Archive of Our Own

September

As soon as he walks in, Kame feels out of place. The floor is a dull gray tile that might once have been white and rumbles gently underfoot. There’s a short row of chairs by the front window strewn with abandoned copies of Maquia and Tokyo Sports. A middle aged woman is pulling heaps of towels out of one of the dryers at the back, while a young housewife carefully sorts her colors and whites into two of a wide row of machines in the center of the room.

Kame shrugs his laundry bag off his shoulder and sets it down next to the nearest machine, opening it up to get started. It’s already full. The one right next to it vibrates against his fingers when he reaches for the lid, and the one after that is making a distinct whooshing sound. He works his way all the way to the other end of the row before he finally finds one that’s free.

It’s quite warm in here, especially at this end of the room nearest the wall of dryers. Kame takes off his suit coat and folds it carefully, checking for detergent spills before he sets it on the machine next to his. After a moment of consideration, he loosens his tie as well and rolls up his shirtsleeves to the elbow. Not like there’s anyone here to impress. He catches the woman with the towels giving him the side-eye as he straightens up with his sack of laundry, but he ignores her and keeps his head down. No more putting this off, or he’ll be going commando at work tomorrow.

So. Laundry.

Most of what he’s got is underwear. A few t-shirts, a few pairs of jeans, but nothing terribly fussy or expensive—he figured it would be safer to start with things he can easily replace if necessary. After spying a little on the young housewife’s technique, he briefly considers sorting his jeans separately from his whites—but that would mean finding another empty machine, and he’s not sure that will be possible in here. He wonders vaguely whose clothes are in all the other ones, because they can’t all belong to these two women unless they each happen to have an army of children at home. In the end, he stuffs everything into one, because screw it, what’s the worst that could happen. Then he starts looking around for the soap.

And there isn’t any.

Hm. Okay…

With another surreptitious little glance over his shoulder, he finds that the housewife has a bottle sitting next to her on one of her machines. The older woman has one too, he notices—she drops it into her basket with all her clean things as she’s packing up. Looks like it’s a Bring Your Own Suds kind of establishment. Which could present a problem.

He’s just pondering the risk of slipping out to the conbini and leaving his stuff here—other people seem to be doing that, apparently, but then he doesn’t know if you’re supposed to get permission or at least pay first or something—when he catches the housewife staring at him curiously. She looks sheepish when he notices her attention.

He tries a helpless, slightly embarrassed smile. Maybe she’ll take pity on him.

“Um, excuse me,” he says, fidgeting his hands at his hips. “I seem to have forgotten my detergent. Would you mind very much if I borrowed yours?”

She gives a shy smile in return and shakes her head. Then she passes the bottle to him, and he accepts it with a little bow.

“Sorry to trouble you.”

“No, it’s no trouble.”

He goes back to his machine.

Now…if he can just figure out where to put it.

Does it go straight into the bowl? He feels like he remembers seeing his mother do that sometimes, but it feels wrong to pour this gooey stuff directly onto his clothes. There are a bunch of little slots and drawers, but they’re all grody with unidentifiable residue and he can’t make sense of any of the markings or read the peeling labels. Finally he twists off the cap and figures the largest compartment is probably the best bet.

“That’s not where it goes.”

He looks up, glances around—but the older woman has left, and the housewife has moved over to the dryers at the other end of the room, not paying him any attention. When he twists around the rest of the way, he finds a little girl standing just behind him. She’s wearing knee-length cutoffs and a striped t-shirt with her hair pulled back into a slightly fluffy ponytail, and she’s staring up at him, arms crossed in front of her, with a very judgey expression.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, that’s not where the soap goes. Don’t you know anything?”

Kame blinks a couple of times. “Well then maybe you’d be so kind as to show me where it goes,” he says with a carefully polite smile.

She rolls her eyes at him and turns away. For a minute he thinks she’s just going to disappear through the narrow doorway at the back of the shop, but instead she reaches around the edge and drags out a folding stepstool. Coming back over to the machine, she prods him in the elbow to get him to move over so she can set up the stepstool in front of the machine. When she climbs up to the second step, he’s slightly irked to find that she’s now nearly as tall as he is.

“Is it cold or warm?” she asks as she leans over and starts fiddling with the controls.

“I’m…not sure. What do people usually use?”

She sighs. “Warm gets things cleaner, but it can make some things shrink or fade. Cold is safer, but it doesn’t clean as well. You need cold for delicates.”

Well. Kame isn’t sure if his jockey shorts really count as delicates, but…safe sounds good.

“You’re supposed to check the tags before you sort stuff, you know.”

Kame narrows eyes at her, but she’s not paying attention, busy checking how full the machine is.

“Cold then, I guess.”

She flicks another switch and holds out a hand. “Give me the soap.”

When Kame hands it over, she pulls out one of the little drawers and pours a bit in, stopping just at the second line etched into the plastic. Then she hands it back to him. “Now the money.”

“How much?”

“200 yen.”

Kame fishes a couple of coins out of his pocket and hands them over. She drops them into the slots and pushes the little money drawer back in. As soon as they hear the coins drop down into the mechanism, the machine starts up. Just like that.

It’s like magic.

“Thanks,” Kame says, turning to the girl with a wry smile. She’s grinning at him rather smugly, but he can’t really fault her for it. It would have taken him an hour to figure all that out himself. Even now he’s not sure he could repeat it. “You must come here with your mom a lot,” he says, nodding toward the housewife.

The girl looks over at the woman, frowning a little. “That’s not my mom,” she says, apparently finding him to be a complete idiot all over again.

He frowns back. “Then where is your mom?”

“Over here.”

Kame glances up.

There’s a man in the doorway behind her, where she got the stepstool from—he can’t be more than a couple of years older than Kame. He’s wearing a white t-shirt with a few grease stains at the hem, and his jeans have holes in the knees that look like they probably weren’t there when he bought them. His hair is sort of fluffy, like hers.

He has a slightly crooked smile.

“What did I tell you about bothering the customers?”

“I wasn’t bothering, I was helping.”

“Nao…”

“I was, Jin.” She rounds on Kame. “Tell him I was helping.”

“She was helping,” Kame confirms. “Honest.”

Jin gives her a shrewd look, pushing off from the doorframe and walking over to stand in front of her. “If you say so,” he says to Kame.

Then he reaches out and scoops her up, ignoring her indignant squawk and “Jin, I can do it myself” as he plops her back on the floor.

“Yeah, yeah. Go back upstairs and finish your homework then—I’ve got dinner on the table for you. Ah-ah-ah—”

She stops in the doorway and turns around expectantly.

“Put this away too,” he adds, folding up the stool and handing it to her.

She gives a longsuffering sigh—but she takes the stool obediently before disappearing into the back room.

“Sorry about that,” Jin says, giving Kame a little smile. He pulls a small wheeled cart out of an alcove nearby and moves over to the machines across from Kame’s to start pulling some things out. “She’s going through kind of a phase.”

“She seemed very sweet.”

Jin laughs. “Somehow I doubt that, but thanks anyway. She really is sweet. She’s just…gotten good at hiding it lately.”

Kame smiles back. “She really did help me out though.”

Jin nods, scooping another clump of wet fabric out of the machine. “Yeah, she does that.”

“So, you work here?”

“I own the place, actually,” Jin says, nudging the cart down toward one of the empty dryers. “We live upstairs.”

“Really?” Kame says—because he can’t help thinking it must suck to live right above a room full of washing machines, and it’s never really occurred to him to wonder what was in the next floor up from a place like this before. (But then, he’s never actually been in a place like this before.)

No wonder the girl knows so much about how to run a laundry machine.

“How long have you been here?”

“It…kind of depends on when you start counting. But I’ve been in charge of the place for about seven years. It’s kind of a family business.”

Kame nods. “Well. It doesn’t seem like you’ll have any trouble passing it along to the next generation.”

“Right?” Jin grins back at him over his shoulder. “I’ll be lucky if she lets me keep it till she gets through high school.”

Kame feels a familiar little flicker of something when Jin smiles at him like that. It’s not surprising—he’s really very good looking, despite the grease stains. Kame can see the muscles moving across his back as he reaches up to shove the piles of heavy wet clothes into the dryer, and he lets himself look, just a little. Not a lot though, because guys who have kids and family businesses are not generally a good bet. He’s been out of the game for a while, but he knows that much.

Still. No harm in looking.

“So, do you live near here?” Jin asks, moving back to the washers to start pulling out another load. “I haven’t seen you around.”

“I just moved in a few weeks ago,” Kame says. “I live around the block from here.”

“That white building with the awning out front?”

Kame nods.

“Nice place.”

“It’s…cozy,” Kame agrees. He can’t think of much else to say about it. It doesn’t really feel like home yet. When he thinks about it too much, he’s not sure if it ever will—so he doesn’t think about it too much. It’s a place to be, for now, until he gets his feet under him again.

“So, what do you do?” Jin asks. “I mean, not to scare you away or anything, but to be honest we don’t get a whole lot of salarymen in here on Wednesday evenings.”

Kame gives a wry smile, fiddling with the end of his tie. “Yeah, I guess I didn’t get the memo about the dress code.”

“Hey, the joint can always use a little more class,” Jin grins.

“I’m a sportswriter.”

Jin looks up quickly. “No way—seriously? So you get, like, free tickets to soccer games and everything?”

“Mostly baseball—but yeah. That’s the gist.”

“That is awesome.”

“It pays the bills,” Kame shrugs. Well. It does now.

“Well, if you ever find yourself drowning in free tickets for stuff and you need someone to take them off your hands, I’m your man. Oh—” he wipes his wet hands off on his jeans and offers one in greeting. “I’m Akanishi, by the way.”

“Kamenashi,” Kame says, shaking his hand. “Kamenashi Kazuya.”

Jin smiles again. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”

~ * ~

December

“Can you pass me that wrench?”

Kame looks up from the batch of laundry he’s folding from one basket into another. Jin is half wedged in between the two machines at the end of the row, the broken one pushed askew so he can reach the mechanism through the back.

