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Kame smells like whiskey and expensive cigarettes.
 
“My lighter,” he says, leaning a little farther into the house than a sober person would without an invitation. His hair is sort of haphazard, his dark shirt half unbuttoned underneath the jacket, and Jin can’t tell whether it’s meant to be that way or he’s just been lazy putting it back on somewhere. He’s leaning against the doorframe, peering over Jin’s shoulder into the living room like he expects to see the lighter sitting on the coffee table somewhere. Kame hasn’t been here in like a month though, he can’t have missed it all that much. “It’s a little silvery thing, sort of…” Kame motions vaguely with his fingers, “silver, with words—there’s letters on it with the little twiddly bits.”
 
“I haven’t seen it,” Jin says. Kame’s hand lands on his shoulder and he leans in further, craning his neck around to look towards the kitchen too. Jin has to take half a step back just to keep them upright, puts a hand on Kame’s chest to try to get him off, but Kame’s heavier than he used to be, and he always gets even heavier when he’s drunk.
 
His eyes come back to Jin just then, dark and unfocused, and he’s still not leaning back. Jin feels Kame’s hand wander up from Jin’s shoulder to the side of his neck, his fingertips just tickling Jin’s hairline.
 
Ooookay. So. Not really about the lighter then.
 
“Let me come in and look for it,” Kame says, and his voice sounds like cigarettes too. His fingers squeeze in Jin’s hair a little as he sways between Jin and the doorframe.
 
“It’s 2 a.m.,” Jin points out, not bothering to keep the annoyance out of his voice. It took three hours to get Theia down, and she didn’t even sleep on the flight back this morning. Or, well, Meisa said she didn’t—Jin fell asleep while they were still on the tarmac in Singapore, but still, she’ll be a basketcase tomorrow if she doesn’t sleep tonight. And he’s still got half of Eikawa-san’s year-end expense report thingy to review because he didn’t get to it on the plane and he’s already fallen asleep twice, and he really doesn’t have time for this.
 
“Come on,” Kame pushes closer, and the hand leaves Jin’s hair to reach for the edge of the door, try to push it open wider and worm his way inside. Jin plants his feet and grabs onto the doorframe to hold the line, and he can feel Kame’s breath against his neck, the little drunken chuckle, and the way Kame isn’t pushing so much past him as into him, and…seriously, what the fuck.
 
“Kame, Theia’s asleep—”
 
“So we’ll go to your room,” Kame murmurs, and tries to stick his hand down Jin’s sweatpants, and that’s when Jin yelps and shoves him hard away. Kame stumbles back out the door and nearly teeters off the porch, has to grab onto the railing for support, and then he blinks back at Jin with that pissy look on his face like Jin is the one who’s being unreasonable here. If Jin didn’t know him, he might find that look intimidating.
 
Jin glances over his shoulder back into the house—if that shout woke Theia, he’s totally blaming Kame. But all he can hear inside is the low murmur of the TV he left on in the living room, so he steps out onto the porch and closes the door behind him.
 
“Go home, Kame,” he says.
 
Kame blinks slowly, his gaze drawing down over Jin in his sweats and t-shirt, his feet cold and naked on the doormat. Jin knows that look, knows what Kame is trying to do, and he is totally not falling for it. It’s Kame’s own fucking rule, let him get bitten by it for a change.
 
God, he must have really gotten shitfaced wherever he was tonight. Do they have happy hours on Laphroaig 18?
 
“I don’t want to go home.” Kame pushes off from the railing and wanders over, slamming his hand against the door beside Jin’s head. Jin doesn’t blink. “I want to fuck you.”
 
It’s an old, familiar quiver, like that breath against his skin, but Jin stuffs it down deep and ignores it. It’s the alcohol talking, not Kame. He’ll regret it in the morning, and he should, the little shit.
 
“No you don’t.”
 
“Yes I do…”
 
“Well, you’re not going to,” Jin says, and Kame chuckles and moves closer.
 
“I think I am,” he singsongs, and tries to press his mouth into the crook of Jin’s neck, but Jin ducks out of the way, leaving Kame rolling against the door. Kame trips over his own feet trying to follow him and stumbles to his knees, lets out another peal of drunken laughter that sort of echoes in the little alcove around the door, and Jin starts worrying about the neighbors waking up and finding him here like this. Nevermind Theia’s sleep schedule, they could have police or fucking paparazzi to worry about if Kame keeps going like this. He pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts looking up the number of the car service.
 
“Take your pants off.”
 
“What—no,” Jin dodges Kame’s searching fingers just before he manages to get a grip on the sweatpants. “Kame—”
 
“Come on, let me see your cock.”
 
“Shh,” Jin hisses at him—for fuck’s sake—okay, no, forget the car service, Kame needs to just…not be in public right now. For a second Jin thinks about letting him inside after all and trying to get some coffee into him or something, but the idea of his tiny daughter picking up any new vocabulary from Kame’s loud demands to see his cock puts an end to that. “Just…stay here for a sec, okay? I’ll be right back.”
 
Kame makes another grab for Jin’s pants—or maybe he’s aiming at what’s inside them, it’s hard to tell—as Jin pulls him out of the way and slips back inside. He runs upstairs and grabs his wallet and keys from the bedside table and a jacket from the foot of the bed. Meisa’s light is off when he passes and he doesn’t want to wake her, so he leaves a note on the kitchen counter just in case. The expense reports are still lying all over the coffee table when he stops by the living room to turn off the TV, and Theia shouldn’t get into those, but—whatever, he’s not staying, he’ll be back in an hour.
 
When he gets back out to the porch, Kame is sprawled on the floorboards looking like the leftovers from a Wink Up shoot.
 
“Come on,” Jin says, offering him a hand.
 
Kame doesn’t really seem to get it at first—might be trying to pull Jin down on top of him instead, or maybe he really is just that drunk—but after a few tries they get all the way back up to standing. Jin takes him by the elbow and drags him down the front steps and around to the garage, trying to shut out Kame’s dirty mutterings in his ear and fend off his clumsy groping. He takes Kame right over to the passenger’s side of his car and opens the door for him, giving a little shove that makes Kame collapse into the seat.
 
