FIC FOR HOLLY_BERRI
For: holly_berri
From: buzzbird
Title: Turtle Soup
Pairings/Characters:Jin/Kame
Rating: PG(-13) for swearing
Warnings: AU
Notes: For holly_berri. You said you didn't want angst or girliness but in the end I wasn't able to avoid either completely. Nonetheless, I hope you like this as much as I enjoyed writing it ! ♥
And a big thank you to S, for being such a sweet beta! ♥
Not all puns are mine, Google is my friend :P
Summary: Kame makes his debut as a TV-chef. Drama ensues
Kame rushes into his living room, balancing six plates, six glasses and a heap of chopsticks on a small tray. He sets the table so quickly, Nakamaru thinks he must be superhuman or something. The movements of his hands are too quick for Nakamaru to see. Kame then hurriedly returns to the kitchen.
From the kitchen Nakamaru hears him yell: “Oh I forgot to tell you guys, we can’t go shopping on Saturday!”
When Kame returns to the living room he sets down the wine and the bowl of salad.
“Where is everybody?” Kame impatiently mutters to himself.
At that moment they hear the front door open and close. “Iriguchi, deguchi, Taguchi deeeeesu!” Junno comes flying into the apartment. Nakamaru sees Koki look up anticipating.
“Okay, I’m here, what’s for dinner!?” Junno asks brightly smiling.
“Your mother’s ass,” Koki says walking past him and joining Nakamaru at the dinner table.
Kame turns to the door, but sees no one else. “Junno, I thought you were picking up Ueda and Jin.” Kame asks surprised.
“Yeah I was going to,” Junno answers, quickly grinning at Koki, “but then Jin told me some American guitar dude invited him over for dinner and said he could bring a plus one. So Jin asked Ueda. I always thought their guitar playing bromance thing was kinda weird but… Hey do you guys know what to do when you break a string on your guitar?” Junno asks with a devious grin.
Kame raises an eyebrow, giving Junno his unimpressed face. “Ask Jin’s real friends to fix it?”
Junno’s face looks like it’s about to split in two as he practically shouts: “Don’t fret!”
The birds on Kame’s balcony suddenly sing very loudly, Nakamaru observes. Nakamaru also observes that Junno’s puns could use a little more subtlety, and maybe timing.
“Junno,” he says in a loud whisper, “just sit and be quiet okay?”
“Okay!” Junno beams at him and takes a seat.
Kame pulls out the chair next to Junno and ungracefully drops himself into the black leather, a grumpy look on his face. As Kame mumbles: “Well, then I guess we don’t have to wait anymore. Let’s eat.” Nakamaru rolls his eyes at Koki, who grins back.
Three bottles of wine and four ridiculously delicious courses later and Kame looks considerably happier and, Nakamaru notices, somewhat nervous. When he actually starts to fidget around with a napkin Nakamaru knows something is wrong. Kame doesn’t usually fidget. Nakamaru fidgets when he’s nervous. Kame drinks a lot, but he doesn’t fidget. Not usually.
It seems however, that tonight, Kame does both. Nakamaru is about to cut him off when Kame gets up, swaying dangerously.
“It appears,” Kame starts slurring, “I have an announcement to make. Even though I wanted to tell all of you at the same time but that stupid Jin with his stupid face and his stupid guitar ruined that plan but anyway,” he rants on, “I hope you guys like my cooking because I said yes and I said yes that you guys would guest and it would really y’know, suck, if you guys hated my cooking because I got offered to be a TV chef and…”
He doesn’t get any further than that. Junno has already stood up to support Kame, who is clearly no longer able to stand up by himself. Nakamaru and Koki jump to their feet for entirely different reasons though.
“You got a what?!” Koki shrieks. Nakamaru thinks the way Koki’s eyebrows move is kind of weird. He makes a mental note to film Koki some time and make a funny video about Koki’s alien eyebrows and how they lead a life of their own.
Kame giggles. “You’re all standing up.” More giggling. “Funny.”
Kame frees himself from Junno’s arm around his waist, now no longer holding him up, and more or less stumbles towards the couch. “I’ve been asked to become a TV-chef,” Kame explains with flailing hands, jumping on the couch. “I already said yes annnd I start next Saturday,” he says, laughing and making happy noises like a four year old.
Nakamaru grabs his hand and pulls him down. He pouts at Kame. “But on Saturdays we always go shopping,” he whines.
Koki huffs at Kame and turns to Nakamaru. “We can go shopping without Kame, it’ll be fine.”
Nakamaru suddenly finds himself struggling for balance as he is overwhelmed by Kame clinging on to him for dear life. He’s a little annoyed when hears Junno and Koki roaring with laughter.
“Pleaaaase, Yucchi, Koki, I want you guys to be my first guests, pleaaaase.”
Nakamaru frees himself from Kame’s clutches to sternly address Kame on how this is so not making up for him abandoning their man-dates but then, Kame makes the eyes at him. Nakamaru is temporarily distracted. Kame is apparently making the eyes at Koki too.
“Ahh Yucchi, just look at him, he really wants this,” Koki pleads.
Nakamaru makes the mistake of looking directly at Kame again. Who is way too close for Nakamaru’s comfort by the way. No seriously, too close. He sets him down on the couch and takes a step back before he gives into the cute that is Kame making puppy eyes.
“Pleaase, Yucchi,” Kame begs, “I promise I’ll make your favourite cream puffs for dessert.”
And really, contrary to popular belief (or maybe just his own) Nakamaru is only a man, so that’s all it takes.
---
“…So that’s why we got to go first!” Nakamaru concludes his explanation happily.
Koki punches Jin in the shoulder, “bet you’re really jealous we got to go first,” he tells him.
Jin shrugs his shoulders and pretends not to be interested. Koki takes a good look at Jin. Definitely hung-over, yup, no doubt about it.
Koki and Nakamaru tease him a little more but with Jin reacting like that, or actually not reacting at all, the atmosphere becomes very awkward very quickly. Nakamaru is pushing it a little, Koki thinks, making jokes about how Jin doesn’t need the extra weight anyway. So Koki is not in the least surprised when Jin’s patience runs out.
