JFK-NRT
Title: JFK-NRT
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho
Summary: A fourteen hour flight awaits, and Jun finds himself sitting next to one of the most irritating passengers imaginable. But he's cute too...
Notes/Warnings: I've wanted to write something inspired by Sakumoto's JAL spots for ages, but this ended up sillier than planned because I was in the mood for fluffy good times. If only all bad flights ended up this way, hehehe.
Terminal 1
John F. Kennedy International Airport
New York, USA
“Use my miles,” Shun had said. “Just use my fucking miles, I never do.”
But Jun hadn’t used them and was already regretting it as he finally set foot onto the massive plane. Ahead of him, it seemed like every other Economy Class passenger was stalled. It was the worst part of boarding, the Battle for the Overhead Bins.
Jun had once been one of those warriors, booking himself a seat in the ass back of the plane but shoving his bag into the first spot that opened up. But things had changed considerably the last few years. More people paid extra for the extra legroom, and for priority boarding, so the front bins always filled up before his section of the plane was even called and by the time he got to the back, so had those. He checked his bags now, eating the cost, and only carried his laptop bag onto the flight and kept it with him.
Thankfully this was an international flight, so at least his checked bag was free. Not much else about this flight was. He’d turned down Shun’s offered miles, paying his own way over to see Satoshi’s exhibit. He’d opted for Economy over his usual “splurge” on Premium Economy, if only so he could take in a Broadway show while he was all the way over in New York.
The show had sucked.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, Jun made his way to the back of the plane, shuddering about the fourteen hours of flight time that was waiting for him. It was just after 9:00 AM, and he was regretting the choices he’d made in the last 12 hours - staying out way too late with Satoshi, not changing out of the suit he’d worn to the exhibit, getting back to his hotel only to check out and have to race to the airport on no sleep.
While he waited in the aisle, he tried to be subtle, sniffing his suit jacket as he’d been doing in the terminal, wondering if he still smelled like the bar from last night. There wasn’t a really noticeable funk, thankfully.
A small miracle awaited when he got back to his seat, the window on the right, row 49. Nobody in the middle seat. The woman seated on the aisle had her hand out, was trying to take a toy out of the hands of the child across from her. Mom, apparently, taking fun away from the kids. He waited patiently for her to notice him, and he slunk over to his window, shoving his laptop bag under the seat.
Well, he’d made it.
He buckled his belt, taking off his glasses and holding them in his hand. He’d nearly felt like dying on the way over, having worn his contacts, spending half the flight putting drops in his eyes. This would be an improvement at least. He listened to the hum of the plane, the murmured noise of people boarding, grumbling as they tried to shove their bags in the overhead compartments. Jun was almost asleep when the announcement came over the speaker that the doors were closed, that they had a full flight today, and please be considerate to those next to you.
Full flight? He opened his eyes, blinking in irritation when he heard a “pardon me, please” just to his left. Mom, annoyed, was unbuckling her seat belt and getting up to let a man into their aisle. Jun’s precious buffer zone vanished in an instant, and he wanted to crush his glasses in his hand. Then again, that would solve nothing.
It was another man in a suit, that much Jun could tell without any corrective lenses. A gray suit, nicer than his own, and the guy smelled…well, he smelled much better than Jun probably did. He sat down a bit heavily, fumbling around awkwardly to get his belt on, realizing he hadn’t shoved his bag under the seat, unbuckling to do that, then buckling again.
And then he realized he needed something from that bag, so off went the belt again.
“Sorry,” the guy was saying. “Very sorry.”
Jun pulled down the window shade with a barely audible huff. This was going to be a long fourteen hours.
-
In the Air
Somewhere over Southern Ontario
Canada
“Excuse me?”
Jun tugged the thin airline blanket around him tighter. No, no it was too soon for this.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but…”
“No,” Jun mumbled.
The guy was way too persistent. “I’m really sorry, but…”
He turned to his left, ready to let out a stream of unpleasant things, censoring himself only because he remembered the Mom with her kids across the aisle. He came face to face with the guy beside him, so close they almost bumped noses. The guy leaned back hurriedly, had probably not expected Jun to turn so suddenly. Served him right.
Jun, breathing in the recycled plane air, instantly wished his vision was worse. Because the annoying guy next to him, Mr. Unbuckle Buckle Up Unbuckle Again, was really good looking. Pretty, tired eyes. Tousled black hair. Plump lips he apparently kept well-moisturized in flight. The suit that fit him so well, he could have been right at home in a menswear catalog.
