Title: Right Down The Line
Pairing: Kame & Jin, Kame & OC
Word count: 72,000+
Rating: R
Genre: AU, future-fic, drama, angst, romance
Warnings: language, adult situations, food & food geekery, old school music, and many, many liberties taken with the world of fine dining.
Notes: Originally written for kizuna_exchange, for tia_junan here: i., ii., iii., iv., v., vi., vii., ( Read more... )

+masterpost

( Kame looks deeply into his cup for a second as if it's the recipe for his day, or, his life: one cup of coffee, black; carefully measure out two spoons of stress; a splash of cream; stir. )

+part one

( 'Am I ever happy?' Kame asks, bypassing the rest and chewing on that question for a moment. 'I don't know. You know me. I'm only happy when the house is burning down.' )

+part two

( Constant vigilance. If the kitchens are clean, if the low-boys and walk-ins are tidy and squared away, if the stations in the main kitchen are tight, if the cooks don't look miserably hungover or like hopped-up criminals, if no one is screaming, if the wait staff is pristine and professional, if customers smile at the end of their meal, if, if, a thousand other ifs - then, and only then does the whole enormous precarious complex mechanism whirr on. )

+part three

( Jin leans in and yells over the music, 'Are we going to pretend we don't know each other?' )

+part four

( 'Was it so bad?' Kame asks softly, frowning. He looks up to meet Jin's eyes. 'Was it really that bad?' )

+part five

( This is not a restaurant, it's a dinner party )

+part six

( By the time Thanksgiving rolls around, the crisis has deepened. )

+part seven

( It occurs to Kame later, much later, that he's the one who needs saving. )

+part eight

( The sunny, stormy affection they'd shared almost from that first day, banging their skulls together on that soccer pitch in Madrid - it defined long years of Kame's life. )