“Well you’re lucky that cream puff made it to your mouth instead of your nose. I don’t know how you manage to eat normally,” Jin snaps at Nakamaru.
Nakamaru looks completely unfazed. Must have become immune to the nose-jokes, Koki mentally notes. He agrees they’re getting kind of old though. Nehh, who is he kidding.
At that very moment Ueda walks into the rehearsal room. “Wow guys, don’t start the party without me,” he comments sarcastically. “Jin, I can smell you from across the room, could you maybe not go party every night?”
Jin glares at Ueda. “Don’t you have some sparkle-convention to go to or something?”
Koki thinks that probably applies to all of them, isn’t that why they’re here anyway? Or wait, why are they here? Koki is confused.
“Isn’t Junno next anyways?” Ueda asks, happily ignoring Jin’s not so subtle remark about the t-shirt Ueda is wearing (white with silver sparkles spelling out ‘I am BIG!!!’).
Jin huffs. “Next for that stupid show?”
Nakamaru, looking a little amused, answers. “Yeah, Kame said something about how it would only be fair to have you guys go last because you made him waste food and how he hates that and everything,” he explains.
Koki looks at Jin, but Jin just stares at a small brown bird outside. If the look on Jin’s face is any indication, it has apparently wronged him horribly.
Koki clears his throat as subtle as he can (not very subtle at all) and hesitantly poses: “Well, at least Kame’s food is totally worth the wait?”
Jin practically hides himself in his hoodie.
Koki, Nakamaru and Ueda exchange looks of varying levels of exasperation.
“So uhm,” Ueda starts, “I guess I’ll go last then.”
No one argues. Koki thinks this is wise.
----
Junno looked at Kame expectantly; the lights warm on his skin. Kame was very busy stirring things.
“So what are we making today Kame?” Junno asked in fake innocence.
Kame looked at Junno in amusement and went back to stirring. Junno knew perfectly well that they were making chocolate cake. He had to get Kame’s attention away from the melting chocolate somehow though. Sometimes Junno thought that Kame acted eerily like a woman. Take this whole cooking thing for example. Who would have thought that when Johnny told Kame he had to choose between this and Going! Kame would choose this. Junno sure didn’t.
Kame answered Junno without taking his eyes off of the frosting-to-be. “Why don’t you guess, I bet our viewers are curious too.”
He was just making it too easy. There were so many possibilities running through Junno’s head, it was dizzying.
“Well…are we making doughnuts?”
Kame smiled. “No we’re not making doughnuts.”
Junno let out a sigh of relief for effect. “Well I’m glad you said that, because I’m seriously done with that hole thing.”
---
“Shit, shit, shit,” Yamapi swears to himself, trying to open the door, holding his groceries while trying not to get soaked. When he realizes he’s failing at all three he decides the rain isn’t too big a deal. There are pink fluffy towels inside the Pin Palace. Because Yamapi loves pink and Jin loves Yamapi. They even have a kitchen full of pink pans with little pigs on them.
Yamapi ponders the hard facts of his life while he puts the groceries inside the fridge. He actually can’t remember the last time he made dinner in those silly pans. He’s been avoiding this place a little since Rina’s English teacher found out they live here. Crazy bitch. Yamapi asked Jin to seduce her the other day, just so she wouldn’t stalk Yamapi anymore, but even Jin said he wouldn’t go there. Some bullshit about not wanting to hurt her feelings or something. Yeah right, Yamapi thought.
He’s getting a little cold. He grabs a beer, puts it on a tray next to his take-out dinner and closes the fridge. When he’s successfully managed to take the tray to the living room and put it on the table there, without tripping over all of Jin’s crap, he expertly darts from one bit of clear floor the next, to his bedroom. He quickly disposes of his soaked clothes and puts them in the washer along with some other stuff. The PJs he’s wearing when he finally sits down in front of the TV are pink with little yellow ducks on them. Whatever, he’s masculine enough to get away with it. Even with the pin(k) towel wrapped around his head and the bunny slippers.
Yamapi turns on the TV to laugh at Jin, who is guesting on Kame’s show tonight. Yamapi is not surprised to see that the stylist has gone all out. Their outfits match. Like really well. Yamapi shrugs as he grabs the take-out ramen. Gotta feed the fans, he concludes. Yamapi had a theory about that once, about how the fans need this like they need food. He tried to explain it to Jin but he completely misunderstood and was under the impression that because the fans bought so much of their stuff, they were actually starving. When he started going to CD stores to give the girls huddling around the Johnny’s shelves some onigiri, Yamapi told Jin that his theory must have been wrong because the fans looked healthier than ever. Jin continued to mock Yamapi for weeks for thinking up something that weird, like anyone would believe something like that.
“So today I’ll be making a special soup for the first time. It’ll be like a set part of the show, but you can be the first one to try it Jin,” the little Kame on the TV said, pulling Yamapi from his reverie.
Little TV Jin raises his eyebrows at the ingredients. “A special soup?”
“Yeah like Kame’s special soup,” Kame answers him enthusiastically.
Yamapi nearly falls off the couch laughing when Kame pulls his hair up into that stupid hairdo, making him look like an underfed pineapple. Well it used to at least. Maybe a chubby pineapple now. Yamapi makes a mental note of this revelation for the next time he sees Kame. They’ll have something more interesting to talk about than drama ratings. Well more interesting for Yamapi at least. He chuckles to himself in the dark apartment as he contemplates the possibilities of combining this with Nobuta jokes.
“Okay, well, let’s see you make it then,” Jin says smugly. He crosses his arms as Kame sets to work.
Yamapi eats his dinner as Kame talks to Jin about how this recipe was handed down to him from his great-grandmother. Yamapi tries not to choke laughing every time Jin makes unimpressed faces at Kame.