“Oh,” Kame says, following Jin’s pointing finger to the toolbox sitting on the chair next to his. “Which one?”

“The little one with the red handle.”

“This?” He holds it up.

“Yeah, that’s the one. Thanks.” Jin reaches out to take it from him, then scoots back and starts fiddling with the back of the machine again. Kame watches a little as he goes back to his folding, picking socks out of the sleeves of one of his t-shirts and spreading them out on his knee.

There’s some grumbling, then a muffled curse that makes the prim woman on the other side of the working set of machines jump, and makes Kame wince and glance over at where Nao is sorting through a pile of magazines over by the other set of chairs.

“Anything I can do to help?”

Jin sighs and slumps back against the machine behind him. “Not unless you’ve got a welding kit in your laundry bag. I think I just broke a bolt.”

“What are you going to do with it then?”

“I’m not sure,” Jin frowns at the thing, poking at some part of it Kame can’t see from this angle. “Probably need to replace this whole panel, but I don’t have the parts for that right now. I should at least move this thing into the back room for now so nobody tries to use it.”

“Want help with that?”

Jin’s mouth scrunches up apologetically. He’s got a little smudge of grease on his cheek. “Would you mind?”

Kame chuckles. “Not a bit. Just let me move my second load into the dryer.”

Jin pushes himself up from the floor and goes to wash his hands while Kame is dealing with the dryer. He helps Kame load in the last few items when he gets back, but Kame swats his hand away before he can use his override key to make the machine run without Kame paying.

“Hey, you’re helping me out,” Jin argues. “It’s the least I can do.”

“It’s not a problem,” Kame says, pointedly putting his coins in. “You don’t have to pay me to do you a favor.”

Once Jin makes sure everything is properly disconnected, it takes some creative thinking to figure out how to shove and scoot and drag the machine past the various obstacles between here and the back room. They try lifting it at first, but that one is a non-starter—Kame can’t get his side up off the ground for more than a few inches at a time, and Jin’s not doing much better. Eventually they settle on having Kame pull from the front while Jin steers from the back.

“Pull it further to the left. No, you have to pull from the side or you’ll get wedged between the—that’s it…”

When they finally get it tucked away in a corner next to a shelf full of tools and spare parts, they both sort of collapse on top of it to catch their breath.

“Well,” Kame says, “at least I won’t have to feel guilty about not making it to the gym today.”

Jin laughs. “Hey, you want a real workout, see if you can get Nao to quit playing shopkeeper and chase her back upstairs to finish doing the dishes.”

“Is that why she’s alphabetizing all your magazines?”

Jin shrugs and swipes a hand through his slightly damp hair. It’s chilly outside, but there’s no shortage of warmth in here, and Jin’s been doing most of the manual labor. There’s a very attractive flush in his cheeks. “It keeps her busy. Easier than trying to keep her out of here, and safer than letting her climb around on the machines and try to fix stuff.”

Kame watches Jin glance over his shoulder to check on her. She’s setting aside the half-sorted stack of magazines now to go help the prim woman with something on the other side of the room. There’s weariness in Jin’s smile, but there’s pride in there too—Kame’s noticed. And Nao does seem to have a way with the customers, when she’s not in one of her smarty-pants moods.

“Where’s her mom?” he asks. It’s an impulse. He probably shouldn’t—it’s none of his business, just cause they talk sometimes about sports and broken bolts and whatever doesn’t mean he really has a right. But he comes here often enough, and they do talk, and…Kame can’t help wondering. It’s pretty clear that she’s not around.

Jin looks at him for a moment, maybe a little surprised, but he doesn’t really seem bothered by the question. He pulls a rag out of his back pocket and starts wiping a few of the new grease smudges out from between his fingers. “She passed away,” he says.

Kame grimaces. He shouldn’t have asked. He knew he shouldn’t have asked.

There’s a little chuckle, and Jin is looking at him like it’s fine, and he’s kind of amused by the way Kame looks guilty. “It was a long time ago, Nao doesn’t even remember. Really, it’s fine.”

“I’m sorry though,” Kame says, half for asking, half just because he is. “That must have been really hard on you—I mean, the two of you, going through that.”

“Yeah,” Jin nods, giving another little shrug. “It was rough for a while. In some ways it was easier because I had her, you know? I mean, I had someone else to focus on besides myself. I couldn’t, like, fall apart or anything. It helped.”

Kame nods. He can see how that would be.

“How about you?” Jin asks, changing the subject. “You married or anything?”

Kame shakes his head. He’s not sure exactly how much he should say—he doesn’t like to make a habit of lying to people when he doesn’t have to, but some things are better left in the dark when that’s possible. But, well—he started up with the prying. Jin told him the truth—least he can offer is the same.

“I just got out of a long term relationship,” he says. “A few months ago.”

“Oh,” Jin murmurs, sympathetic. “Sorry about that. How long?”

“I lived with him for eight years.”

It’s just a little stutter. Maybe Kame only sees it because he’s watching so carefully. He knows how these things go, and it’s fine—it’s not okay, but it’s fine. If that’s the straw, he can deal with it. So they won’t talk about sports, or broken bolts, or whatever. He can read magazines. And he can keep his distance from Nao-chan, if asked—he’s got the hang of the machines by now. And hey, there are other laundromats.

Then there’s a smile. “Eight years? Jeez…guess that explains why you didn’t know how to use a laundry machine, huh.”

It’s a joke. And it’s not even a joke about that, it’s just…a joke. A normal, bantery joke. Even kind of a stupid one.

Kame lets out a little breath. He didn’t even realize he’d been holding it.

“Yeah,” he says, trying to return the easy smile. “Yeah, I guess I’m a little behind the curve on some things.”

Jin grabs a clean rag off of the shelf near his shoulder and passes it to Kame. “There’s a sink right behind you if you want to wash your hands. I don’t want to get my elbow grease all over your clean clothes—might lose me one of my best customers.”

Kame looks at him for a minute. Smiles as he takes the rag, but then he just sort of fidgets with it. “Thanks,” he says. And maybe it’s for more than the rag.

“No problem,” Jin says with a grin.

~ * ~

April

“So then you can just multiply the two numerators—”

“Oh! And then divide this one by the other denominator. Is that right?”

She looks up at him with bright eyes, cause she knows she’s got it—but she can’t wait to hear him say it. It’s a little adorable.

Kame grins. “Perfect.”

She wriggles happily in her chair as she scribbles the last few numbers into the margin and puts a nice thick circle around the final answer.

“Okay,” she says, shuffling to the back of the page and peering at the questions through all the handwriting. “Okay, but this one is really weird though, because I did all the steps just like in the book, but it still keeps giving me a negative number at the end, and it doesn’t fit on the graph…”

The front door bangs shut, and they both look up from the dining table just as Jin walks in. He’s got his hair half pulled up out of the way and there’s a big damp patch on the hem of his shirt that’s doing weird things to the color—looks like it might be some kind of bleach.

“Hey,” he says, grinning at both of them as he passes through to the kitchen. “How goes the homework?”

“Not bad—”

“Kame is so much better at explaining stuff than you, Jin,” Nao interrupts loudly.

“Nao-chan,” he scolds, but Jin barks a laugh over the sound of the sink.

“That’s not saying much,” he calls back. “Did you figure out the one with the fractions?”

“Yep!” She hops up from the table and takes the packet in to show him her work, which seems to involve a lot of handwaving. Kame gets up from the table as well, straightening the hem of his t-shirt and glancing at his watch. His laundry has got to be done by now. He should really go pull his stuff out of the dryer so he’s not taking up a machine. The place is closed for the night, but Jin sometimes puts in a load or two after hours to get a head start on the morning. Anyway, they’ll be having dinner or something, and he should really get out of their—

“Can Kame stay for dinner?” Nao half-skips back out into the living room, going over to the couch to put the homework packet back in her bookbag.

Jin follows her at a slightly less energetic pace, wiping his hands on one of the kitchen towels. “Um,” he gives Kame an apologetic smile. “I don’t know—we’ve kind of taken up a lot of his time this afternoon. I don’t know if he was really planning to spend the whole day on just his laundry.”

“But everybody has to eat,” Nao points out—quite sensibly, too. Then she turns those big puppy-dog eyes on Kame. “You can stay, right?”

Kame glances from her to Jin and back again. “Um…I don’t know. I don’t want to be a bother.”

“You wouldn’t be a bother,” Jin says quickly. “Seriously, we’d love to have you stay if you’re free—I mean, you spent half your Saturday helping this one with math problems, the least I can do is feed you. But I don’t want you to feel like you have to if you’ve got other plans.”

Kame looks up at him again. The offer seems genuine. And he hasn’t really figured out what to do about food yet—the idea of going home and cooking something just to eat by himself at his kitchen counter isn’t very appealing. “You’re sure it wouldn’t be any trouble?”

The grin splits across Jin’s face. “Absolutely. You can help me figure out what to make.”

~ * ~

They end up with a huge pot of spaghetti.

This is apparently a staple in this household, because as soon as it’s decided Nao is climbing on the counters pulling down spices and pasta boxes and getting out the big pot for the water. They both seem to have their roles in this pretty well worked out already, so for a bit Kame just feels in the way again—but then Jin hands him a stick of butter and a few of the spice jars and tells him he can be in charge of the garlic bread, and soon it isn’t quite so awkward anymore.

He remembers full kitchens, but they were usually full of caterers—his job was just directing traffic. This is a lot more fun.

The sauce is really good—unexpected, because Kame isn’t usually a fan of stuff with tomatoes in it, but it doesn’t have that bitterness he hates, and it’s even slightly spicy, which is interesting. Nao gives him a whole big spiel on how to properly twirl the stuff around his fork, and he copies her actions indulgently until she finally gives him her approval. “That’s how you eat like a real Italian,” she says sagely, with a little dot of sauce on her cheek that she missed with the napkin.

Jin lets Kame help with the cleanup a bit afterwards while he shuffles Nao off to bed. By the time he gets back to the kitchen, most of the food is put away, and Kame is halfway through washing out the sauce pot.

