[JE] Third Time's the Charm
Title: Third Time's the Charm
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Kokame
Rating: G
Genre: Fluff, AU
Word count: 2,160
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: Written for the Kokame drabble meme over at jokame, for the prompt: Kame and Jin share a room. Koki, in the room opposite and doing the same course as Jin, has a crush on Kame. Jin attempts to set them up/sabotage their dates etc. The fic is like that, only strike out the sabotage bit.
Third Time's the Charm
The first time Koki meets Kame, he isn't impressed by what he sees. Mostly because he doesn't see a hell of a lot - Jin's roommate is hidden behind a stack of magazines as he flips through the Personals, skimming each page with brisk efficiency before adding the discarded volume to the growing pile at his back.
"Kame's helping with my Psychology project," Jin explains as he hands Koki the cd he'd crossed the hall to borrow.
"When Professor Takizawa told us we'd be researching Love, I'm not sure this was what he had in mind," Koki says dubiously. "You're making a Lit. student read magazines for you? Isn't that against his principles, or something?"
"I'm not making him do anything." Jin sounds offended by the very idea that he might be lazy enough to coerce his roommate into helping with some of the more arduous tasks of his project. "And he's not studying Literature. Not really."
"Not really?"
A magazine, not a discard but quite clearly a keeper, comes flying over the back of the stack, over Koki's head, and lands on a small, neat pile in the corner. It aligns perfectly with the dozen or so underneath.
Koki nods sagely; now he understands what Jin means. "Sports scholarship," he says.
-----
The second time Koki meets Kame, Jin's huddled under his duvet, sniffling pathetically and turning reddened eyes upon everyone who visits in an attempt to draw sympathy.
"Don't," Kame advises, turning away from his textbook when he sees Koki start to melt. "It's his own fault for staying out till five in the morning wearing next to nothing."
"I was wearing three layers when I walked into that club," comes Jin's feeble protest.
Kame gives Koki a weary smile. "See what I have to put up with? I hope your roommate's more reliable."
"Uh..." Koki's barely seen Ueda since the start of the semester - the music student seems to spend most of his time in the practice rooms, and the rest of it in Dictator, that creepy S&M club across from the dorms. What he does in the former is a pleasure to listen to; what he does in the latter, Koki doesn't want to think about. "Reliable? Yeah, you could say that..."
Seeing he's not going to be able to persuade anyone to coddle him, Jin stops dabbing his nose with a tissue and pulls himself a little further up the pillow. "Are those for me?"
Koki realises he's started rolling the sheets of paper in his hands, curling them up into tight scrolls. He's too preoccupied with staring at Kame, now that he can take a good look at him from the front. "My notes from the lecture this afternoon. I made you a photocopy. Here." He sets them down on the desk. "When I told Professor Takizawa you were out with a cold, he just laughed at me."
"I'm not surprised," Jin says grimly. "He was the one responsible for me losing at least one and a half layers of clothing - something to do with his research, he said."
Koki can't help laughing at this, though he does start to wonder if perhaps the pair of them might have been better off under the tutelage of Professor Imai, whose reputation is marginally shinier than that of his partner. "You'll be back tomorrow, right?"
"If I haven't died from all that horrible medicine Kame keeps feeding me, I will be," Jin says, pulling a face.
There is a big bottle on the desk, filled with thick, nasty-looking black liquid that looks equally likely to kill Jin as cure him. Koki suspects that Kame is feeding the stuff to Jin purely to scare him back to health.
Kame smirks. "It's for your own good."
"Sadist."
"Is that any way to talk to your kind, gentle roommate who's been looking after you and nursing you so tenderly?"
Jin bats away the thermometer that Kame is waving in his direction. "Poisoning me with that vile stuff and making fun of me for having a red nose, you mean. Koki, do me a favour and take Kame to get something to eat, will you? When he's not training, he keeps forgetting meals so I have to drag him out and force him to clean his plate."
Koki looks at Kame, who shrugs and sets down the thermometer, saying, "He's only telling you this so I'll leave him in peace for a while, you realise."
"I'm supposed to rest, aren't I?" Jin says. "And you're supposed to live on more than air and coffee, so go with Koki and get something to eat, okay? You can talk about me over dinner."
