[JE] [JEF #3] Photographic Memories 4/8
Title: JE Fleet III: Photographic Memories ch. 4/8
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame (though others are mentioned)
Rating: PG-13? Maybe occasionally bordering on R?
Total word count: Approx. 37,550
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit.
Summary: Mere hours away from Earth, the crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN have their leave cut short as Commodore Yamashita sends Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi on a top secret mission to Venus. But when Kame's past as the tactical advisor for the Fahngarlians catches up with him, the planet of love becomes the planet of war...
Chapter 4
There was definitely something to be said for staying on your own ship and not getting involved in other people's stupid missions, Jin thought. You were a lot less likely to get knocked out that way.
By the time he woke up, sore from slumping to the ground and irritable from the familiar stunner-induced headache, it was full dark. The lights were out and the windows were all closed: if there was anyone left inside the building, they were round the front.
And Jin wasn't going to check. Not now, when even standing up straight was an adventure all of its own. Whoever his assailant was, they'd left him lying by the wall, tucked neatly out of the way, but hadn't made any attempt to hurt him. They hadn't even bothered to search him, or they'd surely have removed his gun. It was as if he was completely inconsequential.
Inconsequential or not, he was relieved to be (relatively) unharmed. He pulled out his phone to check for damage - he'd landed on it, and figured he'd have a nice bruise on his chest by morning - and discovered that his inbox was completely full.
From the looks of things, Kame had been sending him messages for the last couple of hours.
There were missed calls as well, but those were from his other friends too, and there were so many lights blinking angrily at him that Jin was amazed he hadn't noticed any of this taking place. Though he *had* been unconscious at the time, so it was hardly his fault he'd been ignoring everyone.
Jin didn't want to wait around for more trouble to appear, and there was no way he was going to attempt to sneak inside. Trailing his fingers lightly along the wall for balance, he made his way out the courtyard. No one would see him on the unlit backstreets - if he wanted to catch a ride back to the hotel he was going to have to go round the front.
At least the lights were brighter there. A gaudy red sign, a glittering neon cracked heart, proclaimed the building to be the 'Heartbreak Club'. A smaller sign underneath declared that this was the best place to recover from your broken heart, and that in another hour, the doors would be open to help you start the healing process.
Jin's heart was perfectly intact, thank you very much - Kame had done an excellent repair job in it, which was only fair since he was the one responsible for breaking it in the first place - and he wasn't in the mood for dancing. He staggered far enough down the street that the crowds began to pick up again, and he could feel marginally safer as part of an anonymous herd.
A couple of hours later, and that herd would've made it near impossible to flag down one of the small, bright pink cabs, but it was early enough in the evening that most of the clubs weren't open yet and everyone was still working their way through the food and drink portion of the night. Jin hailed a cab with relative ease, and though the driver gave a him a dubious look - he was propped up against a streetlamp to ensure he remained upright and didn't fall in the road - they were soon on their way back to Cupid's Gate.
The backseat of the cab, intended for a cosy couple, was comfortably lined with fur and Jin was grateful to be able to collapse on something *soft*. Spending a couple of hours lying on the cold, hard ground hadn't done him any favours. The hot tub back in his hotel room was looking pretty good right now.
Despite his trembling hands, he took the opportunity to work his way through the text messages from Kame, beginning with the oldest, followed by the most recent. But that had been sent over thirty minutes ago, and Jin's inbox had given up the ghost after that. There was no indication that Kame was in any sort of trouble, at least - though from his recent eavesdropping session, Jin was firmly convinced otherwise - so he decided to call him.
The first word to come from Kame's end of the phone line was Jin's name, said in the tone of voice a starving man might use when faced with an all-you-can eat buffet. Jin's discomfort was temporarily elbowed aside by the delicious warmth that resulted.
The next words were of a more practical nature, though no less desperate. "Where are you? Are you hurt? Did you get my messages?"
"In a cab - I'll be back at the hotel soon. I haven't read all your messages yet but you can tell me what I missed when I get back."
Kame sighed audibly down the line. "Not much. Most of them were variations on 'where the hell are you, you idiot?' so you probably don't need to read those. Are you all right?"
Jin rubbed the back of his head with his free hand. "More or less. And you?"
"I'm okay now that I know you're safe," Kame assured him. "I'll be waiting in the room."
They exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries - there was only so much Jin could say in a cab with the driver hanging attentively on every word - and hung up, leaving him to send quick messages to his other friends to assure them that he was fine.
Before long, Jin found himself walking back through the lobby, trying hard to ignore the cherub statues. He didn't need another dose of paranoia. When he reached the haven of Room 369, Kame met him at the door, looked him over cautiously, then enfolded him in his arms.
Jin had no objection whatsoever to this. He sagged gratefully against his partner, soaking up affection like a sponge as they stood in the doorway. Kame kicked the door closed and locked it with the hand that wasn't currently resting at the nape of Jin's neck.