That laugh is really starting to get on his nerves.
 
Once Kame’s got his boots pulled in behind him, Jin slams the door shut and goes around to the driver’s side. Kame is still twisting around in his seat and laughing, being generally useless, so Jin has to reach over and do the belt up for him while Kame tries to stick his tongue in Jin’s ear, and then it’s another five minutes before he gets all of Kame’s fingers untangled from his hair. He puts Kame’s hands firmly into Kame’s lap.
 
“Stay,” he says, giving him a stern look.
 
Kame lifts his chin a little and narrows his eyes. But he stays.
 
There’s hardly anyone out on the streets at this hour. A few cabs, a few night delivery trucks, the occasional pedestrian who missed the last train. Jin steers them through the quiet neighborhood streets, winding and twisting until they make it out onto the highway.
 
“How did you even get out here?” Jin asks, once the silence has become even more uncomfortable than the groping.
 
Kame’s head rolls toward him, and one of those catlike smiles bows his lips. “Was in the neighborhood. Pi bought me drinks.”
 
“Pi did, huh,” Jin says. And he knows it’s stupid to still be annoyed when Kame calls him Pi instead of Yamapi or, better yet, Yamashita-kun—but hey, some old habits die really really hard. “Pi lives in Asakusa.”
 
“I wanted a walk,” Kame says, as if that makes perfect sense.
 
Obviously a lie—Kame barely made it off the porch on his own two feet. “What were you doing hanging out with Pi?”
 
“There was a thing after the thing,” Kame says, with a vague wave of his hand. “And he said I was stupid because of sharks, so I made him buy me drinks.”
 
Jin frowns, shoots Kame a glance. “Sharks?”
 
“They always keep moving, you know? Like, they’re really fish, but they keep swimming all the time because they think they’re going to die. But fish don’t do that.”
 
If anything Jin feels like he understands less of what they’re talking about than he did when he asked the question—but before he can find out any more about what sharks have to do with Kame being drunk all over his doorstep at 2 a.m. he has to catch Kame’s searching fingers as they sneak over his thigh and down between his legs.
 
“I’m driving,” Jin says. Kame makes a sulky noise, but he shifts again and pulls his arm back. Jin sneaks a couple of glances over at Kame as he squirms in his chair again, and Jin can’t tell whether all the squirming means he’s horny enough to burst or drunk enough to pass out. “Exactly how many drinks did he buy you?”
 
“Dunno,” Kame mumbles into the seatbelt, eyes closed. “I bought some of them.”
 
“I’m not asking about your bar tab, I’m asking how much you’ve had to drink.”
 
Kame holds up a hand with his thumb and forefinger about an inch apart and squints at it thoughtfully. “That much?” Then he giggles and collapses again.
 
Perfect.
 
It starts to rain a little bit. Or maybe it’s supposed to be snow, hard to tell at this temperature—but it makes wet little splodges against the windshield as they sail along, and Jin turns on the windshield wipers to keep the view clear. Keeps his eyes firmly on the road, ignores Kame’s low chuckles and wonders a little bit why the fuck he’s even doing this. This is not his responsibility. Last time he called Kame up in the middle of the night after a few too many he got a lecture about boundaries and clean breaks and how wrong it would be and where the hell does he get off—
 
No. Chill. Not important.
 
It’s the alcohol. Not Kame.
 
Kame wouldn’t show up at Jin’s door in the middle of the night just for sex. Kame has other people for that.
 
The elevators in Kame’s building are very complicated. There’s a key card and a passcode and a thumbprint thingy, and you have to get at least two of them in the right order before it will take you up, but Kame won’t hold his hand still and Jin doesn’t know the passcode anymore. It takes them so long to get it sorted that the elevator starts buzzing at them and Jin worries they’re going to have to deal with building security on top of everything—but then the thumbprint thingy turns blue and the door slides shut, and all he has to do is remember what floor Kame lives on before they’re on their way up.
 
The plush carpeting in the hallway muffles their footsteps and Kame’s giggles, and Kame even sorts himself out enough to find his keys and let them in. It’s dark inside. Jin reaches to the side of the door looking for the light switch, and there’s a jangle of keys in the dish on the mail table, and he doesn’t actually manage to turn the lights on before Kame barrels into him and presses him up against the door.
 
“Finally,” Kame says, curling one hand tight in Jin’s hair and closing his mouth over Jin’s throat. Jin bites down on the noise—god, it’s been—fuck… He fumbles for Kame’s shoulders in the dark, but Kame takes that as encouragement and presses his hips into Jin’s. “Let me fuck you,” he breathes low against Jin’s skin. “I know just how you like it.” Just that, and a little twist of his hand in Jin’s hair, and Jin feels his body slump a little against his will.
 
It’s not fair.
 
It’s not…he shouldn’t, they don’t…Kame doesn’t…
 
Kame’s mouth is hot working its way up the side of Jin’s throat, and Jin feels caught by it. It’s easier to ignore what’s not there in the dark, and that’s dangerous when what is there is Kame’s hands sliding down his ribcage, sneaking up underneath his shirt. Kame’s dick pressed against his thigh, already pretty hard inside his jeans, and Jin remembers, feels it like it hasn’t been five years.
 
Five fucking years.
 
“No,” Jin says, and he’s not sure when his hands got all clenched in the back of Kame’s jacket like that, or when Kame’s hand found its way down the back of his sweatpants. Kame’s hipbone gives a sharp little thrust against him, and he shivers.
 
“Yes,” Kame disagrees, licking a stripe up the side of Jin’s throat and then biting him on the ear. Jin pulls on Kame’s jacket, but that only makes it slide down his shoulders, trapping his elbows against his body and pulling him closer to Jin’s.
 
Jin feels Kame’s fingers sliding between, and he shivers again when they make a slow, teasing circle just there, and Jin remembers long nights of sweat and heat, back when they were happy.
 
