JE Fic: A Stitch To Wear (Yamapi/Jin)

[hermiones]

Title: A Stitch To Wear
Pairing/Group: Yamapi/Jin
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: Sex.
Summary: The sequel to This Charming Man. awefawegae, this fic came out so weird.





The magazine is on sale before Yamapi and Jin get a chance to talk, much to Yamapi's chagrin. They get busy, both of them, and for the first time since Nobuta wo Produce there's an edge between them. Yamapi keeps thumbing Jin's number on his cell, wanting to call him but not daring to, because you can't talk about the weather when there's something so much greater standing between you.

Mid-week, Jin sends him an e-mail, one so sparse Yamapi can't read the tone in it. Jin normally uses stupid faces and there's nothing like that, it's just plain, a little cold.

Can you come over tonight? - Jin.

Yamapi sends back an affirmative, swallows down his nerves, tries to concentrate on anything except Jin. Things come back to him an intervals, the way Jin closes his eyes whenever something feels really good, the way his hands tighten and his breath shortens and the way he swears right before he comes. He doesn't want to think about things like that, but he can't seem to help it.

He visits a news stand before he goes over to Jin's and buys An-An, mostly because he hopes it might lighten the mood. He takes the train and the magazine feels red hot in his bag, like it's burning a hole in his thigh. He doesn't want to look at the pictures. There's a part of him that feels oddly fraudulent, as if he's the last person in the world that should have done a shoot like that. It's an odd feeling, and he doesn't like it.

When he gets to Jin's, he looks at the window, half-open, inviting. In the soil beneath there's a light imprint of boot-soles, the only evidence left of the weekend. He considers doing what he always does, climbing through, but that got him into too much trouble last time, so he rings the doorbell instead.


When Jin hears the bell, he curses the world, because he'd arranged for the night off to talk to Yamapi and if it's Junno wanting to play charades all night again-

“Oh,” he says, when he opens the door.

“You did say tonight, right?” Yamapi says, not coming in, awkward. “Sorry. It is tonight?”

“Yeah,” Jin says. “Sorry. You don't normally ring the bell.”

“No,” Yamapi agrees. “It's just. Last time-- well. I learnt my lesson.”

Jin smiles, but it's a little strained. Yamapi rocks backwards and forwards on his heels, looking at the door frame and not at Jin. Jin looks as if he's just woken up, hair fluffy around his face, eyes sleepy and body warm. He's wearing a t-shirt that's too big and it's sliding on his collarbone. Yamapi remembers that girl's mouth on Jin's collarbone, the way Jin had gone all tense-

“Are you with anyone right now, or is it safe to come in?” Yamapi says, teasing, and Jin smiles properly that time.

“Nah, I just sent her home,” he lies, holding the door open. “Coast's clear.”


They cook together, in silence, for a while. Jin likes to cook, finds it soothing. Yamapi likes to create things when he's nervous, it gives him something to do with his hands. Outside, the noise of cars roaring by is pleasant. Jin doesn't have music on. Yamapi sings the odd fragment of something, it's what he does, and Jin taps a beat out on the counter. It'd be perfect if it wasn't for-

“Tastes good,” Jin says, slowly stirring, licking one finger.

Yamapi hops up on the kitchen bench, rifles through all the spices in Jin's spice rack.

“Are we going to talk?” he says, turned away, it's easier to make the words come when he's doing something else. Saffron, ginger, coriander.

“Are you going to look at me?” Jin says, and it's teasing with an edge, he means it. Yamapi looks around, obediently, trying to look Jin full in the eyes without thinking about him wild and needy and gasping for breath.

“I'm sorry for breaking into your house,” Yamapi says.

“I'm sorry you saw that,” Jin says.

For a while, they leave it at that.


They play Halo 3 and take turns, idly. It isn't the same as it usually is, not the same as the time Jin renamed the lead character Koyama and gave him a running commentary. Nothing ever so funny again as Jin screaming, 'help, help, Shige, men with guns are after me!'

Jin is moody and silent and frustrating, and Yamapi is nervous and awkward and irritable. It's not a good combination.


“I brought you something,” Yamapi says, later. The game soundtrack is playing in the background, the character long since dead. Idle gunfire as Yamapi steps across the carpet to retrieve his bag, oddly apt. Jin sits quietly, curious. When Yamapi brings the magazine back, he laughs, digs around under the sofa.

