One day, I will post something constructive. Today is not that day.
Title: Fix
Pairing: Jyabura/Kaku
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,167
Summary: It's a never-ending cycle: Jyabura screws things up and Kaku puts them back together.
A/N: I promise I'll eventually write something longer than like two pages.
Living with Jyabura is mostly a long parade of repairs: he breaks things, damages things, ruins things, screws things up, and Kaku sighs the long and tortured sigh of someone who has been through all this before and not for the last time before getting up and going to fix it.
Of course, Kaku has spent considerable chunks of his life coexisting in the same space as Jyabura before, but never previous to their…unemployment did he realize how labor-intensive it is to hold the world together while Jyabura is in it. And he doesn’t want to say that it’s like taking care of Jyabura, because it’s not. It’s like taking care of everything else. And it’s a full-time job, with no benefits, and the pay is crap.
He could always let someone else do it, but no one else would.
And that’s why it’s too-early-in-the-damn-morning again and something is burning in the kitchen, and Kaku has to get out of bed and fix this before the entire building catches aflame. He sighs the too-familiar world-weary sigh and grabs his robe from the hook by the door, pulling it on over his t-shirt and boxers on his way out to the kitchen, and when he shoves open the door, Jyabura is standing in front of the stove in apparent consternation as smoke billows from a pan of something that is possibly eggs and definitely on fire.
Kaku snatches a dishtowel from the rack, hip-checks Jyabura out of the way, and wraps the towel around the handle of the pan, lifting it from the range and dumping it into the sink. He’s running water into the pan and over the smoldering mess clogging the drain when Jyabura recovers enough to snarl “I was gonna eat that.”
And Kaku almost has to laugh, except that he doesn’t, and he says “No you weren’t,” and plunks the mostly clean pan back onto the stove before turning around with intent to go back to bed, because he isn’t tired but he isn’t going to stand around here waiting for Jyabura to reply.
But then Jyabura opens his big mouth again, and he says “Will you quit fucking doing that?”
And Kaku stops walking. Normally he wouldn’t have stopped; he would have kept on going right back into his room and thrown the quilt over his head and tried to sleep some more and forgotten all about it until the next disaster, but this time Jyabura doesn’t sound angry or sullen or exasperated or any of the emotions Kaku has come to expect hearing in Jyabura’s voice as he walks away. Instead, he sounds…troubled, and unsure, and not as loud as he had probably meant to be.
“Quit doing what?” Kaku asks, against all his better instincts, and turns back around.
Jyabura stares at him, momentarily looking as though he wasn’t sure he’d said anything at all until Kaku confirmed it for him, and also as though he really wasn’t expecting a response. Quickly enough, he collects himself enough to scowl. “Correcting me,” he says at last. “You keep fixing shit the way you want it and telling me what I will and won’t do, and then you wonder why I’m pissed off all the time. It’s ‘cause you can’t leave well enough alone.” He sounds accusatory, but also as though he feels that he shouldn’t be saying this, and he looks a complicated cross between annoyed and shifty.
As little sense as Jyabura is making, Kaku thinks he understands it. He knows what it’s like to be frustrated with everything while hoping that it won’t change, because he just got a new everything and he can’t deal with any more alterations to the model after such a drastic adjustment. And talking about things tends to make them change, and on top of that, talking has never been one of Jyabura’s strong points.
However, Kaku can’t just say that, so instead he says, “But it’s never well enough, Jyabura. It’s always terrible.”
Jyabura appears to consider this for about a second and a half, and then he crosses his arms, and a corner of his mouth twitches like he isn’t sure whether that’s funny or maddening. “Son of a bitch,” he says appraisingly. “You’re like somebody’s mom.”
“But not yours,” Kaku says, because sadly, he thinks he has to agree with that, but as long as he does, there are going to be stipulations. And Jyabura snorts like it’s both funny and maddening, and Kaku thinks that’s a little better. “Do you want me to make you another omelette?” he offers, because in all fairness, he did finish ruining it.
Jyabura gives him that moody look that means he can’t decide whether he’s being made fun of. Kaku sighs, and that seems to help him make up his mind. “Fine,” he says, almost snaps, and Kaku rolls his eyes and shoves Jyabura out of the way of the refrigerator.
“So what the hell am I supposed to do now?” Jyabura inquires while Kaku rummages through the fridge.
“You can go make my bed,” Kaku suggests, and Jyabura glares at him and huffs something rude under his breath and goes to do it, which is as surprising as anything that’s happened this morning. Kaku wonders if Jyabura actually knows how to make a bed.
When he’s done making the omelette and Jyabura hasn’t reappeared, Kaku goes back to the bedroom to look for him and finds that Jyabura does, in fact, know how to make a bed, and also that he has fallen asleep on it. This confirms two things: first, that Jyabura hasn’t slept in two days (and doesn’t have the benefit of a zoan ability that allows one to function on three hours of sleep or less like Kaku does), and second, that he’s too much of an inconsiderate bastard to at least move to the couch. Both of these were things that Kaku already knew, but seeing the evidence half-curled on top of his quilt in a kitschy tourist shirt changes a few things.
Mostly these things are an added dash of empathy and a spike of annoyance that he has just spent ten minutes making an omelette that no one is going to eat.
Kaku puts the omelette back in the kitchen, hoping in vain that someone will wake up and eat it soon, and goes back into the bedroom and lies down on the other side of the bed, hands stacked on his stomach. “Your omelette is done,” he says, and Jyabura opens one eye and looks at him tiredly and with vast irritation for half a second before closing it again.
When Kaku is sure that Jyabura is asleep, he gets up and takes the blanket from the end of the bed and pulls it over him, because maybe sometimes if he’s going to take care of everything else, he may as well take care of Jyabura too, at least while he’s not conscious to notice it.