“Nobody makes you feel the way I do,” Kame says, the smug bastard, and it cuts deeper than it used to because it’s true. “You probably haven’t even been fucked since me. Should make you beg for it.”
 
“Fuck you,” Jin grits out, and Kame’s finger presses in just a little, not nearly enough.
 
“I’ll fuck you,” Kame says, breathing over Jin’s lips with a little shudder. “I’ll fuck you nice and slow.”
 
Jin leans heavy against the door when Kame pulls back just long enough to get rid of the jacket. He should leave—Jin should definitely leave, Kame is safe now, his job is done—but Kame keeps Jin still with his tongue in the hollow of Jin’s throat while he peels off Jin’s jacket too, and Jin lets him. His dick is heavy in his shorts, but he can take care of that, wouldn’t be the first time he’s driven halfway across town with a raging hard-on because of fucking Kame, and whatever, he could rub one out at home where there’s no Kame and no teeth scraping up the side of his neck, and no dick pressed against him while Kame mocks him in that stupid gravelly undertone that always fucking works.
 
“I hate you,” Jin says when Kame pulls Jin’s t-shirt off over his head and starts sucking on Jin’s left nipple, because he knows that works—Kame knows way too much. He’s got his hands on Jin’s hips now, keeping them pressed firmly against his, and Jin remembers that time in L.A. when Kame got creative with his tongue in other places, and his dick gets heavier.
 
Jin’s hands are in Kame’s hair now, and even he’s not sure if he’s trying to pull him off or keep him there.
 
Just a little—just once. It’s not really letting him win if he just lets him get away with it once, even if Kame never…who cares if it isn’t fair, it’s…
 
It’s a little stumbly when Kame drops to his knees, but he’s got his fingers hooked in the waistband of Jin’s sweatpants to keep him steady. A little burst of cool when he tugs them down just below Jin’s hips, and then a warm hand and an even warmer mouth—
 
“Oh, god,” Jin groans, dropping his head back and trying to catch his breath. Kame doesn’t let him, too mean and too fast. Jin’s harder than he thought already, and there’s a rush when Kame starts really sucking him, when he makes the mistake of looking down and seeing Kame looking back up, Jin’s hand in his hair, and—oh fuck, Jin’s going to come, already, son of a—
 
There’s a sudden pressure just at the base, where Kame’s hand has sneaked in, and Jin whines when it all stops, tries to kick him, tries to breathe…
 
“Fuck you, Kamenashi,” he gasps, banging his head back against the door, and now there’s nothing but a teasing tongue playing around his head. The light brush of Kame’s lower lip when he lets Jin’s dick rest on it, pressing his tongue against the slit. Jin takes deep, harsh gasps, trying to get his body back under his control and away from Kame’s. He’s so frustrated now he’s not even sure he’d be safe driving, and this was not the plan. This was not the plan.
 
“I’m going home,” he says hoarsely, and Kame sort of smirks up at him, gives him another little lick.
 
“If you were going home, you’d be gone by now,” he points out.
 
It’s a good point. Jin doesn’t really know how to argue with that, but then who the hell would with Kame breathing on the head of his cock.
 
Kame reaches a hand up again, palm flat against Jin’s flank as he drags it down over muscle and bone and skin, pressing his thumb into the dip above Jin’s hipbone. “You’ll stay,” he murmurs, and Jin feels it, hot and cold. “You’ll take whatever I give you. You’ll take anything as long as it’s me giving it to you, you little slut.”
 
It’s hot and cold again, prickles all along his skin—but not the nice ones this time. That’s…no. Enough. Jin doesn’t need this, not now, not after—just, no.
 
He snatches Kame’s hand off his hip and pushes Kame’s head away from his dick. Kame lands on his butt on the carpet looking surprised and vaguely confused and…you know what, fuck that. Drunk or not, he should still know better.
 
Jin ignores him and reaches down to pull his sweatpants back up, tucking his still-hard cock back into his shorts. “Don’t,” he fumes. “You don’t get to say stuff like that to me, not anymore.”
 
Kame just blinks heavily at him, still leaning back on his hands. “You used to like that.”
 
“Yeah, well, you used to…” Jin starts—but he doesn’t even know how he wants to finish. There’s no point in arguing with Kame when he’s like this. He won’t get it. He won’t get it, and Jin will just end up feeling like an idiot who cares about things he shouldn’t anymore.
 
“What?” Kame says, blinking and frowning at him again. Jin feels cold. He can’t even tell if that’s just, whatever, blackout drunkness, or if Kame really doesn’t understand.
 
“Forget it,” Jin says, and picks his t-shirt up off the floor and twists it around, trying to find the neckhole. He doesn’t need this shit, not just because Kame is horny or lonely or whatever, and especially not after all the fucking bullshit Kame shoveled his way every time he asked.
 
“Jin,” Kame croaks.
 
“What?” Jin snaps, yanking the shirt down onto his head at what turns out to be an armhole after all—fuck—dammit, it’s too goddamn dark in here.
 
“Jin, you’re making an ass of yourself.”
 
“I am not the one who’s being an ass,” Jin says, and there’s another fucking armhole—god, who made this shirt, Tickling Guan Yin?
 
Jin gets his head through the neckhole, and Kame starts to climb to his feet—misses the coffee table on the first reach, but he gets it on the second one and uses it to push himself up. Jin is still trying to figure out what Kame did with his jacket when suddenly Kame’s got him by the shoulders again, pressed up against the door. Jin tries to turn away when Kame crushes their mouths together, and it’s sloppy, too much tongue and not enough direction—but then Kame’s got him by the hair too, right where he wants him, and his tongue goes deep, and Jin can’t breathe.
 
“Is that it?” Kame breathes into his mouth between kisses. “Is that what you needed? You need me to tell you how pretty you are too, compliment your outfit?”
 
“Fuck you,” Jin says.
 
