn’t why, but Kame knows him pretty well.

Kame takes him by the hand and leads him into the bedroom, the slight resistance in his posture contradicted by the determined look in his eyes. He looks around Kame’s bedroom suspiciously as they enter, and as relief spreads over his face, Kame wonders what he expected to find that would make it any different from any of the other hundred times he’s been in here. Chains on the bed, maybe, or the leather riding chaps Kame is going to change into. Jin told him about the porn he watched. Kame would tease him about it, but he can sense that Jin’s resolve is precarious enough already, and he really would like to get laid some time in the next century.

He pushes Jin down on the bed and crawls over him, kissing him reassuringly. “We can stop any time you want,” he murmurs, pulling Jin’s tie off and discarding it on the bedside table. He helps pull Jin’s blazer off and starts unbuttoning his shirt slowly.

Jin’s hand covers his on the fifth button, and he asks uncertainly, “Are you going to fuck me?”

Kame laughs, resting his forehead against Jin’s. “I don’t think you’re ready for that,” he says bluntly.

“Yeah,” Jin agrees, looking more sure of himself now. “But… other stuff…”

“Yeah,” Kame grins, feeling elated when Jin grins back at him, if a bit hesitantly. “Other stuff.”

Part Six