Archive of Our Own

Jin's dreams are fleeting, not made up of solid or concrete images.

Sometimes, just the simple blooming of a night flower, petals unfolding in the moonlight, or fireflies flitting about in the air, tiny beacons in the dark of the evening. Sometimes it’s the stars, glowing ethereal form thousands upon thousands of kilometers up in the sky, looking, deceivingly, close enough to touch. Sometimes it's a smell, like freshly cut grass or the sweet scent of citron.

Sometimes, it's the soft touch of a square palm on his arm, or the lacing of short, strong fingers through his own, or maybe a laughing mouth releasing a giggle that's followed with a hiccup, or a brush of cotton against the skin of his calf. The ephemeral press of lips on the skin of his neck.

No matter what, though, Jin always, always, dreams of the moon.

#

"Jin, honey, are you doing okay?" Jin's mom sounds tinny through the phone. "I saw the YouTube link you sent yesterday, of that interview you did for your movie, and you look so thin."

"I'm fine, Mom," Jin says, rolling his eyes and smiling. "And yes, I'm eating. We even cooked yesterday, instead of me ordering take-out and camping in front of the TV."

Jin digs in his pocket for his car keys, and smirks triumphantly when he finds them. He holds the phone between his chin and his shoulder as he opens the door to the passenger side, and sets his bag and his lunch on the floor.

"Who is 'we'? Do you finally have a girlfriend?"

Jin laughs loudly into the phone. "I don't have a girlfriend, Mom. Dom was over, and we made macaroni and cheese."

Jin's walked around to the driver's side and climbed into the car, and now he's sliding the key into the ignition so he can turn on the air. It's the hottest part of summer, after all, and he's starting to sweat in the heat. It's not humid though-- he likes that about Los Angeles weather.

"A handsome boy like you, with no girlfriend. You know, Jin, if you want to date a nice American girl, your father and I won't mind--"

"Mom!" Jin says, with a sound somewhere between a screech and a chuckle, and his mom is laughing too. "I don't have time right now. The movie comes out in like, five months, and promotions are going to be insane. Plus putting together the concert and concert rehearsals…"

"I can't wait to see your movie," Jin's mom gushes, and Jin grins wide. "I know you'll be good, baby."

"You'd think it was good if I sneezed on camera for an hour," Jin says wryly, but he's pleased.

"Well, yes, you're my son," she says. "Pisuke came over for dinner last night, by the way. He has a girlfriend, despite his busy career."

"Does he?" Jin asks. He probably owes Yamapi a call, anyway. He hasn't talked to his best friend in almost a month beyond scattered emails, thanks to both their schedules and time zones.

"Don't you keep up with anything in Japan?" his mom chides, and Jin sheepishly tugs on his baseball cap. He leans back in the seat, relaxing. He can't drive and talk at the same time, anyway, so he might as well be comfortable.

"Yeah," Jin says vaguely. "Friends and stuff. Pi and Yuu and Ryo-chan. Josh is doing alright, too."

"KAT-TUN's new single is doing well," Jin's mom says after a moment's pause.

"That's... good," Jin says, and he means it, even if it feels awkward, still, to talk about a KAT-TUN that doesn't involve him.

It's not that he misses it. Well, he does. He misses some parts of it, and he didn’t hate anyone, not by a long shot; KAT-TUN was a big part of his childhood and early adulthood. He owes his opportunities now to KAT-TUN, too, and he knows that. But. It's not weird to talk about it because of that.

It's just he hasn't talked to any of them in a long time. He stayed in touch, for a while, with Nakamaru, but the more Jin's life moved over to the United States, the less he tried.

There's a weird sense of melancholy that still washes over him, when he hears about them. He doesn't miss being a part of KAT-TUN, but he misses KAT-TUN all the same. Not actively, but a little part of his heart twinges at times like these. The feeling of Koki's hand slapping to hard into his back, or of Nakamaru giving him that look when he was being exceptionally stupid. Ueda's joking derision and Junno's bad puns. Kamenashi... They’d been soldiers in the same war for such a long time.

"You should find out how they're doing," Jin's mom says, after a minute passes with neither of them speaking. "I wish you would tell me what happened with you and Kame-chan."

"That's alright," Jin says. "I don't need to talk to them." Jin huffs. "And I've told you time and again that nothing happened with me and Kamenashi." Jin feels the usual tightness in his gut at the other man's name, but he ignores it, closing his eyes. "People grow up. People change. People grow apart. That's all."

"Okay, Jin," his mom replies, but he can't help but think she doesn't believe him.

"How's Reio?" Jin asks, and his mom lets him change the subject.

When he hangs up the phone, he throws it into the passenger seat and grabs his plastic sunglasses from the dashboard, putting them on and then shifting the car into drive.

The whole way home, his mind keeps drifting.

He doesn't have to care how they're doing, he convinces himself. They're selling records without him, and he's doing his thing here. Everything's fine.

They're just chasing different dreams these days, and that's fine. It's all fine. The feeling in his chest is nostalgia, that's all. Fond memories, or something.

Jin's made a new life for himself, and he's happy.

#

Recorded myth tell the tale of a man named Endymion, who had the misfortune of falling in love with the moon, high up in the night sky and so far from his reach that he couldn't imagine crossing the distance.

The moon came out, every night, to visit that shepherd, and Endymion only fell deeper and deeper into love.

And it is because of love that he fell asleep, endless sleep, so that he might remain beautiful and in love forever.

He's still sleeping now, it's said, although there's debate as to where. There's debate over most of the legend, to be sure; whether he was a shepherd or a king, whether it was Zeus who put him to sleep, or Hypnos in a fit of jealousy.

But regardless of ‘where’s or ‘when’s, "to sleep the sleep of Endymion" is to dream of love for eternity.

#

“Jin, have you picked out the songs for the first set yet?” Dom asks, leaning back in his swivel chair and spinning. “I’m so excited to hit the road with you again. Last time was so much fun!”

“Oh hell, I don’t even know. I’m trying to decide if I’m going to include any of the old songs in the sets or not.” Jin scratches his cheek with delicate nails. “I dunno what to do. I’ve got to include some of them, I guess—one full length album isn’t enough to support a concert, right?” A huge concert. The venues will be as big as his Japanese venues, this time. It’s got to be a better show.

“Sure it is, but you should at least include the ones that were on the mini-album you released in Japan. Sometimes I think more Americans bought that than Japanese people.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Jin says. “I just want it to be perfect.”

“Nothing is perfect, Jin. All you can do is your best. Sing the songs you want to sing. Do what you’ve been doing, it seems to be working.”

“Define ‘working,’” Jin says. “I’m kind of worried people are more fascinated with my bizarre past than they are with my music.”

“Well, you’re kinda fighting an uphill battle, dude. And a long Google search history of pics of you in drag holding hands with men.”

“Shut up,” Jin says, grabbing his coke off the table and snagging the straw between his lips. “I can’t believe that was on TMZ.”

“It was awesome,” Dom crows. “Even if they couldn’t even say Akakame right.”

Jin’s mouth falls into a frown. “Whatever. That’s my old life.”

“There’s no such thing as ‘old life,’ Jin. You’ve only got one life, and Japan, KAT-TUN, was a big part of it, whether you want it to follow you here or not.”

“Yeah,” Jin says, slurping soda. “I don’t want to forget it,” Jin says. Sometimes, though, thinking about people he’s left behind, people he can’t talk to anymore… it just makes him hurt. “I’ve just got some things I’d rather not have keep coming up.”

“Like Akakame?” Dom asks, and Jin closes his eyes, leaning back against his own chair.

“Yeah,” Jin replies. Like Akakame.

#

“Akakame,” Ueda barks, and Jin and Kame jump in their huddled conference about a prank they’re plotting for Nakamaru. Kame’s face is shining with mischief. “Whatever terrible, unacceptable thing you’re plotting together-- that will probably result in my misery and despair-- it can wait until later.”

“We have our own nickname now,” Kame says. “Akakame.”

“I like it,” Jin says shyly, and Kame’s smile reflects in Jin’s eyes like moonlight.

#

Jin dreams of honeysuckle, the sweet scent wafting into Jin’s nose when he opens the window to look out upon the night.

It tickles his nose, and he knows how the flowers taste on his tongue, grade school curiosity leading to stamens in his mouth as he tests the flower’s taste.

Jin takes a deep breath, and gazes down at the vines of them, growing up along the fence in Jin’s back yard. They glow in the light of the moon, and instead of flowers, they look like stars.

#

Jin is drinking coffee as he sits on the edge of the stage. Dom is sitting next to him, with his own latte, and Aubree and Lizzy are stretching behind them, occasionally shouting lewd things at one of the new male dancers on the tour. Jin was lucky to get the three of them again—he didn’t think it would work out but the stars had aligned. Working with good friends is never a chore, and now that Jin’s starting to get more successful, his tour is a little bigger, a little louder. It’s nice to have familiar faces amongst all the new ones.

“You decide on your set lists?”

Jin’s hand slides into his pocket and pulls out a wrinkled piece of lined paper from his notebook. “Yeah, I think so,” Jin says, and he hands Dom the list. “What do you think?”

“Looks solid,” Dom says, after he peruses the list and hands it back to Jin. “Varied.”

“Ah, I’m still not sure,” Jin says. “But I am sure about all the debut album stuff, so we can just choreo and rehearse those numbers first.”

“Just go with your gut, man,” Dom tells him, and Jin winces.

“Dude, this is the Staples Center. If I make a boring show, there will be four times as many people to disappoint.”

“Woah, who replaced you with Nancy Negative? You’ll be fine.”

Aubree squeals, and Jin leans his head back, bending so he’s upside down to eye them.

Dom sets his empty cup down between them as Jin watches Lizzy and Aubree with a smile. “Do you like either of them?” Dom asks. “I always wondered, you know. If you did.”

“What?” Jin asks. “No, it’s not like that.” Jin awkwardly kicks his legs out in front of him like a toddler in a high chair. Jin’s not suave, or cool, and he never knows what he can say when people ask him these kinds of questions that doesn’t sound offensive.

“Why not?” Dom asks. “Is it because they’re not Japanese, or something?” Dom looks like he doesn’t even see that as a viable reason, not with Jin, who embraces all things American with open arms

“Of course not,” Jin replies. “That’s not it at all. It’s just…” It’s hard to explain, Jin thinks, what attracts you to people. What makes you want to… to hold someone’s hand, to be closer to them than you are to anyone else. What makes them as important to you as the air.

Jin can’t help but remember Kame’s face, when Jin told him that he was going to be making his solo stuff permanent. That he wasn’t going to be coming back to KAT-TUN. He still remembers the way Kame’s faced had smoothed, become blank and unreadable and detached. Still remembers the words he said. The way Kame had disappeared and Kamenashi, the consummate professional, had taken Kame’s place. Jin had wanted to gather him close and tell Kame that leaving the group didn’t mean leaving Kame, wanted to tell Kame that it was going to be hard but…

“Ah,” Dom says, stretching his arms above his head. “I get it.”

“Get what?” Jin asks, and Dom smiles knowingly. Jin looks down and examines his nails, the way they dig into the denim of his jeans as his hands clench his thighs.

“Jin, shouldn’t you be practicing, too?” Aubree shouts over at him playfully.

“I’m not going to forget the words again, so chill out,” Jin shouts back, and he squeezes his eyes shut to wet his contacts before he looks back at the girls.

“What are you guys talking about over here, all serious and stuff?” Lizzy asks, bouncing over with Aubree in tow. “Jin looks like he just saw himself in sparkly pleather pants and feathers on Perez.”

“Fuck you, too,” Jin says, and Lizzy snickers.

“We’re talking about love,” Dom says. Lizzy claps her hands in delight and Aubree furrows her brow, looking back and forth between Dom and Jin

“Have you ever been in love, Jin?” Aubree sounds curious, and teasing.

“Not yet,” Jin says, standing up. He doesn’t want to think about it. “Don’t we have a concert to rehearse for?”

“Thought you weren’t going to forget the words?”

“Never hurts to practice once more, just in case,” Jin replies, and then he grabs a mic. “No second chances once the show starts.”

#

"Jin, try and remember the lyrics this time," Koki says, his face quirked into a half-smile as Jin sheepishly pulls his hair back from his face in a bizarre approximation of a ponytail. He can still feel the shorter pieces tickling the back of his neck, wet with Jin's sweat. A bead of moisture slowly crawls down the middle of his back, and Jin pulls his shoulders forward, tightening the fabric of his shirt across his back to catch it.

The air is stale, and Jin wishes there was a window to open, but of course there isn't-- Johnny wouldn't want to do anything to make rehearsal rooms look less like jail cells, Jin figures. That would probably make them all less productive, and more likely to smoke during practice.

Jin itches for a cigarette, at the moment; not particularly for the nicotine, but more for the familiar weight of the cigarette on his lower lip, and the reassuring heat of the smoke filling his lungs and bleeding out of his nose. It stings. Jin likes that.

But instead of trying to convince Ueda to let him take five minutes to go up to the roof and have a smoke, he leans back against the wall, sliding down it until his butt hits the floor. The wall feels cool against the heated skin of his shoulders and arms, and it help with the tiny niggling beginnings of a headache that tease at him.

"Every time you forget, it's one more time we have to run through it," Nakamaru says, but there's nothing angry or heated in his tone. Just statement of a fact, one Jin knows all too well. He looks at Koki's hunched form and knows he's tired. They're all tired. Even Junno is drooping, his seemingly boundless energy almost depleted, and Jin feels something like guilt coil in his stomach, even though he knows he's giving it his best.

Jin rolls his neck, loosening the kinks in his muscles. They've been here for hours, dancing, rehearsing. They're too young to mess up, too new. They're just debuting. This is their first single. "Sorry," Jin says, scratching his neck. "I'm trying."

"We know," Kame says, and Jin turns his head to the left to take in Kame, who sits against the glass on the other side of the room, body curled around itself, arms locked around his knees. "Of course you are."

He looks so damn small. He's so thin Jin can see his ribs, even through the ribbed fabric of his tank shirt, and his wrists look so slender Jin wonders if he'll break. They don't have time to break. That's what makes Jin feel the guiltiest of all.

Kame looks up at him, eyes piercing, and Jin can see the shadows beneath his eyes, the color of plums hanging heavy from the branches at the end of summer.

"Shall we go again?" Kame's voice, nasal and sharp, sits in the air like a command. Kame's not their leader, but he's always leading these days. Jin's not sure when it switched, when Kame stopped following Jin and Jin stopped trying to lead him. But now, sometimes, Jin doesn't even realize that he's following Kame. Jin wonders if he would follow Kame right off a cliff, and not even realize it until he feels himself hurtling off the edge.

"Alright!" Junno says, putting his left hand up in a fist, like he's preparing for war. Ueda nods, and he's already standing, running a hand through his sweaty hair and dropping the other hand down, thumb tangling in the cotton string tightening his shorts around his hips.

"Yes," Ueda says, pressing his lips flat together. "Again."

Jin mouths the words to himself as he too stands, and when his eyes flick back over to Kame, the younger man is smiling at him softly.

The way the light hits him, he looks almost unearthly, and Jin wonders if he reaches down and touches, if his hand will pass right through; if Kame, this small thin shell of what used to be Kame, is nothing but air and illusion.

So Jin does reach down, to offer a hand up, and the hand that grasps his own is far from fragile. Kame's grip is far from weak, and the tension of muscle is obvious when Kame effortlessly lets Jin drag him to his feet. Jin's hand tingles at the touch. Something about Kame makes it hard for Jin to let go of that bony hand, so he pulls it, him closer to Jin.

"I got them, this time," Jin says, quiet and fierce. Kame's heat, steady and familiar at his side, makes Jin feel more sure. Ueda clears his throat, and Koki cracks another sideways grin.

"Yeah, it's okay, really Jin. You'll get it." Then Koki turns on that big, wide, irrepressible grin and winks at Jin, smug like a kitten about to get away with something. "It's not your fault your head is so empty."

"Shut up," Jin mumbles, and crosses his arms, catching his elbows with his hands. Kame comes to stand beside him, and leans slightly against him, pressing into Jin's side just enough that Jin can feel the warmth of Kame's sweaty skin. Jin looks down at him, and Kame is looking straight ahead, Kame's tongue flicking out to lick at chapped, cracked lips. He's quiet.

It's Kame's way, lately, to be quiet instead of silly. To be strong instead of vulnerable. Jin doesn't know why it has changed, only that it has.

"It's okay, Jin," Ueda says. "You're still pretty." Ueda is examining his glossy nails as he speaks, a tiny smirk on his face.

"I've got it now," Jin says with a pout. He runs the words through his head one more time. Kame pulls away, and Jin turns to look at him again. This time Kame meets his eyes.

There, in Kame's steady gaze, Jin can see the flashing stage lights, the heavy roar of the audience, the burn in his muscles from running and jumping and dancing. He can feel the words ripping from his throat, sweet and hot, and that burns too.

Kame smiles, and Jin wonders if Kame can see the same thing when he looks at Jin-- the fruit of secrets and furtive promises whispered against soft cheeks as they huddled under heavy blankets, hands linked, pressed together shoulder to elbow.

He wonders if Kame can taste victory along the edges of his tongue every time they perform, like Jin can, or if he remembers when they were so young and hungry and their dreams curled like cigarette smoke up to the sky-- dreams of concerts and debuts and being famous.

When Kame blinks, it breaks Jin's thought process, and the world comes back into focus. Nakamaru is shoving Junno, who is chuckling madly with a self-satisfied grin on his face, and Ueda is glaring at them both as Koki starts needling him.

Kame's still got a tiny grin on his drawn face, and Jin thinks Kame knows what he's thinking. He always has.

The reason Jin can't remember the words isn't because Jin is stupid, or forgetful, or because he’s empty-headed. Jin isn't any of those things, anyway, so they wouldn't be the cause of his problem.

It's just that Jin's always had his head so stuffed full of dreams there isn't really room for much of anything else.

Jin gets it perfect, the next time. “Let’s do it once more,” Kame says, smiling at Jin. “No second chances once the show starts.”

#

Jin dreams of warm moonlight tickling his eyelids. Of the touch of calloused fingers against his brow and a low voice telling him it’s time to wake up.

But when he opens his eyes, it’s day, and Jin is alone.

#

Jin never expects to become friends with Jason Derulo beyond their casual working relationship. But when it comes time to work on his second U.S. album, Jason seems excited to work with Jin again, and despite the five year age difference, they actually have quite a bit in common. That leads to drinks, and pick-up basketball games at the gym, and the occasional ‘how’s life?’ texts.

That's how Jin finds himself at Jason's luxurious Beverly Hills mansion, at a birthday party Jason's throwing for his new girlfriend. The place is packed, and Jin's having a good time, but it's a lot of people, and the drunker he gets, the harder it is too keep up with everyone's English. He’s brought Lizzy as his date, but she’s wandered off somewhere; she was hitting on some random Asian guy at the bar last time he saw her.

Jin finds an escape on the balcony, and he leans with a sigh against the rail, setting his tumbler of whiskey down on the table and pulling out his mostly empty pack of cigarettes.

He lights it, and as he inhales, he closes his eyes.

"Taking a break?" It's a low female voice, and when Jin opens his eyes, the alcohol makes it hard to focus on her. "I preferred being the only one out here."

"So sorry," Jin says. "I just needed some fresh air."

"Then why are you smoking?"

"It was a figure of speech," Jin replies, and then he tilts his chin up to look at the sky.

"It's a full moon," she says, after a few moments of silence. Jin looks at her again. She's wearing a red dress, and her legs go on for miles, and her hair is styled in this short and spiky cut that flatters her face. She's got a strong jaw, but it suits her. She's gorgeous, Jin thinks, and any other guy in Jin's position, single and a little drunk and not low on confidence, would be hitting on her right now.

But Jin's eyes inescapably wander back up to the moon. "It is a full moon," he says. "I love looking at the moon. It's so bright." It reminds Jin of sitting on the roof of the jimusho, Kame looking at the stars and Jin looking at Kame. It reminds Jin of Okinawa too, just him and Kame against the empty backdrop of the beach at night, moon so bright and clear overhead.

"Do you know the Greek myth?" The girl asks, and Jin shakes his head in the negative. "About Endymion and the Moon?"

It rings with vague familiarity in Jin's head, and he snaps his fingers. "Sailor Moon!" he says, and the girl throws her head back and laughs. "She's like the Moon Princess? And he's the prince of the Earth?"