“Huh, what do you want?” he complained, knowing he probably looked as awful as he felt.
The guy was a little sheepish, holding a can of ginger ale out to him. “The drink service came by. I wanted to make sure you got something. Meal service will follow soon.”
Jun stared at him, at his cute, exhausted face.
“Do you…not like ginger ale?” The guy was looking at him curiously.
“I was sleeping,” Jun complained, looking away from the unbelievably handsome catalog model slash salaryman beside him. He did, however, snatch the can of ginger ale from his hand. He put down his tray table, setting the can down and turning to sleep again.
“Uh, excuse me?”
Hot or not, there was murder in Jun’s face and in his heart when he turned back to the guy again. “What is it now?”
“Meal service. Shall I have her leave a tray for you, too?”
Jun had never sat beside someone so…helpful before. Usually, if he wanted to sleep on a plane ride, his fellow passengers seemed to get the hint. He’d woken with a bottle of water on a tray before, but nobody had ever actually woken him, save for a flight attendant waking him for landing.
“Do whatever you want,” Jun complained, rearranging the crappy pillow against the bulkhead and trying to get back to sleep.
“It’s breakfast,” the guy said needlessly. “I think it’s yogurt and a croissant, at the very least.”
Jun said nothing, telling himself over and over that soon he would be back on home soil, and the agony that was the JFK-Narita flight would be a distant memory.
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over Northern Manitoba
Canada
Jun woke once again, this time with the sense of barely being touched. He jolted when he saw the sleeve of a white dress shirt reaching across him.
“What the hell are you doing?” he hissed, smacking at the guy’s hand.
The guy pulled back, clasping his hands together, almost in prayer. “Forgive me. Forgive me, I’m so sorry.”
Jun shoved his glasses on, taking a better look at the weirdo beside him. Mom to his other side was completely out, the kids across the aisle each playing with an iPad of their own. His neighbor had removed his suit jacket at some point, and since Jun couldn’t see it anywhere, he’d apparently put it up in the overhead bin. Without the jacket and in just his white dress shirt and red tie, Jun could see he had very angular shoulders. Wearing backpacks must have been difficult for him, but whatever, why the hell was he thinking about these things when the guy was trying to touch him in his sleep?
Well, maybe there was an explanation. There was a thin, black cord in between the guy’s fingers.
“What is going on here?”
The guy inclined his head apologetically before tapping the little screen on the back of his seat. “My in-flight entertainment system is experiencing a malfunction.”
Jun raised an eyebrow. ‘Experiencing a malfunction.’ Was this guy a robot? A sexy robot who fetched ginger ale for strangers?
“And?”
“And,” the guy said, holding out his cord, “since you’re asleep, sir, I was trying to plug in to your earphone jack. To use your in-flight entertainment system. Since you’re, you know, not using it.”
“Well, I’m awake now.”
“I’m truly sorry. I figured after the last time that it was best if I didn’t wake you.” The guy offered a sheepish smile, gesturing to Jun’s still-down tray table. He had a round face, and his smile full of big teeth made him look a little…chipmunk-y. But in a good way, Jun decided. “You got raspberry yogurt with yours. Lucky day, I’d say. Mine was strawberry.”
Jun looked at his sad little airplane meal with a frown, surprised his friendly neighbor had actually grabbed one for him. He found raspberry to be “just okay,” but telling the guy that would probably just keep him talking at length about yogurt, which Jun wasn’t in the mood for. And Jun hadn’t even answered his actual question.
The guy held up his earphone jack. “So…do you think I could possibly…?”
He turned back to him. “No.”
The guy’s smile disappeared, the handsome sparkle dying in his eyes. “Right. Of course not. Of course not…”
“When I’m done with my croissant, you can though.”
Jun ignored the happy, content noises coming from the cramped middle seat beside him, wondering just how long the guy had been suffering without any bad movies or bad TV shows to watch. Jun knew he had his laptop fully charged in his bag, but he wasn’t going to offer that. With a long flight, you always had to prepare for the worst. This guy could have prepared back-up entertainment.
He was just very lucky he was good looking. And had a nice smile. Jun was too much of a sucker for a pretty face, Nino had always said so.
He inhaled the croissant and the accompanying orange juice, leaving the “lucky” raspberry yogurt behind, seeing as it had been sitting there on the tray for at least an hour or more by now. He’d been hungrier than he’d realized, and he was kind of grateful the guy had gone to the trouble of helping him.