"You're not supposed to run off and get into trouble by yourself." Kame's chastisement, whispered in Jin's ear, was tinged with panic.
But then, Kame hadn't been alone for two years...not until Jin and the rest of the KAT-TUN crew had fallen under the hypnotic influence of a killer space station. It wasn't unexpected for him to worry.
"At least you knew where I was," he continued. "But when I got back to the table you'd disappeared and you weren't answering your phone and-"
Jin squeezed him tighter. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But I need to talk to you."
Kame untangled himself before Jin could crack his ribs. "Still fancy that hot tub?"
-----
Ten minutes later, both men were sprawled on the floor of their enormous bathroom, protected from the cold tile by warm, fluffy towels, as they waited for the tub to fill up. It was a long, noisy process - which was precisely why Kame had suggested it. The fall of water muffled their voices and minimised the risk of them being overheard.
He didn't think it was likely their hotel room was bugged, but he'd had Jin check it out anyway. The other captain was notorious for hiding listening devices all over the ship, apparently for the innocuous purpose of recording the results of his crew's tendency to burst into song at random moments. To be fair, he'd cut back a lot after Yamapi had played him a few secret recordings of his own.
At any rate, they couldn't have smuggled any countersurveillance tools passed the Eros City security, so checking manually was their only option.
Jin hadn't found anything: nevertheless, Kame felt he was justified in being at least a little paranoid. It was far from being the only day in his life when someone had tried to kill him - but it was the first time on a planet better known for love than war.
Better safe than sorry: they'd kept their guns concealed while disrobing, also, and these were carefully hidden within easy reach under the towel rack.
"You really think someone's going to try to kill us when we're in the bath?" Jin murmured.
Kame shrugged. "Why not? It's the perfect time to do it. But no, I don't think we're likely to be attacked here. The cheap motel down the street, maybe, but not here. It'd cost too much to get the blood out of these carpets."
Jin resisted the urge to point out that there was no carpet in the bathroom, and contented himself with pouring ridiculously expensive bath foam (paid for by the military) into the fast-flowing water. Kame jogged his elbow just as he was about to replace the cap on the bottle, causing him to spill even more of the strawberry-scented liquid into the tub.
"We'll have bubbles up to the ceiling now!"
Kame flashed Jin an impish grin - and a lot of leg. "I know!"
He fished around in his toiletries bag, emerging with an extensive collection of ties, bands and clips, and tied first his own hair then Jin's up in an odd bun arrangement. Sure, it made them look like a couple of glamour girls getting ready for a night on the town instead of a couple of hardbitten JE Fleet captains, but it wasn't as if there was anyone around to see.
Unless there really were cameras, of course. But living with the Fahngarlians and suffering the indignity of having his legs shaved for half a year had put paid to any lingering shame Kame might have possessed.
He dropped back to the floor to curl up next to Jin while they waited for the bath to fill. "So? Where did you go?"
Jin shook his head. "You first."
"Fine. But when I got back to the table, the waiter had a go at me for not leaving a tip and two old women told me you'd gotten fed up with my pointless acts of self-sacrifice and insensitive bouts of jealousy and left me for some girl you'd suddenly started stalking. So your story had better be good."
"The story's good but the ending's terrible."
"Mine goes the other way round." Kame dipped his toes experimentally in the mountain of foam that was starting to rise from the water. "I made it up to the staffroom, which was empty, and "borrowed" some chef's whites - including hat - from the locker of some guy named 'Bambi'."
Jin made a shadow-puppet of a deer.
"Not that guy. I'm pretty sure they don't allow creatures from a thousand year-old Disney movie to work in restaurants.
"Anyway, I ran into a couple of people after that but nobody gave me a second look. Well, there was this one sleazy server who tried to hit on me-" Kame hurriedly closed the book on that sentence, "but...uh...I assumed that they'd be very busy this week and not really have time to pay attention to anyone, especially if they had to take on temporary staff for the occasion. I was wearing the right colours, so nobody noticed that I didn't belong."
"You don't even look Italian!"
"Neither do most Venusians. I don't think they were hiring based on ethnicity. Besides, nothing wrong with a Japanese chef working in an Italian restaurant."
"On Venus."
"On Venus," Kame said resignedly. They were never going to finish before he had to turn the taps off, at this rate. "I spent a lot of time digging around upstairs: evidently, some of the staff live there because I found a couple of bedrooms at the back. One of them had a rolled-up futon and a travel bag - nothing incriminating in itself, but the bag still had its luggage label on from the point of departure: Tokyo Central Spaceport. Shuttle flight number matches up with the one Yamapi gave us."
"Did you search the bag?"
"Obviously," Kame scorned. "But not then. I was just looking at the label when I heard voices outside the door, so I hid under the bed."
"In whites?"
Kame had the decency to look faintly guilty. "More like 'off-whites' now. I didn't exactly have time to stop and do laundry, did I?