"I did watch that as a kid," the girl replies. "But I mean the actual myth. In some versions, I think Endymion is a prince, but most of the times he's just a simple shepherd." Now she's leaning next to Jin against the railing, side by side. She grabs his smoke and takes a puff, pink-stained lips closing in a tight circle around Jin's cigarette. "One day he falls in love with the Moon. He thinks it's a hopeless love." She hands Jin back his cigarette, and he stares, bemusedly, at the lipstick marks.

"Falls in love?" Jin asks. "With the moon?"

"Ever heard of 'mooning' after someone? Daydreaming and pining?"

"No," Jin says. "I haven't. But I'll remember it."

"Don't bother," she says with a chuckle. "It's a little outdated." She spins around, then, so her elbows are resting on the railing instead of her back. "Anyway, Endymion and the Moon fall in love."

"The Moon is a person?"

"It's a myth, silly," she says, and now she's drinking from his tumbler, and Jin would draw a line in the sand but he's had enough to drink so it doesn't really matter. He feels easy and relaxed, like the summer night air is loosening his muscles or something.

"What's the point?" Jin asks. There might not be one; Jin's definitely had stranger conversations drunk, and he knows drunk musings don’t always have some kind of point.

"The way you were looking up at the sky," the woman says, and she sets Jin's whiskey back on the table and takes a step away from the railing. "You looked like a man who's fallen in love with the Moon."

She retreats then into the party, into the loud noises and flashing lights and drunken swaying, leaving Jin standing alone on the balcony, thoughts blowing through his mind like leaves in the autumn wind.

#

Jin’s dreams that night are vivid, starlight shining down on a pale face, grass under his back and a warm body pressed against his side.

“Let’s shine brighter together,” Jin says, in the dream, and then the body next to him is gone.

“We can’t,” Kame says. The smell of lemons. Moonlight.

When Jin wakes up, he’s cold.

#

There are many versions, passed down through tradition and in art and in epic poetry, about why Endymion slipped into an everlasting sleep.

The most romantic, by far, is the one that proclaims he loved the Moon so deeply and completely that he would do anything to stay in the light of that love-- even if it meant meeting only in his dreams.

#

Jin keeps crossing songs of the set list, and scribbling in new ones. ‘Paparats’ comes and goes six times, and Jin debates ‘Tipsy Love’ at least as often, drawing a line through it, and writing it back in.

Jin thinks maybe this set list is kind of like his life. He knows how he wants it to look in the end, but he doesn’t know which pieces he needs to get there.

He’s never been afraid of failure. Jin isn’t afraid of jumping from the top of the highest mountain and spreading his arms wide and finding out then and there if he can fly.

It’s what makes him strong. It’s also what makes him weak.

 

#

The sound of the doorbell is not totally out of the ordinary, Jin supposes, although his friends usually know better than to wake him up before four in the afternoon on a Sunday.

His head is pounding. His hangover is more wretched than usual, and his stomach is rolling. He’d had too much whiskey at Jason’s party last night, he thinks. Way too much. The last thing he wants to do right now is get out of bed and answer the door, since he's pretty sure he's just wearing last night's clothes and that he probably reeks of booze and cologne.

The doorbell rings again though, and Jin groans, grabbing his pillow up from the floor and smashing it into his face, inhaling the scent of fabric softener and enjoying the cool white cotton rubbing against his skin. Then he sighs and rolls over, blearily opening his eyes. The room swims into immediate focus, which means he's slept with his contacts in again, and he blinks a few times to clear the stickiness from his eyes, letting natural tears wet the lenses.

The clock by his bedside proclaims it to be a little after two in the afternoon in bright green numbers, glowing too bright for Jin in the darkness of his bedroom, where he keeps the curtains drawn to spare himself the more painful aspects of a hangover.

The doorbell chimes a third time, and Jin bellows "I'm coming," at the top of his lungs before he falls out of bed, slamming onto his elbow and swearing. The sheets come with him, and he untangles them as he stands, throwing them onto the bed before promptly tripping over his shoes, which he'd left by his bedroom door. He swears again, jerking open the door.

The wooden steps are cold under his bare feet, but it helps wake him up. The banister is slick under his hand as it glides along it, helping Jin balance.

He undoes the locks, turning the deadbolt with a steady twist of his wrist, and pulls the heavy oak door open.

The warm Los Angeles air rushes in, and it tickles at Jin's bangs, the shorter pieces that always obnoxiously fall into his eyes and make it harder for him to see. The light is almost unbearable, and Jin squints out into it, left hand coming up to scratch anxiously at his stomach.

The hand drops as Jin takes in the figure in front of him. "Kame?" he croaks out, feeling his eyes grow wider as he looks at him.

Jin would be lying if he said he wasn't more drinking Kame in, trying to wrap his mind around Kame in his impossibly crisp blazer and tastefully ripped jeans standing at Jin's door in the middle of a Sunday afternoon.

Jin suddenly feels self-conscious, tongue running over his unbrushed teeth and belatedly noticing the tight skin around his mouth that indicates he's probably got dried drool in a white circle around it. It’s not his sexiest moment, that’s for sure.

Then Kame clears his throat. "Aren't you going to invite me in?" Kame says, and his voice-- it's not quite the same as Jin remembers it. It's still got that soft, nasal quality to it, but there's something less sure about it, and Jin, even with his barely roused, alcohol-fogged mind, can hear that slight tremble.

It makes him open the door wider, to make room for Kame to walk past him and into the house.

Kame's carrying only a single duffle bag, and his eyes are obscured with large black sunglasses. Now that he's inside, in dimmer light, Jin can see that Kame hasn't shaved, and that Kame's nails are longer than he usually keeps them. Kame's lips are chapped and cracked, too, like Kame's been too preoccupied to even think of it.

If this were eight years ago, Jin would already have his arm around Kame's shoulder, pulling the man who once again looks too thin into his side, and tucking Kame's head beneath his own. Kame's soft breaths would blow lightly onto his neck as Jin took in the scent of Kame's hair as the strands tickled his nose.

But this isn't then, this is now, and all Jin can do is stick his hands anxiously into the pockets of his stiff jeans, and try and figure out if he had more to drink last night than he had thought.

"Can I get you some water?" Jin asks, more to fill the silence than to be polite. Also his own throat has become dry, and his chest is tight, and he needs... He doesn't know what he needs, but water is as good a start as anything.

"Yeah," Kame says, and it's more of a croak than a word.

"Sit down, or something," Jin says hurriedly, reaching over into Kame's space to slide Kame's bag off of his shoulder. Kame jumps when Jin's fingers press against him, and Jin feels that familiar electricity, even through the smooth, thick fabric of Kame's blazer. Jin quickly withdraws his hand, bringing the bag with him, setting it down next to the sofa as he retreats to the kitchen. "I swear my couches and chairs are clean. I try and keep my crazy upstairs."

Kame offers him a dry chuckle, and it makes Jin nervous. He doesn't know why his palms are sweating, really, because he's in his own house in his own territory, and just because he hasn't seen Kame in three years he's known him for over ten. Jin doesn't realize he's just standing there, staring, until Kame's tongue comes out and licks his lips nervously, and Kame looks down at Jin's hardwood floors.

It reminds Jin of when they were younger, when an unsure Kame would tuck his chin just like that, hair falling into his face and hiding his face from Jin's inquisitive gaze. It reminds Jin of a time when Kame wanted his reassurance.

"Right, water," Jin mumbles, and then he spins on his heel, walking purposefully toward the kitchen.

He keeps the water glasses on the drying rack, because he's too lazy to put them in the cabinet after he washes them. He grabs two, hands shaking slightly, standing them upright, and then he reaches for the refrigerator handle, to get out the water filter. He only makes it halfway there when he hears the tapping of Kame's shoes onto the linoleum of the kitchen floor.

Jin doesn't look up at Kame, just stares at his shoes; thick-heeled combat boots with laces only done up halfway, hasty knots holding them closed at the ankle. "Sorry," Kame whispers. "I wasn't sure if I should take off my shoes."

"It doesn't matter," Jin says, and he grabs the water filter from the refrigerator, filling two cups and handing one to Kame. Jin watches as Kame takes a slow sip, lips pressing tentatively against the glass. Kame's hand is shaking, Jin notices, and he wishes he hadn't, because it makes him worried. “Live the American Dream.”

He hasn't worried about Kame in a long time, and he's not sure if it's good for him to start again now. He's worked so hard to push those kinds of feelings as deep as they'll go, to hide them, bury them, somewhere inside of himself so he doesn't have to see them. Because those feelings… they just make Jin confused. Kame just makes Jin confused, in general, because Jin doesn’t understand the rolling in his gut and the way his tongue feels thick around Kame. He never has.

Jin takes a sip of his own water, and immediately sighs in relief. He should probably root up some aspirin, too, for the pounding in his head, but he still feels a little tipsy and knows he shouldn't mix the two. He closes his eyes to savor the way the cool liquid soothes his stomach, trying to focus on that instead of the fact that Kamenashi Kazuya is in Los Angeles, standing in Jin's kitchen with his shoes on, making all these feelings he's managed to avoid thinking about for years start bubbling and churning under the surface of his skin.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?" Kame queries, setting his empty glass down on the island countertop in the center of the kitchen. His hand stays wrapped around the glass, though, and the other hand is at his hip, thumb sliding into a belt loop.

Kame looks scared, Jin thinks, and defensive, and tired. He looks so tired.

Jin considers, for a moment, all the things that could have brought Kame here, to him, after all this time. But then he realizes it doesn't really matter.

"I told you once," Jin says, turning around and putting his glass into the sink. "That if you needed me, for anything, I'd be there for you." Jin turns on the hot water, letting it run into the glass. Watching the steam makes him want a cigarette. "It doesn't matter when I said it," Jin continues. "I still meant it. Mean it." He does. He always will.

"I was hoping you might," Kame replies softly.

Jin shuts off the water, wiping his hands on his shirt and wincing at the smell of beer that wafts up. "So, I figure whatever has brought you here, to me of all people," and then Jin's mouth fumbles, because he doesn't really speak Japanese all that often anymore. "You can, you know, tell me later. Or not. Or whatever."

"Or whatever?" Kame says, and Jin can see faint hints of a smile pulling at Kame's thin mouth. "You always did forget your lyrics." Kame runs a hand through his hair, and Jin wishes Kame would take off his sunglasses. He feels like a hypocrite even thinking that, but he wants to see the expression in Kame's eyes. He wants a hint of what Kame might be thinking. As to why Kame flew halfway around the world to see Jin. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised you're forgetting your own language."

"Shut up," Jin mumbles, closing his eyes and leaning back against the sink. "I need to shower."

"True," Kame says, and Jin opens his eyes again to look at him.

"I wasn't expecting company," Jin defends, restlessly ruffling his own hair. His nails feel soothing on his scalp.

"Sorry," Kame says. "I would have called, but...I didn't really know I was coming here until I was, you know, coming here." Kame shifts uneasily, looking out Jin's kitchen window to his courtyard. He rolls his shoulders, and Jin wonders how long ago he'd even gotten off the plane. "This is a nice place."

"I love it," Jin says. "There's so much space. It's beautiful."

"Don't complement your own house, Akanishi," Kame says, but there's not any chiding in his voice. It's like he's saying it out of habit, but Jin and Kame haven't had anything resembling a casual conversation since 2009.

"I meant Los Angeles, Kame," Jin snaps back, and then scowls playfully even as his chest constricts. The expression feels foreign on his face, and maybe it's because he and Kame...it hasn't been like this for so long that Jin's forgotten what it felt like, to talk with Kame about something that isn’t work. Maybe just to talk with Kame at all.

"So I’m still Kame?" Kame muses, and Jin feels a blush rising up his neck, and he wants to slap his hands to his cheeks because he's twenty-eight years old and acting nervous around Kame is embarrassing.

"Are you staying?" Jin blurts out, and then he shuffles his weight from foot to foot. "I mean, here. In my house. Here."

Kame's hands slide up to his face, and he slides his sunglasses off his face, folding then carefully before hanging them from the neck of his shirt. Then he looks up and their gazes lock for the first time.

Kame's eyes are red, and underneath they're puffy, like it's been ages since Kame's slept. Without the glasses, Jin can see just how hollow Kame's face is-- thin in a way Jin hasn't seen since Nobuta, when he'd maybe been worried that Kame would waste away to nothing. "Would that be okay?" Kame asks, and the tension in the room is so thick that Jin feels like he can barely breathe.

Kame is...Kame is looking at him the same way he did when he was fifteen, asking Jin if it was okay if he shared his futon, because it was too cold at night. Like he's afraid Jin is going to say no. Like he's afraid Jin is going to laugh at him and make him go away. Like Jin is going to reject him.

Jin finds himself just as incapable of doing those things now as he's always been. The feelings bubble faster and faster, and Jin wonders if his skin can contain them.

"Yeah," Jin says, and it's more an exhalation than an utterance. "Of course that would be okay." He feels like his chest is so tight his heart doesn't have any space to beat, and his hands are gripping the countertop behind him so tightly that it hurts, digging into his palm and making his knuckles ache. "Of course you can."

Kame's disbelieving smile, edged with relief and something else Jin can't quite figure out, bleeds into Jin, and makes him feel a little, strangely, like his heart is melting.

#

That night, for the first time in a year, Jin dreams of the beach.

The air smells of salt and sea, and in the night, the breeze is crisp. The sand is cool and textured beneath him, digging in to the soles of his feet as he walks barefoot along the ocean's edge. The waves lap at his feet, pushed and pulled by the tide.

The moon is bright and full in the sky above them.

There's a figure, down the shore, waving to him frantically. A young boy, just a little younger than Jin himself, hair wild from the wind and grin lighting up the night. Jin feels his heart skip a beat.

Jin starts running toward the boy, sand flying up and sticking to his calves, and getting trapped under the rolled cuffs of his jeans.

But then the boy starts running too, and Jin can't catch him, Jin can't keep up. No matter how much he runs, the boy is always out of reach.

The boy, Kame is laughing, and laughing, and Jin tires to make him out but the moonlight on the water is reflecting into his eyes and Jin can't see.

He can't see anything at all.

Jin blinks, and suddenly he can see, and it's his ceiling, beige and boring, and he can touch, but all his hands can grasp is the soft cotton of his sheets and the sweaty fabric of his t-shirt.

Jin licks dry lips, and his pulse is racing.

"Why are you here, Kame?" Jin whispers into his empty bedroom.

There's no answer for him.

“Fuck.”

#

Jin’s first kiss happens on a drama set. He doesn’t count it.

His first real kiss happens when he’s twenty. He’s drunk at a club for the first time, and it’s different than being drunk at his parent’s house when they’re out of tow, giggling with Pi and playing video games at maximum volume while Pi hiccups and snorts and neither of them care what they look or sound like. Here, out, Jin feels like he does when he’s on stage; like he’s being watched and evaluated, and it’s mildly uncomfortable.

Takki keeps teasing him about not being able to hold his liquor, and it’s true. Jin’s swaying on his feet, and his head feels fuzzy. Everything feels sort of like it’s happening to someone else, really.

Jin doesn’t remember much, only that Takki is introducing him to this girl, and they’re dancing, and then she’s kissing him. It’s nice, Jin guesses. Her lips are soft and pliable, and she tastes like strawberry champagne and smells like expensive perfume. She’s soft in his arms, melting into him, all curves and sweetness.

When Jin recalls it, the next night, in fragments of images and smells and feelings, he thinks it was really nice.

Jin doesn’t know why, but strangely, when he touches himself, stroking quickly up and down his hard cock and muffling his gasps by biting his lip, the strawberry in his mind changes to honey, and the smell of perfume is suddenly lemon.

As Jin comes, thighs and abs tight like a bowstring as he spills over his hand, he imagines lean muscle instead of curves, and a mouth that takes instead of gives.

#

Kame is already downstairs when Jin stumbles down, wearing a fresh t-shirt and his favorite pair of plaid shorts.

Kame's hair is pulled back in a ponytail, scraggly pieces falling around his face as he turns two fried eggs in a skillet. Light from the kitchen window shines in on him, but it just highlights how pale he is.

"You're awake already?" Jin says, walking over to stand beside Kame at the stove. "I thought you'd sleep the day away after that flight. I know how rough it is."

"I don't need much sleep anymore," Kame says, and his voice is low. He looks up at Jin, and Jin just looks at him, the same way he always does when he thinks Kame is bullshitting. "Don't give me that look," he says, and it's a little whiny. It makes Jin think about when they were kids.

"You love sleep," Jin says. "No one here is going to tell you that you need to wake up. Certainly not me—I am sleep’s greatest advocate."

Kame brushes past him, grabbing the salt, and Kame's arm brushes against Jin's stomach. Jin steps back, quickly, and Kame looks at him fleetingly, flickering eyes examining Jin's face for a brief moment before he looks back down at the eggs, sprinkling a little salt on the tops of them. "Well, then let's just say I’ve gotten used to not getting sleep." Kame reaches out and turns off the stove. "Where are your plates?"

"Top shelf of the cabinet in front of you," Jin says, and Kame smiles at him with chagrin.

"You'll have to get them, then," Kame says wryly. "I'm not quite tall enough to reach."

Jin clears his throat and shifts so he's behind Kame, who's putting toast in Jin's toaster, and reaches up to the top cabinet. His chest presses against Kame's broad back, and Kame's muscles tense against him. Jin rapidly grabs the plates and steps back. "Sorry," Jin mumbles, and Kame arches a brow at him.

"A simple 'excuse me' would have sufficed," Kame says, as he takes the plates from Jin's hands, scooping the eggs onto plates and dropping a piece of toast onto each one. "Here."

"You're my guest," Jin says in response. "I should’ve made you breakfast."

They sit down at the kitchen table, across from each other, and Kame laughs. "I've barged in on you without calling, even though we haven't talked in, what? Three years?"

"Two years and six months," Jin says, and Kame pauses, looking at Jin, and damn if Jin doesn't want to blush, again. He hasn't felt this out of control of himself in years, but Kame's always had a way of making him come undone.

"Oh," Kame says.

"It's easy to remember," Jin explains. "That day, I mean."

"Is it?" Kame asks.

"You told me..." Jin sticks his fork into his egg, and he notices that Kame's grabbed chopsticks. "You told me 'Good luck with your new life.'"

The silence is heavy. The egg is a little too salty, and it could use some ketchup, but he knows tomatoes and everything associated with them are sort of Kame's arch nemesis, so he refrains, because he doesn't want to see Kame's face scrunch up this early in the morning.

Kame's tongue wets his lips. They're still dry, and still chapped. "The weather's nice, here. I've never been to Los Angeles before."

"We should go out," Jin offers, before he can stop himself. "I'll show you around."

"Don't you have, you know, work?"

Jin considers. He's got a meeting with his manager in two hours, and a photo shoot at three. "Yeah, I do." He takes a big bite of toast. "You wanna come? We'll do sightseeing afterwards."

Kame studies him, and Jin feels like he's under a microscope, and Kame is picking apart his intentions carefully, trying to figure out why Jin is being so...welcoming.

Jin wishes him luck, because Jin doesn't even have those answers for himself. All he knows is that Kame is here, and Jin feels like he has been put in the spin cycle of the wash, wet and soapy and dizzy.

"Jin, why are you..." Kame starts, and then he stops, before he scratches the side of his jaw and starts again. "I'd love to come, if it's okay."

Jin shoves the last bite of egg into his mouth. It's fine without ketchup, he thinks. "Cool," Jin says, and Kame gives him a smile that makes Jin think of the salty beach air in the middle of the night.

"Aren’t you going to ask?" Kame says, when Jin runs the water in the sink and starts cleaning up the dishes. "Why I'm here?"

It takes Jin a moment to respond. "You'll tell me when you're ready, won't you?" Jin asks, and Kame nods. "Then that's enough for me."

Kame's mouth stretches the tiniest bit, into this almost invisible smile. It's gorgeous in its subtlety. Jin loves that smile because it's a smile that Kame has always saved just for Jin.

#

The air is cool, and Jin is shivering. It's night, and there are no clouds. The sky is lit up with stars.

"It's cold," Kame says from behind him, and Jin turns around to look at the smaller boy, who stands in the door, looking out into the yard. He's wearing Jin's sweatshirt, and it makes Jin smile. "Why are you out here?"

"Looking at the stars," Jin says, and Kame looks up, taking in the magnificence above them. Kame's hair is ruffled from sleep, and the arms of Jin's sweatshirt are covering Kame's hands, and Jin feels warmer just looking at him, the chill of the night air forgotten. "Aren't they beautiful?"

"Yes," Kame replies, coming to stand next to Jin. "It makes me feel so small."

"You are small," Jin says, and Kame shoves him with a pointy elbow, making a displeased face at Jin that makes Jin feel like laughing.