Kame rolls his eyes. "I'm sure we can find a more worthy topic of discussion," he says, and before Koki can make a snappy comment of his own, he's being ushered out the door by Kame.
"Where do you want to-" Koki begins, but Kame interrupts, gesturing for Koki to be quiet until they're well away from his room.
"Sorry," Kame says when they pause by the big double doors. "I didn't want him to know we were still there, or he'd start trying to talk to us through the door and he'll just strain his voice worse. I'm hoping he'll be asleep by the time I get back."
Koki wonders just how long Kame plans to be out. It isn't that he objects to going for a meal with Jin's roommate - from the grand total of twenty minutes that Koki has spent in Kame's company, he's formed a pretty positive opinion of the guy. Not to mention, to be able to live with Jin and not get locked up for murder, Kame must have the patience of a saint.
But the fact remains: they don't know each other. Koki doesn't know how Kame spends his time because he's never seen him around on campus, doesn't know what kind of music he likes, or whether he has any interests outside sports, or even how he and Jin knew each other before they started rooming together. So what are they going to talk about?
At first, it's surprisingly easy. Koki tells Kame it's his choice where they go, so Kame picks a little Italian place he knows and loves, which he and Jin discovered one day when they got lost on their way back to the dorms. It's a ten minute walk through crowded streets; Koki doesn't need to worry about what to say because Kame can't hear him anyway.
It's when they're seated inside, shielded from the hordes of students and their neighbours alike, that Koki's problems begin.
For one thing, the waiter obviously fancies Kame, because he forgets to give Koki a menu, doesn't ask him if he wants a drink, and doesn't seem to care that he doesn't have a fork. Kame, on the other hand, receives not only the menu but a version to take home, three sets of cutlery - just in case - and a complimentary salad before he's even ordered anything, with hints of a free dessert to follow, should he so desire. Consequently, Kame spends half his time fending off the waiter's conversational advances rather than talking to Koki.
"I danced with him at a party once," Kame explains when the waiter finally remembers he has other tables to attend to. "Now he thinks we're about ready to move in together."
Koki regrets laughing at Kame's exasperated expression when he almost chokes on a mouthful of lasagne. Having given up on getting a word in edgeways, he'd been concentrating on his food and watching like a hawk to make sure Kame took some sustenance of his own.
Kame's an interesting one to watch, Koki thinks, in that he seems perfectly serene and composed one moment, eyes intense as he listens, like he's taking everything in and filing it away for future reference - yet the next, he has the wide, bright smile of an excited five year-old, one who's just been told that he can have a puppy for Christmas and has to clap and jump up and down to express the feelings he doesn't yet have the words for.
But Kame's excitement turns to embarrassment when he realises he left his room so quickly he forgot to pick up his wallet. Koki pays for them both.
"Sorry," Kame mumbles, red in the face. "I'll pay you when we get back."
He doesn't, though, because they return to find Jin fast asleep, and Kame can't possibly extract his wallet from the drawer without waking him, not with the way it creaks. Koki shrugs, says he'll get the money tomorrow, and heads back across the hall to write an essay on crowd behaviour. He doesn't get very far - he can't seem to picture a crowd with more than two people in it, and one of them looks like Kame.
-----
The third time Koki meets Kame, Koki's scrabbling around under his bed, trying to find the textbook he knows Ueda tripped over when he came home last night and kicked out of the way, and when there's a knock on the door, Koki jerks on instinct and hits his head on the frame. Rubbing the sore spot, he goes to open the door, thinking it's probably Jin come to borrow his notes again. If he's managed to drag himself out of bed, that is, because he still hasn't come back to class.
Of course it isn't Jin, because Jin's knock is rarely so hesitant. It's Kame on the other side of the door, looking slightly shame-faced and holding his wallet. "Sorry about the other day, I forgot," he says. "How much do I owe you?"
Koki's had enough of searching for the stupid textbook, which is probably all the way under the bed, right next to the wall. He can find it later. He vaguely recalls that Kame owes him money, though not how much. "Tell you what," he suggests, "how about you treat me to lunch instead?"
"Do it!" Jin yells through the open door across the hall. "And bring me back a sandwich or something, will ya? I'm starving!"
"If you're well enough to crawl out of bed, you're well enough to get your own food," Kame fires back, then turns to Koki. "Let's go before he talks me into buying him chocolate for medicinal purposes."