“You begged me before,” Kame says, and Jin burns inside, because it’s true. Maybe it wouldn’t be if he were more like Kame, one of those people who can just shut everything off and not feel what they don’t want to. But Jin has never been like that.
 
“You said no,” he points out, and that burns too. He remembers. He was never quite drunk enough not to.
 
Kame kisses him again. “And now I’m saying yes.”
 
“Too late.”
 
“Is it?”
 
Jin is still hard. Kame is still close, and Kame’s eyes are dark like they always were, Kame’s hands sure even as he sways a little on his balance, and Jin always loved that about him. Loved the way Kame always knew what he wanted and knew how to ask for it. How to demand it. The way he made Jin want it too.
 
Maybe that was part of the problem.
 
What the hell, Jin thinks, and leans forward again, because at least if Kame’s mouth is busy he won’t keep talking shit. Anyway, if Jin’s going to take the abuse, at least he’s going to enjoy it. He reaches for Kame’s hips and pulls him flush again, grinding against him until Kame groans and bites Jin’s tongue.
 
Kame pries Jin’s hands off of his hips and twists them around behind Jin’s back, and Jin makes a muffled sound into Kame’s mouth and thinks of the second to last stall in the third floor men’s room at the studios and three different Wednesdays in April 2008.
 
“God, Kazuya,” Jin breathes, twisting against him.
 
Kame smiles like evil and Jin feels it low in his belly.
 
There’s a twist and a yank, and then Kame is behind him, one hand still pulling Jin’s wrist up against his spine, the other arm wrapped around his shoulders, just below his collarbones. Kame feels solid, like Jin could let himself melt and he wouldn’t even hit the floor. “Go,” Kame says in that low rumble, and Jin doesn’t even really resist.
 
There’s a different print above the bed than the last time he was in here, but the bedspread is the same dark blue. Jin gets distracted by the photo of a man stretched out by a lake, and he catches his foot on the trunk at the end of the bed. His body jerks to try to catch itself, but Kame’s hanging onto him and Kame’s balance is still shot—Jin’s lucky to get his free hand out in front of him before his face hits the floor, and Kame comes tumbling down on top of him.
 
“Ow,” Jin says into the floor, and Kame wriggles a bit. Jin can’t tell if he’s grinding against him or trying to get his foot unstuck from something. He’s let go of Jin’s arm somewhere in the fall, and Jin pulls it out from between them, propping up on his elbows. Kame gets himself sorted out, apparently, because then his knees come up on either side of Jin’s waist and he sits down on Jin’s tailbone and Jin lets out a hiss when the move presses his balls against the floor.
 
Kame’s fingers tangle in the back of Jin’s hair, pulling a little so that Jin’s neck bows backwards. “This could work,” he murmurs, half to himself.
 
“You are so drunk,” Jin says, and tries not to focus on the pull, because Kame is right, it could work. It could really work. Tries not to think about how long it’s been since Kame touched him like this either. He’s a little scared he’d find out he knows exactly how many days.
 
“Not too drunk to get it up,” Kame says, rolling his hips against Jin’s ass.
 
“Yeah,” Jin says, swallowing, because his throat’s gone all dry like this. “I can feel that.”
 
Kame leans forward, drops a hand beside Jin’s shoulder to support himself as he closes his mouth over the side of Jin’s neck again. “I meant yours.”
 
Jin’s fingers twitch against the wood, and maybe there’s a little jerk of his hips, but he can’t move far. Kame’s got him pinned.
 
Then there’s Kame’s tongue behind his ear, and Jin gasps out fuck me—wants to reel it back again for a moment because it’s not fair, Kame wins again, but…dammit he knows all the right things…
 
Kame twists his hand in Jin’s hair and rocks Jin’s hips into the floor again. “What was that?”
 
“I said fuck me,” Jin grits out.
 
“Now?” Kame teases. “Like this?”
 
“Any way you want, just do it,” Jin says, trying to keep the movement going in spite of Kame’s weight keeping them steady.
 
“Get me one then,” Kame says. Jin leans up further and reaches for the drawer above his head—Kame still keeps them in the exact same place, surprise surprise—and he’s still fumbling around blindly for the lube when Kame’s weight shifts back from his hips, and Kame yanks Jin’s pants down to mid-thigh. Jin slides the tube and the condom back to him across the floor and tries to wriggle out of his pants the rest of the way, but something is stuck.
 
“Kame, you’re kneeling on my crotch.”
 
“I what?”
 
“The pants,” Jin says, trying to twist his right knee out of the waistband, but Kame’s not paying attention, shifting and pulling Jin’s hips up where he needs them. Jin’s got his left leg out at least, needs it for balance when he feels Kame’s slick thumbs just there, pushing and spreading. Jin can feel Kame looking too, and it makes his arms feel weak. Kame always liked to look.
 
Then one of the hands disappears and he can feel Kame’s cock, Kame tilting him a little and lining himself up, and then Kame shoves in all in one, and Jin cries out in surprise. Shit, that stings—feels a lot longer since then, all of a sudden. Kame is bigger than he remembers, and Jin clenches his fingers against the floor, tries not to tighten up at the intrusion.
 
There’s a groan and a shudder from Kame, his hands trembling a little on Jin’s hips, and his voice too. “God you’re tight…”
 
“What did you expect?” Jin says, squeezing his eyes shut and dropping his forehead onto his arms as Kame pulls out. A little moan slips out when Kame slams back in again, but it’s sharp, hot, sends little ripples all the way out to his fingertips. It makes him feel vulnerable in the good way, as long as he doesn’t think, just opens up and lets Kame take, forgets everything and lets Kame put him where he wants him, take it as he pleases. Kame knows how he likes it.
 
It comes back to Jin slowly—all the angles, pushing back into Kame’s thrusts, trying to take him deeper. Just as Jin is getting used to the slow, steady pace, Kame takes it up, starts fucking him harder and faster. There’s a jolt sometimes when he gets the angle just right, dragging a little noise from Jin’s throat—but it’s random, Kame’s coordination is all over the place right now, and Jin needs him to put a hand on Jin’s dick. He needs to come, for fuck’s sake…
 
Then it’s slow again, deliberate, Kame’s fingers wandering over his ass, pushing his t-shirt up his back and trailing down his spine. Jin can feel the zipper of Kame’s jeans pressing against the back of his thighs, his sticky fingers on Jin’s hips.
 