“Hey—come on, you don’t have to do all of it,” Jin says, mouth twisting guiltily. “I can take care of that stuff tomorrow—you’re the guest.”

“It’ll be all crusty by tomorrow though.”

“So? I’ll soak it overnight—come on, seriously, don’t worry about it.”

“Just let me finish this one and then I’ll stop.”

Jin chuckles at him and wanders over to the fridge. “You want a beer?”

Kame glances back over his shoulder where Jin is holding up a bottle of Heineken over the fridge door. “Um—sure. Yeah, I guess. I mean, I should probably go grab my stuff out of the—”

“Already done,” Jin says, pulling out a beer for each of them and fishing the opener out of the drawer. “Folded it too. I had some time between loads.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” Kame says, leaving the pot in the drainer and drying his hands for the beer.

Jin shrugs. “It’s no big deal. Anyway, you really helped me out with Nao—thank you.” He taps the neck of his bottle against Kame’s and takes a sip.

“It was no trouble. She’s a really sweet kid.”

“She has a huge crush on you.”

Kame laughs and tilts his head, taking a sip as well. “Yeah. I kind of got that feeling.”

“Come on,” Jin says, motioning toward the doorway, “I’ve got to get off my feet for a while.”

They go back out into the living room, and Jin flops down on the couch, one socked foot resting on the battered coffee table and the other one curled up underneath him. Kame sits down next to him and tries to relax as well. The beer helps. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s cold, and it’s good.

“So, can I ask you something?” Kame says after a bit.

“Hm.”

“Why does she call you ‘Jin’?”

Jin laughs and nearly chokes beer up his nose. He rolls a little towards Kame to cough it out of the way, and he’s still laughing. Kame pats him gently on the shoulder, mostly just to make sure he’s not dying.

“Beats the hell out of me,” Jin croaks, when he can breathe again. “I really have no idea. She used to call me ‘Daddy’ and stuff all the time, but then sometime about a year or two ago she started calling me Jin. I guess she decided ‘Daddy’ sounded too baby-ish or something—I don’t know. You know how she is.”

“Doesn’t it bother you?”

Jin shrugs. “Not really. I mean, yeah, sure, sometimes I miss the days when she’d come running to me every time she stubbed her toe and I was, like, the magic-man who could make everything all better. But that doesn’t really have anything to do with what she calls me. Kids grow up. That’s just kind of how it goes.”

“Yeah,” Kame says, nodding down at his beer. “I guess so.”

Jin props his chin up against the palm of his hand, elbow resting on the back of the couch, and looks at him for a while. “You’re really good with her, you know that? I mean,” he motions with his beer, “even putting aside the fact that she thinks you hung the moon, and you’re obviously a lot better at middle-grade mathematics than I am, you just…really know how to handle her, I guess. Whenever any of my old guy friends come to visit or hang out, they never seem to know what to do with her. They’re not bad guys or anything, but they sort of treat her like she’s…a pet or something, I guess. Cute, but kind of a nuisance. How’d you get to be so good with kids?”

“I have a couple of nieces,” Kame says. “They don’t live in town, so I don’t see them as often as I’d like—but whenever the family gets together, I really like hanging out with them. They’re both younger than Nao though.”

“How old?”

“Rina is seven and Hanae is four. Wait—five. She had a birthday last month.”

Jin nods thoughtfully. “Those are great ages. Three is kind of a bitch though.”

Kame laughs. “Yeah…I missed most of that one.”

“Mister Fancy-Pants didn’t like toddlers?”

“Not really,” Kame admits. “I don’t think he had anything against them, really, but—well, it’s like your friends. He just didn’t know what to do with them.”

Jin laughs. “Okay, admittedly I don’t know the guy—but I have a very hard time believing he was like my friends.”

Kame chuckles and sips at his beer again. “Well…maybe a little different. But I don’t think it was the kids exactly, it was just—with anybody who couldn’t at least hold a conversation about restaurants or music or fashion or something like that, he would just kind of get…lost. He wasn’t very good at being lost.”

“Food, music, or fashion, huh?” Jin says, giving him a shrewd look over the neck of his bottle. “Alright…that narrows things down a little…”

Kame rolls eyes at him.

“A famous chef, perhaps?” Jin raises an eyebrow. “Oh! Or one of those fashion designer guys who make ridiculously expensive suits with multicolored stripes or polka-dots on them or whatever. Wait, no, why would that guy have to hide the fact that he was gay…that would be a selling point…”

Kame shakes his head. “I really can’t tell you.”

Jin groans and rolls in a bit closer, tugging at Kame’s t-shirt and pouting up at him. So that’s where Nao gets the puppy-dog eyes. “Come on, Kame. I promise I won’t tell anyone…”

“Nope.”

The puppy dog eyes narrow into a glare as he shuffles back up again. “You’re mean.”

Kame chuckles, just giving an apologetic shrug as he takes another sip of his beer.

“If I guess it, will you tell me?”

Kame shrugs again.

“I’m going to take that as a yes. Okay, so is he a chef?”

Kame glances away, scratching behind his ear. This place has some really nice woodwork. It could use a little refinishing, but the wooden beams in the corners and across the ceiling have a classic sturdiness to them.

“A fashion designer?”

Interesting print in that frame on the wall there. Either some kind of abstract, or a very early bit of artwork from Nao.

“A musician then?”

Kame looks at him. Says nothing.

Jin grins. “I see…a musician, huh…”

“I didn’t say anything,” Kame says, and glances away again as he takes another sip of his beer.

Jin ignores his deflection. “So what, is he like an opera singer? Oh god—please don’t tell me he sings enka. I’ll think so much less of you if he sings enka.”

“He does not sing enka,” Kame says, then snaps his mouth shut, because, um…whoops.

“Hm,” Jin mumbles, slumping a bit against the back of the couch. “Well he can’t be like a heavy metal guy or whatever, because that doesn’t fit with all the fancy-pants stuff—and if he’s not singing for old people, what other kind of singer would be that worried about people knowing he’s—”

There’s a pause. Jin blinks. Then he looks over at Kame.

Kame takes a sip of beer and doesn’t look back.

“Holy shit. He’s an idol.”

A bit of the beer slips down the wrong way, and Kame has to cough to clear it.

Jin is still staring at him by the time he gets his breath back.

“I really can’t say,” Kame rasps. But he knows it’s kind of useless now.

Jin doesn’t look like he feels like joking so much anymore. Maybe Kame should have let him keep thinking his mystery ex was just some stuffy old guy who was too much of a coward to risk his equally stuffy friends seeing him in the tabloids for a day or two.

“Sorry,” Jin says. And now Kame feels guilty, because he really sounds sorry, and Kame didn’t want that. It’s just life—it’s Kame’s problem, not Jin’s. And it’s not like he didn’t have plenty of chances to make different choices. He did make different choices, eventually.

“It’s not your fault,” Kame says, trying a smile to lighten the mood. Maybe he should have told Jin the guy was a fashion designer. They could have made fun of the polka-dots.

“No, but it sucks. I mean, it really…it just sucks. Why do people have to care that much about what some guy does in his private life just because he’s famous?”

“Because they do,” Kame says. “That’s the job. That’s just the way it works.”

“But it’s not fair.”

Kame shrugs, picking at the label around the neck of his beer bottle. “You won’t get any arguments from me, but that still doesn’t change anything.”

“But I mean—you work in sports, and no one cares that you’re gay. No one even asks.”

“If they did ask, they might care,” Kame points out. “Just because nobody thinks of it doesn’t mean they wouldn’t care. And in any case, my job isn’t to make teenagers fall in love with me and think I could maybe someday be their boyfriend or husband or whatever. It’s not the same thing.”

“It should be.”

“But it’s not.”

Jin’s eyes are all kind of soft and dark, and a little bit stubborn. Maybe it’s the low light—maybe it’s the beer though, Kame can’t tell. They look really pretty like that, even with the stubbornness. Maybe especially with the stubbornness.

There’s no pretense with him. No wondering what’s the right thing to say or do, and what will get you kicked out—and in some ways Kame finds that disorienting, because he needs a lead. He needs to know what people want from him in order to know what to give them. But then there’s Jin, who doesn’t seem to want anything in particular from him except his company. Just as he is.

It’s really nice.

When Jin leans in, it’s slow, with a couple of pauses in case Kame wants to stop him. Kame follows him with his eyes until he can’t anymore, and it’s warm and soft, Jin’s hand a little bit cool on his cheek. A little bit clumsy too, because Kame still wasn’t quite prepared somehow, and his heart is suddenly sending little prickles of warmth and surprise all throughout his limbs.

Jin pulls back again, but not far, and his eyes are even darker, but they’re also kind of smiling. Kame licks his lips and then it’s Jin’s mouth again, a little firmer this time, opening a little bit more, and Kame feels warm in even more places.

The beer—he’s still got the beer in his hand and it’s in the way now, but he doesn’t want to miss the table and drop it on the floor, and he doesn’t want to miss this either. Jin huffs a soft breath against his cheek when Kame’s free hand finds its way into his hair and tilts him a little further, deeper, and…oh, yes, that was a very good—

A doorknob, footsteps creaking in the hallway, and the two of them jump apart so fast Kame nearly spills his beer after all. He snatches the throw pillow from behind him and plunks it down on his lap just as Nao walks into the room in her massive Donald Duck nightshirt.

Jin clears his throat. “Everything all right, sweetie?” he asks, totally casual, and Kame’s not sure but he thinks maybe he catches him fluff his t-shirt over his front a little.

“I forgot my glass of water.”

“Oh. Um, I can help you with that,” he says, but he takes another drink of his beer first before he pushes himself to his feet, and Kame watches him follow her into the kitchen.

“I can get it myself, Jin, I’m not an invalid.”

“Uh-huh. Got another vocabulary test tomorrow I see…”

Kame takes another sip of his beer and listens to the shuffling and bickering in the kitchen, trying to make his body calm down. It’s probably better this way. Would have been nice, but nice doesn’t happen in a vacuum, and it really isn’t worth it to risk ruining a perfectly good budding friendship just for the sake of a few minutes of…nice.

Anyway.

“…finished it yesterday!”