Koki doesn't want anything fancy for lunch, largely because he can't remember how much Kame owes him, so they swing by the cafeteria, grab whatever they can juggle between them and park themselves outside on the grass. Kame picks up an extra dessert for Jin, though he says he will be holding it hostage until Jin can prove he's caught up on the work he's missed. There's no malice in his words, merely some goodnatured teasing; Koki thinks it's sort of sweet, not in the least because Kame's looking at him as he speaks and the sunlight sparkles in his eyes.
"You're far too nice to that lazy roommate of yours," Koki jokes. "Which is he? Blackmailer or boyfriend?"
Kame grins. "Neither, just an old friend. We pretty much grew up together...only he grew more than me." He indicates his less-than-impressive stature with a hand over his head.
It isn't as if Koki's a giant himself. It doesn't feel like he dwarfs Kame, sitting opposite; nor does Kame make him feel small.
"Only physically," Koki says. Kame laughs and looks down at his lunch. "I'm serious. I don't care what he's studying - anyone who makes his roommate, old friend or not, flip through thousands of magazines for a project-"
"I really did volunteer," Kame interrupts. "Do you know how long it would've taken Jin to get through all of those? I didn't want them taking up space in our room for longer than I could help it."
Koki still thinks Kame is insane for reading all those Personal ads, but at least his reasoning is sound. "You're good to your old friends, aren't you?"
Kame swallows the last mouthful of rice, pillows his arms behind his head and leans back against the tree, giving Koki a lazy, comfortable smile that makes him feel warm and welcome. "I'm good to my new friends too," he says. "And I really will buy you lunch tomorrow, I promise."
It takes a while to dawn on Koki that not only has he somehow sleepwalked through the payment process, automatically paying for both his and Kame's lunches before Kame can take out his wallet, but he's bought Jin a chocolate pudding on Kame's behalf.
"Buy me a movie ticket and some popcorn instead," he suggests. "For yourself too. You can help me study crowd behaviour at the cinema tonight."
Kame's amused snort says he isn't fooled one bit by Koki's obvious attempt to ask him out...but the way he smiles and nods his head says he doesn't care.
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Kokame
Rating: G
Genre: Fluff, AU
Word count: 2,160
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: Written for the Kokame drabble meme over at jokame, for the prompt: Kame and Jin share a room. Koki, in the room opposite and doing the same course as Jin, has a crush on Kame. Jin attempts to set them up/sabotage their dates etc. The fic is like that, only strike out the sabotage bit.
Third Time's the Charm
The first time Koki meets Kame, he isn't impressed by what he sees. Mostly because he doesn't see a hell of a lot - Jin's roommate is hidden behind a stack of magazines as he flips through the Personals, skimming each page with brisk efficiency before adding the discarded volume to the growing pile at his back.
"Kame's helping with my Psychology project," Jin explains as he hands Koki the cd he'd crossed the hall to borrow.
"When Professor Takizawa told us we'd be researching Love, I'm not sure this was what he had in mind," Koki says dubiously. "You're making a Lit. student read magazines for you? Isn't that against his principles, or something?"
"I'm not making him do anything." Jin sounds offended by the very idea that he might be lazy enough to coerce his roommate into helping with some of the more arduous tasks of his project. "And he's not studying Literature. Not really."
"Not really?"
A magazine, not a discard but quite clearly a keeper, comes flying over the back of the stack, over Koki's head, and lands on a small, neat pile in the corner. It aligns perfectly with the dozen or so underneath.
Koki nods sagely; now he understands what Jin means. "Sports scholarship," he says.
-----
The second time Koki meets Kame, Jin's huddled under his duvet, sniffling pathetically and turning reddened eyes upon everyone who visits in an attempt to draw sympathy.
"Don't," Kame advises, turning away from his textbook when he sees Koki start to melt. "It's his own fault for staying out till five in the morning wearing next to nothing."
"I was wearing three layers when I walked into that club," comes Jin's feeble protest.
Kame gives Koki a weary smile. "See what I have to put up with? I hope your roommate's more reliable."
"Uh..." Koki's barely seen Ueda since the start of the semester - the music student seems to spend most of his time in the practice rooms, and the rest of it in Dictator, that creepy S&M club across from the dorms. What he does in the former is a pleasure to listen to; what he does in the latter, Koki doesn't want to think about. "Reliable? Yeah, you could say that..."