“You’re such a good fuck,” Kame babbles, speeding up again, just a little. “I could fuck you all night.” Jin clenches fingers in his hair and tries to block him out—not hear the words, just the voice and the sounds and—god, he’s going to have to jerk himself off if Kame doesn’t do it soon.
 
“Turn over,” Kame says, slowing again, breathless. “Want to see your face.”
 
Jin groans into his arms.
 
Kame pulls out all the way and shoves at Jin’s hip until he rolls onto his side. There’s shifting and spreading and the floor is colder against his ass than it was against his knees. Kame drags Jin’s pants off the rest of the way and hooks his arms underneath Jin’s knees and gets him opened up, and Jin has to put his hands out to keep from ramming his shoulder on the foot of the nightstand. Feels even deeper this time.
 
Kame’s shirt is falling off one shoulder and his jeans are bunched up below his nonexistent ass, and he’s covered in sweat everywhere Jin can see. He bends over Jin and pushes deeper, mouth fumbling over Jin’s chin like he can’t find Jin’s lips in the dark—drops a palm to the floor for balance and gets faster, even harder, and then his tongue is in Jin’s mouth again and Jin can’t breathe anymore, digs his hands into Kame’s hair to keep him there, keep him inside and close.
 
“I love fucking you,” Kame breathes into Jin’s mouth, and it sends prickles all over Jin’s skin that are not fair, not like this. “Never fucked anyone like I fuck you.” Kame doesn’t have any breath left either, but he still keeps kissing Jin, still keeps going, doesn’t miss a beat. Tangles his fingers in Jin’s hair and pulls again. “I love how you love it.”
 
Love—fuck—what the fuck…
 
But Jin doesn’t have the breath to say it even if he could put words in order, and Kame’s eyes are closed and his thrusts are short and hard until he’s gasping and groaning and coming all at once.
 
Jin still can’t breathe, still curled up under Kame’s increasingly heavy weight, and he watches Kame blink and sway on his arms as the aftershocks pass. Then Kame shuffles back again, and Jin can breathe, and Kame’s arms don’t seem to have much strength in them at all anymore when they drop Jin’s legs to the floor. He fumbles off the condom clumsily, nearly misses the wastebasket when he leans over to drop it in, and then he’s hovering over Jin again, watching him with a weird, hazy expression, like he doesn’t even realize Jin can see him.
 
“I miss you,” Kame says, quietly, like it’s a secret even Jin is not supposed to know. And maybe it is. Maybe that’s why Jin is staring up at him with this squeeze in his chest that’s making it a little bit hard to breathe again and feeling so…confused.
 
Then Kame’s weight shifts in his shoulders as he reaches down lazily to pull at Jin’s dick. Jin twitches and sobs, feels Kame watching him and the lube between his legs, and he still feels open and empty and exposed. Kame sinks down on top of him slowly, keeping up the steady strokes, and his weight all along Jin’s body only makes Jin feel more helpless in his hands.
 
“Jin,” Kame murmurs in his ear, his mouth soft against Jin’s neck, and Jin’s hand is in his hair again. He pushes up against Kame, but Kame keeps it maddeningly slow, his hand moving in time with his tongue. If Jin didn’t know better he’d think maybe Kame was falling asleep.
 
It goes deep when Kame kisses him, and Kame doesn’t even have to try.
 
“You feel so good,” Kame mumbles against his mouth, and his eyes are half-closed, his fingers in Jin’s hair. Jin is so close, wound so tight, he can’t—
 
“Please,” Jin gasps, “just…please…”
 
Kame gets it, lets him have it with a few quick flicks of his wrist until Jin is groaning sharply and hanging on, riding it out. Feeling it where he’s empty, where Kame’s hand is on him, where Kame is everywhere.
 
As he catches his breath, the world comes back to him slowly in little pieces. Kame’s hand, Kame’s mouth. The rough floor, his rumpled t-shirt. The come on his stomach. Kame’s legs and Kame’s voice and Kame.
 
This was not the plan.
 
Kame is still nuzzling into his neck, all fluffy and cuddly now that he’s gotten his rocks off and chou-Kamenashi has fallen asleep. There’s something cold in all the warmth now that Jin’s gotten off too and he’s remembering that he’s the only one here who is sober. Kame wasn’t just horny, he was drunk, and the way he’s curling himself around Jin and making little cooing noises doesn’t mean as much as it feels like it should. Kame will be sober again in the morning, and everything will be the way it was. Except for Jin.
 
This was a mistake.
 
“Hmmm, Jin…” Kame rumbles against his neck, and trails off into a low giggle as he wraps his arms around Jin’s ribcage like he’s settling in for the night. Jin is starting to feel a bit cold on the floor, and a bit stupid with no pants on and Kame draped all over him like they’re something they’re not anymore.
 
“Kame,” he says, though it takes a second try to make it audible. “You should go to bed. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
 
Kame chuckles and nuzzles into Jin’s skin again. “Feel pretty good right now.”
 
“Kame, come on,” Jin says, trying to be firm and not think too much. Thinking can come later. “My arm is falling asleep.”
 
Kame grudgingly accepts this as a good reason to get up and slowly slithers off of Jin. When he’s free to sit up, Jin reaches for his pants and starts pulling them back on while Kame climbs to his feet and strips the rest of his clothes off. The shirt lands on the floor and the jeans land halfway out of the hamper, and Kame doesn’t even notice, just crawls under the covers and falls flat across the bed at a diagonal, his head on his arm and his hand stuck between the pillows.
 
Jin grabs a couple of tissues off the nightstand and wipes the come off his belly. When he gets to his feet and looks down at Kame all flushed and slack like that, he feels…he doesn’t even know what he feels. Like Scrooge visiting his Christmas Past or something. Not quite here.
 