“You’re sure?” Jin prods, and she’s walking rather primly back toward the hallway, trying not to spill the water.

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Alright, if you’re sure. Better get to sleep quick then, it’s late.”

“Goodnight, Jin,” she says with a weary glare. Then a much more adoring smile for Kame. “Goodnight, Kame!”

Kame smiles back, nods a little. “Goodnight, Nao-chan.”

She totters off down the hallway, a dim sliver appearing off to the right in the dark and then disappearing again as she closes the door behind her.

After the door is shut, Kame feels a little tug on his sleeve, and there’s Jin looking down at him from behind the couch. He puts a finger to his lips briefly, then nods his head toward the hallway.

Kame sets his beer down on the coffee table and gets up to follow him.

It’s the first door on the left, and Jin closes it behind them. It’s not big—most of it is taken up by the bed and a dresser, plus the guitar in the corner and a few piles of boxes with stuff on top of them along one wall. Kame barely has time to take it in though, because then Jin is kissing him again, pressing closer than before, picking up right where they left off. It catches him a little off guard, but then he loops one arm around Jin’s shoulders and another around his waist, pulling his t-shirt tight across his back, and…god, he feels good. He feels solid. Good at this.

Kame’s back bumps up against the door, and he breaks the kiss, twisting his head to the side because he’s sure that made a sound, and what if—but Jin just changes course and kisses a trail down the side of Kame’s neck. Kame buries his fingers in Jin’s hair and swallows a moan.

When Jin reaches down and drags Kame’s thigh up against his hip, pressing really close, he finally recovers a little bit of sense.

“Wait. Stop,” he says, trying to catch his breath.

Jin blinks back at him, looking just as hazy as Kame feels. “What, did I—was that wrong? I didn’t mean to—”

“No.” Kame shakes his head, and with a little tug Jin lets him have his leg back. Gives him a little space. “No, that was fine—that was good, it’s just—I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“Because,” Kame starts, and it really is hard to put it into words when Jin is looking all flushed and disheveled like that. But, no. “Because. I’m in kind of a complicated place right now, and you, you’re…” Straight. “You have Nao-chan. I don’t want to confuse her.”

Jin frowns. “Confuse her how?”

“You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t,” Jin says stubbornly. Then he turns away, grumbling a little bit to himself and tugging his hair free from the remnants of the little half-ponytail that’s been keeping it mostly out of his eyes. “Look, I get what you’re saying—and we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, it’s fine, but I just thought…”

“You thought what?”

Jin sits down on the edge of the bed with a little bounce. He leans forward and rests the heels of his hands on the edge of the mattress, between his knees. “I thought it would be nice.”

But you’re straight, Kame thinks again, and Jin is fiddling with the little rubber band that was in his hair now, doing a sucky job of hiding his pout.

“I know things are complicated for you,” Jin says. “I’m not asking you to marry me—I just thought we could have some fun.”

“But Nao-chan—”

“Is fine. She’ll be asleep soon anyway, and the walls aren’t that thin. And if she wakes up and needs something, whatever, I can handle it. I’m a dad, not a monk—I get to have a life too.”

Well. When he puts it that way.

But. Still.

“And. I don’t know,” Jin shrugs. The flush is still there, though now maybe spreading down his neck a little. “I guess I thought you liked me.”

“I do,” Kame says, and the reasons are starting to seem silly again. Maybe he’s making too big a deal out of this. “I like you a lot.”

Jin looks up at him again. There’s a little bit of a frown between his brows as he tries to read him, and it makes him look sort of cutely stupid. “Okay?”

Kame walks over and takes a seat beside Jin on the edge of the bed, just close enough so that their knees are touching. Then he reaches out and strokes along Jin’s thigh, just a bit higher than would be casually friendly.

“Okay.”

Jin leans in again and brushes his lips against Kame’s. It’s almost a little bit shy this time—maybe because they’re actually sitting on the bed and there’s actual talking and thinking involved now. Or maybe because Kame disrupted his flow, and sort of half rejected him, and now he’s lost a bit of confidence—but Kame cups the side of his face and kisses him back, and Jin eases into it a little more. There’s no rush.

“Hang on,” Kame mumbles when it starts to get a little deeper again, a little breathless. “Don’t you think we should wait a bit? Until we’re sure she’s asleep?”

Jin looks kind of hazy, but swallows. Nods. “Sure. Sure, we can wait. We can do that.” His hands fall away from Kame’s shoulders, and Kame sits up straighter too. Rubs his palms against his knees.

The clock on the nightstand reads 10:07. Kame clears his throat a little and glances around the room. It’s old construction in here too, just like the rest of the flat, but it’s clean and cozy and a little bit untidy—it feels very lived in. Even the boxes stacked up in the corner feel more like they’re just there for space reasons. Seven years would be a long time to not settle.

It’s pretty quiet out there.

He catches Jin looking at him out of the corner of his eye, and it sends a little jolt down his spine. He peaks over at the nightstand again.

10:09.

That’s probably good enough.

He grabs Jin by the neck and pulls him in again, one hand working up under the back of his t-shirt. Jin catches on quickly and tugs Kame’s off over his head before tilting them over onto the bed and pulling his own off the rest of the way.

“We’ll just be quiet though,” Jin whispers as he kisses down the side of Kame’s neck.

Kame nods, pulls Jin down on top of him so he settles, their legs tangled together. “Uh-huh. We can totally do that.”

Jin’s skin is so smooth where it slides against Kame’s chest, underneath his fingers. He’s got more muscles than you’d think just to look at him, all that lugging around heavy laundry sacks and fixing machinery. His nipples are huge, and there’s a sharp, quickly stifled sound when Kame flicks a thumb across one of them.

There’s a little part of him that’s waiting for something to go wrong, if he’s honest. Waiting for something to trip Jin up. Kame hasn’t tried this with a straight guy before, and he finds he’s suddenly aware of things he’s never thought much about before, all the little differences there must be—but Jin just keeps kissing him like he’s been kissing men all his life. And as his hands run over Kame’s shoulders and down along his sides, he seems pleased with what he finds. He sort of palms one of Kame’s nipples like maybe he’s looking for a breast, but the kiss doesn’t falter when he finds muscle there instead, and he likes it when Kame arches up into the touch.

“You, um, might have to help me out a little bit,” Jin mumbles low against his lips. They’ve been at this for a while now, and Kame can feel Jin getting hard underneath the jeans—but now he’s sort of toying demurely with Kame’s belt and doesn’t really seem to know how to move forward. He tugs at the belt with a finger again, and there’s a blush there. “I mean, I can figure some stuff out, but, you know…haven’t really done this…”

Kame nods, strokes circles in the small of Jin’s back. “It’s not really that different.” Probably. Kame figures, anyway, people are still people, some stuff has got to translate. “Just, you know, do what feels right. I’ll tell you if something’s wrong. You tell me too.”

Jin nods. Then he leans in again, snuggling into the crook of Kame’s shoulder, and moves his hand down until it’s resting right over where Kame needs it. Kame bites his lip when Jin presses a little, feeling out the shape.

“Wow,” Kame feels the shudder, hears it in Jin’s voice. “You are really hard.”

Kame chuckles a little bit and kisses the side of Jin’s face. “Yeah. That’s kind of how it works.”

Jin squeezes again, a little more confidently this time, and Kame’s hips buck into the touch.

“I…really like it,” Jin says, seeming a little bit surprised himself, and that low sound in his ear makes Kame want to lick all the way down Jin’s body and give him a live demonstration of what a guy can do with another guy’s hard on.

But Jin is fumbling with the belt buckle now, seeming determined to actually open it this time, and the last thing Kame wants is to derail him when he’s on a mission. He kisses Jin, which seems welcome—though eventually Jin has to break the kiss and glance down between their bodies to actually see what he’s doing.

“Do you want me to—”

“No, hang on,” Jin says, working the leather free with his fingertips. “I think I’ve got it…”

The button comes much easier, and Kame’s stomach dips when Jin drags open the zip, and then he’s inside, running fingers over Kame’s length. Pulling him out a little.

“Oh yeah,” Jin breathes, watching the cock in his hand get a little bit harder as he strokes it, and Kame thinks they’re both a little shaky by now. “I like this a lot.”

“Glad to hear it,” Kame breathes, flicking open Jin’s fly as well and finding him just as hard. “Me too.”

Jin whimpers a little and squirms closer, pressing his mouth just beneath Kame’s ear. “You have no idea how good that feels, what you’re doing.”

Kame breathes a little chuckle, briefly considers pointing out that he knows exactly how good that feels—but maybe this isn’t the best time to be teasing him about this.

“I can make it better,” he says instead. He pushes up against Jin’s weight, pleased when Jin just goes with it, rolls over onto his back and lets Kame drive. Kame wraps his tongue around Jin’s nipple on the way down, and it makes him jerk and swallow a moan again. It’s incredibly hot.

Even better when he gets where he’s going.

“Oh god,” Jin says, tangling fingers in Kame’s hair and pushing needily into the heat. “That is—you are so—oh my god…”

So much for keeping it quiet.

“Shh,” Kame reminds him, stroking a little and giving the head another playful lick.

“Shit,” Jin breathes, and his body goes tense all of a sudden. Kame stops what he’s doing—is this the tipping point? He sort of figured they were good once Jin got inside his pants, but…

“Just—hang on, just let me—”

Kame shifts aside when Jin starts squirming, wondering where he’s going. Jin is a little unsteady on his feet, has to balance himself with a hand to the wall, but he starts hopping out of his pants and sort of tiptoeing across the room to—ah. The door.

He twists the handle a couple times, but it doesn’t budge. When he breathes a little sigh of relief and tiptoes back, Kame takes this as the cue to get rid of his pants too.

“I just couldn’t remember,” Jin says with a little grin as he crawls back onto the bed beside Kame. Kame is starting to love the way he blushes. He leans in for a kiss when Jin settles—a pretty chaste one, just cause he’s not sure how into that Jin will be—but Jin doesn’t seem bothered at all, and when Kame opens up all the warmth just pours in.