Yamapi is on his third beer of the night when the show is nearing its end and it’s time for Jin to try out Kame’s latest creation. Yamapi is man enough to admit that, damn, the guy knows how to cook. He’s hungry again from just looking at the orange, creamy soup. And true enough, when Jin tries a careful sip, the look on his face can be seen as nothing less than bliss.
Jin looks at Kame with sparkles in his eyes. “This…I…um.”
“Is it good?” Kame asks him, laughing nervously and taking a sip of his wine.
“Yes, very good,” Jin says, warmly smiling, “I would almost say that…
A flash and then thunder.
They reduce Yamapi to a manly shriek as it leaves him in complete darkness. Not even the light of the TV to illuminate the messy apartment. Yamapi decides this is a good moment to go to bed and wait for Jin to get home to tell him what he missed on those last five minutes. But definitely not because he’s scared. Not at all, nope, not him. He pulls up the blankets when the rain hits his windows violently.
---
No one is really all that surprised when Jin has Yamapi call in sick for him the next day. It was a Saturday night after all. They’re not even working this Sunday, just hanging around at the office, traumatizing some juniors. Ueda thinks no one but Kame really seems to care Jin has once again failed to stop drinking in time.
“We were supposed to drive to a special place in Saitama to get these special ingredients for my special soup.”
Koki won’t hear of it though. He climbs up the table Kame is sitting at. Ueda rolls his eyes, he can already predict what’s going to happen next.
“What’s so damn special about your freakin’ soup anyway?!” Standing on the table Koki flashes a grin down at Kame before he goes on. “I’ll give you a special soup right now.”
Ueda was only here to bring them their coffee and he barely has enough time to set down the coffee and leave the room before he hears the sound of a zipper and an unconvincing “No, Koki, don’t!”
He is so never going by Starbucks for them again.
---
A little over a week later and Kame is staring at the TV in his apartment. It’s a morning show and they’re discussing what’s in the papers this morning. It wouldn’t keep Kame from his morning ritual usually, styling his hair, brushing his teeth and styling his hair some more. Today is different. He’s in the tabloids, and not in a good way. The hosts of the show are discussing an article in which apparently a staff member states that he’s not surprised Kame has grabbed this rare chance to poison two of his band mates. Clearly he was after a solo career all along.
Kame manages to figure out from the tiny prints behind the hosts that apparently Ueda went straight to the hospital after appearing on Kame’s show last night and the doctors might have let something slip about a food poisoning. The article states how this is his second victim in a little over a week, as Jin was also reported as having called in sick after appearing on Kame’s show last week. He’s just about to grab his phone to make some phone calls when it rings.
It’s the big boss himself, giving him a short and clear message. “YOU! Stay at home until the crazy fans don’t want to kill you anymore. We’ll handle this without you!”
Kame stares at his phone for a few seconds. What the hell is all of this supposed to mean? Does Ueda really have food poisoning? He calls Ueda, but it goes straight to voicemail.
After a week Kame is still not allowed to leave the house and when one of Jin’s fans follows Nakamaru to Kame’s apartment, the hate mail starts coming in.
Some of them are not that bad. Some tell him that he should take responsibility and resign from the show. After about five of those Kame starts to agree with them. Some are worse, telling him to resign from life. After about five of those, Kame grabs a bottle of wine and his phone. He orders a pizza and then calls the TV station to tell them he will be taking a break from ‘Kame the Cook’ indefinitely.
The few weeks after that, Koki, Nakamaru and Junno come visit Kame nearly every day. They try to tidy up the place and Kame feels bad for them. He doesn’t even know how it gets that messy again in just one day. He only notices it when they start cleaning up. It’s mostly tissues from crying all day spread all over the apartment. And pizza boxes. And wine bottles.
NTT loudly complain to Kame about how his new best friends are clearly ‘Wine’ and ‘Pizza’.
They bitch a lot about the fact that Kame hasn’t even been in his kitchen once since that first pizza. Kame doesn’t see their point. They try to tempt him with printed out recipes and ready-to-use ingredients, but eventually they have throw everything out. None of their healthy food is even touched by Kame once before it reaches the expiration date. When they tell him he’s a great cook and he should just start cooking again, Kame just tells them that he is obviously the worst cook in the world. Why they don’t understand that there should be a law preventing him from ever even looking at a kitchen ever again is beyond him.
When Junno’s sense of humor is starting to lose the last semblance of tact it had left (“You’re not hot if you’re not cooking!”), Kame bursts into tears in front of them.
“I’m fat! I gained ten pounds in two weeks!” Kame howls at them.
Nakamaru is the only one who isn’t immediately horrified at the waterworks (he grew up with lots of women around him after all) and hands him a tissue.
“And why is Jin not back at work yet?! Ueda was fine right? What happened to Jin?!”
Nakamaru pulls Kame into a hug. He lets him cry it all out, for which Kame is grateful.
“Ouch!” Nakamaru says, laughingly. “You really have to shave, Kame. That beard is getting kind of ridiculous.”
Kame laughs along.
But then sees he completely ruined Nakamaru’s shirt and how Junno and Koki are still standing on the other side of the room, exchanging awkward looks, and he feels the smile vanish from his face immediately.
“You guys should just stop coming here, go visit Jin, I don’t want to bother you anymore.” he sniffs.
“I mean it guys, go!” he says more forcefully.
And on that note, Kame all but kicks them out of his apartment and locks his door. They shouldn’t waste their time with him anymore. He doesn’t understand why they ever even did in the first place.
---
“Jeez, Pi, stop pushing me already,” Jin whines. Yamapi has been pushing Jin all the way to Kame’s apartment and now even out of the elevator. It annoys Jin more than a little. Especially because he would really rather just run the other way. What does it matter if he hangs around the house a lot, staring at the contents of their kitchen cabinets? He isn’t hurting anyone by doing that, right?
It’s like Yamapi can read his mind (as he probably can).
“I’m really getting tired of Nakamaru coming into our rehearsals and stealing my best dancer away for advice on how to deal with your problem.”
Jin thinks Yamapi is overreacting. Can't he see that Jin’s life is clearly much much harder.
Green door.