"I had to wait twenty minutes under the bed while these two guys came in to get changed. I could be wrong but I think one of them left in a tutu. Unfortunately they didn't have anything interesting to say, not until one queried the futon and the other said it was there for Maki, then made an offhand comment about Japanese houseguests."
"Maki?"
"Maybe it's our girl's real name...or just another alias, I don't know. When the guys left I checked her bag, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Clothes, brush, toiletries - nothing with her name on it. However..."
Kame paused to check the temperature of the water and adjust the taps accordingly, provoking an impatient whine from Jin.
"Wait a minute: I have to show you something." Kame crawled across to the pile of clothing under the towel rack, which in addition to holding their guns also concealed his personal data pad. The casing was plastic, so it was safe enough to have in the bathroom. "Take a look at this."
He unlocked the photo album - the pad had a camera function, so Kame liked to keep it on him in case he suddenly got the urge to capture the moment - and flipped through to the latest. He stuck the pad under Jin's nose.
"Here. This is a picture of the photograph I found in the bag. It was kept in an envelope, wrapped inside a shirt. Any of these people look familiar to you?"
Jin forgot to breathe for a second. The central figure in the photograph was immediately recognisable to both of them, though Jin had been the one following her to the Heartbreak Club.
To her left was a man he'd never seen before - Japanese, and solidly built, with thick dark hair and wary eyes.
To her right was someone else he'd seen that afternoon - Ikuta Toma.
"Never seen the guy on the left," Jin said slowly. "But the one on the right...I know him. Or I did, a decade ago. Ikuta Toma, used to work for old man Kitagawa just like me and Pi. I don't know what he does now, though."
"Are you sure he's still alive?"
Jin nodded emphatically. "Positive, or I saw a ghost this afternoon."
And he was certain Toma hadn't been a ghost. He'd have noticed, being quite sensitive to these things. So sensitive, in fact, that he'd once run screaming out of a haunted house when, as teenagers, he and Yamapi had been sent to pull a job in one of those retro theme-parks. Pi hadn't stopped laughing for days.
That caught Kame's attention in a serious way. "Tell me."
Jin pointed at the tower of bubbles, which was threatening to topple over and swamp them both. "I think we need to stop the water now."
Grudgingly, Kame leaned over and turned off the taps. To compensate for the sudden loss of covering noise, he hit the button for the hotel's own radio station, which - perhaps not unexpectedly - played nothing but love songs.
Bad love songs.
Jin groaned, slid into the water, and contemplated ducking his head under to avoid the sap-laden caterwauling.
"Don't even think about it. You are not going to drown yourself and leave me alone to suffer through," Kame checked the screen on the wall, "the Greatest Hits of the Eurovision Song Contest."
He climbed down into the tub to sit beside Jin, causing one of the bubble towers to collapse. Thanks to the jets, the bath seemed more foam than water, and the heat and gentle pressure felt soothing against his skin. It was easy to sink in, to relax and let his troubles be washed away, but Kame knew they had work to do.
Well, that's what his *brain* knew. The rest of his body wasn't so sure. It liked being next to Jin, joined where their skin met, and it had other ideas about what they needed to do next.
Kame picked up a mound of bubbles and washed one slippery hand across Jin's shoulders, curling his fingers inwards to turn the other man to face him. Was it his imagination, or was there hesitation in Jin's movement, a barely detectable lag as he followed Kame's guiding caress?
He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. "You know," he murmured, pressing his lips close to Jin's ear, "even if there *are* cameras in here, there's so much foam we could be hiding the entire crew in the tub and no one would ever notice."
There was a slight ripple in the water as Jin kicked out in the bath, as Kame knew he would, just to check that there really wasn't anyone buried under the snowy layer of bubbles.
An amused smile playing about his lips, Kame stilled Jin's legs, lungs, and everything else by climbing into his lap, straddling him. It wasn't entirely comfortable - the steps in the tub meant that his knees were pressed in an awkward position against the edge - but by doing so, he provided cover for his partner, shielding him from any unseen cameras.
Jin let out a shuddering breath and allowed his forehead to meet Kame's where the other man leaned forward.
"Tell me," Kame whispered, wrapping his arms around Jin's neck to keep himself seated. "Tell me what happened this afternoon."
Water swished and swirled between them: both men were drowning in the scent of strawberries, sweetly delicious and spread by the steam to trickle down the mirror's glass. Foam pushed its way into the narrow crevice that was all that separated their bodies, making their chests slick and slippery.
But Kame's proximity wasn't having its usual effect upon Jin - on the contrary, it seemed to be making him withdraw, retreat into himself as though he would hide away, and that worried Kame.
For Jin's part, he was in two minds about what to tell his partner. Because if what he'd heard at the club meant what he thought it might, things were only going to get worse for them - especially for Kame.