He finds his way back down again, amused when Jin actually slaps a hand over his mouth to shut himself up. He’s pretty worked up by now, and Kame knows it won’t be long at all. He teases a little, just to make it last—because Jin tastes good and feels good, and it’s been a while for Kame too. It’s been even longer with someone new, and he’s forgotten what it’s like to pay so much attention, pick up clues in every twitch of muscle, every hitched breath. He has to listen even harder because Jin is trying to keep quiet—but it sends a little curl straight down Kame’s body every time there’s a moan he can’t hold in.

When the noises start to sound slightly plaintive, Kame gets down to business, finds a tight, driving rhythm. Soon Jin is twisting against the sheets, breath coming in harsh bursts until—

His whole body goes tight, back arching, lips bitten shut. No breath, no sound as it washes over him—and then the shuddering sigh.

Kame swallows, strokes his hip a little as Jin comes down.

When he crawls back up and flops down beside him, Jin sort of rolls over and curls himself around Kame, kissing sloppily. “That was amazing,” he murmurs. “You are amazing.”

“Glad you liked it,” Kame says, stroking along Jin’s spine and trying not to squirm against his hip.

Jin’s hands are wandering lazily over his sides, even as far as his hips, occasionally. When it goes on for a while after Jin has settled, Kame starts to wonder if maybe Jin is getting lost again—if finally getting off has left him feeling more self-conscious about stuff than he was when he was still horny. He’s just considering broaching the subject when he feels Jin’s hand slide around to the front and find him again.

He opens his eyes. Jin is looking down between them, watching his hand slide over Kame’s skin.

“Still there,” he mumbles, lips spreading in a lazy smile as he strokes a little more for emphasis.

“Yep,” Kame says, and he moves a little closer for encouragement. The strokes are still sort of aimless, not really headed anywhere yet—just enough to get him needy. He wonders how much longer Jin intends to dawdle.

But Jin seems to have a plan, and when he leans in close enough that his lips brush Kame’s earlobe, Kame finds out what it is.

“Can I suck it like you did?” Jin murmurs.

Oh god yes.

“You can do whatever you want with it.”

Jin smiles and kisses his neck, strokes him a few more times before he actually makes a move to make good on his request. It’s a little bit clumsy—the bed is pretty squishy, and Jin is not super-coordinated at the moment—but he gets down there. His hand wraps around Kame’s cock again, and he’s got a trace of a blush going when he leans in and presses a kiss to Kame’s hip. Really close, but not quite there—maybe sort of testing the waters.

“Okay, so, this is the part where you might need to help me,” he admits.

Kame nods. “What do you need? What should I do?”

“Just…show me what you want,” Jin says. “I mean, if I’m doing it wrong, show me. How to do it right.”

“Okay,” Kame swallows and nods again. It’s weird how it’s suddenly a little bit nerve-wracking. Jin seems pretty confident, but Kame is suddenly having flashbacks to first times and not knowing what he’s doing, and he’s trying to sort out the stuff that might be useful from the stuff that would just kill the mood. “Do you want me to warn you?”

Jin thinks about this for a bit, fingers still sort of idly stroking up and down. “Mmm…I don’t know. Maybe? If it feels like it’s going to be a big one.”

Kame cracks up.

“Hey, hold still,” Jin scolds him, trying to look stern even though his eyes are glowing and he’s got a cock in his hand. “You’re making it bounce.”

Kame can’t breathe. He has to stuff a fist in his mouth to keep it quiet. “Stop making me laugh then,” Kame shoots back.

Jin just says “okay,” and steals Kame’s breath again in a whole different way.

~ * ~

“It’s not easy though,” Jin says, “meeting people. I mean, for a long time I wasn’t ready—and then by the time I was, I was all out of practice. Or stuff just didn’t work the way it used to anymore. I can’t hire a babysitter just to go out clubbing and try to pick somebody up.”

Kame hums in sympathy and takes a sip of his beer. Jin put on sweatpants and snuck out to grab them a couple of cold ones a little while ago. He’s still got the sweatpants on, but he’s got the duvet fluffed up around his chest as well, protecting his vulnerable nipples from any accidental spillage.

Kame likes Jin’s nipples a lot. They’re surprisingly sensitive for how big they are.

Kame is stretched out on his side, one foot lying on top of the covers, because it’s still a little bit warm in here from before.

“Yeah, I know what you mean. I didn’t even have much practice at dating or picking people up before. He kind of picked me up, and then…you know. Wasn’t really a skill I needed to cultivate much after that.”

Jin nods in sympathy. “Right? That’s the thing nobody ever tells you when you’re getting into a relationship. ‘Congratulations, many happy years, make sure you practice your flirting every few months or so just in case it all goes to hell.’”

Kame sighs, rolling over onto his back and tilting his beer a little to watch the liquid catch the light. “And I didn’t even get to do the congratulations part.”

There’s a brief lull in the conversation, and Kame just breathes in the warmth. Jin has a comfortable bed. The mattress is a little lumpy, but the lumps are soft ones, and the whole thing sort of swallows you up. There might be trouble when it comes to getting out of it, but while he’s in it it feels really nice.

After a little while, Kame hears Jin set his beer bottle down on the nightstand, feels the mattress shake as Jin scoots down and curls in a little closer on his side. “So,” Jin says, “just, you know, so I know and everything, on a scale of one to ten, how did I do with the whole guy-sex thing?”

Kame raises eyebrows at him. “You want me to rate you?”

“Sure, why not? And don’t just be nice and say ten, because that’s bullshit, and it won’t help me learn.”

Kame laughs and rolls to set his own beer down. Then he curls up facing Jin, whose face is all studious even if his eyes glint a little. “You are crazy.”

“Crazy like…seven out of ten?”

Kame pretends to consider that for a while, waiting just long enough that Jin starts to pout. Then he leans in and kisses him softly, pleased when Jin seems okay with it. Kisses him back, even.

“Eight out of ten, at least.”

He feels the smile, and the kiss gets a little more enthusiastic for a while. It might even turn into a second round if it weren’t for the fact that Kame is starting to feel warm and drowsy, and he knows Jin must have been up at six this morning to open the shop.

“You can spend the night here,” Jin says, when Kame interrupts the kiss with a yawn—but Kame shakes his head.

“I can’t. I have to work in the morning and I’ll need to change at some point. Anyway, Nao-chan would see me.”

“So? We’d just tell her it got late and you slept over. It wouldn’t even be a lie.”

Kame shakes his head again, stroking Jin’s cheek a little. “I really can’t,” he murmurs. “This was fun though. You were right about that.”

“Yeah,” Jin says, resigned, snuggling down into the pillow a bit with his arm still around Kame’s waist. “I had fun too.”

Kame smiles. “I’m glad.”

They lie there dozing for a little while longer before Kame decides he really has to pull himself together if he’s going to resist the urge to fall asleep. Jin complains a bit, but doesn’t stop him from sliding out from under the covers and starting to get dressed.

“What did you do with my laundry?” Kame asks as he pulls his t-shirt on over his head.

“Mm. It’s in the back room. I’ll come show you.”

“No, no, you don’t have to get up—you can just tell me where to find it.”

“No, it’s okay,” Jin mumbles into the pillow, stretching and squirming a little to wake himself up. “I have to let you out anyway or you’ll set off the alarm.”

Jin pulls on a t-shirt as well and follows Kame down the creaky back stairs leading to the shop. The laundry is tucked neatly into Kame’s laundry bag and sitting near the other finished loads in the back, just a little apart. Jin punches in the alarm code by the door as Kame pulls the strap onto his shoulder and runs a hand through his hair—he didn’t really think to check how it looks before he came downstairs. But it’s late—not like there will be many people around to see him.

Jin blinks a little bit sleepily and smiles at him as he reaches for the door. It’s dark outside, but the air is warm, and Kame’s skin is still tingling. He hasn’t felt this good in months.

~ * ~

June

“It wasn’t always oppressive,” Kame says, lazing against the headboard. Jin ran out of beer, so they’re drinking Nao’s peach soda instead. She has flute practice after school on Thursdays and Kame had the afternoon off, so Jin turned the store over to his part-timer Eri for a couple hours. “We traveled a lot, and he had this circle of friends who knew about us. It wasn’t like he kept me locked away in a dungeon somewhere and threw me scraps of food. He was a great partner—he treated me like a partner. And he wanted me to be able to have my own life too—he even pulled strings to get me this job.”

“And you were okay with that?”

Kame shrugs. “I don’t know. Everybody needs a connection here and there in this business—”

“No, I mean—about the other stuff. I mean, I get the traveling and the glamorous friends and whatever—but you keep talking about all of them like they weren’t yours.”

“They weren’t,” Kame says. He takes another sip from the soda bottle, wincing a little at the sweet-sour bite. He settles the bottle against his knees, running fingertips over the brightly colored label. “Everything we had was always his. And I knew that, honestly—I knew that I was depending on him too much, living in his world too much, and it probably wasn’t going to be good for me in the long run. But…”

How do you put it into words?

“But?” Jin prompts.

“But it was comfortable that way,” Kame says, finally. “And it meant I got to stay with him. That was all I wanted.”

~ * ~

She’s very pretty.

She isn’t one of the regulars at the store—Kame is pretty sure of that, hasn’t seen her around before anyway. She’s also a bit young, or maybe that’s just how she dresses, with those jeans and that tight-fitting shirt, and her hair all sort of swept over to one side, two little silver earrings in her left ear. Jin is explaining to her about the soap compartments, and she’s nodding along with a concentrated little frown, and Kame—is moving his stuff into the dryer.

Is that flirting?

It’s hard to tell with Jin sometimes, because his version of flirting can just come off goofy, and his version of friendly can sometimes seems seductive just because…he’s Jin. The woman—girl—woman is definitely flirting with him, every once in a while reaching up to swipe her hair out of her face or send him a glance through her eyelashes. Jin doesn’t really seem to notice.

Or maybe he does?