Jin swallows. This is Kame’s front door. He tries to think of ways to get out of this but Yamapi is too fast.
After Yamapi rings the doorbell, Jin hears nothing inside the apartment. This is most definitely a sign. It’s telling him to leave, right now. As he starts to turn around though, the green door opens to reveal a guy vaguely resembling Kame, but… it can’t be him, Jin thinks.
His hair is greasy, he has a little beard and is a lot chubbier than the Kame Jin knows. He also smells like…well like he hasn’t taken a shower in a month actually. Which might or might not be true.
Before Jin can wrinkle his nose in disgust though, Yamapi is pushing past him, grabbing the guy’s arm and says: “Let’s go Shuuji-kun,” as he pulls him deeper into the cave that sort of looks like Kame’s apartment used to look.
Jin’s curiosity takes over as he follows Kame and Yamapi into the darkness of the-lair-formerly-known-as-Kame’s-OCD cleaned-apartment. He sees Yamapi push Kame into the bathroom and hears him tell Kame to not come out until he’s used every single shower product in that bathroom.
Yamapi then walks back towards Jin and grins at him, startling him. “That should buy us some time.”
Jin then experiences something he would never even dream of. He helps clean somebody else’s apartment. Really cleans it, because Yamapi is barking orders at him constantly, leader-style. Jin thanks the lord or whatever’s up there that he’s not in the same unit as Pi and Ryo.
When the apartment looks like Kame’s apartment again, Jin is thankful Yamapi brought a couple of bottles of water, because Kame’s fridge is depressingly empty.
When Kame comes out of the bathroom, he actually kind of looks like himself again as well. Jin swallows. He’s going to have to tell Kame sooner or later why he’s actually here.
Yamapi pushes a blow-dryer into his hands. “I think you can handle it from here,” he says, winking and grinning at Jin and then out the door before Jin can even think of something to say.
Jin looks at the floor. “So…uhm,” he starts, but Kame cuts him off.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I know they want me to apologize to you but I don't know how that’s going to help,” Kame tells him.
“I…uhm…what? Apologize?” Jin asks. “For what?”
Kame sighs. “Well if you really want me to say it then fine, I’m sorry I made you get food poisoning.”
Jin stares.
“What food poisoning?”
Now it’s Kame’s turn to stare. “You really want me to specify all the details in my…”
But Jin interrupts him.
“No no no that’s not why I came here at all.” Jin thinks he has caught on. Kame apparently thinks that Jin had the same thing Ueda had. He doesn’t exactly know about Ueda but he didn’t have food poisoning. The reason he didn't come to work was because that soup was really something special but he can’t tell Kame why and
Kame is staring again.
“Then why are you here?” Kame asks exasperated. “I’m not going to cook again, the others already tried that, in case you don’t know.”
“But…” Jin starts, uncertain how to go on from here. “but, I really like your cooking. I mean I love your cooking. I am in love with your cooking, with you, and I really think you should cook and y’know, do what makes you happy, because I’m really sure that cooking makes you happy.”
Kame frowns at him. “Cooking does not make me happy, I already told you that I wasn’t going to start cooking again and…wait,”
Kame is now looking at Jin in a way that’s kind of scaring him. Jin was hoping Kame wouldn’t catch on to his professing his love for Kame if he just did it really really fast. Stupid Yamashita and his stupid bro-code bullshit (Rule no.4 “You have to confess to the person you like within six weeks time, to spare your bros from any unnecessary whining, complaining and/or crying.”)
Kame looks confused. Or maybe like he’s going to cry? Jin really can’t tell.
“Could you say that again, a little slower this time?” Kame asks hesitantly.
Oh crap. He totally heard. Better to just throw it out now, right? Jin isn’t really sure what the protocol for fail-confessing is, but making it up as you go seems like the only option at the moment.
“So…uhm…what I was saying,” Jin pauses.
“Yes?” Kame asks. Jin thinks he seems interested. He looks pretty at least. His hair is still wet and oh dear lord Jin is still holding that stupid blow-dryer. He puts it on the table and keeps looking at it. He really can’t look at Kame while saying this. He still doesn’t believe what Yamapi said about Kame needing to hear this somehow.
“Jin?”
He really should say it now. Say it fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
“Imnlovweyu!!!” Jin nearly shouts, at the blow-dryer.
The silence after it is unbearable.
“D-did you j-just…?” Kame stutters out.
Jin finally looks at Kame. He can’t lose any more face than he already has anyway. “Yeah. But,”
“But what?”
“But I guess you don’t?”
And then Jin experiences something even more unlikely than him cleaning another person’s apartment. Kame walks up to him, wet hair and all, puts his hands on the sides of Jin’s face and gently kisses him on the lips. When he pulls away Jin doesn’t know what to do. So he does the same, but less gently.
They continue this until Kame’s hair dries and, more disturbingly, he hears the front door close.
“I’m back! I brought groceries!”
Jin makes a mental note of having a long conversation with Yamapi about timing when Yamapi walks into the room and Jin suddenly notices that somewhere along the way Kame has unbuttoned his shirt.
Yamapi grins at them. “Kame, if it’s ok with you I’d like to stay for dinner and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Kame all but rips the grocery bag from Yamapi’s hands and flees into the kitchen, cheeks burning red.
Jin himself is not doing too well buttoning his shirt up again. His hands are shaking.
“Here, I’ll help,” Yamapi says, still wearing the same devious grin on his face. Jin kind of wants to punch him in the face.
“By the way,” Yamapi says with a more serious face when he finishes dressing Jin, “I brought you some stuff, tooth brush, some other things,” Yamapi winks at him, “it’s by the door, I wasn’t sure whether you needed it or not, but yeah.” The grin that made Jin want to punch Yamapi in the face only 10 seconds ago suddenly doesn’t bother him half as much when he hears Kame yelling: “Dinner’s ready!” and Kame walks into the living room balancing three bowls of instant ramen on a tray.
Yamapi immediately digs in and Jin? Jin makes damn sure he doesn’t play with his food.