Kame's solution to the little problem he'd encountered was to touch his lips to Jin's, alternating his questions with the lightest of kisses, a brush of friendly encouragement. It didn't help. Jin placed one hand on Kame's chest and nudged him gently away.
"No?" Kame asked, his voice soft. He wasn't offended, merely curious. Between the heat generated by their position and the temperature of the room, Jin should've been flushed, or at least of healthy colour.
But he was pale, something Kame had overlooked till now.
"Sorry." Jin's tone was weary and worn as his skin. "How about I skip right to my story's terrible ending and tell you about how I wound up stunned outside a nightclub?"
Kame withdrew, but only as far as the length of his arms, which were still clasped behind Jin's neck. "Stunned?" he repeated.
"Yeah. It's kind of a passion killer. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault." Kame blinked. "Actually, maybe it is. What were you doing outside a nightclub?"
Jin squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and launched into a detailed description of everything that had happened since Kame had left their table. (Including the entire conversation with the two elderly ladies.) He wasn't sure he remembered everything, though. Getting stunned didn't do much for his short-term memory.
Kame's emotions ran the gamut from amused right through to horrified. Finally, he said, "Poor Ueda. I guess that confirms it: they were aiming for me and shot him by mistake. I wish I hadn't lent him my hair dye..."
He sounded so disconsolate that Jin forced himself to loosen up enough to place his hands high on Kame's back and gently urge him forwards.
Kame buried his face in the crook of Jin's neck and held still, just breathing in the heady combination of strawberry, Jin's natural musk...and the sickly sweet tang that had 'stunner' written all over it.
"You couldn't have known," Jin comforted him. "No one could've. But they're not likely to mistake the two of you again - I think Ueda will be okay." He closed his eyes. The next part was going to be difficult. "Worry about yourself instead."
"It's not like it's the first time someone's tried to kill me, Jin."
Jin's eyes flew open. "No, but this is the first time I'm worried about them succeeding!"
There wasn't anything Kame could say or do to assure Jin that he wasn't going to get himself killed before Sunday. He wasn't, to be honest, entirely certain of his continued survival himself. For all his earlier bravado about how unlikely it was that an assassination attempt would take place inside their hotel, Kame was forced to consider that given the time constraints, his pursuers might well be desperate enough to risk attacking him in a slightly more secure location than an open square.
But a problem shared was a problem halved, and since Jin wasn't going anywhere without him, Kame could allow himself to at least try to be positive.
"We need to get inside that club," he stated. "If they're using it as a base of operations - wait, do they know you're with me?"
Jin gave him a disbelieving look. "How am I supposed to know?"
Kame ignored him. "Forget I said that: if they'd known, they'd hardly have left you just lying on the ground. They'd have used you against me. *I'd* have used you against me."
"So they stunned me because I was hanging around the club when it wasn't open. How is that good customer service?"
"You were lurking suspiciously," Kame pointed out. "I don't think they were worried about losing your custom, so much as any electronic equipment or cash."
Jin sulked, but to be fair, he couldn't deny the implications.
"What I'm trying to figure out is: have they moved on? Because if they don't associate you with me, they have no reason to do so, and we can go check out the club."
"Definitely not." Jin didn't usually try to enforce his will upon anyone, even in his capacity as captain, but this time he was determined that Kame was going to listen to him. "What we should be doing is going to the station, contacting Yamapi as soon as he arrives and getting ourselves the hell off this planet before anyone realises you're gone!"
"Aren't you forgetting something? The reason we came here in the first place." Kame finally yielded to the demands of his knees, and removed himself from Jin's lap, resuming his seat beside him. "At least we know the photograph's still here."
"I don't think that has anything to do with it at all," Jin said darkly. "They're using it as bait for you, Kame. Toma made that pretty clear."
"It's a good choice of bait if they want to get to me," Kame mused. "The retrieval mission is one that Admiral Takki can only entrust to a very short list of people, and the timing's convenient - we're supposed to be on leave. Everyone knows we were going to Earth-"
"-Where we'd be followed at a "discreet" distance by security the entire time," Jin finished for him. "They've got you here, supposedly without backup and unarmed, and they've obviously got a weapons stash."
"Except that we're not alone, and we're not unarmed." Kame's brow furrowed in concentration. "I don't think Yamapi gave us the full story."
"He wasn't lying," Jin offered. "I can tell."
"I'm sure he told us all he knew." Kame seized Jin's hand as his thought processes grew more frenzied, light dawning on him with sickening, feverish reality. "But not all Admiral Takizawa and Earth President Tsubasa know. I think they're well aware there's a lot more to this than a stolen photograph. That's why we got the cryptic message, and those little gizmos from Arashi.
"I think we're being used, Jin."
"To do what?"
Kame shook his head. "I don't know - yet. But we're going to find out. If people are trying to kill me, I'd at least like to know why!"
Series: JE Fleet
Fandom: KAT-TUN
Pairing: Akame (though others are mentioned)
Rating: PG-13? Maybe occasionally bordering on R?