Kame wonders sometimes if Jin ever misses sleeping with women. He seems to enjoy what they do pretty thoroughly, but as a man who doesn’t really get the appeal of sleeping with women in the first place, Kame just can’t tell if there’s more for him to miss. And they don’t exactly have rules about these things, so who knows, maybe he does sleep with women occasionally. It’s just, based on what he knows about the way Jin’s life works these days, he sort of suspects not.

Jin reaches across to the opposite corner of the machine to point out something on the instructions. From this angle it looks like his arm comes very close to brushing against her left breast. Not quite.

But very close.

Kame sort of hopes that Jin would tell him if he were sleeping with other people. Not that he would mind, and not that they’ve made any actual rules about that either, but just as a courtesy. It would be good to know. It would be good not to have to wonder.

Jin finishes up with the controls and the machine starts whirring, and she smiles at him. Jin smiles back, charmingly awkward as ever. And Kame goes back to his laundry, because it’s none of his business.

~ * ~

Every inch of him is beautiful, and he doesn’t really seem to know it. It’s awkward and playful and hot, the way they move together, sweet, the way Jin holds onto him afterwards. Not like he’s supposed to, but like he’s all cozy and warm and he doesn’t want to be cold again. Sex turns him into a big cuddly teddy bear with tentacles. Kame isn’t used to that, and he’s sort of surprised that it doesn’t bother him, but with Jin it really doesn’t.

They still talk about sports and laundry, and sometimes about other things too. The business belonged to Jin’s wife, actually—and her father, until he passed away. Jin’s parents live in Yokohama—his dad is some kind of upper-level management person in the hotel business. Jin, for his part, barely finished high school with no solid prospects and plans to become a starving musician. When they found out she was pregnant, he decided he needed better plans.

“I sort of like it now though,” Jin says, almost like he’s admitting a secret. “It’s not glamorous or anything—but it’s mine, you know? I get to run things the way I want, and nobody can tell me I can’t.”

“Except Nao-chan.”

Jin laughs. The little breath tickles Kame’s chest. “That goes without saying.”

~ * ~

July

The door is open.

Kame knows he isn’t the type to forget to lock it behind him when he leaves in the morning—sometimes when his muscle-memorized movements get interrupted he even unlocks the thing again and starts over, just to make sure—so when he gets to the top of the stairs and finds his apartment door standing wide open, he knows something is very wrong.

The shoes are all jumbled in the genkan, like they’ve been trampled over, but none of them immediately appear to be missing, and he can see his flatscreen still sitting on the TV stand around the corner, so what the hell would—

Voices.

Shit. There are people actually in here.

He drops his bag on the floor and doesn’t bother taking off his shoes just in case he has to run. It’s a surprise when he hears the little splashes under his feet—and that’s when he realizes that the entire floor is covered in water.

“Ah! Kamenashi-san.”

Kame glances over to see the pleasant old building super walking out of his bedroom, dabbing at his hairline with a rag.

“I’m so very sorry for the mess—it seems there’s been a leak.”

He’s motioning toward the bedroom, and Kame grits his teeth against the dread as he slips past him to see…yeah.

It’s a disaster area. It looks like half the room got in the way of a passing waterfall, and there’s a giant gaping hole in the ceiling near the door to the bathroom where two men are still fiddling with the pipes.

“…only a small crack in one of the pipes, but then you see they were having some trouble with water pressure upstairs a few days ago, and it seems the repairs must have put too much stress on it. We didn’t even realize there was a problem until the young woman two floors down from you called to complain about water dripping from the ceiling…”

The dresser caught the worst of it on this side of the wall—everything that was on top of it is now soaked and scattered all over the floor. The carpet squelches underfoot as he wanders around taking stock of the damage, all the boxes he hasn’t gotten around to unpacking yet that show signs of a high-water-mark about eight inches from the floor. And his closet—god. A few things have escaped on the far side, but at least half his clothes are in wet piles on the floor. And most of them are really, really not meant for that.

“We’ve managed to stop the leak,” the super continues as Kame paws through the mess, only half-listening. “But as you can imagine our contractor has recommended a full inspection, and it will take some time to repair the damage to this unit. We don’t know yet exactly how long, but if you call the building owner, he can help you find a place to stay for the next few weeks…”

Kame nods vaguely, accepting the business card in one hand while his favorite silk shirt hangs limply from the other. As the super goes back to consulting with the plumbers, Kame stares around the room, wondering where on earth he should even start cleaning up.

It’s been a long day.

Well. At least it’s only water. (He’s pretty sure.) When the pipes burst in a residential building, he supposes the result could be a whole lot worse. He’s probably going to have to throw out a lot of stuff anyway though, no getting around that.

But not tonight.

Luckily he keeps his suitcases in the hall closet near the kitchen, so they’ve escaped harm. He grabs the biggest one and sets it up on top of his bed, and then he starts fishing through the pile at the bottom of his closet for as many essentials as he can manage—if he’s going to be living out of a suitcase for a matter of weeks, he wants to make it count.

He gives his cell number to the super so they can contact him as soon as there’s further news about the repairs, checks around for any work he might have left here that he’ll need, and grabs his bag off the floor of the genkan, along with a couple of pairs of shoes.

~ * ~

“Ewww,” Nao says, wrinkling her nose in fascination as she watches Kame dumping piles of wet clothes into the machine. “What happened? You’re not supposed to put them in wet, you know…”

“It’s just water,” he says, closing the lid over the first load and fiddling with the controls.

“How did you get that soaked though?”

“I didn’t—my closet did.”

“Your closet?”

Jin is giving him a quizzical look as he emerges from the back room with another sack of laundry over his shoulder.

Kame returns a rueful smile. “There was a leak in my building.”

Jin eyes the suitcase, which is still two-thirds full. “Some leak.”

“This isn’t even the half of it. They told me it’s going to take a while to get it all repaired, so now I have to find a hotel that rents by the week.” He fingers a stretched-out cashmere sleeve mournfully, then drops it back into the suitcase. “Preferably a really cheap one.”

“You can stay with us!” Nao says, eyes lighting up as she bounces on her stepladder.

Kame laughs. “I think that might get a little bit crowded.”

“No, hey, don’t be silly,” Jin says. “Of course you’ll stay with us.”

Eh? Um. Uh-oh.

“That’s…” Kame starts, caught off-guard. It’s really not what he was thinking—their place is pretty small to begin with, and the couch isn’t really fit for sleeping. Which is probably not what Jin means when he says Kame can stay with them, but then that gets…complicated.

Doesn’t it?

He’s made a point of never staying over before, even when Jin offered. It’s important to keep boundaries with these kinds of things, especially with Nao in the picture. He thinks. It helps keep everything in balance. Keeps things simple.

Then again, he is kind of in a bind here. He has no idea what this whole thing is going to end up costing him in lost property, and his financial situation these days is a little tighter than he’s used to already. He never realized how thin the margins on his salary were until he actually started paying bills with it.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t mind?”

Jin grins at him. “As long as you promise to do all the algebra duty, you’ll have more than made it worth my while.”

~ * ~

Jin, as it turns out, is not a morning person. This makes it even more amazing that he’s out of bed by 5:30 a.m. so he can shower and dress in time to open the store. Kame usually wakes a little bit later and makes coffee for both of them, and Jin reappears around seven to see that Nao gets fed before she heads off to school. Cereal seems to be the routine—there isn’t time for anything else—but when Kame discovers that Nao actually can’t remember ever having had a hot breakfast, he starts setting his alarm an extra fifteen minutes early so he can make a batch of miso and rice. Enough for three.

He makes Jin lunch sometimes as well—sometimes he has to be at the office in the mornings, but other times he stays home and does his writing at the apartment, and then it’s no trouble—they even get to eat together, if Jin has time. Games are usually in the afternoons and evenings, so Kame isn’t always around at dinnertime. Jin and Nao cover dinner duty, usually—unless Kame is home, in which case sometimes they all cook together. It’s a while before Kame realizes he hasn’t had takeout in weeks.

“Y’know,” Jin chuckles sleepily into Kame’s shoulder, late one night, “we eat a lot better when you’re around.”

Kame runs fingers through Jin’s hair and smiles against his forehead. “Yeah?”

Jin nods, humming appreciatively and tucking his arm a little more securely around Kame’s waist. He always likes the petting.

“That’s funny. Me too.”

~ * ~

As expected, a good deal of the stuff in the lowest layer of boxes is completely ruined. Fortunately that doesn’t matter a whole lot in some cases—there was a reason why those moldy old blankets had never been unpacked—but one of them was full of old files and financial records, which are now spread out across every vaguely flat and dry surface Kame can find throughout the rest of the apartment.

“Keep or throw?”

Kame glances up from the 2005-2010 tax return folder to find Jin in the doorway to the bedroom holding up a lumpy old spare pillow, which still looks slightly damp.

“Throw,” he says. “Don’t even want to know what’s started growing in there.”

“I’d suggest sticking it in the dryer on high to see if you can kill whatever it is, but these things don’t usually come out so well after that,” Jin says, shoving the pillow down into one of the big garbage bags they’ve got clumped together in the corner of the room. The living room rug is rolled away behind it, part of the throw pile as well. Some of the furniture might have to go eventually too, but Kame figures he’ll leave it for now and see how it all smells once the repairs are finished.

“I’m done with this pile!” Nao announces triumphantly, depositing a heavily laden laundry basket on the floor next to the armchair. “These ones will be safe in the wash—the other stuff has to get dry cleaned.”

“Where’s the dry-clean-only pile?” Jin asks.

“Still in the closet.”

Jin follows her back into the bedroom to check her work. Kame listens to the two of them arguing about whether it makes more sense to put the stuff on hangers and try to keep it as flat as possible or just fold everything like normal clothes and hope all the wrinkles come out with the cleaning. He smiles to himself and keeps sorting his taxes.

Half an hour later, Jin reemerges with the second batch of laundry.

“You won the debate, huh?” Kame says, noticing everything is folded normally.

“For a change. I told her to start clearing stuff out of the bottom drawers of all the dressers and set aside anything that’s—”

“Jin?” Nao calls from the bedroom. “These are paper, but they’re all glossy—what pile should they be in?”

They both glance over. She’s holding up a magazine.