He runs a hand through his hair and shakes off the feeling, shakes off the slippery sensation of lube between his ass cheeks and tries to think practically. Pulls the wastebasket out of the corner a little in case Kame gets sick in the middle of the night, sticks the abandoned tube of lube back in the drawer. Throws away the condom wrapper.
 
Kame shifts around on the mattress, the duvet sliding down his back until one leg is mostly uncovered and it’s all bunched up in the small of his back. He snuffles in his sleep.
 
Jin finds himself just standing there watching him, wondering how he’s not cold. Feeling sad and stupid for feeling sad, stupid for letting it get to him again, like this. He sucks at this, the shrugging it off thing. It always clings to him when he feels like it shouldn’t.
 
Kame twitches and shifts again, kicks the covers off further until half his ass is exposed and his face is twisted to the other side. And Jin should tuck him back in and then leave, he really should. He’s got stuff to do.
 
I miss you.
 
“Jin,” Kame mumbles, “‘m cold.” His leg twitches again, looking for the covers he kicked away, and Jin reaches over and finds them, starts pulling them over him, and that’s when Kame twists around again and reaches for him. He grabs a handful of Jin’s sweatpants again, but he’s not trying to get at his dick, just trying to drag him forward. It pulls Jin off-balance and he sits down hard on the mattress—which is apparently what Kame wanted, because he squirms closer and wraps his arms around one of Jin’s thighs like it’s a pillow. Jin’s got to get out of here, he’s got the car and…and he left stuff all over the place back home, and…
 
Who is he kidding.
 
Kame makes a disgruntled protest when Jin tries to unwind his arms from Jin’s leg, but he settles again when Jin pulls his feet under the covers and lies down beside him. Jin’s barely got the duvet pulled up over both of them before Kame slithers back in between his arms and curls himself around Jin like they both belong here.
 
One of his legs slides over Jin’s, and his feet are warmer than Jin’s already.
 
“Love you,” Kame mumbles into his chest, as if it’s just “goodnight.”
 
Jin freezes. What the…what?
 
Kame falls asleep again within minutes—but Jin can’t. Jin lies awake for hours listening to Kame’s soft snores and the sounds of Kame’s apartment, and watching the lights reflected on the ceiling from the street slowly shift and blur and disappear.
 
~&~&~&~&~
 
It’s the jolt that wakes Jin up. For a second he thinks it’s an earthquake, until he realizes it’s just Kame freaking out. As expected.
 
It’s a little cold all of a sudden, without Kame’s arms wrapped around him like they’ve been all night, and he shrugs down under the covers and yawns. Blinks the scratchy feeling out of his eyes and swallows the stale taste in his mouth and generally just takes a minute for himself. He feels a bit like he’s hung over—hasn’t slept nearly enough, he can feel it—but he knows he’s not, really, and he knows there’s stuff out there he needs to deal with. He just needs to let his brain wake up slowly for a bit before he starts to deal with it.
 
When he opens his eyes, Kame is staring at him. A little bit wide-eyed and a little bit blurry and a little bit panicked, propped up on one elbow and blinking.
 
“I’m really here,” Jin supplies, and then he breaks off with a yawn and curls over onto his side to try the waking up slowly thing for a bit longer. “You weren’t that drunk.”
 
Kame swallows, but his voice still sounds scratchy when he speaks. “How drunk was I?”
 
Jin looks up at him again, hears the real question. “Pretty drunk,” he says, frankly. And, yep. Kame gets it.
 
Kame closes his eyes on a sigh and sinks back down into the pillows, burying his face between them. “Shit,” he mumbles. “Sorry, I didn’t mean…” he trails off vaguely—and really, even he must hear how stupid that sounds. Jin wasn’t drunk. Jin is an adult, he can say no to things when he wants to.
 
Not always when he should, but that’s Jin’s problem, not Kame’s.
 
“Shit,” Kame huffs into the pillow again, and that frown of his can’t be doing his head any favors.
 
“You feeling okay?”
 
“Yeah,” Kame sighs, and he almost sounds annoyed at that, like he wishes he were sicker. “I’m fine, I just—how are you?” His eyes open suddenly, and there’s concern there. He’s remembered his manners—seems to think he really ought to be a good host, get the guy he fucked last night some coffee and pancakes. “Do you need anything?”
 
Jin remembers. He hasn’t been that guy for a long time.
 
“I’m fine,” Jin says. And he is, mostly. More fine than he was last night, anyway. He had a lot of time to think while he was lying awake with Kame wound around him like a tree monkey—a lot of time to sort out what he was feeling and why.
 
What he understands and what he doesn’t.
 
Kame is rubbing at his eyes, and he still looks disoriented and vaguely miserable. Jin wonders how much of that is from last night and how much of it is from this morning. “Can I use your shower?” he asks.
 
“Of course,” Kame says quickly, trying to focus, and he looks like he’s about to get up and start doing things, and also like he probably shouldn’t. “I can get you—there are towels in the—”
 
“I know where the towels are,” Jin reminds him. And there’s a little flicker of guilt in Kame’s face again. “Don’t worry about me, I think I can handle a shower.”
 
He crawls out of bed and leaves Kame to finish his freaking out in peace. Waits until he’s got the door closed behind him before he peels off the t-shirt and sweats, turns on the hot water. It doesn’t take long to warm up—Kame’s building has annoying elevators, but it has really good plumbing—and by the time he steps under the spray it’s steamy and hot, works the tension out of his muscles, makes him feel more relaxed than he has all night.
 
He wonders where he left his cell phone. He doesn’t think it was in his pants pocket just now, usually he would feel the weight. Maybe he left it in his jacket, which is…in the front hall? He didn’t check the time before he went into the bathroom—probably should have, but anyway he doesn’t have to be back at his place until one, and it can’t be one already. Jin might be able to sleep through noon after a long night, but Kame can’t.
 