“I bought one, too,” he says. “You should keep that one.”

Yamapi is surprised. “Did you buy it to mock me?” he says, without thinking first. “That's why Ryo bought one. Everyone has got one. Even my mother bought one. How wrong is that?”

Jin grins. “Wrong,” he says. “Nah, I bought one to have something to read on the train to rehearsal. The little old lady next to me was pretty surprised, I'm telling you.”

“Jin!” Yamapi says, nudging him, shoulder to shoulder. “I can't believe you.”

“No, I think it gave her the thrill of her life. You should be happy.” Jin is smirking, wider now, and it's not his usual self but it's something else, something dark that Yamapi quite likes.

“You like older women, right,” Jin adds, impishly.

“I'm going home,” Yamapi says, balefully. “And inviting Ryo over. He's less cruel than you are.”

“I liked his shoot, too,” Jin says, smoothly. “It's like you're both trying to outdo each other so I'll have something to mock every Monday morning. You're brightening up my days.”

“I didn't know they needed brightening,” Yamapi says. “You seemed pretty bright the other day.”

Jin looks at him with quiet eyes, trying to work him out.

“This is going to be weird between us, isn't it,” Yamapi realises. “I'm not going to get it out of my head, and you're-”

“I want to go to bed,” Jin says. “I'm cold, it's late. Come to bed. We'll talk.”

“Okay,” Yamapi says, though it's the worst idea in the known universe. “Okay.”


Yamapi has to wait for a while, because Jin wants to smoke first, hanging out of the window. Yamapi squeezes himself into the frame, though it's tight and the wood digs into their hips, and shares his cigarette. There's something to be said for it, both of them start to feel calmer. Yamapi can hear Jin breathing in and out as they pass it between them, so close together, so far apart.

There's a faint drizzle and Jin's hair turns up at the ends. He looks up at the sky and it's like he's hoping for something, something that's very far away. Something so high up, it's in the part of the sky where grey smudges into white, where nothingness begins. Jin looks into that part of the sky as he drags on the cigarette, and Yamapi doesn't want to interrupt it because it's beautiful and frightening.

“You'll make your cold worse,” he says, eventually, because he has to. The cigarette is burned down, and the moment Yamapi speaks Jin comes back into himself, drops it and sucks on the tip of his finger.

They go to bed and Jin's hair is a bit wet, and they're both cold but they don't dare get closer.


“I am sorry,” Yamapi says, trying to break the silence. He's not even sure that Jin is still awake. “I should have left-”

“No,” Jin begins, and that makes Yamapi want to do the opposite, so he keeps talking, and Jin keeps saying 'no', and eventually they both have to stop.

“No,” Jin says, “I knew you were there. I always knew. That should be the big question. You got shut in the closet and I wouldn't have had the guts to leave, either. The whole thing was my-- I knew. I knew, Pi. I didn't stop it. I didn't stop it.”

“Maybe you couldn't have,” Yamapi suggests. “You were too...into it.”

“No,” Jin says, again. “I knew the moment I lay on the bed. I saw your eyes. I remember seeing the juice on the floor. I knew you must have broken in and waited up for me. I don't know why I didn't stop it.”

Yamapi is silent, then. He doesn't dare look at Jin.

“I watched you, the whole time-”

“Jin-”

The silence that descends is unbearable.

“Sorry,” Jin says, after a moment. “I just. I can't deal with this. I don't know what this is. I liked watching you. I liked you watching us. You know what I'm like, I'm full of-”

“I liked watching you,” Yamapi says, a laugh in his voice that he doesn't feel inside. “I'm supposed to be the sensible one. It was...good. You're good in bed. Probably better than me. It's just...weird. This whole thing is weird.”

“We've always been weird,” Jin says. “What the hell would Ryo say?”

“He'll call you a pervert,” Yamapi thinks. “And me an idiot.”

“Huh,” Jin says, a little sardonic. “That's about right.”

“Why did you let me watch you?” Yamapi says, biting one thumbnail. He turns over and the covers rustle and Jin lies on his back, staring at the ceiling, nervous and a bit angry and a lot exhausted.