"Whatever. You're just a few years ahead of me, is all," Kame says, voice cracking. "I'll catch up."

"In your dreams," Jin answers, shoving his hands into the pockets of his basketball shorts.

It's unusually cold for fall, Jin thinks, and as he looks over at his best friend, thin and tiny and wide eyed, he's glad Kame's wearing his sweatshirt.

"I'm going to be so big one day that you won't be able to tease me," Kame says. "I'm going to be tall, and famous, and respected."

"Big dreams you've got there, Kamenashi," Jin says, and he wraps an arm around Kame's shoulder, pulling him in. Kame is hot like fire against his side, and maybe Jin's been outside too long, after all. "But good ones, I guess."

"I want to be a star," Kame says. "Shining so bright that people want to look at me."

Kame is staring down now at the grass, which peeks up playfully between his toes and casts shadows on his bare feet. Jin can't see his face, because his hair, choppy and clumped, obscures his face in shadow.

"Me too," Jin says, and Kame looks up at him, a wry smile on his face.

"You're already so bright," Kame says, and then he swallows. Jin can feel the movement ripple through Kame's frame, still curved into Jin's own. Kame hair smells like lemon, and like the sweet heaviness of afternoon rain, and a little like hibiscus flowers after the first bloom. Jin thinks Kame himself might just smell like spring, even now, in the middle of the fall. Kame's like having spring all year round, Jin figures, and he can't think of anything brighter than that.

Jin exhales, and digs his fingers into Kame's shoulder, making Kame yelp and look up at him. Jin takes his other hand and points up, toward the sky, and Kame follows his finger. "Let's shine brighter together," Jin says, and then blushes, because it sounds silly and gay and like something the guy says to the girl in those television dramas his mom likes to watch.

But Kame's smile spreads across his whole face, and Jin can't really regret that. "Alright," Kame says. "But first, I'm going to be as tall as you."

"No, you're not," Jin says, laughing, as his arm drops from Kame's shoulder and he turns around. He stops at the door, and looks back at Kame, who is still standing in the grass where Jin left him, still a fourteen year old boy in a sixteen year old's sweatshirt, lit from behind by the light of the stars. Outlined like that, he looks like the moon. "But everyone will love you anyway."

Jin will love him anyway. That’s what best friends do.

Jin feels wide awake.

#

On the official Johnny's website, Kamenashi Kazuya's height is listed at 172cm, while Jin's is listed at 178.

It's only six centimeters. Two and a half inches by American measure.

Still, they're adults now, and Kame isn't going to grow anymore. It feels like the end of an era; Kame stops trying to catch him.

Jin wonders, sometimes, if he and Kame weren't always destined to be separated by some measure of distance. If maybe Kame was destined to stop chasing him.

#

Jin's manager looks surprised when Jin walks into the Starbucks with Kame in tow, but he quickly stands and holds out his hand to shake. "Ah, Jin, you brought a friend?"

Kame's head tilts to the side, and Jin realizes, belatedly, that Kame doesn't speak English. "Yes," Jin tells him. "This is Kamenashi."

"Nice to meet you," Kame says, speaking slowly and clearly, face impassive as the two shake hands.

"Kamena...From KAT-TUN?" His manager, David, says the first part like he's talking about a cat, and Jin delights in the way Kame's eyes crinkle at the corners.

"That would be the one," Jin says. He feels strangely nervous, now that they're in public together, even though he's not nearly as famous here as he is in Japan. Not nearly as important. Kamenashi isn't famous at all.

"Wow, when did you get here? Do you like LA? Are you staying with Jin?" David seems excited.

"He can't understand you," Jin says, as Kame's eyes get wider and wider and he leans against Jin in mild panic. "Calm down."

Jin's manager nods then, and looks back at Jin. "I thought you didn't keep in touch with your old band mates."

"He sort of...found me," Jin says, and Jin pushes back.

They all ride together to Jin's photo shoot, Kame silently looking out the window in the backseat of David's Toyota Camry as David tells Jin all about his activities for the next week. Jin sips slowly on his chocolate latte as he watches Kame in the rear view mirror.

Kame's eyes catch his in the mirror once, and there's something strange in them, vague and mysterious and hard to fathom, and then Kame's eyes shift back out to watching the world fly by.

At the photo shoot, Kame sits in the back on a fold-out metal chair and watches unobtrusively, but Jin still feels more jittery than he’s felt at a photo shoot in years, sweating and making silly mistakes. He can feel Kame’s eyes on him, and they’re heavier than any camera lens.

When it’s over, Kame follows Jin quietly back to the dressing room, leaning against the door way arms akimbo as Jin tends to his face with make-up remover. He’s staring, and Jin’s jittery all over again. “Where to now?” Kame asks, and Jin smiles timidly at him.

“Well, I was thinking we could drive down to downtown,” Jin says, and Kame smiles back.

“That would be nice,” Kame replies.

Jin changes quickly, and Kame flips through a magazine making sarcastic comments about the fashion style of American men into the silence, and Jin finds himself snorting at Kame’s comments, even though most of the time he doesn’t give even half of a fuck about fashion.

When Jin’s ready to go, Jin’s manager drops them back at Starbucks, where they pick up Jin’s truck.

The ride is uncomfortable, because Jin’s mind is racing, searching for something to say, but Kame looks so tired, resting his head against the window and watching the scenery race by. Jin doesn’t want to disturb him, and he doesn’t know what to talk about. It’s not that he doesn’t have a million things he wants to say, or a million things to ask about, but he doesn’t want to upset Kame, and he doesn’t know what’s okay and what’s off limits.

As they drive down the highway, Kame rolls down the window and leans out the window. His hair blows behind him, and he relaxes and smiles, and Jin wants to just stare at him, but he’s got to keep his eyes on the road. Still, his eyes keep shifting over for small peeks at the man beside him, whose eyes have closed, just enjoying the wind on his face.

Jin doesn’t know why he feels like a teenager on his first date, but he definitely does. His hands are holding on to the steering wheel too tight, and his throat is dry, and he wants to impress Kame for some reason, and he’d really thought he was over feeling like this.

When Jin pulls into the parking lot, he quickly unfastens his seatbelt and jumps out of the car, opening Kame’s door before his brain catches up with him and he realizes he’s being absolutely ridiculous.

“I’m perfectly capable of opening doors for myself,” Kame says, and he’s amused, and Jin feels stupid but Kame’s smiling at him, looking the least tense he’s looked since he’d shown up on Jin’s doorstep like a stray, so Jin supposes it’s worth it.

“Just because you can do something on your own doesn’t mean I can’t do it for you, sometimes,” Jin mumbles, swallowing quickly.

Kame rolls his eyes, but the grin stays fixed, and then Kame climbs out of the vehicle to look around curiously. “So this is downtown?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “I thought we could walk around so you could see what the city looks like. It’s pretty at this time of day.”

“I’d like that,” Kame says.

Jin wants Kame to like LA. He doesn’t know why it matters to him so much, but he just… Jin loves LA so much, and loves…well, it’s important to him that Kame can see the beauty in it that Jin does, that’s all. Jin is tired of trying to understand himself anyway, and Kame being here, where Jin never expected him to be, makes it infinitely harder.

So Jin pushes it all aside, and shoves his hands into his pockets, instead. “Great, let’s go then.”

Jin’s parked his car in the lot at Union Station, and they just walk the streets, crossing Alameda Street and reaching Olvera Street. Kame’s eyes roam around, just taking in anything and everything.

Kame looks out of place here, Jin thinks, and he can’t pinpoint exactly why.

“So why here?” Kame asks, and Jin scratches his neck earnestly.

“Well, you like old stuff,” Jin says, and Kame raises an eyebrow. “Like Oda Nobunaga and samurai and history, or whatever.” Jin winces at how dumb he sounds, but he barrels on when Kame doesn’t stop him. “Los Angeles isn’t as old as, you know, Japan. But this street…it’s the oldest part of Downtown Los Angeles. There’s like a ton of historical buildings and stuff here. So I thought you might like it.”

Jin digs in his pocket and pulls out his iPhone as Kame stares at him.

“And I also downloaded some old guy talking about it in Japanese from the tourist association, so you wouldn’t have to rely on me translating or remembering stuff while we walked.” He offers Kame one of his earbuds, sticking the other in his ear, and Kame gingerly takes it from Jin’s hand.

“Why?”

“I thought you might like it,” Jin says. “And if you don’t, that’s okay, cause this whole street is a marketplace, and at least you can pick up souvenirs or something for your family, or the guys or whatever, if you wanted, or we could leave too, if you wanted to do that. Maybe this was stupid.” Jin knows he’s babbling, but Kame is just staring at him and it’s making him panic.

“Jin,” Kame says, and he gently rests his fingertips against Jin’s forearm. “It’s kind of perfect.”

“Really?” Jin says, sucking his lower lip into his mouth and biting down on it. “Or are you just saying that?”

“Really,” Kame says, and Jin offers Kame a tentative smile.

They walk down the street, listening to Jin’s recorded tour of the buildings, and it takes the better part of an hour, especially because Jin keeps pausing the audio in order to drag Kame over to stalls and make him look at handmade toys or scarves or jewelry, Kame laughing lightly and barely protesting as Jin pulls him away from archaic buildings made in the 1700s and toward festive lights and lively music. Kame doesn’t seem to mind, staying half a step behind Jin and perusing the contents of the stalls with more life than Jin’s seen in him yet.

He stops, and pulls a huge SLR camera out of his bag, snapping pictures of buildings and the street. He tries to take pictures of Jin, too, but Jin sneaks out of shots with apologetic grins, and Kame shrugs.

Kame buys a small golden beaded bracelet for his niece, delicate and bright, with coral detailing and elegant swivels. It looks so small and precious. Jin thinks it’s the perfect gift for a little girl, pausing barely a moment before he picks a similar looking one in turquoise for Lina.

Kame seems particularly taken with a plain silver necklace, a simple sterling silver circle pendant hanging from an even simpler chain. When Kame goes to the restroom, Jin buys that too, shoving the purchase into his pocket before Kame can see it, gut twisting up. He doesn’t know why he bought it, only that he thinks Kame should have it.

The sun is starting to set now. The harsh daylight fades to a soft orange, and against the city skyline, it’s wonderful. “Wow,” Kame says, and Jin turns away from the view to look at Kame. The rays of the setting sun reflect in his auburn hair, and it makes Kame seem to glow, red and gold and soft, and Jin almost forgets that Kame is worryingly thin and worn, and he can’t take his eyes away. Kame turns to look at him too, and his eyes widen at whatever he sees in Jin’s eyes. “What?”

“It’s a gorgeous sunset,” Jin says, because it is.

“I like your city, Jin,” Kame says, and Jin feels the joy start tingling in his chest before it flows out to fill his whole body.

#

Jin sees Kame standing out on the front porch, head thrown back and staring at the sky. “The stars look completely different here,” Kame says, as Jin closes the door behind him and stops next to Kame, shoulder to shoulder but with a hands width between them.

Jin looks up too. “Do they?”

“Yes,” Kame says, and then he wraps his arms around himself. “They really do.”

He retreats inside, and Jin is left alone to contemplate the difference.

#

Jin dreams of singing. He’s singing at the top of his lungs, and he can’t hear anyone or anything. He’s just singing all alone on an empty stage, surrounded by darkness, voice echoing against imaginary walls.

Suddenly there’s a second voice singing too, lower and more nasal, and it’s singing just as loud is Jin.

Jin immediately starts to harmonize—with that voice, it’s what he’s always done best.

He doesn’t need to see Kame to sing in harmony with him, but Kame’s eyes meet his from out in the darkness anyway, and they’re piercing and bright.

It’s been a long time since they’ve sung together, but it’s easy and effortless, like Jin is muscle and Kame is bone, Jin’s voice twining around Kame’s to build something greater than them both.

They just sing and sing and sing, until Jin can’t sing another note, and Kame is glowing now, soft white light like moonbeams shining in Jin’s eyes.

Jin wakes up in a cold sweat, and his throat aches like he’s been singing all night.

#

“What are you working on?” Kame says from behind him, and Jin jumps, dropping the crinkled sheet of notebook paper in his hands and falling over sideways on the sofa like someone lacking basic motor control. He looks up sheepishly at Kame, who’s laughing lightly at him.

“You scared me,” Jin says defensively, and Kame’s shoulders shake slightly as he stands with his hands on his hips behind Jin. He’s wearing this awful stripped shirt, and these huge oversized glasses that make him look like he’s about to discuss art theory or some underground band Jin’s never heard of, and the way one eyebrow is arched, Jin feels a little silly. “I’d gotten used to living alone.”

“What are you working on,” Kame asks again, after a moment of silence.

“Ah,” Jin says, picking up the pathetically crushed piece of paper from the floor and laying it on his lap, smoothing it out as Kame comes to sit next to him. Kame’s holding a gigantic book, with kanji Jin has never even seen written boldly across the cover.

Kame slides into the space next to Jin with ease, head leaning forward to examine Jin’s rushed handwriting. He’s not touching Jin, but Jin reacts as if he is, muscles tensing and breath catching at the other man’s proximity. Kame clicks his tongue at the list.

“So why do you keep crossing stuff out?”

“I’m not sure which of the songs from the Yellow Gold Tour to include,” Jin manages, looking back down at his list. “I can only have three or four of them, and I don’t know which ones resonate the most with people, you know? They’re all mine, so of course I love them all.”

Kame looks up at him, over the rim of his glasses, as his tongue peeks out to lick his lips. “You’re never indecisive about music,” Kame says. “This is weird.”

Jin bristles. “Well, it’s important,” Jin says. “Last time, it was all just old fans of mine at the concerts—people who knew me from Japan.” From KAT-TUN, Jin wants to say, but he guesses he doesn’t have to. Kame knows what he means. His eyes fall back down the battered paper. “Now it’s new people.”

“The Fifth Season,” Kame says, and Jin’s head whips up to stare at him. “It shows off your voice. It’s pretty.” Kame is assiduously not looking at Jin now, eyes fixed on Jin’s crumpled paper like it holds some important answer.

“I never released that as a single in Japan,” Jin says. “You listen to my music.”

A light flush crosses Kame’s face. It’s fleeting, and Jin supposes that Kame’s continued participation in Japanese variety television has made it easier to stifle embarrassment. “Just a little,” Kame mumbles, and he’s so cute, Jin thinks, and his stomach is doing tiny flips at the thought of Kame watching his concert, even after… “It’s not a big deal.”

“Kame,” Jin says, and his voice, to his dismay, is wobbling a little, so he presses his lips together to keep something gay from coming out.

“So anyway,” Kame says, standing up brusquely and brushing off his jeans uneasily. “You should definitely include that one.”

Then Kame disappears into the kitchen, and Jin hears the kitchen door that leads to the courtyard open and shut.

“Pull yourself together, Jin,” Jin mutters to himself. “It doesn’t mean he missed you.”

Still, he adds ‘The Fifth Season’ into the sixth slot, and smiles.

#

"Jin," Kame says, "What is your most important dream?"

"For us to make it," Jin says, and looks over at Kame, who is fiddling with his shoelaces. It's late, and the others are setting off firecrackers to celebrate the new year while Jin and Kame watch them from the top of the hill.

The sky is filled with smoke and sparks, and the air around them is filled with laughter. "Me too," Kame says, and he rests his head on Jin's shoulder. His hair, black and spiky, tangles with Jin's. He looking out on their friends, their group mates, and his lips are pulled into the gentlest of smiles.

Jin feels confused, because his heart is beating so fast and and he feels dizzy, like just being next to Kame is intoxicating; it feels like when Yuu’s mom serves them wine with dinner, and Jin’s head seems like it can float right off of his body. Like that, only better.

He doesn’t know what it means, but it makes him want Kame to be closer.

When they go to bed that night, all of them crammed into one room, futons side by side, so close their elbows touch, Jin's hand seeks out Kame's in the dark.

#

There’s a weariness in how Kame holds himself that keeps Jin from asking questions.

When Kame falls asleep in the armchair in Jin’s living room, and the lines in his face relax, brow unfurrowing and thin lips falling into a gentle pout, Jin thinks he looks painfully young, and it makes Jin feel painfully young too.

Kame shifts when Jin carefully tucks a blanket around him, grabbing the thick book Kame’s holding from his lax fingers, and Jin’s not sure if it’s his imagination, but he thinks Kame whispers his name.

#

The rising moon has hid the stars;
Her level rays, like golden bars,
Lie on the landscape green,
With shadows brown between.

--Endymion, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#

“Oh my god,” Kame says, as he peeks his head into Jin’s room, eyes becoming round with what Jin thinks is dismay as he surveys the train wreck that is Jin’s room. “I’d almost forgotten you were a disaster zone.”

“Yeah,” Jin says, setting down his notebook on top of his tangled sheets. “I keep meaning to clean it up, but…” But there’s always something else to do, something more important that captures his attention. It’s not that he doesn’t care about the mess, it’s just that he cares more about other things, like writing song lyrics, or smoking cigarettes out in the yard with his feet in the swimming pool, leaning back at looking at the stars.

“If it was clean, it wouldn’t be you,” Kame says in response. “I thought you must have a housekeeper or something with the way the rest of the place looks.”

“Ahh, no, I’m just too busy to make a mess out of everywhere else,” Jin says, and Kame laughs.

“Anyway, I wondered if you wanted to get lunch. I know you have rehearsal this afternoon, so…”

“Okay,” Jin says. “Just give me a minute.” He shifts his guitar, which he’s got around his neck, and plays the bit of melody he’s just worked out again, thinking about the lyrics. He closes his eyes for focus, and then the bed dips in front of him.

Kame is lying on his back across the foot of Jin’s bed, hands resting on his stomach. “Sing it to me,” Kame says, and Jin does, fingers brushing across the strings and voice coming out just a little hoarse.

As Jin sings, he opens his eyes, and Kame’s staring at him, or staring through him, Jin’s not sure which. Kame rolls onto his side, and he looks so…so otherworldly, curled up on Jin’s bed and staring at Jin with tired eyes that look like they have all the answers.

It makes Jin want to put his guitar down and stretch out beside him, and ask Kame all his questions, and feel the tickle of Kame’s breath on his neck.

Instead, he just keeps singing, and the words come as if he’s already written them.

Everything in his room is out of place, Jin thinks. Clothes on the floor, dishes on tabletops and sheets ripped from the mattress from anxious nighttime tossing and turning. His chair is piled high with sweatshirts and worn-out sweats, and discarded lyrics can be found on crumpled sheets of paper everywhere Jin looks. But Kame…Kame, in his loose black t-shirt and artfully tattered jeans, dark against the white of Jin’s tangled sheets, looks like he’s exactly where he belongs.

#

Jin dreams of fog. In his dream, it’s tangible, and he can scoop up handfuls of it. It slips tremulously from his hands, bleeding through the spaces between his fingers and rejoining the rest of it filling the air.

Through the fog, he sees a figure facing away from him, broad shoulders leading to a narrow waist, and he walks toward it, until he can see every detail of the familiar back. He’s close enough to touch, but when tries to close his fingers, Kame turns to nothing, disappearing into the fog.

Overhead, the moon’s light is obscured.

#

Seven days isn't so long, in a person's life. One week. It's almost nothing, when you consider that there are three-hundred-and-sixty-five days in a year, and fifty-two weeks, and the average person lives to be seventy-eight years old.

Still, it only takes seven very short, inconsequential days for Jin to wonder if Kame can ever be someone that Jin can forget.

#

Jin fumbles for his cell phone, groping around blindly on his bedside table for it as it blares Nicky Minaj. "Hello?" Jin says groggily into the phone, voice feeling scratchy with sleep.

"Yo, Jin, wassup?" Yamapi says cheerfully from the other end of the line. Jin wonders if Yamapi is able to the feel the power of his glare from across 9000 kilometers of ocean.

"Fuck you so much," Jin says. "It's five in the morning, asshole."

"I haven't heard from you in a month, and that's all you have to say when I make time in my busy schedule to call you on the other side of the world?"

"My mom says you have a girlfriend now," Jin replies, sitting up on bed and leaning his back against the headboard. He takes his left hand and rubs at his eyes, trying to clear the sleep from them. "Why don't you call her instead?"

"Jin, I have a different girlfriend every two weeks. The fact that I have a girlfriend is not surprising news." Yamapi chuckles and Jin can hear him shuffling magazines around on his coffee table like he always does when he's on the phone. "And I talked to her already today. It's you I haven't talked to."

"Sorry, man," Jin says, and it's more a yawn than words. "I've just been so busy. I keep wanting to call, but then I get caught up in stuff and...yeah."