He doesn’t bother with the hairdryer when he gets out—just towels off enough so his hair won’t freeze when he goes outside. He puts the sweats back on, and the t-shirt, but he leaves the towel around his shoulders to soak up the dampness.
 
When he gets back out to the bedroom, the bed is made, and Kame isn’t in it. His clothes aren’t scattered on the floor anymore either.
 
Of course. A Kamenashi freakout always involves tidying.
 
Jin goes out to the living room and finds his jacket on the floor near the front door. The cell phone is in the right hand pocket. There’s an email from Meisa from a couple of hours ago, around seven.
 
Hey, just wanted to make sure you’re okay. Theia was interested in the papers you left out in the living room, so I put them in your studio. Hope that’s alright.
 
He feels a little guilty at that—probably should have at least messaged her last night to let her know he wouldn’t be home. It’s her morning anyway, she won’t have missed him, but they usually try to keep each other posted when the schedule changes, just to be sure.
 
Still at Kame’s, sorry, Jin writes back. Thanks for taking care of the papers—I’ll be home before she gets dropped off.
 
Then he tucks the phone into his pants pocket, drops the jacket over the back of the armchair, and goes into the kitchen.
 
Kame is making coffee. Or rather, the machine is making coffee. Kame is standing there in front of it, staring sullenly at it like he thinks it might go rogue and make tea or something instead if he takes his eyes off it for too long. The guy definitely looks like he could use the coffee, but Jin is pretty sure it’s not the coffeemaker that he’s worried about.
 
“You okay?” he asks, leaning a hip against the counter, and Kame jumps.
 
When he sees Jin he gets that guilty look in his eyes again, and Jin is, frankly, getting a little tired of that.
 
“Sorry, I didn’t—I didn’t hear the shower turn off,” Kame says. He turns back to the counter and reaches up into the cupboard for one coffee mug, and another. “Coffee?”
 
“Sure. Thanks.”
 
The coffeemaker finishes with a little grind and a dribble, and Kame pulls the carafe off of the plate and pours them each a cup. Jin moves forward to take his from the counter, and Kame sidles out of the way, making sure they don’t touch.
 
Of course. Back to that.
 
Jin settles back against the counter again and watches Kame fiddling the carafe back into the slot, getting out the half-and-half and pouring a little in his own mug. All the while Kame doesn’t look at him, and Jin thinks this is actually getting kind of ridiculous.
 
“I need to ask you something,” Jin says.
 
“Hm,” Kame says, eyes on his coffee as he tests a first sip.
 
“What happened?”
 
Kame frowns and his eyes blink up again. It takes him a second to get them focused on Jin. “Jin, I—” he says, his voice scratchy and low, “I was really drunk. Yamashita and I—last week, at the Countdown concert there was a—well, you probably heard. Anyway, we went out for drinks last night and we got to talking about…about all these things, and there was—I’ve been working a lot lately, and things are all up in the air there, and I just got…lonely. For you. I’m really sorry.”
 
Jin can see him choosing the words—he knows that carefully open look. He’s not saying anything that isn’t true, but that’s just it, he’s not saying anything. “You’re doing it again.”
 
Kame’s brow twitches. “Doing what?”
 
“That thing,” Jin says. “That not-lying thing. You’re acting like you’re answering my question, but you know you’re not.”
 
Kame opens his mouth. Blinks a few times, like a dazed fish. Then he gives up on whatever he meant to say and lets out a breath. “Jin, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
 
“You do though. You’re acting like you think I’m only asking about last night, and you know that’s not it.”
 
“What is it then?” Kame asks, giving Jin a mildly exasperated look.
 
“You still care about me,” Jin accuses.
 
Kame’s eyes get wider, and he blinks at Jin like he’s wondering if he dozed off there for a bit. “What?”
 
“Last night,” Jin says, and he tries to play it cool, but he still catches himself fiddling with his coffee cup. “You told me you love me.”
 
Kame’s eyes are a little wary, staring back at Jin like he thinks maybe Jin is trying to trap him into something. Jin chooses to take the fact that he doesn’t know how to answer as a good sign.
 
“I don’t remember saying that,” Kame says.
 
“So you’re saying it wasn’t true?” Jin presses. He watches Kame, and Kame still has that quiet, blank, choosy look on his face.
 
“I’m saying that if I said that…I shouldn’t have,” Kame decides. And that…isn’t quite the answer Jin was expecting. He’s not sure where to go with that.
 
“Why not?”
 
“Because, it complicates things.”
 
Jin peers at him. “So you’re saying it is true.”
 
“No.”
 
“Dammit, Kazuya,” Jin sighs, putting his coffee mug down on the counter. “You’re the one who complicates things. Why can’t you just say what you mean for once?”
 
Kame presses fingertips to the bridge of his nose. “Jin, can we please not do this right now?”
 
“No,” Jin says. “You know what, no, I think this is actually the perfect time to do this. I think you owe me a straight answer on this.”
 
“A straight answer on what?”
 
“On what happened,” he says. “With you and me. And that guy.”
 
Kame looks a little taken aback, but at least he seems to get what Jin is talking about this time. He doesn’t go back to giving Jin the lowdown on his drinking binge with Pi, anyway. “You know what happened with that.”
 
“I thought I did too,” Jin says. Doesn’t think about it, doesn’t let it stick, just spits the words out. “I thought you just got bored with me, but now I think that was bullshit, and I want to know why.”
 
There’s a pained little flicker in Kame’s eyes. His voice gets thick again. “Do we have to do—”
 
“Yes.” Jin is not backing down on this one. Not this time. “Right now.”
 
Kame closes his eyes on a sigh. He takes another sip of his coffee and shifts his feet as he leans into the counter, wraps his hands around the mug. He still looks a little pale and a lot tired, but Jin isn’t going to be all softhearted and let him off the hook this time. He might not get another chance at this.
 
“I got scared, okay?” Kame says at last. He runs his tongue over his lips and frowns down at his coffee. “You kept talking about kids and babies and things, and I just…couldn’t see how you were ever going to have that with me. And I got scared.”
 