Kame bites off a gasp and drops the taxes on the couch, hopping over the coffee table to get in there before she opens the thing up.

“Um, you know what, why don’t I handle the nightstand,” he says, taking the magazine and trying to find a casual way of hiding it behind his back. “You start on the big dresser over there—some of those things might need to go in the laundry pile anyway.”

She gives him a curious look, but smiles back when he does and scoots over to pull out the lowest drawer of the dresser. Kame grabs one of the empty garbage bags off the bed and crouches down to start emptying the small stack of magazines into it. He checks to make sure Nao is still occupied before slipping the lube and the box of condoms out of the middle drawer—just in case—and sticking them in the bag as well. Then he takes the whole thing and stashes it on an upper shelf in the hall closet, at a safe distance from all the water damage.

“Need a hand?”

Kame jerks around—and there’s Jin propped up against the back of the armchair, looking rather amused.

Kame gives him a flat look.

~ * ~

This particular problem actually has Kame stumped. They both tried to work it out a couple of different ways, but even after reading through the chapter in the book that’s supposed to explain how it works, they still weren’t able to get it to come out right. Kame finally ends up looking it up on the internet.

“Oh…” Nao murmurs, squinting over Kame’s shoulder at the laptop screen. “We missed that part with the square root thingy…”

They pull out a fresh sheet of graph paper and start the working over again, referencing the laptop on one side and the textbook on the other as they proceed step by step.

“But why doesn’t it just say that?” Kame frowns down at the conflicting sources, trying to figure out what they missed the first time.

“Maybe it was a typo?”

“Somebody typoed out an entire paragraph?” Kame says, arching an eyebrow.

Nao shrugs. “People make mistakes.”

“Well. With that big a mistake, I won’t be surprised if you’re the only one in your class with the right answer tomorrow.”

Nao beams at him and goes back to her working. He watches over her shoulder to double-check, but she’s totally got it now—she’s good with numbers. Once she understands the theory, she’s really quick with her calculations.

When she gets to the end, she keeps staring at the paper for a bit, a little crinkle between her brows. Kame glances over the work again, trying to figure out what she thinks she missed—but it really is all right. He’s pretty sure, anyway. He’d have to run it by a calculator to check, but it looks good from here.

“Can I ask you something?” she says. She puts her hands in her lap and still doesn’t look up from the paper.

“Sure,” Kame says. “Anything.”

There’s an uncomfortable little pinch around her mouth, like she’s screwing up words or courage, or maybe both. When it comes out, it’s surprisingly quiet, but also in kind of a rush.

“Do you like my dad?”

Kame feels the jolt all the way down. Weirdly, the first thing he gets stuck on is the way she said it. She called him dad—she never calls him dad. Kame isn’t really sure what that means, and he really wishes Jin were here to fill him in right now. Jin should be here, dammit.

But, well…it’s not like she couldn’t have asked Jin herself if that was who she wanted to hear from. She’s not asking Jin about this—she’s asking him. And somewhere along the way he stopped expecting her to, he realizes, which was dumb—stuff like this gets more likely with time, not less.

Whatever, who cares whether he’s prepared himself for this or not—he still has to deal with it.

He tries a smile, a little laugh that he hopes sounds easier than it is. “Of course I like your dad. Your dad’s a great guy.”

She looks up at him and…nope. Missed the mark.

“I mean you like like him,” she clarifies. “Don’t you.”

Shit. Shit, shit, shit.

What do you do?

What would Jin want him to do? They’ve never actually talked about this, and it suddenly feels like a glaring oversight, because of course this was going to come up eventually. Nao is a clever kid—she was bound to notice. Jin just kept saying he’d handle it if it ever became an issue, which was fine as long as he happened to be around at the moment it became an issue—but now it’s become an issue, and Jin is not around. And Kame doesn’t want to lie to her, but he doesn’t want to tell her anything Jin doesn’t want her to know either.

And…the truth is, he’s not even sure he knows what the honest answer to her question is.

“I like him a lot,” he says, with a little nod. Because that much is certainly true, and maybe it’s all she needs to know right now. Maybe it will be enough.

She gives him a brave look, but he can see her shoulders slumping a little bit—and for a moment he worries he’s said too much, he’s made it worse somehow. How did she even know? Did she hear something? See something? Would she know enough to…understand what she heard? Did someone else figure something out—one of the regulars at the store maybe?

But then he looks at her again and thinks properly, sweeps away his complicated grownup questions and realizes what that look is. Why it’s actually there.

Why she’s asking him.

“I like you a lot too,” he says. When she perks up slightly at that, he gives her a little smile.

She smiles back.

~ * ~

“She said that?” Jin says, the sentence broken by a yawn. He’s sprawled out on top of the bed, still fully-dressed while Kame is brushing his teeth—the store was swamped this evening. He didn’t even make it upstairs to grab dinner until after Nao had gone to bed.

“Yeah.”

Jin scrubs at his eyes and scratches fingers through his hair. “Look,” he sighs, blinking a few times, like he’s struggling just to keep himself awake, “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t mean to leave you in an awkward position.”

“I’m not worried about that,” Kame says. He rinses his toothbrush under the faucet and drops it in the little holder, next to the red one. “She can ask me any questions she wants, I don’t mind—but you and I really need to get on the same page as far as what the answers should be, or she’s definitely going to be confused.”

“Confused about what?” Jin’s eyelids are drooping again.

Kame tugs the towel loose from his shoulders and rubs it over his face one last time. Hangs it up by the sink. Then he fluffs a hand through his wet hair and wanders over to the edge of the bed, dropping down to sit next to Jin. Jin’s eyes flutter open again at the residual bounce.

“Jin,” he says, “we said we wanted to keep this simple—and I do want that, I’m not asking you for anything different. And I know you said being a dad doesn’t mean you don’t get to have a life—you’re right about that, and I know you’re doing what you can, and I’m not trying to tell you how to parent your kid. But like it or not, this whole thing has gotten way out of hand. She’s getting attached to me, and she knows something is going on with the two of us, and she’s going to have questions. And if I disappear sooner or later—”

“Why would you disappear?” Jin mumbles. Maybe it’s just because he’s so tired that it comes out sounding like a pout.

Kame kind of wants to reach out and pet his hand, or his hair, or maybe just tuck him into bed and leave this conversation for the morning. He’ll probably have to, ultimately, because Jin is obviously in no fit state to make thoughtful decisions about things right now. But they’ve put this off for longer than they should have already, and he really can’t let that keep happening. Jin makes that too easy.

“Because that’s what keeping it simple means.”

Jin peers over at him again, not saying anything. Then his eyes fall closed, and he rubs a hand over his face.

“I’ll talk to her tomorrow,” Jin murmurs into his palm. “I’ll make sure she’s not confused about what’s going on, and that she doesn’t expect you to stay here forever. Okay?”

“Okay,” Kame nods. “Thanks.”

~ * ~

August

“I’m sorry to call you out of the blue like this. I know you asked that we not keep in contact, and I’ve tried to respect that—but I’d really like to see you. Just to talk. Please, give me a call.”

~ * ~

The tie is still wrong. It looked good on the hanger, but now in the light from Jin’s nightstand all the colors seem off, the blues all the wrong shade. He unties it again and throws it on the bed, digging for a silver with a subtle diamond texture instead. When he holds it up to his neck in front of the mirror, he makes a face and tosses it aside immediately.

Nao is curled up on the couch with her homework spread out around her, Jin looking over her shoulder, the two of them with identical frowns on their faces. He looks up as Kame walks into the room, still tugging at his tie—it’s a dark navy one this time. He catches the flicker as Jin looks him up and down briefly, and falters, hand flying to the knot.

“Shit—it’s still wrong, right? It doesn’t go with the suit. Should I maybe go with the silver? Or something totally different—I have a red one, I didn’t try the red one. It doesn’t go very well with this suit either, but maybe I should switch to a—”

“You look fine,” Jin interrupts him, and there’s something weird about the smile, something weird about the way he seems to be making himself look at Kame’s face—but Kame doesn’t have time to figure out what that’s about right now.

“You’re sure?”

“Absolutely. You look great.” It sounds certain enough, and Jin punctuates it with a little nod before turning back to the homework. The frown comes back then, but Jin’s eyes don’t quite seem to be focusing on the page.

It’s too late to change again anyway—if he doesn’t get a cab soon he won’t have time to make it across town, and he doesn’t want to keep him waiting. Kame straightens out the jacket and tie a bit more and checks his appearance one last time in the bathroom mirror.

He still looks nervous. Why the hell is he nervous? There’s nothing to be nervous about, it’s just dinner. Just to talk.

Late. Right.

“—but you have to find the value of X first or else you don’t get the right answer when you try to do the next part,” Nao is saying, poking at the graphing calculator and then turning it around so Jin can see.

“Oh. Um…well, maybe if we—oh, wait,” Jin looks up again as Kame heads for the door. He gets up from the couch and follows him to the front hall. “Are you leaving?”

“Yeah,” he tugs on his second shoe, straightening the heel with a finger, “I’m supposed to be there in half an hour.”

“Do you know when you’ll be home? I mean, just.” Jin scratches at his lower back, rumpling his t-shirt. Shifts his weight a little. “You know, in case Nao asks. I don’t want her to worry or anything if you’re late.”

Kame glances at Nao, who is still hunched over her homework over on the couch, scribbling something in the margins. “Yeah. Sure. Well, I don’t know exactly—I don’t think I’ll be out late though. Maybe eleven.”

“Sure,” Jin nods quickly. “Sure, good—eleven is fine. And it’s fine if you’re later too, of course, I just…yeah. I mean, you have the code and everything. You can let yourself in.”

Jin looks away at the coat rack, which is still loaded down with his and Nao’s winter things. They’ll probably be in season again before Jin gets around to putting them away.

Kame fidgets with his keys, slips them into his pants pocket. Checks for his wallet again.

“Well,” he says. “I’d better get going.”

“Of course.” Jin smiles at him again. “Have a great time!”