"Excuses, excuses," Yamapi says, and he's still laughing. "Are you awake enough to chat, or should I give this up as a lost cause?"

"No!" Jin says. He's really happy to hear from Pi, who's one of his best friends. He misses him, sometimes. "It's nice to hear your voice."

"Don't get mushy on me, Jin," Yamapi warns playfully. "You're missing all the gossip here in Japan."

"Gossip?"

"Yeah, KAT-TUN announced a hiatus yesterday, it was all over the entertainment news. Uproar, fangirls crying in the streets, old ladies in love with Taguchi sobbing at the news stands..."

"Seriously?" Jin asks, feeling more awake by the second.

"No one knows why either, although I ran into Massu this morning, and he said, on the down-low, that Nakamaru says Kamenashi's gone AWOL."

"Really?" Jin says faintly. His fingertips feel cold, so he snuggles deeper into the blankets. "That doesn't seem like him."

"Apparently, no warning or anything. Johnny's going apeshit about something, anyway, and Kamenashi’s just missing." Yamapi sighs. "Sometimes I want to go missing too. Like, I just need a break. I bet he's holed up at his older brother's house or something, playing with his niece and getting some shut-eye. He needs to."

"Um." Jin's not sure if he's supposed to say that he's one-hundred percent sure that that's not what Kame is doing. "Wow."

"Yeah, I don't know," Yamapi says. "It's got everyone in a tizzy, though. Massu said Nakamaru looked panicked." Yamapi clears his throat, and Jin feels his heart leap into his own. "I shouldn't be talking to you about Kamenashi. Sorry. I always forget."

"Why not?" Jin says. "I don’t remember that being a rule. You totally just made that rule up."

"You always get all weird and bristly about him. You’ve always been weird about him, and it just gets worse with age." Yamapi's moved to the kitchen, Jin can tell, and he hears the sound of the coffee grinder.

“I’m not weird about him,” Jin grumbles, and Yamapi snorts derisively.

“Okay, Jin, you’re not weird about Kamenashi.” His voice is flat, like he’s humoring Jin. "Anyway, what's been up in Los Angeles? Seeing anyone? Attracting trouble?"

Jin thinks about Kame, who's sleeping right now in his guest bedroom, with his tired red eyes and worrying lines around his mouth, too thin and too tattered to be a twenty-six year old man. Jin thinks about words caught sticky in the back of his mouth, lying heavy on his tongue, and sweaty palms and feeling eighteen all over again. He wonders if that’s ‘trouble’.

"Nothing much," Jin says, in an attempt to sound light and flippant, and definitely not like he's harboring a fugitive in his comfortable LA home.

"Wow, you are the worst liar in the whole world," Yamapi says in response, his voice caught between a snort and curiosity. "Like, I can't believe they let you act. In movies even. Do they pay you?"

"Shut the hell up," Jin says, slinking down in place. He can imagine Yamapi's eyebrows climbing his forehead in amusement.

"Spill," Yamapi says, and Jin sighs, closing his eyes and falling down onto his side, tangling himself up in his blankets as he curls into a ball. He's not sure what to say, so he just presses his face into the blanket, scrambling for words.

"Kame is here," Jin says, when Pi makes an impatient noise at Jin's silence.

"What?"

"Kame. He's here. In LA. More specifically, he’s in my guest bedroom."

Yamapi is silent for a moment. "Why there, though? Is he having some sort of, I don’t know, breakdown? I didn't think you'd even talked to him in years, Jin."

"Yeah. I mean, I haven’t." Jin's face is buried in his pillow now, and he's sure his voice comes out muffled. "And I don't know why he’s here."

"Don't know?" Yamapi's voice is high, now, and Jin wishes he was a better liar. "What do you mean you don't know? Did you ask?"

"Not really," Jin says softly, and then Yamapi snorts again.

"Jin." Yamapi sounds caught between amused and annoyed. "Kamenashi shows up at your house, after two or three years where you two haven't exchanged glances, let alone words, and you just open your house to him with no questions? You don’t even know why he stopped--"

"He's Kame," Jin interjects helplessly, like it explains everything. The way Yamapi quiets, maybe it does. "He's still Kame."

"This isn’t going to mess up your concert rehearsals, right?" Yamapi queries, and now his voice is calm. "I don’t trust your common sense when it comes to Kamenashi. You always act like an idiot.”

"It's fine," Jin says. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I do not act like an idiot around Kame."

"If you say so," Yamapi says, sounding dubious. “I don’t know why, but you’ve always been weird about Kame, Jin. Really weird.”

"You can't tell anyone he’s here," Jin says quickly. "I don't know why he's here, but it's obviously the last place anyone will think to look." Jin hugs his pillow in between his arms tightly, like it's a teddy bear. "He doesn't want to be found." Jin worries at his lower lip. “He looks…” Jin searches for the word. “Weary.”

"Jin..."

"Promise me you won’t tell. Bro-code promise me."

"You can't use the bro-code at a time like this, Jin. People are worried about him. His family is worried. His friends are worried. Hell, I was a little worried, as much as I worry about things that aren’t sex and fried foods."

"I'll make him call his mom," Jin says. "I will. So his family can relax."

Yamapi takes a deep breath, and then lets it all out in whoosh. It's loud in Jin's ear. "Alright Jin," Yamapi says. "Just...I don’t know why, but I want to tell you to be careful, or something."

"It's not big deal," Jin replies, sucking his lower lip into his mouth.

Yamapi chuckles again, but this time it's dry, and a little sad. "You're the worst liar in the whole world."

"It'll be okay," Jin says again. Maybe he's reassuring himself.

#

"Jin, do you like Yamapi more than you like me?"

Kame's voice is uncertain, and Jin doesn't like it.

"Yamapi is my best friend," Jin says. "I can talk to him about anything and everything, and sometimes I don't even have to talk to him for him to get me. It's easy."

"Easier than with me?"

"Yeah," Jin says.

"Oh," Kame says, leaning away from Jin.

Jin's having none of it. His arm snakes out and pulls Kame in, until Kame topples into his lap, arms looping around Jin's waist for balance. "But."

"But?" Kame says, and Jin can feel Kame's lips move against his ribs, even through his shirt.

"I want more than things that are easy," Jin answers. "Because some of the things most worth having are things you have to work at."

"Okay," Kame says, but his voice is still wavering.

"It's like..." Jin isn't sure how to make the words come out. "The things you work for, the things you have to keep trying and trying at, the things you keep reaching for...those are the things you really, really want."

Kame's arms tighten around him, and Jin's fingers clutch at Kame's sweatshirt, the fleece soft in his desperate grip.

"So even if I don't always understand you immediately," Jin continues. "Even if sometimes we misunderstand each other because we're so different..." Jin swallows, and exhales, and when he breathes in again, he can almost taste the rain. "I want to keep you." Jin smiles, and looks down at Kame, who looks up at him. "And I'm willing to work at it."

"So you like me more than Yamapi?" Kame asks, with a cheeky grin. His eyes glow silvery in the evening light.

"I like you different," Jin says, and that's the first time he realizes that Kame makes his heart beat faster in his chest just by being close.

#

Jin realizes, somewhere along the line, that he doesn’t really know what’s been up in Kame’s life. Luckily, Jin doesn’t have to actually ask Kame, which would totally be awkward, because Kame is famous and a large number of Jin’s questions can be answered with a Goo search of Kame’s name.

Jin thinks Yamapi’s theory that Kame might seriously need a break holds some weight as he reads about all the different things Kame is doing these days—it seems impossible that Kame can do all of these things and sleep.

Jin feels really out of touch with Japanese pop culture as he reads, and he supposes it only makes sense, since Kame is threaded through all of it, somehow, and Jin’s been avoiding news about Kame like the plague for the past two and a half years because it made him ache in strange ways.

He downloads the first few episodes of Kame’s drama from last year when he sees tons of pictures of Kame and his co-star pop up on celebrity dating blogs. She’s tall, Jin thinks, maybe almost as tall as Jin himself, and the way Kame is smiling at her sits like a stone in Jin’s belly.

Kame’s been busy, Jin thinks. Working a lot. He’s smiling in all the pictures Jin sees of him, tired but smiling, and Jin supposes that’s part of the job, but it doesn’t look like false cheer. The smile reaches Kame’s eyes, Jin thinks. Kame doesn’t look miserable. Kame doesn’t look like a man on the verge of a breakdown.

Jin wonders why Kame is here. Jin wonders if Kame is okay.

#

“You’re acting weird,” Dom says, and Jin stops scribbling in his notebook to look up at him.

“Weird?”

“Not that you’re usually the most focused guy or anything, but you seem…I don’t know. Distracted.”

Jin feels distracted. He feels like all his old feelings, long bottled up and pushed to the back of his mind and the back of his heart, have fallen off the shelves, crashing down on Jin and burying him under their weight, pinning him down so he can’t think about anything else.

Jin’s expression must be telling. Jin’s not surprised. He gets told time and time again that he’s an open book. It’s why he wears sunglasses inside—it makes him feel like he can keep his thoughts to himself.

“I dunno man, you don’t have to tell me about it, or anything. I was just noticing.” Dom shakes his head, and stares at Jin searchingly.

Jin blinks at him, and Dom laughs.

“Don’t worry about it man. What are you working on?” Jin triumphantly turns his notebook around, and points at the page he’s been scribbling on for the past few minutes. Dom gives a low whistle. “Looks good, man.”

Jin’s decided on his set list, and the sixth song is Kame’s choice.

#

"Why are you smiling at me like that?" Jin asks, as he tightens his grip on his guitar.

"You look so serious," Kame says. "It's not like you to be focused like this. You're usually all over the place."

Kame's fumbling with the corsage on the breast of his jacket, square fingers exploring the textures of the leather rose, and tugging on it to make sure it's affixed perfectly to the lace. His lower lip is slick from his tongue constantly peeking out to wet it, and his shoulders are hunched forward like he's a little tired. Jin's eyes peruse the line of his neck, following helplessly down his back to admire the way Kame's low-slung jeans hand sublimely around his hips.

But it's his smile, slight and teasing and innocently amused, that draws Jin's gaze again and again, until he almost forgets he's holding a guitar.

"I can be focused," Jin says, and Kame laughs, taking the jacket off the hanger and pulling it over his broad shoulders.

The jacket is ridiculous, Jin thinks, with lace and feathers and all manner of patterned fabrics. Kame doesn't look ridiculous though. "Well, Mr. Focused, how do I look?"

"Like something worth focusing on," Jin replies, and Kame's smile grows a little wider.

Jin doesn’t allow himself to look at Kame on stage—to get too close, or to touch. If he does, he’ll forget the words.

#

“You should call your mom,” Jin says to Kame. “The only reason no one’s called the police yet is because you’re Kamenashi Kazuya, and because the media would know if they did, and Johnny doesn’t want any of that.”

Kame starts. “I’d rather not,” Kame says.

“Why not?” Jin asks, tapping his fingers against his thigh.

“Because then I’d have to explain why I’m here, and I don’t think she’ll understand,” Kame replies.

“Are you having a breakdown?” Jin asks.

“No,” Kame says. “I am absolutely not having a breakdown.” He looks amused at the thought, and Jin notices that the circles under his eyes are starting to disappear, but that strange look in his eyes remains.

“Fine,” Jin says, and then he scratches at his hair thoughtfully. “Then I still think you should call your mother and tell her you haven’t been kidnapped by a lunatic or murdered or something. Tell her you’re safe”

“Not sure I can tell her I’m safe,” Kame says. “Your room is probably emanating toxic air to the rest of the house.” Kame’s studying the wood of the table, dragging his fingertip along the grain.

“I’m not asking you why you’re here, or anything. Just… people are worried about you. If you had disappeared and I didn’t know if you were okay… well, I don’t know if I’d be able to sleep at night,” Jin adds quietly, and Kame purses his lips, eyelashes fluttering as he blinks at Jin.

“Okay,” Kame says. “Okay.”

“Are you going to…” Jin debates whether it’s okay to ask, before he just barrels ahead. “Aren’t you going to be in major trouble? I mean, with your radio show and your TV stuff, and all the things you’re doing all the time?”

“Probably,” Kame says, and he’s not looking at Jin. He’s looking out the window with a serious expression on his face. He wraps his hands, (and Jin has always loved Kame’s hands), around a mug of coffee, and Jin notices that his knuckles are white. “Ah. More like definitely.”

“Is that okay?”

“There’s something I wanted, no, needed to know,” Kame says, and his voice doesn’t invite questions, so Jin doesn’t ask. He just walks over to the coffee pot, and pours himself a cup. “Are you asking why I’m here?” Kame’s tone is a little sharp, not with anger, but with uncertainty, and Jin runs his tongue over his teeth. He wants a cigarette.

“No,” Jin says.

#

Jin dreams of rain.

Warm and gentle, falling down on him until he’s soaked to the bone.

He doesn’t mind, because the rain’s not cold, and it smells like the change in seasons—like soil and flowers and new life.

And then Kame’s beside him, offering him a closed umbrella. Jin takes it from him, then opens his mouth to thank Kame, but then Kame is gone, and suddenly it’s night, and the moon is in the sky.

Jin reaches into his pocket and pulls out the silver necklace from Olvera Street, and offers it to the moon. It glows in the moonlight.

 

#

And I'm trying to please to the calling
Of your heart-strings that play soft and low
You know the night's magic
Seems to whisper and hush
And all the soft moonlight
Seems to shine in your blush...

--Moondance, Van Morrison

#

They go to Griffith Observatory, which by now, Jin knows quite well because he visits every chance he gets, just to look at the night sky projections in the huge dome, leaning back and taking in all the stars. He and Kame try and point out all the differences between the sky here and the sky in Japan, and Jin translates all the blurbs about the constellations while Kame ‘oooh’s and ‘ahhh’s in amazement, face open and expressive.

Jin thinks if he saw Kame, just like this, when he closed his eyes, he wouldn’t mind sleeping forever.

“What are you thinking about?” Kame asks him, poking his index finger right between Jin’s brows.

“Huh?”

“You had this look on your face, like you were thinking too hard about something.” Kame’s eyes twinkle at him. “Don’t hurt yourself.”

“Hey!” Jin says, and he’s not mad, just laughing. He likes this familiarity, the way they fit together in all their awkward differences just like a jigsaw puzzle.

“What were you thinking about?”

“Greek Mythology,” Jin tells him with a teasing grin, and Kame laughs.

When Kame laughs, Jin thinks, it’s like a waterfall, crashing down into the pit of Jin’s stomach. Jin feels like he’s between two times, and a shadow of Kame as he was, graceless and gangly, flits in front of Jin’s eyes, just for a fraction of a second.

There are tons of children underfoot, but that’s one of the things Jin loves about it. He loves kids, how passionate they are, and how freely they express their joy and their sadness. Sometimes, when he looks at them, he sees an echo of his younger self, and at the same time, a projection of everything he wants to be: fearless, and full of optimism and hope.

Kame watches the kids quietly. He’s got on a knit hat of Jin’s today, and Jin wants to tell him he can keep it since it looks better on him than it ever looked on Jin. His glasses are sliding down his nose, and he looks contemplative.

“I’m surprised you don’t have kids already,” Kame says, still watching the school group tumbling around the lobby, tugging on the limbs of their friends and just being kids. “You’re twenty-eight now, and you’ve been talking about starting a family since you were sixteen.”

“Ah, well, life happens, you know?”

“No future Mrs. Akanishi picked out yet?” Kame jokes, and Jin frowns.

“Not really,” Jin says flatly. “Got a wedding ring picked out for Anne?”

Kame turns to look at him with surprise. “You know about Anne?”

Jin flushes, and realizes he’s probably just outed himself for internet stalking or something. “I mean…everybody knows about you and Anne,” Jin mumbles, looking anywhere but at Kame.

Kame laughs. “I’m not dating Anne,” Kame says, chuckling. “I mean, we did date, for a while. But we’re just friends. Good friends. She’s cool.”

“She’s too tall for you anyway,” Jin says with a frown, directing his gaze to the floor.

“Oh don’t be so shallow,” Kame says. “I like long legs just as much as anyone else does. I don’t have any complexes about my height anymore, and I refuse to let you give me any.”

“I love your height,” Jin blurts out, and then he risks a glance up at Kame through his lashes, and Kame is looking at him like he just declared a sexual preference for zebras. Jin searches desperately for the previous topic of conversation, so he doesn’t have to explain that Kame’s the perfect height, because when Jin pulls him into a hug, Kame’s face fits right into the crook of his neck. “If Anne is so cool, why’d you break up?”

Kame’s face straightens, and his eyes lose focus, like his mind is far away. “She told me I was waiting for someone else,” Kame says.

“Someone else?” Jin echoes, and Kame snaps back to now.

“It doesn’t matter,” Kame says. “You ready to go?”

“Yeah,” Jin says, and they walk out to Jin’s car. Jin stops in front of it, and lights a cigarette. Kame leans back against the car as he waits. Jin offers him a cigarette too, but Kame declines with a shake of his head.

Kame's hands are shoved in his pockets, and he looks relaxed and free. He takes a deep breath, the kind that makes his chest puff out, and then he exhales.

"This is nice," Kame says, and Jin grins at him. He loves this place, he really does, because Jin has always loved looking at the night sky.

"It's a great view," Jin replies, and Kame turns from looking out at the constellations to look at Jin with slight surprise, before his face breaks into a radiant smile, the kind that makes Jin feel like he’s melting where he stands.

"Oh, yes, it is," Kame says, eyes alight in a way that reminds Jin, achingly, of the way Kame used to look at him all the time, like Jin was wonderful. "But that's not what I meant."

"What did you mean, then?" Jin queries, walking over until he and Kame are standing side by side.

"Spending time with you again. Making new memories with you." Kame pulls off his cap, and pushes a hand through his hair, careless of how it looks, relaxed and natural. "I missed you."

Jin has so much he wants to say. He wants to tell Kame that living without him in his life has been like living with a chunk missing from his heart. He wants to tell Kame that having him here, in Jin's new home, has made Jin feel whole again for the first time in a long time. That talking to him is something Jin's been longing for since he lost it. But the words don't come. "I missed you too," is all Jin can manage.

Maybe Kame can hear all the rest of it in his tone though, because he looks at Jin; he looks at him carefully, and then stands a little closer, until Jin can feel the heat of Kame's body through the thin fabric of his t-shirt and smell the lemon and hibiscus of Kame's hair.

He fingers the necklace in his pocket, and imagines how it would look hanging around Kame’s neck.

#

Kame, Jin remembers, has got this way of humming when he writes. It’s not a song, or a melody, just this flat, weird sound that makes it impossible to look away from him.

Kame’s just writing some souvenir list, but Jin’s caught up in the familiarity of it all, and how everything Kame does is emblazoned across Jin’s memory, like a brand.

#

Jin has to spend almost three consecutive days in rehearsal for his shows, sleeping on couches and eating instant noodles with Dom on the roof of the rehearsal studio, smoking cigarettes and trying not to pass out.

When he gets home, Kame is lying on his sofa, bare feet hanging over the edge of the sofa, a large tome opened in his lap. Jin recognizes it from before.

“Jin, are you alright?” Kame asks, closing the book and setting it on the coffee table.

“Just want to sleep forever,” Jin says, and Kame sits up. Kame hesitantly pats his lap, and nothing has every sounded so wonderful to Jin.

Jin flops down on the couch, his head falling easily into Kame’s lap. His eyes close, heavy, and then Kame tentatively runs a hand through Jin’s greasy hair, and Jin sighs. Kame must take it as an invitation, because his hand grows bolder, weaving through the strands of Jin’s hair, tugging and twisting in a way that makes Jin want to mewl with delight.

“How’s the show coming?”

“Well,” Jin says. “I’m so tired.”

“Then sleep,” Kame tells him, hand steadily pulling through Jin’s too-long mane and Jin feels sleep beckoning him.

Later, and Jin doesn’t know how much later, only that it’s dark outside now, Jin opens his eyes. Above him, Kame has drifted to sleep, too, slumped against the arm of Jin’s sofa, neck in a strange position and hand still tangled in Jin’s locks. His glasses sit crooked on his nose, and his mouth is parted slightly in sleep.

Jin doesn’t want to wake him, because he looks so peaceful. Jin reaches up and slips Kame’s glasses off his face, folding them carefully and setting them on top of Kame’s huge text. Then he closes his eyes again, enjoying the texture of Kame’s ribbed shirt against the skin of his cheek and the solid feeling of Kame’s thighs beneath his head.

The next time Jin wakes up, Kame is staring down at him. Kame’s eyes are round, and he looks confused. His tongue peeks out to wet his lips, and he blinks twice as Jin tries to focus on him.