Total word count: Approx. 37,550
Genre: AU, sci-fi, crack
Disclaimer: Not mine, dammit.
Summary: Mere hours away from Earth, the crew of the JE Fleet ship KAT-TUN have their leave cut short as Commodore Yamashita sends Captains Akanishi and Kamenashi on a top secret mission to Venus. But when Kame's past as the tactical advisor for the Fahngarlians catches up with him, the planet of love becomes the planet of war...
Chapter 4
There was definitely something to be said for staying on your own ship and not getting involved in other people's stupid missions, Jin thought. You were a lot less likely to get knocked out that way.
By the time he woke up, sore from slumping to the ground and irritable from the familiar stunner-induced headache, it was full dark. The lights were out and the windows were all closed: if there was anyone left inside the building, they were round the front.
And Jin wasn't going to check. Not now, when even standing up straight was an adventure all of its own. Whoever his assailant was, they'd left him lying by the wall, tucked neatly out of the way, but hadn't made any attempt to hurt him. They hadn't even bothered to search him, or they'd surely have removed his gun. It was as if he was completely inconsequential.
Inconsequential or not, he was relieved to be (relatively) unharmed. He pulled out his phone to check for damage - he'd landed on it, and figured he'd have a nice bruise on his chest by morning - and discovered that his inbox was completely full.
From the looks of things, Kame had been sending him messages for the last couple of hours.
There were missed calls as well, but those were from his other friends too, and there were so many lights blinking angrily at him that Jin was amazed he hadn't noticed any of this taking place. Though he *had* been unconscious at the time, so it was hardly his fault he'd been ignoring everyone.
Jin didn't want to wait around for more trouble to appear, and there was no way he was going to attempt to sneak inside. Trailing his fingers lightly along the wall for balance, he made his way out the courtyard. No one would see him on the unlit backstreets - if he wanted to catch a ride back to the hotel he was going to have to go round the front.
At least the lights were brighter there. A gaudy red sign, a glittering neon cracked heart, proclaimed the building to be the 'Heartbreak Club'. A smaller sign underneath declared that this was the best place to recover from your broken heart, and that in another hour, the doors would be open to help you start the healing process.
Jin's heart was perfectly intact, thank you very much - Kame had done an excellent repair job in it, which was only fair since he was the one responsible for breaking it in the first place - and he wasn't in the mood for dancing. He staggered far enough down the street that the crowds began to pick up again, and he could feel marginally safer as part of an anonymous herd.
A couple of hours later, and that herd would've made it near impossible to flag down one of the small, bright pink cabs, but it was early enough in the evening that most of the clubs weren't open yet and everyone was still working their way through the food and drink portion of the night. Jin hailed a cab with relative ease, and though the driver gave a him a dubious look - he was propped up against a streetlamp to ensure he remained upright and didn't fall in the road - they were soon on their way back to Cupid's Gate.
The backseat of the cab, intended for a cosy couple, was comfortably lined with fur and Jin was grateful to be able to collapse on something *soft*. Spending a couple of hours lying on the cold, hard ground hadn't done him any favours. The hot tub back in his hotel room was looking pretty good right now.
Despite his trembling hands, he took the opportunity to work his way through the text messages from Kame, beginning with the oldest, followed by the most recent. But that had been sent over thirty minutes ago, and Jin's inbox had given up the ghost after that. There was no indication that Kame was in any sort of trouble, at least - though from his recent eavesdropping session, Jin was firmly convinced otherwise - so he decided to call him.
The first word to come from Kame's end of the phone line was Jin's name, said in the tone of voice a starving man might use when faced with an all-you-can eat buffet. Jin's discomfort was temporarily elbowed aside by the delicious warmth that resulted.
The next words were of a more practical nature, though no less desperate. "Where are you? Are you hurt? Did you get my messages?"
"In a cab - I'll be back at the hotel soon. I haven't read all your messages yet but you can tell me what I missed when I get back."
Kame sighed audibly down the line. "Not much. Most of them were variations on 'where the hell are you, you idiot?' so you probably don't need to read those. Are you all right?"
Jin rubbed the back of his head with his free hand. "More or less. And you?"
"I'm okay now that I know you're safe," Kame assured him. "I'll be waiting in the room."
They exchanged a few meaningless pleasantries - there was only so much Jin could say in a cab with the driver hanging attentively on every word - and hung up, leaving him to send quick messages to his other friends to assure them that he was fine.
Before long, Jin found himself walking back through the lobby, trying hard to ignore the cherub statues. He didn't need another dose of paranoia. When he reached the haven of Room 369, Kame met him at the door, looked him over cautiously, then enfolded him in his arms.
Jin had no objection whatsoever to this. He sagged gratefully against his partner, soaking up affection like a sponge as they stood in the doorway. Kame kicked the door closed and locked it with the hand that wasn't currently resting at the nape of Jin's neck.