“Thanks,” Kame says. And he still feels like he’s leaving something undone, forgetting something somewhere. But he’s got his wallet, and he’s got his keys, and his tie is okay even if it’s not perfect. It’s fine.

It’s just dinner.

Okay, now he really is running late.

“Bye.”

He just catches a sliver of Jin’s cheerful “bye” as he pulls the door shut behind him.

~ * ~

It’s not a restaurant he’s ever been to before—he thinks it must have taken the place of that little bistro they used to like, because he remembers the furniture store next door—but it’s somehow nostalgic anyway, exactly the sort of place he expects. The kind of place that always makes Kame think of him. Everything is modern and muted, with dark walnut paneling from floor to ceiling and little glowing bulbs setting the mood at each table in place of candles. When he gives his name to the maître d’, he’s shown immediately through the main dining room to a private room at the back.

Kimura stands from his chair as the doors are shut quietly behind them. He looks elegant as always, and Kame has to resist the urge to pull at his tie again, make sure it’s lying flat.

He doesn’t know what to say.

“I’m so glad you could come,” Kimura says, with that smile that says he means it. “Please, have a seat. I’ve ordered a bottle of the Lafite, but you can have something else if you like. Whatever you like.”

“The Lafite will be fine,” Kame says, trying to unstick himself. Get past the fact that they’re here, doing this again, like the way things always were, and just go with the flow. He can manage dinner. This isn’t giving in—it’s the way this was always supposed to be. Eventually.

The wine is excellent—Kimura always had good taste. And soon there’s a small salad and an array of tiny amuse-bouches shaped like little pink and green and orange hamburgers with a variety of different fillings—jams and pates and cheeses. Kimura asks him about work, and Kame tells him about the series of articles he wrote about Takano Jiro’s elbow injury in the spring, a close study of rehabilitation practices in the pro league that won him a small award. Seems Kimura even read a few of them.

Kame hasn’t kept up with Kimura’s career, but it’s been hard to avoid him entirely. There was a drama Kame didn’t watch, a movie Kame didn’t see, a tour Kame didn’t attend. Not even backstage with the tech crew, watching from the wings.

The salads and amuse-bouches are whisked away, and Kame tucks into a tiny apple tart palate cleanser as Kimura tells him about Paris, La Tour d’Argent, and this little inn on the outskirts he would have loved.

~ * ~

Jin is nothing like Kimura.

With Kimura, it was always like this—always the best wines and the finest chefs. Tailored suits that cost more than most people’s rent but somehow never made him look like a snob. Not to Kame, anyway. Even in bed he was refined, elegant. Generous. Confident. Kimura was candles and flowers and good taste, beautiful expensive things everywhere, and Kame felt lucky every day to have all that in his life and be a part of it. Lucky that this interesting man found him interesting, this beautiful man found him beautiful. When Kame was with Kimura, he felt valuable. Like the version of himself he always wanted to be.

Jin is beer. Jin is elbow grease and wrinkled t-shirts and jeans that are five sizes too large. Jin is bickering about homework in the kitchen and a lumpy mattress you could drown in and something always broken that there hasn’t been time to fix. Jin is spaghetti dinners and a goofy smile and flopping into bed after a long hard day when he just doesn’t give a fuck anymore, and then making stuff happen that’s raw and cozy and not the least bit refined.

It’s not at all what he wanted. It’s not at all what he thought he was missing all this time, but there it is—and he’s sitting here now with Kimura in this empty room with his wine and his sea urchin bisque and eight more courses to go, and everything is excellent, and he’s starting to wonder why he’s even here.

When he could be somewhere else.

~ * ~

It’s eleven-thirty at night when Kame closes the door to the shop, punching in the alarm code so it doesn’t start shrieking and wake up the neighbors. He tries to be quiet on the stairs—he knows Nao will already be asleep, and it’s likely that Jin will be too, as he has to get up in the morning. Usually Kame tries to remember to leave his night things in the hall bathroom when he’s going to be late so he can get changed without disturbing Jin, but he was in such a rush he forgot this time. He’ll just have to be quiet.

He’s surprised to find the lights still on in the living room when he slips in the front door. As he steps out of his shoes he hears the sink running in the kitchen, which is weird—Jin is not a fan of dishes. And he’s even less a fan of dishes when it’s nearly midnight, and he’s been working all day, and he knows Kame will do them in the morning anyway if he just leaves them alone.

As he steps around into the kitchen doorway, he finds Jin scrubbing the big saucepan with a worn-out sponge in his hand and the same little frown he had on his face before Kame left.

“What are you doing up?”

Jin sucks in a breath and looks around.

“Sorry,” Kame says. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“No no, you didn’t,” Jin shakes his head, going back to his scrubbing. “I just didn’t hear you come in. How was your evening?”

“Fine. It was really nice.”

Jin nods, mumbling something noncommittal in response. He keeps scrubbing the edge of the pan over and over again. Even Kame can see that it’s pretty much clean by now, but Jin doesn’t really seem to be paying that much attention.

“He wants me to come back,” Kame says, pulling at the cuff of his sleeve where it’s slipping beneath his suit coat. The cufflinks were a gift from him years ago, little sterling silver turtles with a diamond each in the shell. Kame hasn’t worn them in months. They’re a bit flashy for the press box at the Tokyo Dome, and definitely too much for the laundromat.

Jin nods, still wiping down the handle of the pan. “I kind of thought he might.”

“He said we could work on things, maybe find ways to make it not such a secret. He said he was thinking of moving abroad, just coming back here for work, so he wouldn’t have to hide all the time.”

Jin stops scrubbing the pan and opens his mouth. Kame watches him struggle with something, trying on words once or twice. But whatever he wants to say doesn’t make it all the way out.

He looks down again. “That’s a good idea,” he says. “I mean, it would probably make things a lot easier for both of you.”

He’s not even pretending to be cleaning anymore though. Now he’s just sort of got his hands resting on the edge of the soapy pot, two fingers plucking at a loose fiber on the sponge.

“It probably would,” Kame agrees. “I turned him down though.”

The fingers stop plucking. Finally he looks over at Kame again, and…good. That’s…good. Maybe Kame got it right. He hopes so.

“You did?”

Kame nods.

“But I thought…things were still complicated with him. For you.”

Kame lifts his shoulders in a small shrug. “So did I. But I guess they weren’t as complicated as I thought anymore.”

Jin sets the pot down in the sink and drops the sponge inside it. Reaches for a dish towel to dry off his hands and leaves it on the counter as he walks over to where Kame is standing. It almost takes him by surprise when Jin just folds him up in his arms, just like that, holding him so tight Kame can’t help but wrap his arms around Jin as well. There’s a little kiss against the side of his neck, just beneath his ear, and it’s not seduction. It makes Kame feel warm all over, and he squeezes Jin’s waist a little bit tighter.

“Kame?” Jin says, just a mumble in Kame’s ear.

“Hm.”

“Is it okay with you if we stop keeping things simple now?”

Kame laughs a little and wriggles to loosen Jin’s hold on him enough that he can get his arms around him properly, twisting his fingers in the back of Jin’s soft t-shirt. He nods. “Yeah. I think that ship might have sailed a while ago.”

Jin kisses him again, and Kame feels the smile this time—and maybe, Kame thinks as Jin’s voice drops down low, this one is a little bit seduction.

“Good.”

~ * ~

September

The score is eight to zero in the Giants’ favor, and Nao is jumping and screaming at the top of her lungs as two more runners circle the bases, bringing the score up to an even ten.

“We are going to have to have a serious talk about you and your bad influences,” Jin mutters across Nao’s empty seat. Kame just grins back at him and ruffles his hair.

“What? You can’t handle having a mixed-faith family?”

“If she starts wearing orange everywhere, I swear, you are moving out.”

“Relax,” Kame pats his arm and glances down at the field where the players are changing positons for the top of the ninth. “I have three tickets for Verdy next week.”

“No.” Jin clutches at his hand. “You’re serious? Really?”

Kame smiles and nods.

Jin tugs his hand across the distance and kisses his knuckles. “I take it all back. You can stay forever.”

“You only love me for my sports tickets.”

“You figured me out,” Jin grins, and squeezes his hand again. Nao is still waving her new Giants pennant in the air—Kame glances back to see if she’s annoying the people behind them, but the game is such a foregone conclusion by now no one really seems to mind. One guy a few seats down is giving Kame and Jin’s joined hands the side-eye, but Kame just smiles at him pleasantly and turns back to the field.

“So, actually,” Kame says, leaning in a little bit so Jin can hear him over the crowd, “speaking of me moving out—I heard from my landlord the other day. They say my apartment is finally ready.”

Jin isn’t paying attention to the game—he seems more interested in playing with Kame’s fingers, which are still laced between his. “They do, huh?”

“Yeah. I can move in as early as next week.”

“Hm,” Jin nods thoughtfully, running a fingertip up underneath Kame’s pinky. “Have you figured out what you’re going to do yet?”

“I don’t know,” Kame says, brushing his thumb along the side of Jin’s hand. “It’ll probably take me a while to pull together all my stuff. And I still have to figure out what to do with the rest of my furniture—what stuff is in good shape and what needs to go.”

Jin nods and hums again. Then he looks over at Kame. “You know, I’ve been thinking. What if you just got rid of all your furniture?”

Kame raises eyebrows at him. “And what? Slept on the floor?”

Jin smiles. “That’s…not really what I was thinking, no.”

Kame smiles back, giving him a shrewd look. “Go on.”

“Well,” Jin says, “see, I figure half your stuff is already at our place anyway, and the other half is mostly stuff you’re thinking of throwing out, so…really, the only sensible solution is for you to just throw out the stuff you want to throw out, and move the rest back to our place. If you think about it.” He makes an innocent face.

Kame smiles. “I guess I would save quite a lot on rent.”

“And laundry bills,” Jin points out. “One of the perks.”

“Just one?”

Jin grins. He brings Kame’s hand up to his lips and bites one of his knuckles. The guy in the row behind them makes a scandalized face, and Kame presses his lips together to hold in the laugh.

“So,” Jin says, a little more quietly. “Will you stay?”

Kame just smiles again. And the crowd goes wild.