“I guess because-” Jin begins, and then looks at Yamapi, not sure. There's a lot he can say to Yamapi. Yamapi holds ten of Jin's biggest, baddest secrets. But this is something else. This is something bigger than Jin and bigger than Yamapi, and it frightens Jin more than anything he's ever felt. The more he goes on bearing it alone, the more he feels he's walking down steps, down and down and down into the earth, further and further away from anybody else, further away from home.

Yamapi waits. He's no longer biting his thumbnail. He's just waiting, because it's like Jin's uncurling something out from his gut and he's seen it before, and he knows not to rush it.

And then Jin closes his eyes, and his voice is shaky and wild and worried.

“I guess because if it'd been you in my lap, that would have been okay, too.”


“I was expecting something worse than that,” Yamapi admits, beginning to laugh. It's not unkind, but Jin swats him on the head anyway. “The way you built it up, I was expecting you to reveal a really sordid kink.”

“I'm trying to say that I'm attracted to you, you moron,” Jin says, huffily. “Stop laughing at me.”

“Oh, fuck, Akanishi,” Yamapi says, the words spiraling out with laughter. “You're such an idiot. You didn't think that was always there? We've always had that weird thing. If I was a girl, you'd have asked me out before now. You're such an idiot.”

“When did you realise, then?” Jin splutters, accusing and furious all at once.

“Three days ago,” Yamapi says, loftily. “Shut up. I figured it out before you did.”

“Always fucking there! That's what you just said! You're such a dick, Pi.”

“Yeah, well,” Yamapi says. “You're dirty. You said you'd have fucked that girl against the wall.”

“Hah,” Jin says. “I didn't know your English was that good.”

“It isn't,” Yamapi says. “I asked Ryo what it meant.”

Jin pushes Yamapi out of bed.


“Jin,” Yamapi wheedles. “You can't leave me on the floor. It's freezing.”

“I should kick you out of the house,” Jin says, from under the covers. “I don't like you anymore. I'm going to find a new best friend.”

“You don't fancy any of your other friends like me,” Yamapi points out. “I'm the best friend you'll ever have. Let me back in bed.”

“No,” Jin says. “You can sit and be cold. I don't care.”


Yamapi climbs onto the mattress and underneath the duvet from the bottom, where Jin's feet are weak to tickling. He climbs upwards until the duvet is rolled too tight to climb any further, and then he realises that he's straddling Jin, and he's right about at Jin's-

Jin lifts the duvet up and looks at Yamapi in the little dark tunnel. They stare at one another, dark-eyed and curious and questioning, until Jin pulls the duvet off and Yamapi has to close his eyes because the thoughts are too obvious on his face.

“I would have sucked you off,” Yamapi says, honest and quiet. “You could have thought about something else.”

“If you can say that in English,” Jin says, folding his arms. “I'll let you. And I'll not think about anything else.”

“Fuck off,” Yamapi says. “Hey, you're the one who confessed to me. Why aren't you giving me a blowjob? And you're assuming that I feel the same way!”

“Everyone feels that way about me,” Jin says, with a shrug. Then, worried, “You do feel that way, right?”

Yamapi sighs, smacks Jin's shoulder. “Everyone does.”

“Pi-”

“Yes,” Yamapi says. “Yes, I do.”


“Ryo-”

“If you're going to ask me whether the hotel has a pool one more time-”

“No, it's an English question.”

“Oh,” Ryo says. “Why don't you ask Jin?”

“...He says he doesn't know.”

“Yeah, that'd be right.”

“How do you say, 'I would have', in English? How do you pronounce it?”

“I would have what?”

“It doesn't matter what.”

“Yeah, it does,” Ryo lies. “It's different, depending on what you want to do.”

“'I would have...fucked you'.”

“Liar,” Ryo says. “I'm not telling you until you tell me.”

“You don't want to know.”

“I do want to know.”

“Trust me,” Yamapi says. “You don't.”


They meet up in the hotel, stealing a night before Yamapi has to travel down to Okinawa. He's doing a shoot with the band and he wants to sort everything out before he leaves. He's not entirely sure what he wants to say to Jin, really, or how he wants to play it – just that a part of him wants to be with him, and to see where that takes them.

When Jin arrives, he's nervous, his hands shake when he closes the door behind him and it bounces back on the hinge.

“I didn't find out how to say that...thing, in English,” Yamapi says, instead of 'hello'.