Kame’s a little flushed, Jin thinks, and there’s something in his eyes that Jin feels like he should know, should recognize, but it eludes him.

Later still, when Kame has retreated to the guest room and Jin is alone in the living room, eating peanut butter from the jar and watching Cartoon Network, Jin keeps thinking about the gentle soothing of Kame’s fingers against his scalp, and the way stress just melted away under his touch.

Jin sleeps deeply, and he doesn’t dream.

#

The Moon appears in front of the slumbering Endymion, and sensing the light, he opens his eyes, eyelashes fluttering against the moon’s light, and for a moment, he sees the most beautiful vision he has ever encountered through his sleepy eyes. Just a moment is enough. In Endymion’s heart blossoms a passion so intense and steadfast he knows that he’ll never love another. He wakes, fully, but the moon, the beautiful moon, that he’s imagined so close beside him, is far away, high up in the night sky, impossibly out of reach. Endymion is sure that such perfection must be a dream, but the moonlight glances across his sleeping face night after night, and Endymion can’t resist the pull of the moon’s gravity.

#

When Lizzy and Aubree find out that Jin has a friend from Japan visiting, they invite themselves over for dinner. Jin tells Kame about it with an apology in his eyes, but Kame just crosses his arms and demands Jin take him to the grocery store.

“We can just order pizza,” Jin says, and Kame gives him this look that Jin swears his mother’s given him hundreds of times that tells Jin he’s ordering take-out for guests over Kame’s dead body.

Kame’s fascinated by the expanse of American grocery stores, eyes wide and amazed at the sheer size. “Americans think it’s more convenient this way. It’s why the stores in Tokyo are starting to resemble this, though. Because it is easier than going to the butcher for meat, and stuff like that.”

Jin picks out all kinds of disgusting American treats for Kame to taste, while Kame selects vegetables and makes Jin show him where he can find the ethnic foods section so he can find the right sorts of spices to make curry. Kame raises his eyebrows at the Cap’n Crunch, but Jin knows Kame, and he’s pretty sure Kame will be addicted to the stuff before he can even blink. Kame likes to pretend he likes healthy foods and being reasonable, but secretly, Kame loves to sleep in unmade beds and eat things that are terrible for him if he thinks no one is looking.

They return home triumphant, and Kame puts everything away in the kitchen while Jin watches helplessly and tries to stay out of his way.

“You have this huge kitchen,” Kame says. “And all I have seen you do in it is make ramen.”

“I also make cheeseburgers,” Jin informs him smugly, and Kame rolls his eyes.

Lizzy and Aubree show up twenty minutes earlier than they say they will, and Kame freaks out because his hair is still pulled back in a sloppy ponytail and he’s wearing comfy loose clothing that he for some reason thinks is unacceptable. Jin thinks Kame’s got this casual sort of elegance that means he looks good in whatever he wears, so he tugs Kame with him to answer the door.

The girls are all smiles as they walk in, and Jin elbows Lizzy as they walk in. “You’re early,” he says, and Lizzy shrugs and grins. Jin introduces them to Kame, and both girls eyes light with recognition at Kame’s name.

They all make their way into the kitchen, where Kame immediately excuses himself to work on the food. Jin wonders if Kame is nervous.

“So,” Lizzy says, as she sits at the kitchen table watching Kame chop onions with curious eyes. “I thought you didn’t chill with your old band mates anymore.”

Jin squirms in his chair. “Well, it’s complicated.”

Aubree leans forward, elbows on the table, to stare at Jin. “What’s with that face?”

“What face?” Jin says defensively, his eyes once again wandering to Kame’s profile as he works. “I’m not making a face.”

“You look like your hand is in the cookie jar,” Lizzy says. “No one cares if you still talk to your old bandmates, Jin. It’s not some terrible secret.”

“I know that,” Jin says, forcing himself to look back at the two girls in his kitchen. “It’s just we haven’t talked that much. It was sort of a surprise visit.”

“Awww, how cute!” Aubree says, leaning forward even further and ruffling Jin’s hair. “He came to surprise you!”

“I don’t really know why he came,” Jin replies, pouting and blowing his hair back out of his face.

“Akanishi,” Kame says, in a voice that demands Jin’s presence, and Jin jumps up and hurries to the kitchen, ignoring Lizzy’s low whistle and Aubree’s mocking whip crack.

“Kame?” Kame shoves a knife in Jin’s hand, and directs him towards the peppers.

“Cut,” Kame says sharply, and Jin gulps and does as Kame says. Kame goes back to the onions, slamming the knife down too hard and making Jin wince. Aubree and Lizzy are cackling at the table, leaning over Lizzy’s cell while Lizzy plays a video. Jin thinks it’s the one of him and Dom having a beer chugging competition at the Sonic drive-through last Halloween, but he can’t be sure—the sound is faint.

“Did I…do something?” Jin asks, after a minute of Kame angrily slicing at the onions.

“No,” Kame says, sighing. He scoots over to Jin and takes the knife back. “Sorry,” he mumbles. “Entertain your guests. Your girlfriend’s probably angry you haven’t spent that much time with her the past few weeks.”

“Girlfriend?” Jin asks quizzically, tilting his head to the side in confusion.

“The red-headed one,” Kame says, not looking up. “Isn’t she your girlfriend?”

Jin can’t help it. He laughs. “This is America, Kame. Girls and boys can just touch each other and it doesn’t imply anything like a romantic relationship. Aubree’s my friend, and so is Lizzy. Nothing more.”

“Oh,” Kame says, and his tight grip around the knife handle visibly relaxes. “Okay.”

“Were you…jealous?” Jin asks tentatively, brushing his hand to Kame’s elbow in the lightest of touches. His stomach sinks, and he wonders if Kame likes Aubree or Lizzy or something, and he’s jealous of Jin maybe having claimed one of them. “I think Aubree is single, if you like her—“

“No!” Kame says, and it’s loud enough for the two girls to quickly turn to look at them, distracted from their video. Lizzy, who understands a little Japanese, raises an eyebrow at Jin, who waves her off. “It’s not that.”

“Then what made you upset?” Jin asks.

“I…” Kame quiets. “Um.” Kame scoops up the onions and drops them into the pot he’s got sizzling on the stove, and then comes back for Jin’s peppers. “You chopped these like a six year old.” He starts stirring the mixture into the oil, and then checks on the meat that’s cooking in a separate pan.

“Don’t change the subject,” Jin says sternly, and Kame stops stirring.

“It’s just before, you said you didn’t have…”

Oh, Jin thinks. The Observatory. Jin remembers Kame asking, vaguely, about Jin’s love life, but Jin had been far more focused on Kame’s. “Oh, yeah. I’m not seeing anyone. I’m not looking, either.” He tugs on the fabric of the flannel shirt Kame’s wearing. It’s Jin’s, actually—Jin had let him borrow it when Kame complained about the air conditioner being on too high. “Hey, you know I’m a terrible liar. Also I’m not going to lie to you.”

Kame swallows, and starts stirring again. “Okay,” Kame says, and Jin really wants to hug him. Instead, he goes over to the sink and washes the rice until the water runs clear, and then turns on the rice cooker.

Dinner is fantastic—Kame’s always made good curry, and Aubree and Lizzy make him blush with compliments that Kame doesn’t have to speak English to understand, because it’s all in orgasmic moans and extra helpings.

Kame tries, with his limited English, to talk with the girls, and Lizzy tries back with her fledgling Japanese, and Jin translates the rest when things get confusing. It’s a fun night.

When they’re leaving, Aubree stops Jin as Jin starts to close the door behind them. Kame is in the kitchen still, and Jin can hear the sink running. Aubree’s hand wraps around Jin’s arm, her neon green painted nails digging a little into the skin of his forearm. “He’s really nice, Jin,” she says, and Jin nods.

“Yeah.”

“You care about him a lot, don’t you?” she asks, and Jin nods again, slowly, not because he has to think about it, but because he doesn’t know where she’s going with it. “He cares about you a lot too.” She smiles knowingly, and Jin doesn’t understand why. “You should pay more attention to what you’re heart is telling you.”

And then she lets go of his arm and backs out the door. Jin shuts it behind her, and then leans his back against it.

Lately, Jin thinks, all he can seem to do is listen to his heart, because it’s always beating so dam loud.

Still, it’s good advice. When he sees Kame standing by the stairs, still wearing Jin’s flannel shirt, the sleeves falling halfway down his hands and more hair fallen out of the ponytail than still in it, he gives into his urge to hug. He stands behind Kame and wraps his arms around him pulling Kame’s back into his chest. Kame tenses at first, but then he relaxes with a sigh, and Jin buries his face in Kame’s hair and breathes in the unique smell of Kame, and tries to memorize the way Kame feels in his arms right now, which is so different from the way it felt years ago but is also so much the same. “I’m glad you’re here,” Jin whispers.

Kame doesn’t reply, but after a moment he pulls himself smoothly free of Jin’s grasp, and Jin lets his arms fall naturally to his sides. His heart is hammering in his chest, for some reason, and Jin’s listening, but he doesn’t really understand. “Goodnight, Jin,” Kame says, eyes indecipherable, and then he goes upstairs. Jin hears the doorway to the guest bedroom close.

“Goodnight,” he replies, to an empty living room.

#

When Jin leaves KAT-TUN officially, it’s a shitshow. He keeps hearing about his betrayal, to the point where Jin is afraid to look on the internet or turn on entertainment television. It’s almost a relief to escape Japan, in the end, when he goes to audition for a film role, because it least he doesn’t have to close his eyes when he walks past the newspapers in the convenience stores, or wonder if people on the streets recognize him; if they’re whispering behind their hands about what a terrible person he is for wanting to do something different.

When Jin breathes in the LA air, it smells like freedom. Like summer. It’s amazing.

Jin calls Kame once a week for sixth months, and Kame never answers a single call. He finds out from Nakamaru that Kame’s changed his number on accident. Nakamaru doesn’t mean to tell him, it just slips out, and it sends Jin’s heart plummeting in his chest.

Jin misses the smell the evening rain, and the light of the moon that’s bright even through an overcast sky.

#

“It’s so peaceful here,” Kame says one afternoon as they sit on deck chairs in the yard. Kame is reading that book, and he’s got a highlighter tucked behind his ear and a fine-tipped pen in his hand. He’s jotting notes in the corner in sloppy kanji. Jin’s got a GQ in hand, but he’s not really reading it; he’s too busy watching Kame to bother flipping through the pages.

“Peaceful?” Jin asks, because he’s never heard Los Angeles described as ‘peaceful’ before.

“Yeah,” Kame says. “I think I really needed a break. From…everything.”

Jin thinks back to when he’d creepily stalked Kame on the internet, reading about the extensive number of commitments and tasks Kame had on a daily basis—dramas, variety show appearances, his radio show, his baseball stuff. He thinks back to the dark purple bruises under Kame’s eyes when he’d shown up on Jin’s doorstep, too.

“Is that why you came?” Jin asks, and Kame looks up at him over the top of his glasses. “To take a break?”

“No,” Kame says, and he bites his lip for a moment, like he’s thinking of saying something else. Jin doesn’t speak, watches Kame back, trying to puzzle out what the expressions flitting across his face mean. “It’s not that.”

“Oh,” Jin says, and Kame sighs and looks back down at his book.

Jin feels like he’s missing something, but he doesn’t know what it is.

“Kame, can I ask you a question?” Jin says, and it’s hesitant.

Kame nods, and Jin wants to ask him why. Why he refused to say a word to Jin for years.

Why he waited for Jin to give up on him before he walked back into Jin’s life and made a new place for himself in it.

“Nevermind,” Jin says, and he doesn’t understand this feeling at all, like he’s reaching and reaching for something he’ll never be able to touch.

#

“Kame, if you get this call, you should call me back,” Jin says to Kame’s voicemail. “Because I really want to talk to you.” Jin’s hand grips his cell phone tightly in his hand. “I really miss hearing your voice.” Jin sighs. “I don’t know why you won’t answer the phone when I call. If you’re mad at me, you should just yell. Scream. Tell me I abandoned you. Tell me I suck. Tell me you’re angry. Just…Just talk to me,” he says.

It’s the same message he left last week.

It’s the same message he left the week before last, too.

Kame never calls him back.

#

It’s four in the morning, and Jin kind of wants to die as he picks up his phone. “This had better be an emergency,” Jin says into the receiver. “Like, you’d better be bleeding to death on the side of the road and this is the last conversation we’re ever going to have, because if you’re still alive next time I come to Japan, I’m actually going to kill you.”

“Well, aren’t you just delightful today,” Yamapi says, and Jin wants to punch him in the nuts. “No ‘hi, how are you’ for your best friend in the whole wide world?”

“No, because you suck,” Jin replies. “I have rehearsals forever and ever, and I’m tired as hell.”

“Go back to sleep after this, then,” Yamapi says dismissively. Jin’s read stuff, though, about REM cycles, and he doesn’t know what an alt rock band from the ninties has to do with sleep, but he knows he’s supposed to sleep a certain number of hours uninterrupted in order to be a regularly functioning human being.

“Oh my god, I hate you so much,” Jin says, and Yamapi cackles.

“You love me,” he says, and then Jin can hear him take a huge bite of something, and it makes his next words hard to make out. “So how’s everything going with your hard-shelled housemate?”

Jin rolls his eyes, and smiles. “It’s okay,” Jin says. “It’s…actually it’s really nice. To spend time with him.”

“I really don’t get you guys. You don’t talk forever, and then Kame shows up at your house unannounced and now you guys are totally tight bros again, even though you totally haven’t talked about why he’s there or why you guys didn’t talk that whole time you, like, didn’t talk.”

“It’s fine,” Jin says.

“It’s fine now,” Yamapi says. “But Jin. Don’t forget he doesn’t live there with you for real. He’s going to leave again. Things might go back to the way they were before if you don’t talk about it.”

Jin tries to swallow around the lump that pops up in his throat. He puts his arm over his eyes, because tiny cracks of light from the coming dawn are starting to peek through his window, and Jin doesn’t like to see this time of day if he can help it. “I know,” Jin says. “You know that I know that.”

“So don’t…don’t get yourself hurt, okay?”

“I won’t,” Jin replies, and Yamapi sighs heavily. “I am totally prepared for that.”

“You’re the worst at lying. If there was Guinness book record for that, I swear Jin, your picture would be in there, extra huge and adorned with some squiggly emphasizing border.”

“Fuck you,” Jin says, and Yamapi laughs. “I’m an honest and forthright person by nature. That’s not a bad quality.”

“It is for an idol,” Yamapi says. “But that’s neither here nor there. Just…be careful Jin. Don’t get all attached to the idea of Kamenashi being there; everything’s back here waiting for him.”

“Yeah,” Jin says, but they both know it’s too late for that.

#

There’s a huge pile of socks on the floor between them, and Jin gulps at the task of sorting them, but Kame just rolls up his sleeves and spreads them all out, so they can try and find matches.

“Why are all your socks different? “ Kame asks, and Jin frowns.

“Because I keep having to buy news packs and I always forget the brand,” Jin answers.

“Why do you keep having to buy new packs?”

“Because I always lose one of every pair of socks. I don’t know how,” Jin adds quickly before Kame can comment. “It’s like my socks are in a conspiracy. Somehow, out of three pairs of socks, after a month there are only two socks left. I don’t know where they go. I suspect the floor is eating them.”

Kame snorts. “Or they’re all under your bed.”

“My room is not that messy,” Jin defends, and Kame’s raised eyebrow gently rebukes him. “Okay, so maybe it could be more organized, but it’s not that bad.”

“Whatever,” Kame says. “Your room is a cesspool of despair. Where hygiene goes to die.” Jin blushes, and he doesn’t know what comes over him. Maybe it’s because he and Kame are bantering like old times, Kame gently ribbing him and Jin having no comeback that isn’t shy admittance of Kame’s valid point, but he sort of launches himself at Kame, hands finding there way to Kame’s sides and tickling him. Kame is laughing, choking with it. They’re squirming around, like they’re still kids, rolling in a pile of clean, unmatched socks, and Jin feels them getting stuck in his hair and he doesn’t care. He’s got Kame trapped, straddling him, both wrists in Jin’s right hand while the left tickles him, and if Kame wasn’t laughing so much, he’d definitely be able to escape.

“Mercy, mercy,” Kame gasps, and Jin grins triumphantly when Kame looks up at him through his lashes, echoes of laughter in the lines around his mouth.

He’s beautiful, Jin thinks, and suddenly, Jin wants to kiss him. Kame’s mouth looks soft and inviting, and Jin wants to lean down and capture it, because Kame is warm and vibrant beneath him.

Oh, Jin thinks, as the bottom drops out of his stomach. Oh.

Kame’s laugh trails off as Jin tenses, and abruptly the air between them becomes strange, Kame’s eyes focusing in on Jin as Jin tries to figure out what’s come over him. “Jin?” Kame asks, and Jin feels panic well up inside him so rapidly that it takes his breath away.

“I...” Jin blinks, and then he’s standing, backing away from his feelings and the realization and the searching look on Kame’s face. “I think I hear my phone,” Jin croaks, and then he races up the stairs, dashing into his bedroom and closing the door behind him.

He dives face first onto his bed, body splayed like a starfish. His pulse is racing, and he feels like he’s on fire, and all those feelings of confusion that Kame always makes gush inside of him are simmering beneath the surface, and maybe Jin finally understands them.

Oh, Jin thinks. Shit.

Jin supposes e should have figured it out before this, that he should have known that the way he feels about Kame defies any sort of normal friendship or whatever, but Jin feels like he’s been punched in the gut, and he’s still trying to find air, deep breaths not helping him at all because he still feels light-headed and sick.

Jin’s in love.

In love with Kame. Impossible, unpredictable Kame, who’s a man, who lives in Japan, who might still be in love with his ex-girlfriend, who’s completely unavailable to Jin in every conceivable way.

And maybe, Jin thinks, he’s always been in love with Kame. Actually, he’s pretty sure he has been, because nothing feels different, inside of him, except that he knows what this feeling is.

Oh.

Maybe an hour later, when Jin’s managed to convince himself that he can keep his cool, that maybe “I just realized I’m totally, stupidly in love with you,” might not be written on his face, he goes back downstairs.

But Kame’s nowhere to be found, and Jon’s socks are all paired and folded together at the ankle, heaped into the laundry basket, except for one lone unmatched sock hanging over the edge.

It hurts, Jin realizes. This hurts.

#

Jin wants to avoid Kame, because he hasn’t figured out what to do or what to say, and he hasn’t figured out if he’s going to do or say anything at all, but he can’t. He’s drawn to Kame, and he’s unable to stay away.

Jin wonders if Kame can feel the difference between them now, Jin simultaneously drawing back and leaning in to Kame’s accidental touches, stumbling over his words and skin turning red at every inquisitive look.

Jin feels like an adolescent. He feels like writing love songs and throwing tantrum and listening to sad, sad music in his room with the lights out self-indulgently mired in the misery that is unrequited love. Some days he feels like the words are seconds from crossing his lips, and some days he feel like he wants to bury those same words as deep inside of him as he can.

#

Jin dreams of fireflies.

They’re glowing so brightly in the night air, and Jin’s eyes are enchanted. He reaches out to catch them, and suddenly they’ve turned into stars.

Jin’s hands grasp empty air, and then the night is too dark to see.

#

Kame drags Jin with him to see the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Kame takes pictures of all the stars of people he’s met, or people he admires, with his oversized camera, as Jin walks ahead of him, hands in his pockets listening to music.

Jin keeps looking back at Kame though, and Kame is enchanting, his face set in a tiny smile, camera held up between two steady hands as the afternoon sun shines brightly down on him.

Jin is dazzled by his radiance. Kame catches him staring once, and snaps a picture of Jin, whose eyes are wide with his mouth falling open, before Jin can blink and hide his face, and the triumphant grin he gives Jin is enough to make Jin feel like he’s falling apart.

#

Jin sweats his way through practices, hours and hours of dancing and singing, and all he can think about is Kame, laughing and smiling, a grain of rice at the corner of his lip that Jin aches to brush off with his thumb.

Kame is always waiting when he gets home, that history book in his lap, face in a concentrated frown that breaks into a soft grin when Jin walks in.

Jin never wants to come home to anything else ever again.

#

"So you're going to leave? Just like that?" Kame asks, legs crossed at the ankle as he leans back in the foldout chair. "On some whim, you're going to go halfway across the world?" Kame's voice is hot with held-back anger

"It's not a whim, Kame. You know I've been wanting to go and learn English for a while now." Jin's voice is hotter.