From: buzzbird
Title: Turtle Soup
Pairings/Characters:Jin/Kame
Rating: PG(-13) for swearing
Warnings: AU
Notes: For holly_berri. You said you didn't want angst or girliness but in the end I wasn't able to avoid either completely. Nonetheless, I hope you like this as much as I enjoyed writing it ! ♥
And a big thank you to S, for being such a sweet beta! ♥
Not all puns are mine, Google is my friend :P
Summary: Kame makes his debut as a TV-chef. Drama ensues
Kame rushes into his living room, balancing six plates, six glasses and a heap of chopsticks on a small tray. He sets the table so quickly, Nakamaru thinks he must be superhuman or something. The movements of his hands are too quick for Nakamaru to see. Kame then hurriedly returns to the kitchen.
From the kitchen Nakamaru hears him yell: “Oh I forgot to tell you guys, we can’t go shopping on Saturday!”
When Kame returns to the living room he sets down the wine and the bowl of salad.
“Where is everybody?” Kame impatiently mutters to himself.
At that moment they hear the front door open and close. “Iriguchi, deguchi, Taguchi deeeeesu!” Junno comes flying into the apartment. Nakamaru sees Koki look up anticipating.
“Okay, I’m here, what’s for dinner!?” Junno asks brightly smiling.
“Your mother’s ass,” Koki says walking past him and joining Nakamaru at the dinner table.
Kame turns to the door, but sees no one else. “Junno, I thought you were picking up Ueda and Jin.” Kame asks surprised.
“Yeah I was going to,” Junno answers, quickly grinning at Koki, “but then Jin told me some American guitar dude invited him over for dinner and said he could bring a plus one. So Jin asked Ueda. I always thought their guitar playing bromance thing was kinda weird but… Hey do you guys know what to do when you break a string on your guitar?” Junno asks with a devious grin.
Kame raises an eyebrow, giving Junno his unimpressed face. “Ask Jin’s real friends to fix it?”
Junno’s face looks like it’s about to split in two as he practically shouts: “Don’t fret!”
The birds on Kame’s balcony suddenly sing very loudly, Nakamaru observes. Nakamaru also observes that Junno’s puns could use a little more subtlety, and maybe timing.
“Junno,” he says in a loud whisper, “just sit and be quiet okay?”
“Okay!” Junno beams at him and takes a seat.
Kame pulls out the chair next to Junno and ungracefully drops himself into the black leather, a grumpy look on his face. As Kame mumbles: “Well, then I guess we don’t have to wait anymore. Let’s eat.” Nakamaru rolls his eyes at Koki, who grins back.
Three bottles of wine and four ridiculously delicious courses later and Kame looks considerably happier and, Nakamaru notices, somewhat nervous. When he actually starts to fidget around with a napkin Nakamaru knows something is wrong. Kame doesn’t usually fidget. Nakamaru fidgets when he’s nervous. Kame drinks a lot, but he doesn’t fidget. Not usually.
It seems however, that tonight, Kame does both. Nakamaru is about to cut him off when Kame gets up, swaying dangerously.
“It appears,” Kame starts slurring, “I have an announcement to make. Even though I wanted to tell all of you at the same time but that stupid Jin with his stupid face and his stupid guitar ruined that plan but anyway,” he rants on, “I hope you guys like my cooking because I said yes and I said yes that you guys would guest and it would really y’know, suck, if you guys hated my cooking because I got offered to be a TV chef and…”
He doesn’t get any further than that. Junno has already stood up to support Kame, who is clearly no longer able to stand up by himself. Nakamaru and Koki jump to their feet for entirely different reasons though.
“You got a what?!” Koki shrieks. Nakamaru thinks the way Koki’s eyebrows move is kind of weird. He makes a mental note to film Koki some time and make a funny video about Koki’s alien eyebrows and how they lead a life of their own.
Kame giggles. “You’re all standing up.” More giggling. “Funny.”
Kame frees himself from Junno’s arm around his waist, now no longer holding him up, and more or less stumbles towards the couch. “I’ve been asked to become a TV-chef,” Kame explains with flailing hands, jumping on the couch. “I already said yes annnd I start next Saturday,” he says, laughing and making happy noises like a four year old.
Nakamaru grabs his hand and pulls him down. He pouts at Kame. “But on Saturdays we always go shopping,” he whines.
Koki huffs at Kame and turns to Nakamaru. “We can go shopping without Kame, it’ll be fine.”
Nakamaru suddenly finds himself struggling for balance as he is overwhelmed by Kame clinging on to him for dear life. He’s a little annoyed when hears Junno and Koki roaring with laughter.
“Pleaaaase, Yucchi, Koki, I want you guys to be my first guests, pleaaaase.”
Nakamaru frees himself from Kame’s clutches to sternly address Kame on how this is so not making up for him abandoning their man-dates but then, Kame makes the eyes at him. Nakamaru is temporarily distracted. Kame is apparently making the eyes at Koki too.
“Ahh Yucchi, just look at him, he really wants this,” Koki pleads.
Nakamaru makes the mistake of looking directly at Kame again. Who is way too close for Nakamaru’s comfort by the way. No seriously, too close. He sets him down on the couch and takes a step back before he gives into the cute that is Kame making puppy eyes.
“Pleaase, Yucchi,” Kame begs, “I promise I’ll make your favourite cream puffs for dessert.”
And really, contrary to popular belief (or maybe just his own) Nakamaru is only a man, so that’s all it takes.
---
“…So that’s why we got to go first!” Nakamaru concludes his explanation happily.
Koki punches Jin in the shoulder, “bet you’re really jealous we got to go first,” he tells him.
Jin shrugs his shoulders and pretends not to be interested. Koki takes a good look at Jin. Definitely hung-over, yup, no doubt about it.
Koki and Nakamaru tease him a little more but with Jin reacting like that, or actually not reacting at all, the atmosphere becomes very awkward very quickly. Nakamaru is pushing it a little, Koki thinks, making jokes about how Jin doesn’t need the extra weight anyway. So Koki is not in the least surprised when Jin’s patience runs out.
