J&A: Swallow the Sun

[aegistheia]

Title: Swallow the Sun
Rating: PG
Genre: General
Word Count: 4375
Warnings: Real person fiction. KAT-TUN's special brand of work ethics, relationships, and brotherhood.
Also Archived On: Livejournal; Archive of Our Own on June 1, 2010.
Summary: Jin has always been lost, and Nakamaru is getting sick of watching from the side.
A.N.: Inspired by Cartoon KAT-TUN episode 49, when Jin and Nakamaru gets sent to Hokkaido for the DAT-TUN5 penalty game.

April 2005


Jin's the kind of person to pursue interesting topics at the drop of a hat. Or the drop of a sheet of staff paper, a violin's bow, maybe even a fucking chord from three half-intervals up. He's got the attention span of a kitten in a full basket of yarn, and anyone in his presence for longer than five minutes can see that.

Nakamaru would doubt that his mind ever fully processes anything, but the other thing that five minutes in Jin's reach doesn't prove as clearly is that Jin's got a peculiar kind of thinking process. That, you've got to listen to him talk to find out, and of that, KAT-TUN's had five years of experience. It's kind of hard to escape his clutches when you're the only person he knows whom he can grab and not let go and not risk permanent bodily harm or rep defamation.

"Let go, Akanishi," Nakamaru repeats, "I'm going to be late for the briefing. Find someone else to entertain you."

Jin pays him no heed, possibly because Nakamaru's late to everything anyway. "I could give you the briefing! Shounen Club's theme in May is friends—"

"Just because Yamashita-kun told you about his production doesn't mean it's what'll end up happening on stage," Nakamaru says exasperatedly. "Isn't there somebody in the dressing room? I know Koki's—"

"Have you ever heard of this legend?" Jin barrels on without a pause, a slightly manic look in his eyes. "How a monster tries to swallow the sun but can't because the sun's enemy won't let it?"

Nakamaru blinks. Sometimes, if he listens for long enough, Jin's little segues end up making more sense than even Jin himself suspects. And humouring Jin is the fastest way to get him to shut up. "No, I can't say I have."

Jin sniffs. "It's a classic Egyptian myth, you know. At least I think it's Egyptian. Somewhere in the deserts. Lots of stars."

And sometimes they don't. But Nakamaru's feeling optimistic today, so he tries. "Okay, who was involved in this legend?"

"Gods," Jin replies vaguely. "I didn't think the names were important; the story was interesting enough."

He ducks in time to avoid Nakamaru's swipe at his head, but shrieks when Nakamaru manages a direct hit to his collarbone.

---

June 2005


Nakamaru kind of forgets about Jin's anecdote until Kanjani8 is called in to film the same day Tackey & Tsubasa are scheduled to guest in the show occupying the set next to theirs. The moment he spots Takizawa and Shibutani very determinedly and very awkwardly ignore each other in opposite ends of the studio he's abruptly reminded – rather poetically, it has to be said – of glory and the business of salvation in stardom. Which doesn't very logically lead to the sun and its enemy, mostly because there's no way telling who sun is and whether there's really an enemy at all in their case, but Nakamaru quells the train of thought before it gets too ridiculous and gives him a migraine and makes him doubt his sexuality because fuck it, who thinks in purple prose except for Victorian England and they are certainly shining paragons of liberal heterosexuality and shut up now, mind— and focuses on the issue at hand.

The sun.

It's not like Nakamaru can't look up the myth in question on his own, but he doesn't quite trust his memory anymore, so he takes his chances with asking around. Koyama promises that he'll look too, and to his credit, he drags Shige with him to the Shounen Club two weeks later (because it's slipped out of Nakamaru's to-do-list yet again).

"Koyama says you've got a question about Egyptian myths," Shige starts shyly. They've finished filming next month's first episode, but Nakamaru only has about ten minutes before he'll be late for dance practice. "I can't promise you I'll know much, because it's been several years since I've been into ancient civilizations and texts, but I can try."

"I don't have names, though," Nakamaru says sheepishly. Not that he would have remembered at this point. "Just a really vague story. I don't even know if it's really Egyptian." He repeats Jin's less-than-informative description and hopes that he's dealing with a very famous myth.

"The sun's enemy?" Shige echoes. "Oh, Seth."

"Eh?"

