[01/01] Backup Valentine
title. Backup Valentine
pairing. pikame, akame (je)
rating. r
summary. kame just got back from seeing jin in nyc. it's valentine's day!
author's note. for the 24 hour valentine's day challenge though finished in a significantly shorter period of time. if i ever try to write jin in la again, please punch me in the face. other fic can be found here: acchikocchi, agirlcalledkil, anamuan, devetir, honooko, imwahyou, iverin, jackoweskla, jadedfrenzy, jain, jnessap, ky_rin, mousapelli, pearljemz, peroxidepest17, procreational, shatteredinu, soucieux , thawrecka, tinyangl, tokyostory
word count. 00740
Kame planned on spending Valentine's Day mostly alone and jetlagged. Jin is in LA and Kame's just returned from New York City.
He ends up spending the day with Yamashita.
"How is he?" Yamashita asks as soon as Kame arrives, and the other sags into the booth across from him, flips open his cell phone to check the time before pulling his cap a little lower over his forehead. Yamashita is talking about Jin.
"Good. He looks tired. Koki got pissed off at that. He yelled at him."
"For looking tired?" Yamashita waves down a waitress. She takes Kame's drink order. Seltzer water with lemon.
"He didn't think Akanishi was doing anything useful. And you know. Four months of building emotion. He sort of exploded." Kame yawns through his fingers. "Akanishi took it in stride."
"He feels guilty. When I saw him in LA, he felt really guilty. He tried not to ask about KAT-TUN though. Because I think that makes him feel worse."
"He asked about you," Kame says, voice quiet. "You and Ryo."
"It's not that he doesn't care about KAT-TUN," Yamashita says. "It's just. You know. KAT-TUN is always there, so like-"
"You're always there too. You aren't going to disappear." Kame says it more bitterly than he means and fingers a napkin irritably. He understands where Koki came from, more empathetically than he'd like to admit.
"But, you know," Yamashita takes a sip of his soda. "He's Jin. So."
"That made everything better when we were like, sixteen," Kame hisses, eyebrows furrowing and lips thinning. "We're not sixteen anymore. We're grown men."
"You have to admit," Yamashita says, "that some people mature slower than others. And it's not like he's ignorant. He's just-" He has to bite his tongue so that he doesn't say 'Jin.'
"Just what?"
"You know what he's like," Yamashita says. "You work with him."
"He needs to grow up." Kame grabs his water from where the waitress puts it down and takes a long sip. "He needs to grow up and come back to work. None of this 'experience' bullshit. Because, you know, it is bullshit."
There's silence between them. They both know that learning English is not the foremost reason for Jin's trip to LA.
"It's bullshit," Yamashita says, carefully, "but there's nothing we can do to change it. There's nothing he can do to change it. He didn't really want to go, you know. I mean, he wanted to go, but he didn't want to leave KAT-TUN behind."
Kame's quiet for a moment before he says, "Let's go." He pulls his cap up a little and Yamashita can see the dark circles under his eyes. "We can go back to my place," he says, and his eyes flicker to the girls who are starting to congregate outside the front window of the restaurant. Some of them hold chocolates.
"Did you talk to Jin about any of this?" Yamashita asks. "I mean, in New York." He stands up with Kame and puts on his coat.
"It's too heavy," Kame says. "We were only there for a few days, you know? That kind of talk would ruin the atmosphere. It was difficult enough without that."
They leave through a back door and Yamashita leads the way to his car. They're quiet and they keep their hands in their pockets, their heads bowed low against the windy tunnel effect of the buildings.
They don't speak the entire way to Kame's apartment, and Kame is pressed against the inside of the front door before either of them says anything again.
"But I did tell him," Kame says, lips wet, body warm. Yamashita's breath is hot on his skin. "I told him," he repeats. "You know."
"What did he say?" Yamashita asks, hands grazing against Kame's stomach.
"Does it matter to you?" Kame asks, and his hands are in Yamashita's hair.
"Yes," Yamashita says, "but you don't have to tell me."
"He said he was sorry. That it wouldn't work. I agreed. Because like, you know, it's true." Kame swallows, closes his eyes and feels Yamashita's fingertips beneath the waistband of his jeans.
"You had sex, though," Yamashita says, softly, hands curling and pulling the jeans down over Kame's slim hips. "These, right?" His fingers run softly over disappearing bruises.
"Yeah."
Yamashita smiles wanly against Kame's bellybutton, trails tiny kisses down down down. "As long as you don't lie, it's all right."
2008.02.14