"You're not supposed to run off and get into trouble by yourself." Kame's chastisement, whispered in Jin's ear, was tinged with panic.
But then, Kame hadn't been alone for two years...not until Jin and the rest of the KAT-TUN crew had fallen under the hypnotic influence of a killer space station. It wasn't unexpected for him to worry.
"At least you knew where I was," he continued. "But when I got back to the table you'd disappeared and you weren't answering your phone and-"
Jin squeezed him tighter. "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. But I need to talk to you."
Kame untangled himself before Jin could crack his ribs. "Still fancy that hot tub?"
-----
Ten minutes later, both men were sprawled on the floor of their enormous bathroom, protected from the cold tile by warm, fluffy towels, as they waited for the tub to fill up. It was a long, noisy process - which was precisely why Kame had suggested it. The fall of water muffled their voices and minimised the risk of them being overheard.
He didn't think it was likely their hotel room was bugged, but he'd had Jin check it out anyway. The other captain was notorious for hiding listening devices all over the ship, apparently for the innocuous purpose of recording the results of his crew's tendency to burst into song at random moments. To be fair, he'd cut back a lot after Yamapi had played him a few secret recordings of his own.
At any rate, they couldn't have smuggled any countersurveillance tools passed the Eros City security, so checking manually was their only option.
Jin hadn't found anything: nevertheless, Kame felt he was justified in being at least a little paranoid. It was far from being the only day in his life when someone had tried to kill him - but it was the first time on a planet better known for love than war.
Better safe than sorry: they'd kept their guns concealed while disrobing, also, and these were carefully hidden within easy reach under the towel rack.
"You really think someone's going to try to kill us when we're in the bath?" Jin murmured.
Kame shrugged. "Why not? It's the perfect time to do it. But no, I don't think we're likely to be attacked here. The cheap motel down the street, maybe, but not here. It'd cost too much to get the blood out of these carpets."
Jin resisted the urge to point out that there was no carpet in the bathroom, and contented himself with pouring ridiculously expensive bath foam (paid for by the military) into the fast-flowing water. Kame jogged his elbow just as he was about to replace the cap on the bottle, causing him to spill even more of the strawberry-scented liquid into the tub.
"We'll have bubbles up to the ceiling now!"
Kame flashed Jin an impish grin - and a lot of leg. "I know!"
He fished around in his toiletries bag, emerging with an extensive collection of ties, bands and clips, and tied first his own hair then Jin's up in an odd bun arrangement. Sure, it made them look like a couple of glamour girls getting ready for a night on the town instead of a couple of hardbitten JE Fleet captains, but it wasn't as if there was anyone around to see.
Unless there really were cameras, of course. But living with the Fahngarlians and suffering the indignity of having his legs shaved for half a year had put paid to any lingering shame Kame might have possessed.
He dropped back to the floor to curl up next to Jin while they waited for the bath to fill. "So? Where did you go?"
Jin shook his head. "You first."
"Fine. But when I got back to the table, the waiter had a go at me for not leaving a tip and two old women told me you'd gotten fed up with my pointless acts of self-sacrifice and insensitive bouts of jealousy and left me for some girl you'd suddenly started stalking. So your story had better be good."
"The story's good but the ending's terrible."
"Mine goes the other way round." Kame dipped his toes experimentally in the mountain of foam that was starting to rise from the water. "I made it up to the staffroom, which was empty, and "borrowed" some chef's whites - including hat - from the locker of some guy named 'Bambi'."
Jin made a shadow-puppet of a deer.
"Not that guy. I'm pretty sure they don't allow creatures from a thousand year-old Disney movie to work in restaurants.
"Anyway, I ran into a couple of people after that but nobody gave me a second look. Well, there was this one sleazy server who tried to hit on me-" Kame hurriedly closed the book on that sentence, "but...uh...I assumed that they'd be very busy this week and not really have time to pay attention to anyone, especially if they had to take on temporary staff for the occasion. I was wearing the right colours, so nobody noticed that I didn't belong."
"You don't even look Italian!"
"Neither do most Venusians. I don't think they were hiring based on ethnicity. Besides, nothing wrong with a Japanese chef working in an Italian restaurant."
"On Venus."
"On Venus," Kame said resignedly. They were never going to finish before he had to turn the taps off, at this rate. "I spent a lot of time digging around upstairs: evidently, some of the staff live there because I found a couple of bedrooms at the back. One of them had a rolled-up futon and a travel bag - nothing incriminating in itself, but the bag still had its luggage label on from the point of departure: Tokyo Central Spaceport. Shuttle flight number matches up with the one Yamapi gave us."
"Did you search the bag?"
"Obviously," Kame scorned. "But not then. I was just looking at the label when I heard voices outside the door, so I hid under the bed."
"In whites?"
Kame had the decency to look faintly guilty. "More like 'off-whites' now. I didn't exactly have time to stop and do laundry, did I?