"So get a tutor. Take a class, or something, like normal people. Don't go gallivanting to the other side of the world when I--" Kame stops, and looks away at some imaginary point in the distance. His hands grip the side of his chair, knuckles white and red around the edges. "When we need you."

"You know it's not the same as living there, Kame. I'll learn faster, get closer to my dream--"

"What happened to our dream, Jin? We're debuting. We waited so long, and now it's here. Our turn. Why now?"

"Then when, Kame? When am I supposed to go?" Jin's hands come up and rub at his eyes, pushing on them to try and relax his headache. "When it's time for the next single? Or the next one? You know how this works. It'll be single after single after single. Variety show after performance after concert. It's never going to stop. I want to go now, Kame. Before I'm trapped."

"Jin," Kame says, and now his arms are wrapped around himself protectively, like he's trying to ward off his own emotions. "Jin we were supposed to do this together."

"Just wait for me. I'll definitely come back," Jin says. "Just wait for me."

"How are we supposed to be KAT-TUN without an 'A'?" Kame asks, and it's soft. His anger has quieted, and all Jin can see is that gentle melancholy that's been running like a tiny stream through Kame's center in the past year; a shadow behind his eyes that makes him look older, and wiser.

"You'll have to carry it for me," Jin whispers, and then he stands up, and closes the distance between them, grabbing Kame in a tight hug. Kame is stiff in his arms. "And if you ever need me, for anything, anything at all, I'll be here for you, okay?" Kame relaxes, just a little, so Jin presses his advantage. "Seriously. You can just show up wherever I'm staying, and cry on my shoulder, or whatever."

Kame laughs, then, and it turns into a tiny sob. "You've got all these big dreams, Jin," Kame says. "One day you're not going to come back, because they aren't the same as mine, anymore." Kame looks vulnerable, something that’s been missing in Kame lately, hidden beneath intense willpower and almost terrifying focus. The Kame in front of him looks so young, and so fragile, and Jin just holds him tighter. Jin’s heart is in overdrive, because even though he’s tried to ignore it, Kame still makes his pulse race faster than Jin had ever thought was humanly possible until now.

"But this time, Kame," Jin says, running his hand anxiously through Kame's hair as the other lays heavy on Kame's back. "This time I'll be back."

Jin thinks about Kame, carrying the K and the A on his already over-weary shoulders, the entire plane ride to Los Angeles.

#

Kame’s book is almost finished. As the pages dwindle, Jin has a sinking feeling that Kame’s time here, with him, is dwindling too.

#

Jin dreams of the beach again.

He’s running and running and running, but Kame is as untouchable as the moon.

#

“I hate that I can’t even be mad at you,” Kame says, leaning against the concrete wall. Jin is standing next to him, puffing on a cigarette, eyes closed because he can’t look at Kame right now. “I know this is what you’ve wanted for a while now.”

“I can’t miss this chance,” Jin says quietly. “I can’t. This is one of my dreams.”

“I know,” Kame says. “I know.” He hears Kame take a deep breath. “I just wish it didn’t feel like you were abandoning us to do it.”

“I’m sorry,” Jin says. He opens his eyes. Kame’s face is inscrutable. “You’ve carried the K and the A before.”

Kame laughs bitterly. “Yeah, I suppose I have.”

“I can’t do what I want to do and be in KAT-TUN, Kame. I can’t have the weight of a band on my shoulders while I’m trying to pursue a solo career in the United States.”

“Are we a weight, Jin?”

“I don’t mean it like that, Kame, and you know it.” Jin sighs, and drops his cigarette to the gravel, putting it out with the toe of his shoe. “You’ll never be a weight to me.”

Jin and Kame aren’t as close now, as they used to be, the pull of Jin’s increasingly bigger dreams dragging him further and further away from him, and the group. The feeling of being trapped, that had receded with Jin’s first trip to Los Angeles, has been clawing its way back up his ribs and closing in around his lungs.

Mostly Jin wants to reach out to that California coastline, and now he’s been given a chance.

But even if KAT-TUN isn’t where he is musically, even if Jin’s got new friends and new adventures and new parties, there’s still Kame. For him, there will always be Kame. He knows that as surely as he knows the sun will rise in the morning, as surely as he knows he needs air to breathe.

For him, there will always be Kame.

“Good luck with your new life,” Kame says, and it’s the last time Jin sees him.

#

They lay on their backs out in the grass of Jin's court yard, heads resting on Jin's oversized black hoodie that Jin's spread out like a blanket beneath them.

“Are you going to come to my show next week?”

“I don’t know,” Kame says.

The sky is clear. "The stars are really bright here," Jin says. "You can see them more easily than you can in Japan."

"Even though it's the same sky," Kame says slowly, like he's tasting the words as he says them, "the stars look completely different here." It’s not the first time he’s said it, but it sounds final, somehow.

"What do you mean?" Jin asks, turning his head to look at Kame's profile. Jin has all the lights out in the courtyard in an attempt to avoid the mosquitoes that linger here, even after summer draws to a close, and all he can see is the faint outline of Kame's distinctive nose, subtly illuminated by the soft light from Jin's kitchen. Jin can't read Kame's face, but that doesn't have much to do with the light.

"When did we stop reaching for the same set of stars, Jin?" Kame asks him, and Jin doesn't know the exact answer. Maybe he does, but it hurts to think about it. Jin's gotten good at pushing aside the things that hurt.

"Sometime between then and now," Jin says, and Kame laughs sharply, more like a bark.

"Do you remember..." Kame starts, but then he trails off.

Jin reaches up above him, stretching his arms as far as they'll go. "When we said we'd shine brighter together?" Jin offers, ignoring the way his gut clenches and the flush that's fighting it's way up his neck. Kame's still looking at the sky, though, and a gentle breeze blows, and Kame still smells of lemon and hibiscus. "Like it was yesterday."

"What happened to us, Jin?"

Jin's asked himself the same question hundreds of times, and no matter how many times he turns it over in his head, he still doesn't know the answer.

But for some reason, he thinks Kame's not really asking.

"You tell me," Jin says. "All I know is that one day, you were gone."

"I was gone?" Kame says, his voice harsh, even though he's only speaking in a whisper. "You were the one that found all these new dreams that didn’t involve me--"

"It wasn't like that," Jin says, and his voice comes out louder than he means it to. "You know that, Kame,” he continues in a quieter tone.

Jin remembers feeling trapped. Remembers the lights that used to thrill him becoming nothing more than bars to a cage, capturing him in the spotlight and leaving him bare and on display. He remembers wondering, panicked, if this, this, was what they had worked for, and if he was going to spend the rest of his life trying to get out.

Jin remembers being confused, too, and maybe that was the worst part of all, because with those lights shining down so hot and bright, Jin was so afraid someone would see.

"Do I?" Kame asks, but he sounds resigned. "The first time you left. That's when we started reaching for different stars. You and your American constellations."

"Yeah," Jin says, but it isn't true. It was before that, way before, he knows.

Kame had started shining so bright all on his own, without notice or warning, that Jin, well... Jin kept forgetting to look at the sky at all.

Jin had started wanting to reach for the moon right beside him.

Even now, when he's got all these dreams, all these ambitions, and he's taking his chances and giving it all he's got, he still...

When Jin closes his eyes at night and dreams, it is of soft touches and the heat of a heavy weight by his side, of gentle breaths on the soft skin of a bared shoulder, of lemon and hibiscus and the lick of moonlight. Jin dreams of the moon, over and over and over again.

“I came because…I needed to see your American Dream,” Kame says into the silence, and Jin sucks in a lungful of air at the tone of Kame’s voice, the way it ripples down his spine and makes him want to slide closer. “I wanted to see what you were dreaming of these days.”

“Why?” Jin asks, and it’s too blunt. “You basically told me to have a nice life, and wrote me out of yours.”

“You wrote me out of yours way before that, Jin. You’ve dreaming about things that didn’t involve me for years.”

Jin has been dreaming of lots of things that did involve Kame, too, Jin wants to say, but he can’t. It’s like when Jin’s on a television show, when he knows everyone is watching—he just freezes up, because he’s so worried about saying the wrong thing he can’t ever say the right one.

“I just wanted…” Kame stops for a breath, before he rushes on. “I guess I just wanted to see if it was worth it. To see if you were happy.” Kame looks at Jin, and Jin doesn’t have to open his eyes to feel the weight of Kame’s gaze.

“And?” Jin says, his voice straining with the effort. There’s a stone on his chest, making it hard for him to do anything more than that.

“This…this was the right choice for you,” Kame tells him. “You’re sparkling again.” Kame’s next breath is shuddering, like the leaves on the maple trees on a breezy autumn day in Tokyo. Jin can hear the air crackling, just like tat, between them.

Jin wants to tell Kame that Jin is sparkling because Kame is here. That he loves America, and he loves his career and his social life and his house and the weather and all of those inconsequential things, but god, he loves Kame so much more than that. Jin doesn’t have just one dream, he’s got hundreds of them, head stuffed so full of them he always forgets the words.

But his biggest dream, since he was fifteen and foolish and staring at the stars, is for Jin and Kame to make it.

Jin is pretty sure, when he told Kame that, years ago when Jin couldn’t have even begun to fathom that his life might end up like this, that Kame had thought he’d meant KAT-TUN, or that Jin had been referring to superstardom or something like that.

But Jin had just wanted them to make it. Them. Two boys with not much in common but big dreams and connected hearts, with intertwined fingers and a lot of hope.

“Kame, I…”

“If you could do it all over again, would you still come here? Do this?”

“Yes,” Jin says aloud. But I would have held on to you tighter, remains unuttered, echoing in Jin’s head like a gunshot. "Building a new career here, in a completely different place—it’s hard. One of the hardest things I’ve done. But…I want more than things that are easy."

“I just wanted to see your dream,” Kame says. “Now I can finally say goodbye to our old one.”

Jin feels like the Earth is swallowing him whole, like he can’t move and he can’t tell Kame that that’s not what Jin wants, not even close to what Jin wants.

Jin wants to find Kame’s hand in the dark.

Kame sits up, next to him, pushing himself up with his strong arms, and smiles down on Jin. It's not a happy smile, or a sad one. "I'm going to go inside," Kame says, and he stands. Jin sits up too, picking up his sweatshirt and shrugging it on. "See you," Kame says, and he disappears into the house.

Jin follows him after a few minutes, stopping in the back doorway when he sees Kame sitting at the kitchen table, arms folded and head resting atop them. Kame's eyes are closed, and his eyelashes look dark against his pale skin. Los Angeles sun hasn't tanned Kame's skin at all, Jin thinks, but Kame seems to glow healthier anyway, fuller cheeks giving him a softer, gentler look that reminds Jin of being young and carefree.

Jin can't resist the urge to run his hand through Kame's hair, which looks soft and inviting, and so he does, just once. It feels as good as it looks, free of hair product, and naturally a little wavy. The roots of it are a dark black now, from a month of no upkeep, but it caresses Jin's palm just like it always has. Jin remembers it feeling just like this.

Jin remembers everything feeling just like this.

His fingers slide down to Kame's face, tracing his eyebrows and slowly following the uneven bridge of his nose. His thumbs run over the two moles on Kame's chin, and tease at the outline of Kame's lips.

Kame is so still, and Jin thinks he could stand here, fingertips brushing soft skin, forever.

It's not like a love song. Jin doesn't feel like there's a rainbow exploding behind his eyes or any kind of endless possibilities. The only colors he sees are purples and blues, like a fresh bruise, and his heart just hurts, because there aren't endless possibilities, not for him and Kame, who are separated by 9000 kilometers and words that Jin might never say.

Jin's love story has never been destined to have a happy ending. He's known that. He's always known that.

It's why he's worked so hard to push the feelings away, he thinks. Why he never acknowledged them. Maybe Jin has some sort of unconscious self-preservation. Maybe, Jin’s heart didn’t want to break.

Jin manages to stop, and to walk away, but he pauses at the stairs and looks back at Kame. Kame's eyes are open now, and he's looking steadily at Jin. There's a mystery in his eyes that makes Jin scared and excited all at once. "You're awake," Jin says, and Kame tilts his head to the side.

"The kitchen table isn't for sleeping. I was just thinking."

"Your eyes were closed," Jin explains hastily, and Kame just keeps staring at him, like he can see through Jin, see how confused and frightened and yearning his.

"Yes, they were," Kame says. "My thoughts are clearer in the dark."

"Oh." Jin tugs on his own hair. It's not as soft as Kame's. Probably because he hasn't had a haircut since January, and he always forgets to use conditioner. "Goodnight," Jin says, and retreats up the stairs.

Later, after they've both gone to bed, Jin stares blankly at his ceiling, covers pulled all the way up to his chin, the soft cotton tickling him and brushing against the small beginnings of the beard he's cultivating.

He can't sleep. He keeps thinking about the way Kame had looked at him as he stood at the foot of the stairs, eyes unreadable but fierce. That look burns through him, searing hot, even now, hours after he's retreated to his room and hidden like a child beneath his sheets.

The sound of his door opening startles him. His glasses are on the bedside table, but there's only one person it can be, and Jin relaxes even as his heart starts to beat with the rapidity of a rabbit’s with his chest.

"Jin," Kame says, and his voice cuts through the air even though it's barely a whisper, ringing in Jin's ears as loud and clear as a bell. "Can I..."

Jin smiles, and for a moment, just a moment, he pretends the past ten years don't stand between them like a great big wall. He pretends, and it makes it easy to lift up one side of his blankets and scoot to one side of the bed, making just enough room for Kame to curl up beside him.

Kame is just as warm as Jin remembers, but the feeling of laying next to Kame the man, who slips one muscular arm across Jin's belly, is so very different from laying next to Kame the boy, who clung to Jin with bony arms, nothing but edges and rough spots.

Maybe Jin's thoughts are clearer in the dark, too. Because now, it's as if everything is in sharp focus, and Kame is the bright moon amongst all the glittering stars. Kame has always, always been Jin's moon; even when Jin put the Pacific Ocean between them he looked up to the sky and watched him wax and wane, his heart like the ocean tides, rising and falling to Kame's pull.

Jin tingles everywhere that Kame touches, and he feels impossibly young, like a teenager all over again, awash in heady, giddy emotion that makes him both terrified and almighty.

As Kame's breathing evens out beside him, Kame finding somnolence much easier than Jin will be able to, Jin's heart beats to the rhythm of endless, inescapable love.

"Kame," Jin whispers. "Kame, Kame, Kame." And Kame stirs, just a little, and his lips brush the skin of Jin's neck, and his exhales are warm and heavy and Jin feels like he's going to burst from his skin. "Let's shine brighter together."

The gentle rise and fall of Kame's chest eventually lulls Jin to sleep as well.

#

“Jin,” Kame says, and Jin shirts, rolling on his side to face Kame. The futon is small, but big enough for two thin, gangly teenage boys.

“What’s wrong?” Jin whispers, because Koki is asleep, breathing heavily behind Kame on his own futon, and Jin doesn’t want to wake him.

“It’s not possible, is it?” Kame’s voice is warm and heavy, like soil after the rain.

“What isn’t possible?” Jin replies. Kame’s legs brush his own, the cotton of Kame’s pajama pants brushing against Jin’s bare calves, an innocent touch that Jin will never forget, and Jin thinks anything is possible.

“For us to stay just like this. We’ll have to grow up.”

“Maybe,” Jin says. “But when that time comes, we’ll be something new.”

“What?” Kame asks.

“I don’t know yet,” Jin says, burying his face in Kame’s neck. “It’ll be up to us to figure it out.”

#

When Jin wakes up, he's cold. The space beside him his empty, and Jin knows, somehow, that Kame is gone.

He finds a note on the kitchen table, next to the fruit bowl.

Thank you is all it says, in crisp, clear English letters.

Jin's emotions are tumbling over each other, rolling around inside of him and crushing everything in their path, until Jin is left wrecked and demolished and empty.

Jin's built all these walls to protect himself from his eager heart, and in four weeks, Kame has managed to tear down every single one of them.

Jin takes a deep breath, and there's a change in the air. It smells like fall. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out the silver necklace and clenching it tightly in his hand.

I’m not going to cry, Jin tells himself.

That night, it's cloudy, and Jin can't see the moon at all.

#

Suddenly, living alone is so hard. Jin's house, which over the last four weeks, had been filled with laughter, with moments of tenseness and moments of idyllic ease, too, is now eerily quiet.

Jin makes enough coffee for two people every day for a week, and then he feels guilty and drinks twice as much as he should.

That's not why he can't sleep, though.

He can't sleep because Kame is gone, and Jin, like an idiot, had left his heart open for demolition.

Jin had known Kame wouldn't, couldn’t, stay forever. His life and career are back in Japan, after all, and even if Kame had come to Jin for a reprieve, it was always going to be a temporary one.

But that doesn't make Jin feel less shattered, less bereft.

Without the moon's gravity, Jin just spins faster and faster on his axis, and until he feels like he'll spin right out of control.

#

Jin gets an envelope in the mail, just white with his name on it in block printed English letters and the Kanji written smaller underneath. There’s no return address in the upper left corner, and there are four Japanese stamps lined up neatly in the upper right.

Inside are four photographs.

The first picture is of Olvera Street as it turns to dusk, the stall lights glowing against the setting sun. Jin remembers this picture, Kame standing in the middle of the road, camera held up to his eye and a smile teasing at his lips.

The second picture is of Kame’s shoes, untied and sitting in Jin’s foyer, amidst all of Jin’s shoes. They look like they belong there.

The third picture is of Jin’s yard, and of Jin, feet in the pool with his guitar in his lap, lyric notebook by his side. The picture was taken from the kitchen window, Jin thinks, because the corner of the picture has a glare from the glass, and Jin can see a tiny bit of the yellow daffodils he keeps on the windowsill above the sink.

The fourth picture is of Jin, too. It’s Jin, mouth parted in surprise, hands in his pockets and staring at the camera. Staring at Kame. Beneath his feet is the Walk of Fame, burgundy marbled stars making a path that goes into the distance behind him.

Jin takes in the look in his own eyes—it’s the look of a man who has fallen in love with the moon, he thinks, a man filled with some kind of dizzying, terrible passion that he’ll never escape.

On the back of the fourth picture, it says “You’ll have one of these stars someday. Good luck on your concert,” in Kame’s usual leftward slanting handwriting, and Jin traces the kanji with his fingertip, imagining Kame scrawling the note hastily, tongue sticking out the side of his mouth.

It feels like goodbye.

#

Kamenashi’s back Yamapi’s email says. Johnny didn’t even suspend him, the lucky bastard. I should disappear for a month and refuse to tell anyone where I was.

Jin’s fingers shake as he replies. Where would you go? You couldn’t come here. Johnny would find you in twenty-four hours.

There’s no response to Jin’s email, for about ten hours, and then Yamapi sends him another mail. Are you okay?

I will be, is Jin’s answer, and he hopes it’s true.

#

"You want to go out?" Lizzy asks, and Jin knows he should say yes, because he hasn't done much, when he’s not in rehearsal, but mope pitifully around his house for five days, and he probably hasn't changed his clothes either. “I know we have rehearsal again in the morning but…”

"No," Jin says into the phone, and Lizzy sighs.

"That's it, Jin. I'm coming over."

Without fail Lizzy shows up with Aubree and an oversized bag of chalupas from Taco Bell, and carrying a two-liter of Pepsi. Jin opens the door to them, and they waltz in without fanfare, Lizzy dropping the greasy bag onto Jin's coffee table as they both collapse on Jin's sofa.

"Have a chalupa," Aubree says, tossing Jin a wrapped packed that smells of salsa and beef. He catches it. It's warm.

"I'm not very hungry," Jin says, staring down at the chalupa in his hand like he's never seen one before.

"It's worse than we thought, Liz," Aubree says. "Jin is turning down Taco Bell."

"Where's Kame?" Lizzy asks, as she takes a bite of her own chalupa, and Jin wants to make a dirty joke about the sour cream all over her face, but he doesn't, because hearing Kame's name on someone else's lips sends him right back down into wallowing misery.

"He's gone," Jin says, and even though he means to sound steady and nonchalant, his voice cracks revealingly.

"Oh," says Lizzy, and Aubree is looking at him through narrowed eyes.

"That's why you're all depressed, isn't it?" Aubree asks him, setting her own food down on the coffee table next to the bag. "Because Kame's gone."

"Of course not," Jin says, eyes shifting away from the two girls on the couch as he sinks down in one of the chairs. "Don't be ridiculous."

"You're the worst liar ever," Lizzy says, taking another bite. "It's normal to be upset when a friend leaves, especially one you don’t get to see very often. But seriously, Jin. This is Taco Bell." She opens the two-liter of Pepsi and drinks straight from the bottle. "You're acting like a lovesick girl."