Seeing he's not going to be able to persuade anyone to coddle him, Jin stops dabbing his nose with a tissue and pulls himself a little further up the pillow. "Are those for me?"
Koki realises he's started rolling the sheets of paper in his hands, curling them up into tight scrolls. He's too preoccupied with staring at Kame, now that he can take a good look at him from the front. "My notes from the lecture this afternoon. I made you a photocopy. Here." He sets them down on the desk. "When I told Professor Takizawa you were out with a cold, he just laughed at me."
"I'm not surprised," Jin says grimly. "He was the one responsible for me losing at least one and a half layers of clothing - something to do with his research, he said."
Koki can't help laughing at this, though he does start to wonder if perhaps the pair of them might have been better off under the tutelage of Professor Imai, whose reputation is marginally shinier than that of his partner. "You'll be back tomorrow, right?"
"If I haven't died from all that horrible medicine Kame keeps feeding me, I will be," Jin says, pulling a face.
There is a big bottle on the desk, filled with thick, nasty-looking black liquid that looks equally likely to kill Jin as cure him. Koki suspects that Kame is feeding the stuff to Jin purely to scare him back to health.
Kame smirks. "It's for your own good."
"Sadist."
"Is that any way to talk to your kind, gentle roommate who's been looking after you and nursing you so tenderly?"
Jin bats away the thermometer that Kame is waving in his direction. "Poisoning me with that vile stuff and making fun of me for having a red nose, you mean. Koki, do me a favour and take Kame to get something to eat, will you? When he's not training, he keeps forgetting meals so I have to drag him out and force him to clean his plate."
Koki looks at Kame, who shrugs and sets down the thermometer, saying, "He's only telling you this so I'll leave him in peace for a while, you realise."
"I'm supposed to rest, aren't I?" Jin says. "And you're supposed to live on more than air and coffee, so go with Koki and get something to eat, okay? You can talk about me over dinner."
Kame rolls his eyes. "I'm sure we can find a more worthy topic of discussion," he says, and before Koki can make a snappy comment of his own, he's being ushered out the door by Kame.
"Where do you want to-" Koki begins, but Kame interrupts, gesturing for Koki to be quiet until they're well away from his room.
"Sorry," Kame says when they pause by the big double doors. "I didn't want him to know we were still there, or he'd start trying to talk to us through the door and he'll just strain his voice worse. I'm hoping he'll be asleep by the time I get back."
Koki wonders just how long Kame plans to be out. It isn't that he objects to going for a meal with Jin's roommate - from the grand total of twenty minutes that Koki has spent in Kame's company, he's formed a pretty positive opinion of the guy. Not to mention, to be able to live with Jin and not get locked up for murder, Kame must have the patience of a saint.
But the fact remains: they don't know each other. Koki doesn't know how Kame spends his time because he's never seen him around on campus, doesn't know what kind of music he likes, or whether he has any interests outside sports, or even how he and Jin knew each other before they started rooming together. So what are they going to talk about?
At first, it's surprisingly easy. Koki tells Kame it's his choice where they go, so Kame picks a little Italian place he knows and loves, which he and Jin discovered one day when they got lost on their way back to the dorms. It's a ten minute walk through crowded streets; Koki doesn't need to worry about what to say because Kame can't hear him anyway.
It's when they're seated inside, shielded from the hordes of students and their neighbours alike, that Koki's problems begin.
For one thing, the waiter obviously fancies Kame, because he forgets to give Koki a menu, doesn't ask him if he wants a drink, and doesn't seem to care that he doesn't have a fork. Kame, on the other hand, receives not only the menu but a version to take home, three sets of cutlery - just in case - and a complimentary salad before he's even ordered anything, with hints of a free dessert to follow, should he so desire. Consequently, Kame spends half his time fending off the waiter's conversational advances rather than talking to Koki.
"I danced with him at a party once," Kame explains when the waiter finally remembers he has other tables to attend to. "Now he thinks we're about ready to move in together."
Koki regrets laughing at Kame's exasperated expression when he almost chokes on a mouthful of lasagne. Having given up on getting a word in edgeways, he'd been concentrating on his food and watching like a hawk to make sure Kame took some sustenance of his own.