"Seth and the sun were arch nemeses," Shige explains, suddenly looking far more comfortable in his own skin. "The Egyptians believed that the sun sails for the Underworld every time it sets, and that an evil snake god there really wanted to eat the sun. Seth was the only one powerful enough to fight off the snake god every night so that the sun can sail back to light the world up in the morning again. Only Seth got really arrogant because he's the only one who can save the sun, and it got pissed off and threw him off its barge—"

"Huh, what? It what? Who?"

"Eh—oh. The sun, the sun. The sun threw Seth off his barge. The Egyptians liked to change their myths very often, though, so I'm not sure what happened to him afterwards."

---


September 2006


There are times Nakamaru wonders if Jin really knows how bad of a liar he is. The way his eyes jerk all over the place like a scared lamb is always a dead giveaway. If he actually looks at you, the faintly bemused, earnest devil-may-die attitude in his expression is more than enough to confirm that Jin has next to no idea what the hell he's spinning at the moment.

Only this time, when Nakamaru stares at Jin, all he sees is desperation.

Which is extremely strange. Jin thrives on attention, revels in it. He's about the only one in the band who doesn't bother hiding what he thinks or feels, no matter how dangerous or otherwise. He's tired, he's bored, he's disgusted or joyful or derisive or lonely, it's on his face. He doesn't need to say anything for his opinions to be heard. That's Jin. He's honest.

So to see him actively push their focus away from the truth of the matter? Makes things really suspicious and difficult to accept.

And everyone knows it.

Koki hadn't bothered looking back when he'd stormed out of the room thirty-two seconds ago. Taguchi, who has never been on the best of terms with Jin, had just taken the same opportunity to slip out of the room to hide what is wide open on his face for the first time in nearly sixteen months in Jin's presence.

Nakamaru watches Kame open his mouth, close it, and attempt to put back together the pieces of his expression. It's no use, of course; Kame, for all his prized acting skills, is no good at hiding anything when it comes to the things he cares for.

His band members aren't very good distractions for his own pounding heart.

"What?" Kame finally croaks, and when Nakamaru sees his eyes he almost instinctively takes a step forward. But Kame's the former Junior league national baseball representative, so he's already backpedalled in every way he can before Nakamaru had even thought about twitching. "We—how—?"

Jin presses his lips into a thin, bitter line, and just stares back.

Nakamaru finds his voice at last, somewhere in his gut beside his heart. "Oi, Akanishi—!" He doesn't know what's went down or what's going on between the two of them, but right now, right now—

Kame's expression is terrible to behold. He turns and walks out of the room without finishing his sentence. Later on he'll probably come back to yell, and then another spectacular row will ensue, and KAT-TUN will fracture for good this time. There's no way they won't; they had never shared that strong a bond to begin with. Nakamaru can see it all in his head, in slow motion, details clear and succinct and brutally clean. Somehow, that's the most painful part of it all, all that lack of strings.

What to do—?

Then Ueda stirs.

Nakamaru is surprised by the silence. Normally Ueda would have let words fly like punches by now. When it comes to confrontations like this he can be unpredictable, and that is the most dangerous kind of person to have in the room right now.

But all he does is turn towards the door.

Ueda glances back once before he leaves, lips slightly parted like he's about to say something, but then shakes his head and disappears around the corner.

Jin eyes him resignedly, hands wringing around wrists like fretful, inattentive snakes. "And what are you going to do, Nakamaru?" he says, and Nakamaru almost draws blood from his tongue to keep from asking about the shutters in his eyes, the exhaustion.

Instead, he chews on the inside of his cheek, and rummages through his collection of mediating words. Why does his entire vocabulary seem so totally inadequate for this occasion?

When the silence stretches farther than Nakamaru is usually wont to let it go if he has any to say, Jin drops his eyes and turns to go, and finally, finally, the defeated line of his shoulders prompts Nakamaru to try one more time. Not one last time, he tells himself. Not yet.

"Why are you going?" he asks impulsively. Jin stares at him, lips pursed slightly like he's trying to choose one of the hundreds of excuses he's prepared before dropping this atomic bomb on them. There's no reason why Jin would give him a different answer than he had already, but—

What are you looking for?

Then Jin smiles jerkily, a bump on his face where he's poked his tongue into his cheek. "To keep the sun shining," he says, whimsically.

---


June 2005


"Why didn't they ever kill him off, this Seth guy, if he was so troublesome?" Nakamaru asks curiously. It was the solution to most enemies back in the day, anyway.

"I think Seth was needed in the Egyptian pantheon," Shige says slowly. "He wasn't intrinsically evil. He just represented chaos. Without chaos, order wouldn't exist and there would be no balance in the universe."