Jin looks at him, nibbling his lip. “That's okay,” he says. “We don't need to do blowjobs. We can do something else. What would you like to do?”

There's a question. “This is pretty...”

“Strange? Yeah.” Jin smiles, folding his arms across his chest.

“If I was a girl, you'd have asked me out, right?” Yamapi says.

“Yeah, but you're-”

“It doesn't matter,” he continues. “Jin, it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. Just go with it.”

Jin just looks at him. To make the point, Yamapi climbs off the bed and walks over to Jin, and he walks until Jin walks back into the wall and there's a thud.

“Kiss me,” Yamapi says. “Don't think. Just kiss me.”

And Jin leans forward, his eyes lidding, and he takes a breath--

and then he does.

And it's better than Yamapi's ever imagined, better than anything he's had with anyone. It's rough and unusual and forceful, a bit strange, but it's better. It's still better. He winds his arm around Jin's neck and Jin runs his hands down his back, and that's all it seems to take, that little nudge, because Jin turns them both around and pushes Yamapi's back against the wall.

Yamapi lifts his arms above his head and Jin holds them there, kissing down his jaw and his neck and muttering, 'is this okay, is this okay?', so much that Yamapi wants to slap him.

“Shut up,” he replies. “Just stop thinking. You never used to think at all, don't start now.”

“Hey,” Jin says, a small bite. “Are you calling me stupid?”

“Yes,” Yamapi says, fiddling with Jin's belt buckle. “Are you resisting?”

“No,” Jin says. “Not if you're going to- ungh. Fuck, Pi.”

Yamapi leans forward and kisses Jin, kisses him and strokes him, both of them shaking together, wonderful and new.


They play rock, paper, scissors in order to call who fucks who. It's totally stupid, but it's them.

Yamapi wins the first round, so Jin calls best of five.

Jin wins the next two rounds, but Yamapi polishes off the last two.

“Do you mind?” Yamapi says, as Jin lies down on the bed, pulling off his jeans.

“No,” Jin says. “I just wanted to win the game.”


They lie for a while, just kissing. Experimental. Yamapi can't keep his hands off Jin's cock and he knows that he should probably worry about that, but he doesn't feel like it. Jin's touch is more gentle, more unsure, and it takes Yamapi grabbing his hand and holding it around for Jin to jerk up and down, thumb splayed across the top, the way they both seem to like it.

And when Yamapi's grunting with it, Jin tells him to take over, and tackles the lube. Yamapi watches through lidded eyes, kind of surprised and impressed and nervous, because Jin seems to know about this in a way that Yamapi doesn't. Also, Jin's kind of slutty with the preparation, which Yamapi wants to mention to him but he looks so fucking frightened that he doesn't dare.

“Jin, Jin-” Yamapi says, but Jin reads it as a warning and forcibly removes his hand from his cock.

“Have you no self-control,” he chastises, finishing up, spreading the remaining lube from his hand onto Yamapi's cock. “Stupid.”

“Don't be nervous,” Yamapi says.

“I'm not,” Jin insists.

“It's just me, Jin.”

“I know,” Jin says. “That's the problem.”

Yamapi smacks him, when what he really wants to say is something different, like 'thank you'.


Ryo's pleased, which is a rare occurrence when he's been travelling on Japanese trains. He's almost an hour earlier than he'd planned to arrived at the hotel, and he's looking forward to a bath and some time to himself. He checks in and asks the desk supervisor whether any of his party have arrived.

When he hears that Yamapi (read: Nicolas Cage, they always check in under pseudonyms) checked in earlier that morning, he scrubs his plans for washing and television-watching. There's ten copies of An-An magazine in his bag, and mischief on his mind.


“When I was watching you,” Yamapi says, as he strokes Jin's hip, his thigh, just brushing the head of his cock so that Jin swears at him. “You were so. You weren't nervous at all. You just didn't care that I was watching.”

“You don't know what I was thinking,” Jin says. “For fuck's sake, Pi,” he adds, grabbing Yamapi's hand and giving his cock a few rough strokes. Yamapi raises his eyebrows.

“I was thinking-- fuck, I'm not telling you this.”

“Why all the secrets?” Yamapi says, furrowing his brows. “We don't have secrets.”