Kame's an interesting one to watch, Koki thinks, in that he seems perfectly serene and composed one moment, eyes intense as he listens, like he's taking everything in and filing it away for future reference - yet the next, he has the wide, bright smile of an excited five year-old, one who's just been told that he can have a puppy for Christmas and has to clap and jump up and down to express the feelings he doesn't yet have the words for.
But Kame's excitement turns to embarrassment when he realises he left his room so quickly he forgot to pick up his wallet. Koki pays for them both.
"Sorry," Kame mumbles, red in the face. "I'll pay you when we get back."
He doesn't, though, because they return to find Jin fast asleep, and Kame can't possibly extract his wallet from the drawer without waking him, not with the way it creaks. Koki shrugs, says he'll get the money tomorrow, and heads back across the hall to write an essay on crowd behaviour. He doesn't get very far - he can't seem to picture a crowd with more than two people in it, and one of them looks like Kame.
-----
The third time Koki meets Kame, Koki's scrabbling around under his bed, trying to find the textbook he knows Ueda tripped over when he came home last night and kicked out of the way, and when there's a knock on the door, Koki jerks on instinct and hits his head on the frame. Rubbing the sore spot, he goes to open the door, thinking it's probably Jin come to borrow his notes again. If he's managed to drag himself out of bed, that is, because he still hasn't come back to class.
Of course it isn't Jin, because Jin's knock is rarely so hesitant. It's Kame on the other side of the door, looking slightly shame-faced and holding his wallet. "Sorry about the other day, I forgot," he says. "How much do I owe you?"
Koki's had enough of searching for the stupid textbook, which is probably all the way under the bed, right next to the wall. He can find it later. He vaguely recalls that Kame owes him money, though not how much. "Tell you what," he suggests, "how about you treat me to lunch instead?"
"Do it!" Jin yells through the open door across the hall. "And bring me back a sandwich or something, will ya? I'm starving!"
"If you're well enough to crawl out of bed, you're well enough to get your own food," Kame fires back, then turns to Koki. "Let's go before he talks me into buying him chocolate for medicinal purposes."
Koki doesn't want anything fancy for lunch, largely because he can't remember how much Kame owes him, so they swing by the cafeteria, grab whatever they can juggle between them and park themselves outside on the grass. Kame picks up an extra dessert for Jin, though he says he will be holding it hostage until Jin can prove he's caught up on the work he's missed. There's no malice in his words, merely some goodnatured teasing; Koki thinks it's sort of sweet, not in the least because Kame's looking at him as he speaks and the sunlight sparkles in his eyes.
"You're far too nice to that lazy roommate of yours," Koki jokes. "Which is he? Blackmailer or boyfriend?"
Kame grins. "Neither, just an old friend. We pretty much grew up together...only he grew more than me." He indicates his less-than-impressive stature with a hand over his head.
It isn't as if Koki's a giant himself. It doesn't feel like he dwarfs Kame, sitting opposite; nor does Kame make him feel small.
"Only physically," Koki says. Kame laughs and looks down at his lunch. "I'm serious. I don't care what he's studying - anyone who makes his roommate, old friend or not, flip through thousands of magazines for a project-"
"I really did volunteer," Kame interrupts. "Do you know how long it would've taken Jin to get through all of those? I didn't want them taking up space in our room for longer than I could help it."
Koki still thinks Kame is insane for reading all those Personal ads, but at least his reasoning is sound. "You're good to your old friends, aren't you?"
Kame swallows the last mouthful of rice, pillows his arms behind his head and leans back against the tree, giving Koki a lazy, comfortable smile that makes him feel warm and welcome. "I'm good to my new friends too," he says. "And I really will buy you lunch tomorrow, I promise."
It takes a while to dawn on Koki that not only has he somehow sleepwalked through the payment process, automatically paying for both his and Kame's lunches before Kame can take out his wallet, but he's bought Jin a chocolate pudding on Kame's behalf.
"Buy me a movie ticket and some popcorn instead," he suggests. "For yourself too. You can help me study crowd behaviour at the cinema tonight."
Kame's amused snort says he isn't fooled one bit by Koki's obvious attempt to ask him out...but the way he smiles and nods his head says he doesn't care.