"Don't be ridiculous," Jin says, unwrapping his chalupa and shoving it in his mouth, fitting almost half of it inside in a single bite. He can feel his face turning red though, and his gut churning, and the chalupa tastes like nothing on his tongue. He chews anyway.

"Oh my god," Aubree says, and she's studying him now. He red hair is falling around he face, and she looks too young to have such a serious face. Jin's a Japanese pop star, though, and he knows looking young doesn't have much to do with maturity or actual age. "You are. You’re lovesick!"

"Lovesick over what, now?" Lizzy asks, and Aubree whips around and grabs the soda bottle from Lizzy's hand. "Hey, I was drinking that!"

"Kame, Liz. Jin's lovesick over Kame!" Jin tries to curl into himself as they both turn back to look at him.

"I never said that," Jin defends weakly.

"You didn't have to," Aubree says. "Your face is totally transparent, dork." Aubree reaches into the bag and pulls out a handful of napkins, shoving them at Jin. "You've got sour cream all over your face."

"So you like boys?" Lizzy says, sitting up and resting her elbows on her knees. She sets her chin in her upward facing palms. "Why am I not surprised, Jinnifer?"

"Shut up," Jin says. "I don't like boys. It's just Kame. I love Kame."

It's the first time he's admitted it aloud, Jin realizes, all of a sudden. He's felt it, for years and years, and he's thought it, to himself, when the lights are out. Yamapi knows, he thinks, but it's not because Jin ever said it, it's just because Yamapi can read his mind with his freaky best-friend mind powers.

"Wow," Aubree says, and Jin gulps, and wishes the chair would swallow him whole. "Does he know?"

"No," Jin replies. "Of course not." Jin takes another bite of his chalupa. "It doesn't matter. I can make it stop. I'll get over it soon."

"Yeah," Lizzy says. "You really look like you're on the right path, what with the wallowing and the not dating anyone ever." Jin gives her the finger, and she laughs. "You should just tell him."

"Out of the question."

"Then you'll never know what could happen," Aubree says quietly.

"You can't touch the moon," Jin says. "You can only watch it from the Earth and admire how brightly it shines."

"Okay," Lizzy says. "This is unacceptable. Jin is making up terrible song lyrics and there are uneaten chalupas on the coffee table." Lizzy crosses her arms. "Jin, grow some balls. Clearly, you've been in love with Kame since forever. Don't you think you should tell him? Or move on? Or something? This is kind of pathetic."

Jin knows she's right. It's the same thing he's been telling his heart for years, even when he was just trying to get over their friendship, and before Kame wandered into his home and back into his life, Jin had almost convinced himself that he'd gotten over it.

But now, he's raw all over again, because when he closes his eyes all he can see is Kame's brilliant smile and the warmth of his hands and the gentle cadence of his laugh, the real one, the one that Kame doesn't show the cameras or his colleagues. All he can do is remember that this feeling, the swelling inside of him like the tide pulling the waves-- this feeling is love, and no matter how far he runs, he can't catch it or escape it.

"Pass me the Pepsi," Jin says, and Aubree smiles at him softly. "And I'll try."

#

In the two days leading up to Jin’s concert, he doesn’t give himself time to sleep, or time to breathe. He fills every moment he can with dancing and singing and going, because it’s those quiet moments, the ones where he’s waiting for the tech guys to change the position of a light, or where he and all the dancers have stretched out on their backs, guzzling water from water bottles and inhaling huge gulps of air into their exhausted bodies… Those are the moments where Kame creeps up on him, where Jin imagines the scent of lemons and wants to wrap his arms around his own knees and try and push the hurt back down to where he can’t see it.

#

Jin’s revelation, as they always do, comes at the most inconvenient of times, when too many people are watching and the stakes are too high.

When Jin had first dreamed of an American career, he hadn’t dreamt of the status quo, performing in smaller venues to crowds of moderate sizes. He’d dreamed of this: filling a huge stadium just like this, with thousands of people all coming to hear his music-- his music, that he was proud of and loved and wanted to be singing.

Jin didn’t get here, to this moment, by accepting things they way they were. He’d had to reach out and grab onto his dream with both hands, despite all the people he’d had to disappoint, and all the people who’d told him that it was crazy and reckless and hopeless.

As Jin belts out ‘The Fifth Season’, sitting on a stool with just a microphone in the middle of a massive stage, black fedora sitting heavy on his brow and sweat pouring down his face, Jin can’t help but think that this is it. This is his American Dream, right here, sweaty and hot and scary and perfect.

Jin knows, he’s always known, that the things he works the hardest for are the things that he wants the most.

As Jin sings his heart out, he thinks of Kame. Kame’s secret smiles and Kame’s short fingers and Kame’s moles to the right side of his mouth, and the way Kame is wonderful, in so many tiny impossible ways, ways that Jin doesn’t even know how to describe because Kame does them as naturally as he breathes.

It occurs to Jin, at that moment, as the word overflowing tumbles over his lips, that he doesn’t want the status quo. He doesn’t want things to be like before, where pushes everything to do with Kame to the darkest corner of his heart and tries to make it disappear. He’s tired of trying to pretend like thinking about Kame doesn’t make his gut twist and his hands tremble. He’s tired of pretending that Kame isn’t one of the things he wants most.

Jin isn’t afraid of failure. Jin isn’t afraid of jumping from the top of the highest mountain and spreading his arms wide and finding out then and there if he can fly.

So Jin doesn’t know why he’s so afraid of love, because love is just like anything else Jin’s ever dreamed of—big and scary and impossible, and worth the risk.

Jin doesn’t know what Kame will say, or what Kame will do, if Jin tells him that he loves him. All he knows is that he wants to reach out and grab onto his dream with both hands.

As far as epiphanies go, this one’s pretty major, and Jin would have a major epiphany at the most inopportune moment, during a stage show, in the middle of a song, in front of thousands of people who are watching him with bated breath at he hits a high note.

But Jin doesn’t stumble, and he doesn’t forget the words.

Jin thinks it’s because Kame chose this song, and maybe Jin is singing it for him.

After the show, Jin can still feel the adrenaline rushing through his body, making him feel like Superman, and maybe like anything is possible.

“So, how’s it feel to have accomplished your dream?” Dom says, as Jin guzzles water from a giant orange nalgene bottle.

“I’ve got more than one dream,” Jin says, and the words sit in the air, and then, in Jin’s heart, they harden into resolve.

#

Christmas is beautiful in Tokyo. One of the things Jin misses about Japan is the seasons. There are seasons in Los Angeles, too, but in Japan, each season has a mood to it, a certain atmosphere, and the weather changes are far more drastic, and far more beautiful.

A soft blanket of snow covers the ground when Jin steps outside and breathes in Tokyo air. Winter hits him all at once, and the stress of wrapping up his concert and movie promotions melts away in the arctic air, until Jin is left feeling cleansed.

His mother, who is waiting outside the airport in the parking lot with Reio, jumps out of the car and embraces him. “Welcome home, honey,” she says, and Jin feels like somehow, everything is going to be okay. His mother has that effect on him—she’s a pillar of strength, always in Jin’s corner.

“I’m home,” Jin replies, and she smiles.

#

Jin always has to stop by to visit Johnny, when he’s in Japan. The old man always leers at Jin, a cigar hanging from the corner of his mouth as he looks Jin up and down like he’s measuring his worth in U.S. dollars, and then nods.

“Movie sales are doing well,” Johnny says. “Movie’s a blockbuster here in Japan.”

“Thank you, sir,” Jin says.

“Your concert sold out in America, and Test Drive went Gold.”

“Yes, sir,” Jin repeats.

Johnny leans back in his black leather desk chair and sighs. “I guess you did alright, kid,” Johnny says. “I’m happy for you.”

Jin’s not used to receiving praise, not in this business. Jin’s used to receiving scathing criticisms about his personality, his free-time behavior, his lack of prowess in interviews and variety shows, his personal scandals, and his partying habits.

Jin thinks this might be the first time Johnny’s ever said something nice to him. It’s not that Johnny is mean, it’s just that Johnny has high expectations and a mind that’s one-hundred percent focused on marketing. It’s not that he’s kept Jin from doing what he wanted, or told Jin he wasn’t going to succeed. It’s just that he never told Jin he was.

It feels strange. It kind of makes Jin uncomfortable, to be praised. It makes him want to pull up his hood and hide, even though he likes it.

When he shuffles out of Johnny’s office, buttoning up his wool coat and pressing the button for the elevator, the last person he expects to run into is Koki.

“Hi,” Jin says, shifting his weight from foot to foot anxiously. “Long time no see.”

“Akanishi Jin?” Koki says, and then he slaps Jin on the back. “Man, how are you?”

“I’m…” Jin stops to think about his answer. “Well. Doing well.”

“That’s good to hear, man. Good to hear.” Koki is grinning at him, and Jin realizes he missed him.

“And you?” Jin says. “Still dating porn stars and having fun?”

“You bet,” Koki replies, with a lascivious wink.

The elevator dings, and Jin’s about to say goodbye, when he stops. “Do you…are you free right now? Do you want to have lunch?”

Koki’s eyes widen, and then his grin gets even larger. “Sure,” he says. “That sounds awesome.”

They walk side by side down the busy street, both of them in sunglasses and hats pulled low to protect their faces from both the fans and the biting winter wind. They stop at this okonomiyaki shop Jin hasn’t visited in years, and Koki orders enough food to feed four people because Jin “looks too thin.”

“So I heard your concert did really well. And I see your ugly face on movie posters everywhere these days, too. I feel like you’re haunting me in the loo.”

“Shut up,” Jin says with a laugh. “I’m having fun. Are you? How is…everyone?”

Koki leans forward and rests his head on his hands. “Well, I’m sure you heard about Kame-chan.”

Jin’s stomach flips. “What do you mean?” Jin asks carefully, his words tenuous.

“He disappeared for a month and won’t tell anyone where he went. And then he just comes into work one day like nothing happened.”

“Like nothing happened?” Jin queries, and Koki looks at him more closely.

“Well, he acted like he was in mourning for a while, but now he’s almost back to himself.” Koki tilts his head to the side. “Now tell me what you know.”

“What makes you think I know anything?” Jin asks, and his voice cracks, and he knows the jig is up.

“Jin,” Koki says, like Jin is saying something really stupid. Jin figures maybe he is.

“I know, I know, you don’t have to tell me. I’m a horrible liar.”

“Yes,” Koki says. “A horrible liar with information. Tell me what you know.”

“Kame was with me,” Jin says, and Koki chokes on his giant bite of pancake, coughing and onion back out onto his plate. “In Los Angeles.”

“Oh,” Koki says, after a few seconds of blank staring. “So that’s it.”

“What do you mean?” Jin asks, and Koki looks at him disbelievingly.

“Jin,” Koki says. “Kame-chan’s spent years trying to let you go. You two have always had this…thing.” Koki takes a sip of his water. “I guess that’s what the mourning was for.”

Jin doesn’t reply for a few moments. “I don’t want him to let me go,” Jin says quietly, and Koki’s gaze turns sharp. Jin wishes he could hide his thoughts right now, because he feels like I’m madly in unrequited love with Kame who is possibly trying to forget I exist is written all over his face, and he doesn’t want it to be.

“Then you should probably tell him that,” Koki says. He digs into his leather bag and pulls out a tiny Moleskine notebook and a pen. He tears a page out of the notebook, and then flips to the front. He copies something down on the paper, and then hands it to Jin.

“What’s this?”

“Kame’s address,” Koki replies. “I’d give you his number, but Kame doesn’t answer calls from numbers he doesn’t recognize.”

“Why are you giving me this?”

Jin hadn’t really had a plan, when he came to Japan, about what he was going to do about Kame.

Now Koki has dropped a plan into his lap.

“Now,” Koki says. “Now you don’t have any excuses not to go and tell Kame…whatever it is you have to tell him.” Koki smiles, and pours more soy sauce into his dish, before taking his chopsticks and ripping another piece off of their okonomiyaki. “If I were you, I’d just go over there and say everything there was to say, you know?”

Jin puts a piece of pancake in his mouth. He can taste the onion and the squid and the vinegary taste of soy sauce against his tongue. “You’re right,” Jin says, and Koki gasps.

“Did you just say that?” Koki says. “Did you really just admit I’m right?” He clutches his heart in fake shock. “Shit, maybe my little brothers should go to America. Clearly it makes you smarter.”

Jin chuckles, and then Koki raises his water glass. “What are we toasting?” Jin asks, raising his own glass.

“To old friends,” Koki answers, and the clink of the glasses resounds in Jin’s head.

#

Jin's still thinking about what Koki said when he hails a cab. He's got Kame's address clutched in his fingers, and his gut is churning with indecision and fear and love, so much love, so fierce and persistent that Jin doesn't think he'll be able to ignore it, ever again.

When the driver asks him "Where to?" Jin hesitates for only a moment before he hands the driver the slip of paper, crinkled and smeared from the grip of Jin's anxious fingers.

Kame lives in a quiet neighborhood. Jin had always imagined Kame living in a slick Tokyo high rise apartment, but the taxi driver drops Jin off in front of a small house, the kind of house Jin grew up in, with three bedrooms and a kitchen overlooking a modest backyard. Jin guesses it's the last place the paparazzi would think to look for a guy like Kame, with his perfectly pressed blazers and his overpriced jeans slung low on his hips.

But beside the front door is a bush, and Jin recognizes it as a hibiscus plant.

"Wait here," Jin says softly to the driver. "This will only take a few minutes."

The door is white, with black numbers down the side, and the knocker is simple, and brass. It's not what he expected, but it fits, Jin thinks, because it's effortlessly beautiful, like Kame himself is, in the morning, hair falling in soft waves down to broad shoulders and tiny moles littering his face and neck, oversized sweatshirt hanging low on his shoulder, and a smile in his eyes.

Jin is done hesitating, because his heart has never been more sure.

Jin rings Kame's doorbell, and Kame answers quickly, eyes widening as he takes in Jin at the door.

"It's rude," Jin says, lips trembling. "It's rude to leave without saying goodbye."

"It's rude to drop by without calling first, too," Kame says, and his smile is gentle.

"Never would have thought that out of the two of us, you'd be the most rude," Jin says, and then he shoves his hands into the pockets of his wool coat for warmth. He's got a knit cap pulled down over his ears but it's still so cold.

"Do you want to come in?" Kame asks, stepping aside.

"No," Jin answers. "I just want you to listen."

"I'm listening, then," Kame says, and Jin wonders if he's cold in just his soft blue corduroy pants and cashmere sweater, with it's deep v-neck, exposing his collarbones to the frigid winter night air.

"You asked me..." Jin takes a breath to steady himself. He feels dizzy, and so afraid. "You asked me why I left you. When it was that we started to have different dreams."

Kame nods, slowly, eyes never leaving Jin's.

"The answer isn't when I left for Los Angeles, the first time."

"It isn't?" Kame asks, and his voice is soft, like he's holding his breath.

"No, Kame, it was...it was way before that." Jin hunches his shoulders. He's always cold, and now he's shivering worse than usual. Jin's not good with this, with saying what's in his heart. He's still looking at Kame, who's starting to shiver too, goosebumps popping up on the bare part of his chest. "See, you were trying to become a star, but to me, you were already the moon."

"Jin, what?"

"Do you know the story of the shepherd and the moon?" Jin asks. "This poor shepherd fell in love with the moon, so high up in the sky that he'd never be able to reach. He just loved, and loved, and loved, forever."

"Jin, what are you trying to say to me?" Kame's voice is unsteady, and he's looking at Jin with wide eyes. He looks…scared, Jin thinks, like he’s terrified of the words coming out of Jin’s mouth. But Jin can’t stop, now that he’s started. And Jin’s scared too. He’s never been more scared in his life, because he can’t turn back from this and pretend he’s never said it.

"Making American music...that's a dream of mine. Writing and singing music that resonates with me--it's something I have always wanted to do." Jin finally breaks from Kame's intense gaze, and looks up to the sky. "But Kame, what I wanted the most, for a long time, was to shine with you. Whether we were together on stage or not, I wanted to shine with you."

"Jin--"

"The problem was...the problem is...how can anyone shine as bright as the moon?" Jin laughs, and then the wind blows, and they both shiver as Jin catches Kame's gaze again. "I’m just a shepherd, after all. And I..."

"Oh Jin," Kame says, and he's looking at Jin with this expression of panic that cuts right through the wind and burns him, turning him to ash.

"And I loved... I love you, god, I've always loved you, since I was seventeen and too young to even know what it meant."

Jin can't bear to look at Kame anymore, with his flushed cheeks and open mouth, arms wrapped around himself as they stand quivering and cold in Kame's doorway, December wind pulling at Kame's hair. He's beautiful, and Jin has never loved anyone more than he loves Kame right now.

He squeezes his eyes shut, and takes a step backward, down off the front step. "I just..." Jin's fumbling and tripping over his words now. "I just wanted to tell you that when I left the group, it was just about music. It wasn't about my heart. You had that. You kept that. I wasn't leaving you, Kame."

Jin takes a ragged gasp of air, and the cold stings in his lungs. “Jin…”

“So even if you said goodbye to our old dream, even if you don’t love me…the same way as I love you,” and those words barely make it out because the idea of it hurts him so damn much. “Please don’t say goodbye to me.” Jin tries to tell himself he isn’t crying, but Jin’s never been good at lying, not even to himself. He reaches out and roughly grabs Kame’s wrist, pulling Kame’s hand toward him, palm up. Kame’s skin is cold, too cold, because he’s standing halfway outside with no coat in the dead middle of winter. Jin’s other hand drops the silver necklace into Kame’s hand, and closes Kame’s fingers around it. “You’re my dream too. I don’t want to let you go. I don’t want you to let me go.” The silver chain is hanging between Kame’s fingers,

And then Jin spins on his heel, and walks briskly back to the cab, climbing in and nodding to the driver to go, tears freezing on his face. He tells the man Yamapi's address, and braves a look out the window as the driver shifts gears.

Kame is standing completely out the door now, and the wind is whipping at his sweater, and Jin can't see the expression on his face. But his porch-light is on, and he's illuminated, glowing against the backdrop of the night sky.

#

"You did what now?" Yamapi asks as he pours Jin and himself another shot. They're piss drunk, now, and Jin's lying on his back on the floor, hazy eyes trying to focus on the ceiling.

He'd shown up at Pi's place about three hours ago, and Pi had taken one look at his face and abandoned him in the genkan to get two shot glasses and a handle of Absolut.

Jin had shed his thick coat in the doorway, not bothering to hang it up, and yanked off his boots and followed Yamapi like a puppy into the living room, and now he's laying on the floor on his back, hands linked and resting on his stomach.

"I sort of...told Kame I was madly in love with him," Jin slurs, for the second time, and then he closes his eyes to stop the room from spinning.

"You are?" Yamapi asks, before he lays down on the floor next to Jin. His own speech is far from steady, and Jin thinks the best friends are the ones who will get drunk with you before they even start asking questions.

"Yeah," Jin says, more sighing than speaking, and Yamapi laughs.

"Well, I kind of figured, but you never really talked about it so I started to wonder if it was something else."

"I'm so stupid," Jin says. "He'll probably never talk to me again. He's probably still heartbroken over Anne, or whatever her name was, or stressed about work, or you know, not gay."

Jin sighs, and the whole thing just pours out of him, like a terrible Telemundo soap opera.

"Wait, wait, back up and tell me about the part where you fled before he could answer by jumping into a cab again," Yamapi says, and he's curling up into a ball as his shoulders shake. "What, are you thirteen?"

"Oh god," Jin says, melodramatically throwing his arm over his eyes. "Stop laughing at me." He hiccups, and he's starting to feel a little sick. "I feel terrible enough already. You don't have to rub it in."

"Dude, you confessed your gay love to Kamenashi and then ran like a sissy before he could even get a word in." Yamapi rolls over to face Jin, flushed face supported by his bent arm. "I don't know why you're even here if you didn't want to get laughed at."

"I dunno," Jin says. "Maybe I just wanted my best friend to support me in my time of romantic misery?" Jin scowls, and he wants to shove Yamapi, but he feels to dizzy to move. "What did I do when you broke up with Maki?"

"You bought me a stripper," Yamapi replies. "Jin, I'm not buying you a man-stripper. I can't have that kind of transaction on my credit card."

"I'm not gay, Jin bellows. “It's just Kame. It's always been Kame." it's strange, Jin thinks, how his face feels numb but his heart is still aching. Alcohol's funny like that, he thinks, because it never takes away the pain you actually want it to.