"Oh," says Nakamaru, feeling very small, and wonders why that sentence seems so very terribly important to him, like it should remind him of something he's already forgotten.

---


February 2008


It's too late to fly back to Tokyo – the perks of working in such a tiny town – so they bunk down in the second nicest hotel in town for the night. Nakamaru had had to wake up at four in the morning to catch the flight to Rikubetsu to start filming at six; it had been a brutal day. Totally worse than a drama filming, not that he has much to compare to.

Thus, for today even simple luxuries will wring out a heartfelt response from him. "A blanket!" he groans, "Oh, how I missed thee~"

Jin is less specific in his demands. "Bed!" he crows in mocking imitation. "Oh my god, we get thick futons!"

"Well, if we don't we'll freeze," Nakamaru says reasonably, "and we're worth too much money to freeze."

Jin is too busy preparing his futon to reply right away, and Nakamaru decides that Jin's setting an example most worth of being followed.

The moment Jin gets his unrolled and laid out, he flops face-first onto it. Nakamaru chooses to stop following his lead then by lying down more sedately. Together, they revel in the ringing silence of the wind shrieking beyond the sturdy walls of the inn. Nakamaru shuts his eyes and tries not to think about the frostbite on his cheeks. Gods, Hokkaido winds are lethal. He sighs and sits up to reach for his bag.

"'s not fair," Jin mutters into his pillow, and Nakamaru pauses, because that was first human sound in the room in about half an hour and because there's a dark note in his voice that he hasn't heard for a while. "I come back from America and not only do I not get a solo on our tour, I have to do this punishment game as well. The cold is ruining my skin..."

Jin had never really dealt well with the cold. It's the strangest thing, because he's perpetually warm, like a furnace that just keeps burning. He complained the loudest of them all when the temperatures were low, especially in their early days, and though his attitude has improved as he grew up, his ability to cope hasn't. Nakamaru thinks back to the sullen mood Jin had been in for a week when he had been picked to go to Hokkaido, the miserable ball huddled beside him during the convertible ride, the faint shiver he'd never quite gotten rid of even though he'd been bundled up thicker than Nakamaru had been. The closed, slightly abandoned expression he now wears when he thinks no one is looking, when no one pays him any apparent attention.

This was probably why he hadn't protested much when Jin kept shunting the crappy assignments his way, now that he actually thinks about it. He'd hate it too, if he had to take part in the first punishment for a game with a name to remind him that he'd never belong to it.

Nakamaru sighs, and climbs onto Jin's spread futon. Jin is a tense line from shoulder to toe beside him, face still buried in his pillow. Nakamaru tucks Jin firmly to his side with an arm just below his armpit. Ticklish, Jin squirms a little and huffs out a shuddery breath.

"You know," Nakamaru says conversationally, leaning back against the wall and staring at the ceiling pensively, "it's not us who want to punish you." KAT-TUN are big boys now; they're mostly over that issue already. Somewhat. He ignores Jin's half-hearted snort and belatedly snags his own pillow to cushion himself, because the wall is made of concrete and concrete in sub-zero weather is pretty damn cold, internal heating systems or no.

They let the quiet sink into their bones after that, settling their restlessness, listening to the muffled howl of the wind outside make music with the beat of their hearts.

After a countless drum of songs, Jin awkwardly shuffles his face from his pillow to Nakamaru's thigh. And unwinds, just a little, just enough to let Nakamaru breathe out, long, slow. Jin's entire body curls around Nakamaru's legs and his shoulders hunch as he tucks his arm beneath Nakamaru's knee, and he clings to Nakamaru like he is the only warmth in the sea of snow around them. Nakamaru runs his fingers through Jin's glossy hair, smoothes his hand down Jin's back again and again.

They stay like that for as long as Jin needs to pull himself back together.

"Thanks," Jin says hoarsely, finally, into the fabric of Nakamaru's pants. His body is a limp, leaden drape across Nakamaru's legs, and he looks every bit as wrung out as he sounds.

"No need," Nakamaru says. He doesn't stop stroking Jin's back and sides, because Jin's always been lost, looking for something not even Jin himself knows about, and Nakamaru is getting sick of watching from the side.

They fall asleep like that, the two of them tangled around each other like frightened children afraid of the other slipping from their grasp again.

Though Nakamaru wakes up the next morning before dawn with an awful crick in his neck and his back screaming murder and can't get up for ten minutes because his leg is beyond asleep, the haunted, awful look in Jin's eyes has vanished, and that makes everything worthwhile.