“It's not-” Jin says, then falls silent. “Just shut up,” he adds, confusing and unhelpful, and shoves Yamapi down onto his back.

“It's not a secret,” he says, swinging one leg over Yamapi's thighs. “Stay really still. Don't move until I say, okay. This is what I was thinking. This is what I've been thinking about all day. You can't-- don't say anything. Just go with it. It'll be alright.”

“Jin,” Yamapi says, stroking his hip. Jin is naked and vulnerable, wearing nothing but the product of a lifetime, all of the scars stitched up, all of the people who've laid their fingerprints on his skin, all of the sweat and the kisses and the sounds written down on his shoulders, his hips, his back. Not a stitch to wear, but his sexuality cloaks him. “It's not an invasion of North Korea. It's just me.”

“You're not just you,” Jin says, lowering himself down, stealing the words from Yamapi's mouth. Everything goes ice white and Yamapi's head throbs and his heart aches and every muscle in his body goes tight and cramped with pure, unbelievable pleasure. He doesn't speak, or move, or do a single thing other than cry out, and every move he wants to make, every thing he wants to say, goes into that one solitary sound.

“You've never been just you,” Jin says, and it's hoarse and shot through with desire. “Never. I have wanted this for so fucking long-”

Yamapi tilts his head up, holds Jin's hip in one hand and his face in the other, “You know when I did that shoot. I was thinking of this, too.”

Jin frowns. “Well,” he says. “In that case, I'm going to make sure you look a bit into it, this time.”


Ryo walks onto the corridor, praying that Yamapi will be asleep. It's the most fun to play a practical joke on someone who's asleep. When he gets to Yamapi's door, it's slightly ajar. That'd odd. Yamapi's not the kind of person who'd leave his door open, maybe he's gone to check out the pool-

Without thinking about it, Ryo pushes the door open a bit. If Yamapi's out, he'll wallpaper the room in spreads from the shoot. If Yamapi's in, he'll say 'hi' as if everything is normal.

He hadn't anticipated Yamapi having a girl in with him. There are many weird things that JE has prepared Ryo for. Most of them involve sequins or nurse's outfits, or men on roller skates singing your songs. Sometimes, a vague combination of the three. He hasn't been prepared to see his band mate getting it on with some girl. It looks like the shoot, only a whole lot worse.

Yamapi's head is tilted and he's moaning, and his hands are tight around the girl's hips. He's not doing the majority of the work, which is hot, and it makes Ryo want the girl's number because that's what he wants and never gets. And she moans, too, her head tilted back and her hair waving down her shoulders and her hips a beautiful, smooth undulation.

The sun comes through the blinds and cuts waves into Yamapi's hair, drapes itself over his hands as they rock together, and Ryo feels that he should leave because it's too intimate, too much, but he can't because it's too intimate, too much. He's a bad person, a bad, bad person.

The girl leans forward and buries her face into Yamapi's shoulder, an edge of teeth, her hair falling into her eyes. Yamapi's hand is between their stomachs, dirty, dirty, Ryo thinks, and she's moaning into it, pushing forward and back as though everything in the world depended on her ability to ride this guy into tomorrow afternoon. And her hands wind around Yamapi's shoulders and her nails dig in and she cries out, and out, and out-

And when she leans backwards to get the better angle, when she leans far backwards and her chin is tilted back and the sound leaves her lips, Ryo's eyes re-focus and he recognises, for the first time, two staggering differences between this and An-An.

That isn't a woman.

And, worse, he knows the guy.


“Ngh,” Jin says, as Yamapi leans over him to find the sheet and draw it over them.

“Sorry,” Yamapi says. “You're too heavy, shift.”

“No,” Jin says, pleasantly. “Work around me.”

“You're so fucking annoying,” Yamapi says. “See, we're fine. It'll be fine. I still think you're an irritating pain in the arse.”

“Oh, good,” Jin says, turning over and against Yamapi's side. He's sleepy and warm and vaguely sticky but Yamapi doesn't care. They're both too boneless to do anything about it. “I love you too,” he says.

“Nngh,” Yamapi says, but he grabs Jin's hand, all the same.

“Oh,” Jin says, suddenly, “by the way. I'm not better in bed than you.”

“You could have said that at the time, had a little faith in me.”

“I could have,” Jin says. “But it's always best to be sure.”