"I don't think my neighbors heard you, Jin. You should yell a little louder."

"The point is," Jin says, more quietly. "I didn't laugh at you. I was there for you."

"And I'll be here for you," Yamapi says. "But I can't let this confess-and-run pass. As a friend, I owe it to you to help you learn from your mistakes."

"Why does it hurt so much?" Jin asks, and Yamapi stops laughing, propping himself up on his elbows so he can look down at Jin solemnly.

"Because you've been in love with the same person for more than twelve years, and now you're faced with the prospect of having to get over it." Yamapi blows air out of his nose, and it makes his nostrils flare.

"That seems so impossible," Jin whispers, and in the end, it does, because Kame is threaded into every aspect of Jin's life now. Every moment of Jin's history since he was fourteen, and now through his life in LA, too. Kame is everywhere Jin goes, and he's in everything Jin sees, and he blows through Jin's thoughts every moment Jin is awake, and every moment he's asleep too, like a gentle spring breeze.

Yamapi pushes at Jin's shoulder with his forearm. "Mario Kart?"

"No thanks," Jin says, and his throat is tightening and his eyes are starting to tear up. "I think I'd like to just wallow."

"That’s cool," Yamapi replies, ruffling Jin's hair like he's the elder of them. "We can do that too."

“Thanks,” Jin says, voice cracking. They both pretend he isn’t crying, because they’re best friends, and that’s the sort of thing you ignore.

But Yamapi does hand Jin a tissue, a little later. “Damn it Jin,” he whispers. “I thought I told you not to get yourself hurt,” and Jin had known he was coming to the right place for comfort.

#

When Jin leaves Japan, it’s with a heavy heart and a resolute mind.

His plane leaves in the middle of the night. Jin watches the moon get smaller and smaller out of the plane window.

He feels like he’s left everything on Kame’s doorstep—his hope, his heart and his truth. He keeps imagining the silver chain of that necklace from Olvera Street hanging through the spaces between Kame’s fingers. Then he imagines it falling into the snow, silver glinting on a bed of white.

#

When Jin dreams, Kame’s holding his heart instead of that necklace, and it’s Jin’s heart melting and slipping from Kame’s hand down onto the snow.

#

O weary hearts! O slumbering eyes!
O drooping souls, whose destinies
Are fraught with fear and pain,
Ye shall be loved again!

-- Endymion, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#

Jin keeps hoping that Kame will call. That Kame will write. That Kame won’t just ignore Jin for the rest of Jin’s whole life while Jin holds the broken pieces of his heart in his own hands.

But the phone doesn’t ring. He doesn’t get a letter or an email.

Japan has never seemed so far away to Jin.

It’s just like before, Jin thinks. Maybe all Kame can offer Jin, now, is silence.

It’s the new moon.

#

There’s something almost serene about heartbreak. In knowing you’ve said all the things you’ve had to say, and that all your cards on the table.

So even though Jin’s in pieces, and his house feels lonely and there are little bits of Kame around every corner, he’s calm.

If he’s honest with himself, he’s calmer than he’s been in a long time.

He throws himself into recording for his new album, and doesn’t think about how sharp and longing the notes sound when he listens to them on playback.

#

Winter fades to early spring, and Jin still feels raw.

There is nothing from Kame but silence.

#

Jin comes home tired from his recording session, throat raw and eyes heavy. He can't wait to lie down in bed, with his clothes on, and sleep until noon, because it's just been that kind of day.

He opens the door, and slips out of his shoes, hanging his jacket on the coat-rack he keeps in the foyer.

That's when he notices the light in the kitchen. That's funny, Jin thinks, because he'd left in the middle of the day, and there's no way he would have left it on, because he wouldn't have turned it on, not in the bright daylight of a Los Angeles spring.

The last thing Jin expects is Kame, sitting casually on the edge of his kitchen counter, a mug of coffee in his hands. Kame's wearing tastefully faded jeans, and he's cut his hair-- it barely reaches his chin, and it falls in gentle waves around his face. "You got a haircut," Jin says as he drops his bag on the floor next to the kitchen table, because he doesn't know what else to say.

"I did," Kame replies, mouth quirking into a tiny little smile. It's his Jin smile.

"How...?" Jin's not sure what he's asking. It might be any number of things, but he doesn't really get the chance to think about it, because Kame is staring at him over the rim of the coffee cup as he takes a sip, and Jin loses his ability to think in the depths of those eyes.

"You showed me where you keep the extra key, remember? Under the flowerpot on the from porch."

"Right," Jin says, and his knees feel weak, and his heart is racing a mile a minute, and he can't take his eyes off of Kame, who is unfathomably here, in his kitchen, drinking Jin's coffee out of Jin's favorite mug. This time, he’s not wearing his shoes.

"Aren't you going to ask me why I'm here?" Kame says, and it rings in Jin's ears, just like it did eight months ago when Kame asked him that for the first time, standing in this same kitchen with dark circles under his eyes, thin and drawn and fragile.

"I told you once," Jin says, and then he stops, hand grabbing the island countertop for support. "I told you once," Jin starts again, "that if you needed me, for anything, I'd be there for you." Jin's eyes are still trapped in Kame's and he doesn't think he could look away even if he wanted to. "I'll always mean it."

"Because you love me," Kame says, and all the breath leaves Jin's body.

"Yes," Jin says, and he feels naked, like there's nothing hidden inside of him anymore. Kame can see him all now, knows everything Jin's ever kept from him.

Jin feels free.

"You're such an idiot," Kame says to him, and Jin blinks.

"What?" Jin asks, and his throat is so dry, and now it's not just from recording.

"I can't believe you showed up at my door in the middle of the winter and stood outside, telling me you've loved me, like, forever, and spewed Greek mythology at me before running away.”

Jin sputters, because now Kame is sliding off the counter, and setting his mug down on his vacated seat. "It wasn't exactly...planned," Jin replies, and Kame grins at him incredulously, his teeth perfect and white and Jin is mesmerized by how brightly Kame always shines.

"And got the mythology all mixed up, too," Kame continues, looping his thumbs through his belt loops and tilting his head to the side. As he does so, there’s a glint around his neck, and Jin’s eyes trace the line of the silver necklace with it’s round pendant to where it sits in the hollow of Kame’s neck.

"Um," Jin says, and in his imagination, he's always eloquent at times like this. But the reality is that Jin's only good with words when he's writing them down to tell a story in lyrics. The rest of the time he just absolutely crashes and burns, in Japanese and in English. He doesn't even know what he would say, really, because he's not sure what's going on, only that Kame is so close to him now that the smell of hibiscus flowers is wafting into Jin's nose and Jin wants, more than anything, to pull Kame even closer and bury his nose in that lemon-scented hair.

"It's true," Kame says, "that Endymion the shepherd loved the moon for all eternity. But." Kame pauses, and his hands slip from his belt loops to slowly come up to Jin's face, cupping Jin's face between his strong square hands. "You forgot the most important part, Jin."

"I did?" Jin whispers, as Kame's thumbs swipe softly across the skin of Jin's cheeks. Jin feels like he's running a race, like he'll never be able to catch his breath. Something that might just be hope is blooming in his chest, unfolding like the first hibiscuses of spring, pinks and golds and yellows and reds, and maybe every other color too, and Kame is just looking at him, eyes wide and honest and perfect.

"Yeah, stupid," Kame says, and now there's a slight waver in his voice, and Kame is so close that Jin can see the crooked shape of Kame's nose in sharp focus. "The moon loved him back."

And then Kame is kissing him, his thin lips feeling so much fuller as they press up against Jin's, and Jin is helpless to the assault, mouth falling open to Kame with no resistance. “Kame,” Jin mumbles against Kame’s mouth, and then he’s closing his eyes.

Kame’s mouth tastes like coffee, and like honey at the same time, and Jin wonders if he’s ever felt anything as intensely as he feels Kame licking his way slowly into Jin’s mouth, his tongue caressing Jin’s and making Jin forget everything, even his own name. Kame’s hands slide into Jin’s hair and drag his face down, so that Kame can press himself even tighter, and Jin’s hands come up to rest on Kame’s hips, thumbs resting along the line of Kame’s belt as he kisses Kame back.

Kame pulls away from Jin, and they’re both breathing hard, and Kame’s eyes glow ethereal as stares at Jin. Jin lets one hand drift up to Kame’s face, and Kame’s eyes flutter shut, delicate like a new butterfly, as Jin pushes a piece of loose hair out of his face, tucking it behind Kame’s ear. “Can I…?”

“Yes,” Kame says, and this time, Jin kisses Kame, fusing their mouths together with no hesitation.

There’s always been a spark between them; an electricity that charges through Jin and makes his hair stand on end. Jin wonders, if now, as his hand falls back to Kame’s hips and he pulls Kame flush against him, if that electricity will set them both on fire.

Kame’s soft gasps into his mouth make Jin want to know how he lived before this moment, how he’d thought his life was complete without the sound of Kame’s low moans and Kame’s slick, hot mouth moving beneath his own, and the feeling of Kame’s strong square hands roaming across the muscles in Jin’s shoulders, clutching at Jin’s sweatshirt to pull him closer.

Kame pushes at him, and Jin stumbles back, through the living room, never letting Kame pull back, clutching at Kame’s hips and making him follow so closely that their legs tangle together, tripping and stumbling until Jin’s back hits the railing of the stairway. Jin lets out a soft gasp at the impact, and Kame chuckles against his lips, and it might be the sexiest sound Jin has ever heard, all low and deep and resonating beneath Jin’s hands, which have made their way up to Kame’s waist.

“Do you thing you can let me go long enough to walk up the stairs?” Kame asks, and Jin swallows as Kame’s hand makes it’s way under his sweatshirt to rub a slow circle into the skin at Jin’s hip right above the waist of Jin’s sweatpants.

“No,” Jin says honestly, and then blushes as Kame lets out a full laugh, grabbing Jin’s wrists and leading him up the stairs, Jin fumbling his way up, eyes trained on Kame’s kiss swollen lips and laughing eyes.

Jin wonders if he would follow Kame right off a cliff, and not even realize it until he feels himself hurtling off the edge.

At the top of the stairs, Kame starts kissing Jin again. It’s addicting, the way Kame makes Jin feel, like there’s no gravity in the room and Jin is floating, anchored only by the silky stroke of Kame’s tongue against his own, and the brush of Kame’s callused thumbs against the fevered flesh of Jin’s torso.

Kame makes a disgruntled sound, tugging at Jin’s sweatshirt, and Jin hurriedly takes it off, throwing it somewhere in the hallway, and then he’s dragging Kame’s top off too, throwing it the same direction as he’d thrown his own. Kame is laughing at him even as Jin’s hands eagerly run up and down Kame’s bare sides, and as he drops tiny kisses along Kame’s neck, he feels Kame’s laughs against the sensitive shell of his ear, and it makes him shudder.

“You’re such a mess,” Kame says.

“Do you really care right now?” Jin says, and Kame’s laughter stops, and then Jin’s breathing stops, because Kame is running exploring hands up the front of Jin’s chest, brushing across his nipples before roaming down his ribs.

“No,” Kame whispers, and then they’re falling through Jin’s bedroom door, and Jin is tripping over a sneaker as he sheds his pants and socks, and Kame steps easily out of his jeans. Jin swears and Kame chuckles, and then Jin shoves Kame down to his bed, scrambling on top of him and kissing him so fiercely he loses track of time and space and everything that’s not Kame. The first touch of flesh against flesh has Jin hissing into Kame’s mouth, and Kame groans, too, and it just makes Jin want to kiss him harder as he relishes the feeling of Kame’s square, narrow hips between his thighs, and the brush of Kame’s chest against his own. Their erections slip across each other, and arousal clenches like a fist in Jin’s belly, sending warmth down his legs and making him shiver.

Jin lets himself look down at Kame, with his hair mussed and his chest heaving, eyes narrowed beneath perfectly arched eyebrows. This is it, Jin thinks. This is everything.

“You’re wearing the necklace,” Jin says, fingering it lightly as he kisses the skin around it and beneath it, enjoying the way Kame comfortably shifts closer to him, hands running up and down Jin’s sides. It’s like when they were younger, but it’s also completely different, because Kame’s touches are filled with intent, and now when Jin gets the urge to cover Kame’s mouth with his own and move his way inside it, he can. He seals their mouths together, and Kame quickly takes control of the kiss, lifting up and caressing Jin’s tongue with his own, making Jin gasp into his mouth. Jin feels like Kame’s hands are everywhere at once, like he’s surrounded by Kame’s heat and Kame’s scent, and like he’s drowning in Kame, who is perfect in this moment, eager and hungry beneath him.

Jin breaks away for air, kissing across Kame’s face, pressing fluttering kisses to his jaw before trailing down to his neck. Kame sighs, hands coming to rest on the small of Jin’s back as Jin’s kisses turn open-mouthed, leaving a trail of saliva in his wake as he makes his way down to Kame’s collarbones. Jin’s arms support his weight as he licks and sucks across them, and Kame shifts beneath him, tiny groans escaping from his throat when Jin blows warm air along the line of wet skin.

“The necklace…It looks like the moon,” Kame replies when Jin’s eyes find his in the dark. Kame’s hair is spread around him, burnt red waves against the stark white of Jin’s sheets, and his eyes are heavy lidded and smoldering. Jin feels like he’s going to explode, like he can’t contain all the feelings swirling inside of him, like he’s so full of hope and joy and love that there’s no way his skin can hold it all in.

“I love you,” Jin says, and then Kame is moving, flipping them over so now it is Jin who lies on his back, and Kame who has to lean down to join their mouths back together. “Oh god, I love you.”

And then Kame slides down him, and Kame is taking Jin’s cock between his lips, mouth stretching around it’s girth and eyes never leaving Jin’s face. It’s hot and wet and feels so good, and Jin tangles his hands in Kame’s hair, silently urging him on as he trembles and lets tiny moans escape his throat, even as he bites down hard on his lower lip at the overwhelming pleasure as Kame’s tongue circles slowly around the head of his cock. Jin can’t hold back the mewling sound that fights its way out when Kame takes him all the way in, his hands softly stroking Jin’s inner thighs and subtly holding Jin down as Jin gets closer to the edge.

“Do you have…?” Kame says, and Jin sticks a hand out, blindly finding the drawer of his bedside table, and grabs the tiny basket he keeps there. Kame smirks. “Organized where it counts, huh?” Kame says, and then Jin is too distracted to reply, because Kame is easing a lubed finger inside of him.

It’s like nothing Jin’s ever felt before. It stings, but it’s not really uncomfortable, and he likes the way Kame’s eyes surge with heat as Jin spreads his legs wider to give Kame more access. “Relax,” Kame says, and then he’s working in a second finger, stretching and scissoring, and Jin feels his breath coming faster and faster. He wants to close his eyes, to just feel, but he also doesn’t want to miss a second of the doting look on Kame’s face, or the way Kame shivers at the tight embrace of Jin around his fingers, or the way Kame’s mouth is parted as he breathes.

Kame brushes against something inside him, with the addition of a third finger, that makes Jin’s world flash in almost unbearable bright color, and makes his abs clench and his hips lift off the bed. “Did I find it?” Kame asks, and Jin nods, and his hair is plastered to his neck with sweat, his entire body tight with desire and need.

“Just…” Jin starts, and Kame’s other hand, the one not inside of him, teasing him into madness, runs a soothing line up Jin’s shaft, and Jin feels like he’s falling apart. “Please,” he says instead, and Kame’s fingers slip from him.

When Kame presses inside of him, much larger than the fingers had been, Jin feels stretched and whole, and Kame, strong arms on either side of him, is beautiful, throat bared to Jin’s devouring eyes, hair wet and skin shining with sweat. Jin pulls his legs up to his chest, holding them there, and just feels. Kame is shaking with the effort of holding still, and for just a moment, Jin savors everything—the cotton digging into his back, the way his cock aches to be touched, the way he feels full in every way, joined with Kame just like this.

Then he whispers “Move,” and Kame is pulling out and slamming back in, and Jin cries out as Kame hits that spot inside him that makes him see stars, makes him feel like he is a star, burning hot and white in the night sky.

Jin’s world is spinning faster and faster, and he reaches out, clutching desperately at Kame’s back, nails digging into Kame’s flesh and making Kame grunt and Jin just drinks in the sounds and the tightening, and he feels himself getting closer to completion.

“Jin, I’m going to—“

“Me too,” Jin manages to gasp out, and then he slips a hand between them to wrap around his own cock. After only a few jerks he comes, and Kame chokes as Jin clenches around him, thrusting into Jin through Jin’s orgasm, and then he’s collapsing down on top of Jin, and Jin’s wondering if he’s ever felt so complete.

#

“I’m sorry I took so long,” Kame says.

“You’re here now,” Jin replies.

“It was scary,” Kame says. “When you showed up at my door, saying all these things I never thought you’d say, and feeling all these things I never thought you’d feel, it was scary. I’d never ever thought… I wasn’t prepared for it. I’ve never been like you. I have to think about every consequence, figure out every way it could go wrong and every way it can go right. I can’t just do it and hope for the best—“

“Kame,” Jin says. “You’re here now.” Jin can feel Kame’s breathing slow beside him, chest moving up and down at the same steady pace as Jin’s heart. “You’re here now.”

“It’ll be hard,” Kame says to Jin, as Jin runs his fingertips up and down the line along the center of Kame’s stomach.

“Everything with you is hard,” Jin says. “But right now, this?” Jin gestures to how they lay, wrapped together, skin to skin, sweat cooling on their backs and Jin’s head tucked into the hollow of Kame’s neck. “This feels easy.” Jin drops a kiss on Kame’s sweaty forehead.

“I never imagined being in an intercontinental romance,” Kame muses. “But I guess we’ll try our best.”

“I love you too much to let you go,” Jin tells Kame, and Kame looks up at him like Jin is sixteen and Kame is fourteen, and Jin has all the answers. “So our best is good enough.”

Kame swallows, and Jin thinks he might cry. “I love you too,” Kame says. “I love you so much.”

“I’ll leap enough for the both of us,” Jin says.

And then Kame laces their fingers together and smiles, so bright and warm that Jin feels like nothing will ever hurt again, and Jin thinks that he’d swim across the Pacific Ocean just to see that smile again.

#

“Mama!” Jin says, when he accepts the call.

He’s in the parking lot again. He leans back in the driver’s seat, and takes off his sunglasses, closing his eyes.

“Jin, how are you?” Jin’s mother says into the phone, and Jin taps his fingers on the steering wheel, humming as he thinks about an answer.

“I’m great,” Jin says. “I’m wonderful.”

“I thought you might be,” Jin’s mom says. “Kame-chan stopped by to visit me yesterday and tell me you two were seeing each other.”

“What?” Jin shouts into the phone, before he quickly lowers his voice. “Mom, I can explain—“

“You don’t have to, Jin. You know I don’t care.” Jin’s mom laughs, and Jin can imagine the gloating expression on his mother’s face when she says her next words. “I always knew something had happened between you and Kame-chan.”

“Oh god, mother, please do not speculate about—“

“I guess I don’t have to bug you about getting a girlfriend anymore,” Jin’s mother muses, and Jin would be melting with embarrassment if the thought of Kame being his didn’t make him feel so gleeful. “Now that you’re Kame’s girlfriend, I mean.”

“I am not Kame’s girlfriend,” Jin squawks indignantly, and Jin’s mother laughs even louder.

“But Jin,” she says, in a more serious voice, and Jin licks his lips, opening his eyes and taking in the sight of the los Angeles afternoon, bright sun beating down on the pedestrians bringing their groceries to their cars. “I’m glad you’re happy.”

“Me too,” Jin says, and then he smiles, because this is a dream he can chase for the rest of his life.

#

Later, Jin gets an email from Yamapi.

I heard you're Kame's girlfriend now, it says, and Jin scowls at his iPhone screen, even as the joy he hasn't been quite able to dampen bubbles up in his gut and froths through his whole body at the thought of Kame. Jin feels like he's flying.

Stop hanging out all the time with my mom, Jin mails back, and Yamapi sends him a picture of a naked woman in response, that Jin quickly deletes before someone in line behind him at Starbucks looks over his shoulder and gets the wrong idea.

He thinks of Kame, who he’s going to visit in Japan next week, and he feels that familiar excitement raging inside him, and this time, Jin lets it consume him.

#

When Jin closes his eyes, he dreams of Spring, lemon and hibiscus and the colors of new life.

When he opens them, Spring is waiting for him with a wicked smile and a warm bubbling laugh, with laced together fingers and a mouth that tastes like the evening rain.

And in the night, Jin wraps his arms around the Moon, and they shine together.