Especially when Jin brings him breakfast (well, tea) in bed.

---


June 2005


"They really must have this love-hate relationship going if Seth is willing to protect the sun every night despite the fact that he gets thrown off and all the gods are his enemies," Nakamaru muses.

Shige winces slightly. "Yeah, well, they're brothers."

"Seth is the sun's brother?" Nakamaru repeats. His stomach abruptly feels like it's back on top of the freefall ride in the amusement park, right before the drop starts and he has to start beatboxing. "So there's no possibility of a happy ending?"

"Legends rarely have happy endings, Nakamaru-kun," Shige says firmly, like he's spent time thinking about this. "At least happy in our terms. Most myths are like that anyway; they're just stories of human glory and human failure and what humans wish for but can't have. They're just stories."

---


Now


They've been given a ten-minute break to wander as they wished while the camera crew reviews the requisite shots and decides whether last-minute retakes are necessary, and someone had gotten it in their head to take band-only pictures for their personal mementos. It's not a particularly pretty rural setting, but the afternoon is bleeding into dusk, so Nakamaru suspects the sky will soon make up for the drabness of the surroundings. Plus, the clouds are drifting restlessly; by nightfall the winds will be cold and the stars clearer than stage lights in Osaka.

It's when they're crossing a beaten path bordered by a rice field and a stretch of water that looks like it reaches beyond the horizon that he abruptly finds unbidden words in his mouth, on his lips. "Hey, you remember that Egyptian myth you were telling me about?" Nakamaru says suddenly. "The one where the monster tries to eat the sun?"

Ueda gives him a blank look, but Jin turns to look at him, wrapping up his conversation with Koki neatly. "Yeah?" he says inquisitively.

"That god that keeps the sun from being eaten," Nakamaru says. Ueda, bless him, he knows Nakamaru too well to take too much offence; he moves ahead to talk to Koki and Jin drops back accordingly to walk at his side. "His name was Seth."

"I knew someone named Seth back in America," Jin says. His eyes are very focused, very dark.

"Like I care about that," Nakamaru says hotly. "Back to the god. He got kicked off the sun's chariot when he got too proud of being able to save the sun."

Jin arches an eyebrow. "Huh." America has taught him a myriad of subtle expressions that are as foreign as they would have been on the young Jin in Nakamaru's memories. "So his rival saves him, but his ego couldn't take it?"

Nakamaru shrugs. "Something along the lines of that."

"What a picky enemy," Jin remarks, wrinkling his nose. "If that happens every day, why doesn't he do something about it? Egyptians are so unimaginative!"

"Why are you criticizing the work of dead people? Tell them that face to face!" Nakamaru shoots back. "What would you do, then?"

"If I were Seth," Jin says, "I would just eat the sun! And then kill the monster. So I won't have to worry about protect something else. I'd just have to defend myself! The sun will be safe and defeated inside me. I'll shine for it!"

There are a lot of things Nakamaru can say in response. You'd burn up from the inside would be the first logical one, followed by if you were burning from the inside, what's the point of defending yourself from the outside? closely tailed by then it would make you the monster, wouldn't it? But neither of these logical, logical thoughts take any precedence in his mind.

"You would eat your own brother?" Nakamaru says blankly.

Jin frowns at him. "Was that something I missed that you should have told me?"

"Seth and the sun god were brothers. Are. Apparently no one really knows about what happened to Seth after he got rushed off, because the Egyptians liked to change things around a whole lot."

Jin's not so worried about that, though.

"The sun's enemy was his brother?" His face smoothes out, and that makes Nakamaru watch him more closely. It's not every day that Jin gets upset and tries not to show it. "That's sad. It'll be like me and Reio or Pi or Yuu-kun fighting every second of our lives. That's really sad." His entire body droops like a wilting fern, and he kicks at pebbles in vicious, swinging arcs.

They're quiet for a moment that stretches on and on and on.

"I'd hate it if my brother hated me like that," Jin says, much softer than before. "If my brother tried to kill me. It'll be like it's winter every day, inside and out."

You've been sad since before our debut, Nakamaru wants to point out. Since before you told me that half-assed Egyptian myth that made me go to Koyama and Shige for help. But he glances ahead, to where Kame is currently looking for a perch for the camera, and keeps his mouth shut.

"What, well, what if you don't like your brother?" he asks instead. This whole conversation is starting to stress him out; he can feel the sweat bead on his nose.