Pairing: Jyabura/Kaku
Rating: PG
Word Count: 1,167
Summary: It's a never-ending cycle: Jyabura screws things up and Kaku puts them back together.
A/N: I promise I'll eventually write something longer than like two pages.
Living with Jyabura is mostly a long parade of repairs: he breaks things, damages things, ruins things, screws things up, and Kaku sighs the long and tortured sigh of someone who has been through all this before and not for the last time before getting up and going to fix it.
Of course, Kaku has spent considerable chunks of his life coexisting in the same space as Jyabura before, but never previous to their…unemployment did he realize how labor-intensive it is to hold the world together while Jyabura is in it. And he doesn’t want to say that it’s like taking care of Jyabura, because it’s not. It’s like taking care of everything else. And it’s a full-time job, with no benefits, and the pay is crap.
He could always let someone else do it, but no one else would.
And that’s why it’s too-early-in-the-damn-morning again and something is burning in the kitchen, and Kaku has to get out of bed and fix this before the entire building catches aflame. He sighs the too-familiar world-weary sigh and grabs his robe from the hook by the door, pulling it on over his t-shirt and boxers on his way out to the kitchen, and when he shoves open the door, Jyabura is standing in front of the stove in apparent consternation as smoke billows from a pan of something that is possibly eggs and definitely on fire.
Kaku snatches a dishtowel from the rack, hip-checks Jyabura out of the way, and wraps the towel around the handle of the pan, lifting it from the range and dumping it into the sink. He’s running water into the pan and over the smoldering mess clogging the drain when Jyabura recovers enough to snarl “I was gonna eat that.”
And Kaku almost has to laugh, except that he doesn’t, and he says “No you weren’t,” and plunks the mostly clean pan back onto the stove before turning around with intent to go back to bed, because he isn’t tired but he isn’t going to stand around here waiting for Jyabura to reply.
But then Jyabura opens his big mouth again, and he says “Will you quit fucking doing that?”
And Kaku stops walking. Normally he wouldn’t have stopped; he would have kept on going right back into his room and thrown the quilt over his head and tried to sleep some more and forgotten all about it until the next disaster, but this time Jyabura doesn’t sound angry or sullen or exasperated or any of the emotions Kaku has come to expect hearing in Jyabura’s voice as he walks away. Instead, he sounds…troubled, and unsure, and not as loud as he had probably meant to be.
“Quit doing what?” Kaku asks, against all his better instincts, and turns back around.
Jyabura stares at him, momentarily looking as though he wasn’t sure he’d said anything at all until Kaku confirmed it for him, and also as though he really wasn’t expecting a response. Quickly enough, he collects himself enough to scowl. “Correcting me,” he says at last. “You keep fixing shit the way you want it and telling me what I will and won’t do, and then you wonder why I’m pissed off all the time. It’s ‘cause you can’t leave well enough alone.” He sounds accusatory, but also as though he feels that he shouldn’t be saying this, and he looks a complicated cross between annoyed and shifty.
As little sense as Jyabura is making, Kaku thinks he understands it. He knows what it’s like to be frustrated with everything while hoping that it won’t change, because he just got a new everything and he can’t deal with any more alterations to the model after such a drastic adjustment. And talking about things tends to make them change, and on top of that, talking has never been one of Jyabura’s strong points.
However, Kaku can’t just say that, so instead he says, “But it’s never well enough, Jyabura. It’s always terrible.”
Jyabura appears to consider this for about a second and a half, and then he crosses his arms, and a corner of his mouth twitches like he isn’t sure whether that’s funny or maddening. “Son of a bitch,” he says appraisingly. “You’re like somebody’s mom.”
“But not yours,” Kaku says, because sadly, he thinks he has to agree with that, but as long as he does, there are going to be stipulations. And Jyabura snorts like it’s both funny and maddening, and Kaku thinks that’s a little better. “Do you want me to make you another omelette?” he offers, because in all fairness, he did finish ruining it.
Jyabura gives him that moody look that means he can’t decide whether he’s being made fun of. Kaku sighs, and that seems to help him make up his mind. “Fine,” he says, almost snaps, and Kaku rolls his eyes and shoves Jyabura out of the way of the refrigerator.
“So what the hell am I supposed to do now?” Jyabura inquires while Kaku rummages through the fridge.
“You can go make my bed,” Kaku suggests, and Jyabura glares at him and huffs something rude under his breath and goes to do it, which is as surprising as anything that’s happened this morning. Kaku wonders if Jyabura actually knows how to make a bed.
When he’s done making the omelette and Jyabura hasn’t reappeared, Kaku goes back to the bedroom to look for him and finds that Jyabura does, in fact, know how to make a bed, and also that he has fallen asleep on it. This confirms two things: first, that Jyabura hasn’t slept in two days (and doesn’t have the benefit of a zoan ability that allows one to function on three hours of sleep or less like Kaku does), and second, that he’s too much of an inconsiderate bastard to at least move to the couch. Both of these were things that Kaku already knew, but seeing the evidence half-curled on top of his quilt in a kitschy tourist shirt changes a few things.
Mostly these things are an added dash of empathy and a spike of annoyance that he has just spent ten minutes making an omelette that no one is going to eat.
Kaku puts the omelette back in the kitchen, hoping in vain that someone will wake up and eat it soon, and goes back into the bedroom and lies down on the other side of the bed, hands stacked on his stomach. “Your omelette is done,” he says, and Jyabura opens one eye and looks at him tiredly and with vast irritation for half a second before closing it again.
When Kaku is sure that Jyabura is asleep, he gets up and takes the blanket from the end of the bed and pulls it over him, because maybe sometimes if he’s going to take care of everything else, he may as well take care of Jyabura too, at least while he’s not conscious to notice it.