“Well you’re lucky that cream puff made it to your mouth instead of your nose. I don’t know how you manage to eat normally,” Jin snaps at Nakamaru.
Nakamaru looks completely unfazed. Must have become immune to the nose-jokes, Koki mentally notes. He agrees they’re getting kind of old though. Nehh, who is he kidding.
At that very moment Ueda walks into the rehearsal room. “Wow guys, don’t start the party without me,” he comments sarcastically. “Jin, I can smell you from across the room, could you maybe not go party every night?”
Jin glares at Ueda. “Don’t you have some sparkle-convention to go to or something?”
Koki thinks that probably applies to all of them, isn’t that why they’re here anyway? Or wait, why are they here? Koki is confused.
“Isn’t Junno next anyways?” Ueda asks, happily ignoring Jin’s not so subtle remark about the t-shirt Ueda is wearing (white with silver sparkles spelling out ‘I am BIG!!!’).
Jin huffs. “Next for that stupid show?”
Nakamaru, looking a little amused, answers. “Yeah, Kame said something about how it would only be fair to have you guys go last because you made him waste food and how he hates that and everything,” he explains.
Koki looks at Jin, but Jin just stares at a small brown bird outside. If the look on Jin’s face is any indication, it has apparently wronged him horribly.
Koki clears his throat as subtle as he can (not very subtle at all) and hesitantly poses: “Well, at least Kame’s food is totally worth the wait?”
Jin practically hides himself in his hoodie.
Koki, Nakamaru and Ueda exchange looks of varying levels of exasperation.
“So uhm,” Ueda starts, “I guess I’ll go last then.”
No one argues. Koki thinks this is wise.
----
Junno looked at Kame expectantly; the lights warm on his skin. Kame was very busy stirring things.
“So what are we making today Kame?” Junno asked in fake innocence.
Kame looked at Junno in amusement and went back to stirring. Junno knew perfectly well that they were making chocolate cake. He had to get Kame’s attention away from the melting chocolate somehow though. Sometimes Junno thought that Kame acted eerily like a woman. Take this whole cooking thing for example. Who would have thought that when Johnny told Kame he had to choose between this and Going! Kame would choose this. Junno sure didn’t.
Kame answered Junno without taking his eyes off of the frosting-to-be. “Why don’t you guess, I bet our viewers are curious too.”
He was just making it too easy. There were so many possibilities running through Junno’s head, it was dizzying.
“Well…are we making doughnuts?”
Kame smiled. “No we’re not making doughnuts.”
Junno let out a sigh of relief for effect. “Well I’m glad you said that, because I’m seriously done with that hole thing.”
---
“Shit, shit, shit,” Yamapi swears to himself, trying to open the door, holding his groceries while trying not to get soaked. When he realizes he’s failing at all three he decides the rain isn’t too big a deal. There are pink fluffy towels inside the Pin Palace. Because Yamapi loves pink and Jin loves Yamapi. They even have a kitchen full of pink pans with little pigs on them.
Yamapi ponders the hard facts of his life while he puts the groceries inside the fridge. He actually can’t remember the last time he made dinner in those silly pans. He’s been avoiding this place a little since Rina’s English teacher found out they live here. Crazy bitch. Yamapi asked Jin to seduce her the other day, just so she wouldn’t stalk Yamapi anymore, but even Jin said he wouldn’t go there. Some bullshit about not wanting to hurt her feelings or something. Yeah right, Yamapi thought.
He’s getting a little cold. He grabs a beer, puts it on a tray next to his take-out dinner and closes the fridge. When he’s successfully managed to take the tray to the living room and put it on the table there, without tripping over all of Jin’s crap, he expertly darts from one bit of clear floor the next, to his bedroom. He quickly disposes of his soaked clothes and puts them in the washer along with some other stuff. The PJs he’s wearing when he finally sits down in front of the TV are pink with little yellow ducks on them. Whatever, he’s masculine enough to get away with it. Even with the pin(k) towel wrapped around his head and the bunny slippers.
Yamapi turns on the TV to laugh at Jin, who is guesting on Kame’s show tonight. Yamapi is not surprised to see that the stylist has gone all out. Their outfits match. Like really well. Yamapi shrugs as he grabs the take-out ramen. Gotta feed the fans, he concludes. Yamapi had a theory about that once, about how the fans need this like they need food. He tried to explain it to Jin but he completely misunderstood and was under the impression that because the fans bought so much of their stuff, they were actually starving. When he started going to CD stores to give the girls huddling around the Johnny’s shelves some onigiri, Yamapi told Jin that his theory must have been wrong because the fans looked healthier than ever. Jin continued to mock Yamapi for weeks for thinking up something that weird, like anyone would believe something like that.
“So today I’ll be making a special soup for the first time. It’ll be like a set part of the show, but you can be the first one to try it Jin,” the little Kame on the TV said, pulling Yamapi from his reverie.
Little TV Jin raises his eyebrows at the ingredients. “A special soup?”
“Yeah like Kame’s special soup,” Kame answers him enthusiastically.
Yamapi nearly falls off the couch laughing when Kame pulls his hair up into that stupid hairdo, making him look like an underfed pineapple. Well it used to at least. Maybe a chubby pineapple now. Yamapi makes a mental note of this revelation for the next time he sees Kame. They’ll have something more interesting to talk about than drama ratings. Well more interesting for Yamapi at least. He chuckles to himself in the dark apartment as he contemplates the possibilities of combining this with Nobuta jokes.
“Okay, well, let’s see you make it then,” Jin says smugly. He crosses his arms as Kame sets to work.
Yamapi eats his dinner as Kame talks to Jin about how this recipe was handed down to him from his great-grandmother. Yamapi tries not to choke laughing every time Jin makes unimpressed faces at Kame.
Yamapi is on his third beer of the night when the show is nearing its end and it’s time for Jin to try out Kame’s latest creation. Yamapi is man enough to admit that, damn, the guy knows how to cook. He’s hungry again from just looking at the orange, creamy soup. And true enough, when Jin tries a careful sip, the look on his face can be seen as nothing less than bliss.