"You're supposed to love your brother!" Jin shouts, whirling to glare at him. Ahead, Ueda and Koki pause to glance back at them in askance, and are totally ignored. "Even if you don't like him! That's cruel!"

Segues, Nakamaru thinks. Jin's segues, although indirect and winding and sometimes more contradictory than their costume sets, always seems to have more behind them than anyone might believe if they listen for long enough. Only, years are a hell of a long listen. Maybe he's giving Jin too much credit. "I think that's the point," he feels the bizarre need to say instead. Isn't it?

"It doesn't matter if it's supposed to be a point. It's still cruel," Jin says quietly, voice raw, voice bitter. "Pitting brothers against each other just so you can get what you need. What do you need it for? To tell a moral? We don't need these morals if people can just remember what's important!"

Suddenly this feels a lot like déjà vu. They're not making any sense anymore. Were they ever? Damn segues. "You know," Nakamaru says slowly. "I asked someone about this. And he told me that these were only stories. They don't have to be real, you know. If you don't want them to be real."

They've stopped walking, and the other four have just noticed. Taguchi raises an eyebrow at them, but Nakamaru disregards him for the moment. The sun paints the sky flaming orange and violet against the faint backdrop of stars, and Jin's profile is a sharply defined chisel against the blinding gold of the waters.

"Why does it matter if I want them to be real or not?" he says, eyes fixed on Nakamaru and lips curled in like claws, as if he's trying to hold something back but can't manage it for much longer. "It's not like me wanting them to be real or fake will change anything."

"No," Nakamaru says, "but it'll change the way you deal with it."

They stare at each other in the violent, fading colours, and for a moment Nakamaru can almost pretend that it's only the two of them on the little dirt road. In Jin's eyes he can see the fabric of constellations that Tokyo never shows in her night sky. Sometimes, though, someone remembers their glory. Somewhere.

Then Jin blinks and they're just a few idols on a dirt road, dressed in the whimsies and mercies of their wardrobe on crack. "Ah, I don't know anymore," Jin whines, tossing his hands up. "Being Akanishi Jin is enough for me right now! I just need to find something warm so I won't ever go cold again." He shivers. "Even though Los Angeles was in the middle of the desert, America really was cold." He pauses, then adds almost absently, "until January, at least."

"Idiot," Nakamaru says. "You don't need to worry about it."

Jin looks at him curiously. "And what do you think will keep me warm?"

Nakamaru pokes at his belly, smiling when Jin flinches away with a shrill giggle and bats at his hand. "The sun inside you," he replies.

And when Jin smiles at him, a brilliant smile that creases his eyes and bunches up his cheeks and dims the world for a second, Nakamaru knows he's telling the truth, stories or otherwise.

---


June 2005


Nakamaru glances at his watch. Swears.

"I have to run," he says, harried as he grabs his bag, his brush, almost knocks over Koyama's mirror. Shige looks embarrassed and opens his mouth. "No, no, it's not your fault. You were too interesting and I got absorbed."

Shige laughs shyly. It's a very self-conscious sound. "Have fun with KAT-TUN!"

"We'll see, yes?" Nakamaru says diplomatically, then throws himself out the door.

The comments he receives when he runs in ten minutes late are the regular ones from Kame demanding reasons for his absence and Koki's more civil version, Taguchi's supremely funny "ten minutes is better than twenty!" as well as the manager's resigned reminder. Then there was Jin's.

"You're late~," he sings. "We're missing a brother! Hurry the fuck up so we can start the family gathering!"

Nakamaru doesn't find out until later that his role in a play was the sibling in question, but that had made him pause, just for a moment.

The sun, he thinks, stunned. "What are you looking for?"

Jin stares at him. So does K-TTU. "Need a break, Yuichi," Koki says slowly.

"Not very sure," Jin says. Nakamaru stares at him. So does K-TTU. "For a brother so we can start practice, really."

"Not funny—!"

"You need a break too, Akanishi?"

He probably shouldn't have said anything. That made about as much sense as the Egyptian myth. It's not like he'll ever find the words to explain it to Jin.

Only, the look in Jin's eyes—

Yeah. He's thinking too hard. A myth is a myth, and mere myths have no bearing on their lives. Ha! There are too many stories for anyone to remember. Every life is a story. A legend.

...he probably won't remember this little slice of epiphany. Maybe it isn't even true and he really needs sleep or something. But that's okay. They'll write their own.

They'll write their own.





-fin-