"I had to wait twenty minutes under the bed while these two guys came in to get changed. I could be wrong but I think one of them left in a tutu. Unfortunately they didn't have anything interesting to say, not until one queried the futon and the other said it was there for Maki, then made an offhand comment about Japanese houseguests."
"Maki?"
"Maybe it's our girl's real name...or just another alias, I don't know. When the guys left I checked her bag, but there was nothing out of the ordinary. Clothes, brush, toiletries - nothing with her name on it. However..."
Kame paused to check the temperature of the water and adjust the taps accordingly, provoking an impatient whine from Jin.
"Wait a minute: I have to show you something." Kame crawled across to the pile of clothing under the towel rack, which in addition to holding their guns also concealed his personal data pad. The casing was plastic, so it was safe enough to have in the bathroom. "Take a look at this."
He unlocked the photo album - the pad had a camera function, so Kame liked to keep it on him in case he suddenly got the urge to capture the moment - and flipped through to the latest. He stuck the pad under Jin's nose.
"Here. This is a picture of the photograph I found in the bag. It was kept in an envelope, wrapped inside a shirt. Any of these people look familiar to you?"
Jin forgot to breathe for a second. The central figure in the photograph was immediately recognisable to both of them, though Jin had been the one following her to the Heartbreak Club.
To her left was a man he'd never seen before - Japanese, and solidly built, with thick dark hair and wary eyes.
To her right was someone else he'd seen that afternoon - Ikuta Toma.
"Never seen the guy on the left," Jin said slowly. "But the one on the right...I know him. Or I did, a decade ago. Ikuta Toma, used to work for old man Kitagawa just like me and Pi. I don't know what he does now, though."
"Are you sure he's still alive?"
Jin nodded emphatically. "Positive, or I saw a ghost this afternoon."
And he was certain Toma hadn't been a ghost. He'd have noticed, being quite sensitive to these things. So sensitive, in fact, that he'd once run screaming out of a haunted house when, as teenagers, he and Yamapi had been sent to pull a job in one of those retro theme-parks. Pi hadn't stopped laughing for days.
That caught Kame's attention in a serious way. "Tell me."
Jin pointed at the tower of bubbles, which was threatening to topple over and swamp them both. "I think we need to stop the water now."
Grudgingly, Kame leaned over and turned off the taps. To compensate for the sudden loss of covering noise, he hit the button for the hotel's own radio station, which - perhaps not unexpectedly - played nothing but love songs.
Bad love songs.
Jin groaned, slid into the water, and contemplated ducking his head under to avoid the sap-laden caterwauling.
"Don't even think about it. You are not going to drown yourself and leave me alone to suffer through," Kame checked the screen on the wall, "the Greatest Hits of the Eurovision Song Contest."
He climbed down into the tub to sit beside Jin, causing one of the bubble towers to collapse. Thanks to the jets, the bath seemed more foam than water, and the heat and gentle pressure felt soothing against his skin. It was easy to sink in, to relax and let his troubles be washed away, but Kame knew they had work to do.
Well, that's what his *brain* knew. The rest of his body wasn't so sure. It liked being next to Jin, joined where their skin met, and it had other ideas about what they needed to do next.
Kame picked up a mound of bubbles and washed one slippery hand across Jin's shoulders, curling his fingers inwards to turn the other man to face him. Was it his imagination, or was there hesitation in Jin's movement, a barely detectable lag as he followed Kame's guiding caress?
He dismissed the thought with a shake of his head. "You know," he murmured, pressing his lips close to Jin's ear, "even if there *are* cameras in here, there's so much foam we could be hiding the entire crew in the tub and no one would ever notice."
There was a slight ripple in the water as Jin kicked out in the bath, as Kame knew he would, just to check that there really wasn't anyone buried under the snowy layer of bubbles.
An amused smile playing about his lips, Kame stilled Jin's legs, lungs, and everything else by climbing into his lap, straddling him. It wasn't entirely comfortable - the steps in the tub meant that his knees were pressed in an awkward position against the edge - but by doing so, he provided cover for his partner, shielding him from any unseen cameras.
Jin let out a shuddering breath and allowed his forehead to meet Kame's where the other man leaned forward.
"Tell me," Kame whispered, wrapping his arms around Jin's neck to keep himself seated. "Tell me what happened this afternoon."
Water swished and swirled between them: both men were drowning in the scent of strawberries, sweetly delicious and spread by the steam to trickle down the mirror's glass. Foam pushed its way into the narrow crevice that was all that separated their bodies, making their chests slick and slippery.
But Kame's proximity wasn't having its usual effect upon Jin - on the contrary, it seemed to be making him withdraw, retreat into himself as though he would hide away, and that worried Kame.
For Jin's part, he was in two minds about what to tell his partner. Because if what he'd heard at the club meant what he thought it might, things were only going to get worse for them - especially for Kame.