Jin looks at Kame with sparkles in his eyes. “This…I…um.”
“Is it good?” Kame asks him, laughing nervously and taking a sip of his wine.
“Yes, very good,” Jin says, warmly smiling, “I would almost say that…
A flash and then thunder.
They reduce Yamapi to a manly shriek as it leaves him in complete darkness. Not even the light of the TV to illuminate the messy apartment. Yamapi decides this is a good moment to go to bed and wait for Jin to get home to tell him what he missed on those last five minutes. But definitely not because he’s scared. Not at all, nope, not him. He pulls up the blankets when the rain hits his windows violently.
---
No one is really all that surprised when Jin has Yamapi call in sick for him the next day. It was a Saturday night after all. They’re not even working this Sunday, just hanging around at the office, traumatizing some juniors. Ueda thinks no one but Kame really seems to care Jin has once again failed to stop drinking in time.
“We were supposed to drive to a special place in Saitama to get these special ingredients for my special soup.”
Koki won’t hear of it though. He climbs up the table Kame is sitting at. Ueda rolls his eyes, he can already predict what’s going to happen next.
“What’s so damn special about your freakin’ soup anyway?!” Standing on the table Koki flashes a grin down at Kame before he goes on. “I’ll give you a special soup right now.”
Ueda was only here to bring them their coffee and he barely has enough time to set down the coffee and leave the room before he hears the sound of a zipper and an unconvincing “No, Koki, don’t!”
He is so never going by Starbucks for them again.
---
A little over a week later and Kame is staring at the TV in his apartment. It’s a morning show and they’re discussing what’s in the papers this morning. It wouldn’t keep Kame from his morning ritual usually, styling his hair, brushing his teeth and styling his hair some more. Today is different. He’s in the tabloids, and not in a good way. The hosts of the show are discussing an article in which apparently a staff member states that he’s not surprised Kame has grabbed this rare chance to poison two of his band mates. Clearly he was after a solo career all along.
Kame manages to figure out from the tiny prints behind the hosts that apparently Ueda went straight to the hospital after appearing on Kame’s show last night and the doctors might have let something slip about a food poisoning. The article states how this is his second victim in a little over a week, as Jin was also reported as having called in sick after appearing on Kame’s show last week. He’s just about to grab his phone to make some phone calls when it rings.
It’s the big boss himself, giving him a short and clear message. “YOU! Stay at home until the crazy fans don’t want to kill you anymore. We’ll handle this without you!”
Kame stares at his phone for a few seconds. What the hell is all of this supposed to mean? Does Ueda really have food poisoning? He calls Ueda, but it goes straight to voicemail.
After a week Kame is still not allowed to leave the house and when one of Jin’s fans follows Nakamaru to Kame’s apartment, the hate mail starts coming in.
Some of them are not that bad. Some tell him that he should take responsibility and resign from the show. After about five of those Kame starts to agree with them. Some are worse, telling him to resign from life. After about five of those, Kame grabs a bottle of wine and his phone. He orders a pizza and then calls the TV station to tell them he will be taking a break from ‘Kame the Cook’ indefinitely.
The few weeks after that, Koki, Nakamaru and Junno come visit Kame nearly every day. They try to tidy up the place and Kame feels bad for them. He doesn’t even know how it gets that messy again in just one day. He only notices it when they start cleaning up. It’s mostly tissues from crying all day spread all over the apartment. And pizza boxes. And wine bottles.
NTT loudly complain to Kame about how his new best friends are clearly ‘Wine’ and ‘Pizza’.
They bitch a lot about the fact that Kame hasn’t even been in his kitchen once since that first pizza. Kame doesn’t see their point. They try to tempt him with printed out recipes and ready-to-use ingredients, but eventually they have throw everything out. None of their healthy food is even touched by Kame once before it reaches the expiration date. When they tell him he’s a great cook and he should just start cooking again, Kame just tells them that he is obviously the worst cook in the world. Why they don’t understand that there should be a law preventing him from ever even looking at a kitchen ever again is beyond him.
When Junno’s sense of humor is starting to lose the last semblance of tact it had left (“You’re not hot if you’re not cooking!”), Kame bursts into tears in front of them.
“I’m fat! I gained ten pounds in two weeks!” Kame howls at them.
Nakamaru is the only one who isn’t immediately horrified at the waterworks (he grew up with lots of women around him after all) and hands him a tissue.
“And why is Jin not back at work yet?! Ueda was fine right? What happened to Jin?!”
Nakamaru pulls Kame into a hug. He lets him cry it all out, for which Kame is grateful.
“Ouch!” Nakamaru says, laughingly. “You really have to shave, Kame. That beard is getting kind of ridiculous.”
Kame laughs along.
But then sees he completely ruined Nakamaru’s shirt and how Junno and Koki are still standing on the other side of the room, exchanging awkward looks, and he feels the smile vanish from his face immediately.
“You guys should just stop coming here, go visit Jin, I don’t want to bother you anymore.” he sniffs.
“I mean it guys, go!” he says more forcefully.
And on that note, Kame all but kicks them out of his apartment and locks his door. They shouldn’t waste their time with him anymore. He doesn’t understand why they ever even did in the first place.
---
“Jeez, Pi, stop pushing me already,” Jin whines. Yamapi has been pushing Jin all the way to Kame’s apartment and now even out of the elevator. It annoys Jin more than a little. Especially because he would really rather just run the other way. What does it matter if he hangs around the house a lot, staring at the contents of their kitchen cabinets? He isn’t hurting anyone by doing that, right?
It’s like Yamapi can read his mind (as he probably can).
“I’m really getting tired of Nakamaru coming into our rehearsals and stealing my best dancer away for advice on how to deal with your problem.”
Jin thinks Yamapi is overreacting. Can't he see that Jin’s life is clearly much much harder.
Green door.
Jin swallows. This is Kame’s front door. He tries to think of ways to get out of this but Yamapi is too fast.