It’s like a sucker punch. He hadn’t really thought it this far through, hadn’t come up with any idea what he thought Kame’s answer would be, but he never would have thought of that. And the fact that he—for fuck’s sake, it was real for Jin. He used to…think about stuff. He used to imagine what it could be like for the two of them, making a family together—maybe not the old fashioned way, but it’s the twenty-first century, there are options. And the fact that Kame would use it as an excuse—for that—is just…
 
“So, what,” Jin says, trying to keep a lid on all the stuff that wouldn’t help anything right now. “You’re saying it was your plan to drive me away?”
 
“It wasn’t a plan,” Kame says, and the way his face looks raw like that, young and old at the same time, makes Jin a little less angry. Serves him right. “I just didn’t know what to do. Everything had gotten so hard between us and I didn’t know how to talk to you about it, and he was there that night, and I just—I fucked up. And then you did leave, and I just…didn’t stop you. I figured maybe that would be best.”
 
“Best for who?”
 
“For you,” Kame says. “Maybe me too.”
 
Jin doesn’t say anything.
 
“Come on, Jin,” Kame says, his eyes frank and serious, and Jin hates that look too. It’s the look that says they can’t go out to a normal club because someone might catch them making out, and that it’s not feasible to have a real lion on stage with them at Tokyo Dome. “Were we really going to end up together? Could you honestly see that working out?”
 
Yeah, Jin thinks stubbornly. I could. I did, loads of times.
 
But Jin also knows he sees the impossible sometimes. Kame was right about the Tokyo Dome too, in the end.
 
“Maybe,” Jin says, because that’s all he’s willing to concede. They could have tried, at least—and even if it wasn’t possible, Kame picked a really shitty way of coping with it. There’s no getting around that. “That doesn’t make it okay though.”
 
“I know,” Kame says. “I’m sorry for that.”
 
They fall into silence again for a while. Kame goes back to his coffee and Jin goes back to his thoughts. His fingers are still playing with the handle of the mostly-full mug he left on the counter, but he doesn’t really feel like drinking it.
 
He watches Kame instead.
 
He still looks pretty miserable, and Jin suspects the alcohol in his system is still doing more to him than he’s letting on—Kame is always like that, likes to seem like he’s got his shit together even when he really doesn’t. It’s not even an act anymore—just habit. Jin has to remind himself to look through it sometimes, see what’s really there.
 
“What did you talk about?” Jin asks. Kame gives him a questioning look, and Jin clarifies. “With Pi. Last night.”
 
Kame’s face relaxes again. “You, mostly,” he says, looking down at his coffee again. “I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. Pi was right. I was stupid.”
 
“Because of sharks?” Jin says.
 
Kame breathes a laugh. Then he squeezes his eyes shut and rubs a hand over them. “God, there was something about sharks, wasn’t there…”
 
It feels good to see him smile. Not a drunken smirk or a leer, but just…sheepish and stupid and normal. Not so far away.
 
“Do you still love me?” Jin asks, a little bit quietly. Because he needs to get that part straight before he can figure out anything else, and Kame kept dodging the question before.
 
Kame looks at him over his coffee. “Yes,” he says, just as quietly. Not exactly proud, but not hedging this time.
 
“Why didn’t you say something?” Things were bad for a while, he gets that, but…things have changed since then. A lot. They’ve been on pretty good terms for a couple of years now, and if it really happened the way Kame said, he could have—they could have at least—he could have said something.
 
“Because I figured you’d say no,” Kame says, with a little shrug. “And I didn’t want either one of us to get hurt again. It just didn’t seem worth the risk.”
 
“Worth the—” Jin starts, and then breaks off with a little growl. Stupid. Kame is so stupid.
 
He walks over to Kame and grabs him by the collar of his t-shirt, tugs him forward for a kiss. Kame is caught off guard, nearly spills coffee on both of them, and Jin sort of misses his mouth at first, but when he finds it everything just sort of…slides into place. Like always.
 
“I still love you too. Asshole,” Jin says, giving Kame a little shake. And he can feel the flush crawling up the sides of his throat—can’t be helped, his body just does that—but it’s true, and there’s nothing he can do about it. “What you did—I was so angry at you for that, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t…” he flounders a bit, because this part is important. He needs to get the words in the right order this time. “You didn’t come after me. That was it, I really thought you just…didn’t care anymore.”
 
Kame swallows. “I’m so sorry.”
 
“You should be.”
 
Kame looks like he doesn’t know what to say. After a moment, he sets the coffee cup down and leans forward, slides a hand against Jin’s face and kisses him softly. Jin lets him. He lets Kame fold him up in his arms and keep him close, and after a while his hands twitch toward the small of Kame’s back too. And then it’s like back then, like a normal lazy Sunday in the kitchen when they don’t have anywhere else to be except here.
 
Kame was right. He knows what Jin likes. He knows everything Jin likes.
 
Kame presses little kisses all along Jin’s jaw and down the side of his neck, and then he just wraps his arms around Jin’s shoulders and stays close. His breath is warm and his body is solid, and Jin feels held like he hasn’t been in a long time.
 
“Do you think we could try again?” Kame murmurs into his neck.
 
The question takes Jin by surprise. Maybe it shouldn’t—maybe he should have known that was the next thing. Maybe he even led it there. But it still catches him off guard when Kame says it out loud.
 
“Are you still a coward and a jerk?” Jin asks.
 
“Yes,” Kame says, and when he leans back Jin can see the wry smile. But then Kame’s eyes turn serious again. “But I can try to be less of one.”
 
Jin feels Kame’s fingers in his hair and tries on the thought. Kame again. The two of them again. More mornings like this and more nights like the last one, and dinners and music and Kame again, like before, and the idea…
 
Scares him a little. He knows how that story ends.
 
But maybe it doesn’t have to this time, if they’re careful. Maybe they can be happy again.
 
“Okay,” he says.
 
And Kame tastes like heat and freshly-ground coffee.