Kame's solution to the little problem he'd encountered was to touch his lips to Jin's, alternating his questions with the lightest of kisses, a brush of friendly encouragement. It didn't help. Jin placed one hand on Kame's chest and nudged him gently away.
"No?" Kame asked, his voice soft. He wasn't offended, merely curious. Between the heat generated by their position and the temperature of the room, Jin should've been flushed, or at least of healthy colour.
But he was pale, something Kame had overlooked till now.
"Sorry." Jin's tone was weary and worn as his skin. "How about I skip right to my story's terrible ending and tell you about how I wound up stunned outside a nightclub?"
Kame withdrew, but only as far as the length of his arms, which were still clasped behind Jin's neck. "Stunned?" he repeated.
"Yeah. It's kind of a passion killer. I'm sorry."
"Not your fault." Kame blinked. "Actually, maybe it is. What were you doing outside a nightclub?"
Jin squared his shoulders, took a deep breath, and launched into a detailed description of everything that had happened since Kame had left their table. (Including the entire conversation with the two elderly ladies.) He wasn't sure he remembered everything, though. Getting stunned didn't do much for his short-term memory.
Kame's emotions ran the gamut from amused right through to horrified. Finally, he said, "Poor Ueda. I guess that confirms it: they were aiming for me and shot him by mistake. I wish I hadn't lent him my hair dye..."
He sounded so disconsolate that Jin forced himself to loosen up enough to place his hands high on Kame's back and gently urge him forwards.
Kame buried his face in the crook of Jin's neck and held still, just breathing in the heady combination of strawberry, Jin's natural musk...and the sickly sweet tang that had 'stunner' written all over it.
"You couldn't have known," Jin comforted him. "No one could've. But they're not likely to mistake the two of you again - I think Ueda will be okay." He closed his eyes. The next part was going to be difficult. "Worry about yourself instead."
"It's not like it's the first time someone's tried to kill me, Jin."
Jin's eyes flew open. "No, but this is the first time I'm worried about them succeeding!"
There wasn't anything Kame could say or do to assure Jin that he wasn't going to get himself killed before Sunday. He wasn't, to be honest, entirely certain of his continued survival himself. For all his earlier bravado about how unlikely it was that an assassination attempt would take place inside their hotel, Kame was forced to consider that given the time constraints, his pursuers might well be desperate enough to risk attacking him in a slightly more secure location than an open square.
But a problem shared was a problem halved, and since Jin wasn't going anywhere without him, Kame could allow himself to at least try to be positive.
"We need to get inside that club," he stated. "If they're using it as a base of operations - wait, do they know you're with me?"
Jin gave him a disbelieving look. "How am I supposed to know?"
Kame ignored him. "Forget I said that: if they'd known, they'd hardly have left you just lying on the ground. They'd have used you against me. *I'd* have used you against me."
"So they stunned me because I was hanging around the club when it wasn't open. How is that good customer service?"
"You were lurking suspiciously," Kame pointed out. "I don't think they were worried about losing your custom, so much as any electronic equipment or cash."
Jin sulked, but to be fair, he couldn't deny the implications.
"What I'm trying to figure out is: have they moved on? Because if they don't associate you with me, they have no reason to do so, and we can go check out the club."
"Definitely not." Jin didn't usually try to enforce his will upon anyone, even in his capacity as captain, but this time he was determined that Kame was going to listen to him. "What we should be doing is going to the station, contacting Yamapi as soon as he arrives and getting ourselves the hell off this planet before anyone realises you're gone!"
"Aren't you forgetting something? The reason we came here in the first place." Kame finally yielded to the demands of his knees, and removed himself from Jin's lap, resuming his seat beside him. "At least we know the photograph's still here."
"I don't think that has anything to do with it at all," Jin said darkly. "They're using it as bait for you, Kame. Toma made that pretty clear."
"It's a good choice of bait if they want to get to me," Kame mused. "The retrieval mission is one that Admiral Takki can only entrust to a very short list of people, and the timing's convenient - we're supposed to be on leave. Everyone knows we were going to Earth-"
"-Where we'd be followed at a "discreet" distance by security the entire time," Jin finished for him. "They've got you here, supposedly without backup and unarmed, and they've obviously got a weapons stash."
"Except that we're not alone, and we're not unarmed." Kame's brow furrowed in concentration. "I don't think Yamapi gave us the full story."
"He wasn't lying," Jin offered. "I can tell."
"I'm sure he told us all he knew." Kame seized Jin's hand as his thought processes grew more frenzied, light dawning on him with sickening, feverish reality. "But not all Admiral Takizawa and Earth President Tsubasa know. I think they're well aware there's a lot more to this than a stolen photograph. That's why we got the cryptic message, and those little gizmos from Arashi.
"I think we're being used, Jin."
"To do what?"
Kame shook his head. "I don't know - yet. But we're going to find out. If people are trying to kill me, I'd at least like to know why!"