After Yamapi rings the doorbell, Jin hears nothing inside the apartment. This is most definitely a sign. It’s telling him to leave, right now. As he starts to turn around though, the green door opens to reveal a guy vaguely resembling Kame, but… it can’t be him, Jin thinks.
His hair is greasy, he has a little beard and is a lot chubbier than the Kame Jin knows. He also smells like…well like he hasn’t taken a shower in a month actually. Which might or might not be true.
Before Jin can wrinkle his nose in disgust though, Yamapi is pushing past him, grabbing the guy’s arm and says: “Let’s go Shuuji-kun,” as he pulls him deeper into the cave that sort of looks like Kame’s apartment used to look.
Jin’s curiosity takes over as he follows Kame and Yamapi into the darkness of the-lair-formerly-known-as-Kame’s-OCD cleaned-apartment. He sees Yamapi push Kame into the bathroom and hears him tell Kame to not come out until he’s used every single shower product in that bathroom.
Yamapi then walks back towards Jin and grins at him, startling him. “That should buy us some time.”
Jin then experiences something he would never even dream of. He helps clean somebody else’s apartment. Really cleans it, because Yamapi is barking orders at him constantly, leader-style. Jin thanks the lord or whatever’s up there that he’s not in the same unit as Pi and Ryo.
When the apartment looks like Kame’s apartment again, Jin is thankful Yamapi brought a couple of bottles of water, because Kame’s fridge is depressingly empty.
When Kame comes out of the bathroom, he actually kind of looks like himself again as well. Jin swallows. He’s going to have to tell Kame sooner or later why he’s actually here.
Yamapi pushes a blow-dryer into his hands. “I think you can handle it from here,” he says, winking and grinning at Jin and then out the door before Jin can even think of something to say.
Jin looks at the floor. “So…uhm,” he starts, but Kame cuts him off.
“You don’t have to stay if you don’t want to. I know they want me to apologize to you but I don't know how that’s going to help,” Kame tells him.
“I…uhm…what? Apologize?” Jin asks. “For what?”
Kame sighs. “Well if you really want me to say it then fine, I’m sorry I made you get food poisoning.”
Jin stares.
“What food poisoning?”
Now it’s Kame’s turn to stare. “You really want me to specify all the details in my…”
But Jin interrupts him.
“No no no that’s not why I came here at all.” Jin thinks he has caught on. Kame apparently thinks that Jin had the same thing Ueda had. He doesn’t exactly know about Ueda but he didn’t have food poisoning. The reason he didn't come to work was because that soup was really something special but he can’t tell Kame why and
Kame is staring again.
“Then why are you here?” Kame asks exasperated. “I’m not going to cook again, the others already tried that, in case you don’t know.”
“But…” Jin starts, uncertain how to go on from here. “but, I really like your cooking. I mean I love your cooking. I am in love with your cooking, with you, and I really think you should cook and y’know, do what makes you happy, because I’m really sure that cooking makes you happy.”
Kame frowns at him. “Cooking does not make me happy, I already told you that I wasn’t going to start cooking again and…wait,”
Kame is now looking at Jin in a way that’s kind of scaring him. Jin was hoping Kame wouldn’t catch on to his professing his love for Kame if he just did it really really fast. Stupid Yamashita and his stupid bro-code bullshit (Rule no.4 “You have to confess to the person you like within six weeks time, to spare your bros from any unnecessary whining, complaining and/or crying.”)
Kame looks confused. Or maybe like he’s going to cry? Jin really can’t tell.
“Could you say that again, a little slower this time?” Kame asks hesitantly.
Oh crap. He totally heard. Better to just throw it out now, right? Jin isn’t really sure what the protocol for fail-confessing is, but making it up as you go seems like the only option at the moment.
“So…uhm…what I was saying,” Jin pauses.
“Yes?” Kame asks. Jin thinks he seems interested. He looks pretty at least. His hair is still wet and oh dear lord Jin is still holding that stupid blow-dryer. He puts it on the table and keeps looking at it. He really can’t look at Kame while saying this. He still doesn’t believe what Yamapi said about Kame needing to hear this somehow.
“Jin?”
He really should say it now. Say it fast. Like ripping off a Band-Aid.
“Imnlovweyu!!!” Jin nearly shouts, at the blow-dryer.
The silence after it is unbearable.
“D-did you j-just…?” Kame stutters out.
Jin finally looks at Kame. He can’t lose any more face than he already has anyway. “Yeah. But,”
“But what?”
“But I guess you don’t?”
And then Jin experiences something even more unlikely than him cleaning another person’s apartment. Kame walks up to him, wet hair and all, puts his hands on the sides of Jin’s face and gently kisses him on the lips. When he pulls away Jin doesn’t know what to do. So he does the same, but less gently.
They continue this until Kame’s hair dries and, more disturbingly, he hears the front door close.
“I’m back! I brought groceries!”
Jin makes a mental note of having a long conversation with Yamapi about timing when Yamapi walks into the room and Jin suddenly notices that somewhere along the way Kame has unbuttoned his shirt.
Yamapi grins at them. “Kame, if it’s ok with you I’d like to stay for dinner and then I’ll be out of your hair.”
Kame all but rips the grocery bag from Yamapi’s hands and flees into the kitchen, cheeks burning red.
Jin himself is not doing too well buttoning his shirt up again. His hands are shaking.
“Here, I’ll help,” Yamapi says, still wearing the same devious grin on his face. Jin kind of wants to punch him in the face.
“By the way,” Yamapi says with a more serious face when he finishes dressing Jin, “I brought you some stuff, tooth brush, some other things,” Yamapi winks at him, “it’s by the door, I wasn’t sure whether you needed it or not, but yeah.” The grin that made Jin want to punch Yamapi in the face only 10 seconds ago suddenly doesn’t bother him half as much when he hears Kame yelling: “Dinner’s ready!” and Kame walks into the living room balancing three bowls of instant ramen on a tray.
Yamapi immediately digs in and Jin? Jin makes damn sure he doesn’t play with his food.