He balled up the wrappers, his empty plastic containers, handed the guy his tray. “You take care of this.”
The guy obediently obliged, reaching up and pressing the call button for the flight attendant. The flight attendant who apparently had quite the crush on him, because she smiled almost a bit too big when she came by.
Jun settled his blanket back around him, fumbling beneath to unbuckle his belt and get a bit more comfortable. “Alright,” he said, “plug away.”
“Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, truly.”
“I get it,” Jun grumbled. “Hurry up before I change my mind.”
He tried to breathe evenly, although the handsome stranger reaching across him again put them in super duper extremely close proximity. The guy somehow got his earbuds plugged into the jack on the arm of Jun’s seat, and Jun could hear the tapping of the guy’s fingers on the screen. He was falling back asleep when the noise finally calmed, when the guy seemed to settle on something to watch.
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over the Northwest Territories
Canada
He had to pee.
But there was something on his left side, and his shoulder felt funny. Which was how Jun woke up to discover that the guy beside him had fallen asleep, passed out with his head against his shoulder. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” he mumbled, wishing he didn’t like the warmth of the other guy beside him so much. He was snoring lightly. Completely out, one of his earbuds having fallen out and onto the top of Jun’s blanket.
On the screen in front of him was what appeared to be a documentary about manufacturing, the camera panning painfully slowly across some factory floor, machines whirring and assembly line workers putting something together. He was using Jun’s in-flight entertainment for something like this?
“And you’re boring too,” he whispered, unable to hide a smile.
Jun did his best to forget about his panicking bladder, using his right hand to tap to something else on the screen. First was the map, showing there was a lot of ground to cover between here and Tokyo. Shuddering at how much time was remaining, he tapped to the movie selection.
Nothing stood out, so he clicked back to the guy’s weird documentary. By now, it was revealed that the factory was making and packaging onigiri. Jun’s eyes fixated on the triangular items being spat out of the machine, fully wrapped and stickered and ready to go.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, watching the assembly line before he couldn’t hold it any longer. Feeling a bit mean, even though it had been a desperately long time since anyone had fallen asleep beside him (in general, not just on a plane, Jun lamented), he took his finger and flicked the guy in the forehead.
“Ow,” the guy grumbled before realizing just what had happened. “Aaaah, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not a pillow,” Jun protested, and though his shoulder felt better, he already kind of missed the guy and his leaning, wishing he wasn’t so easily led astray by a pretty face. God, when was the last time he’d been on a date? Work kept him so busy and his last break-up had pissed him off so much he’d sworn off playing the field indefinitely and…
Wait, he had other priorities right now.
“I have to use the bathroom. Get up.”
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over Alaska
USA
“Hey.”
Jun stirred, letting out what he knew was a pathetic whine, but at this point, he didn’t care what his seatmate thought of him.
“Hey, something’s going on.”
The words ‘crash’ and ‘catastrophe’ and ‘oxygen masks’ all flooded into Jun’s head and he snapped to attention, fumbling again for his glasses. His neighbor leaned over, using more of Jun’s armrest than he ought to.
“Something’s happening up front, everybody’s talking about it. They asked for a doctor about 10 minutes ago.”
Jun clutched the guy’s arm, discovering a rather firm, muscular bicep underneath his dress shirt. He ignored that information in favor of something more immediately pressing. “Are we crashing? Are we going down?”
“What? No!” the guy said, seeming a bit uncomfortable with how Jun was clinging to him. As though an hour or more ago he hadn’t been using Jun’s shoulder for a pillow. “I said they asked for a doctor. You’re not a doctor, are you? I didn’t want to wake you and ask but…”
“I’m not,” he answered, finally letting the guy go, adjusting his blanket once again. By now the guy had moved on to yet another boring documentary on Jun’s screen, this time one about deep sea fish. A hideous looking creature with a massive mouth and pointy teeth went swimming by, and Jun shuddered. “I work in a restaurant.”
“Oh, well, either way. I’m thinking someone’s ill. All the flight attendants are up there,” the guy said, pointing. “First class, maybe?”
“Pfft,” Jun mumbled, “if one of us was sick back here, they’d just try and give us a wet wipe for our faces.”
“That’s not true,” his seatmate chuckled. “Although I suppose it would have to be quite serious and…”
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are currently working with air traffic control and…”
“No,” Jun mumbled, shaking his head. “No, please don’t…”
“…due to a sick passenger, this plane will make a temporary, emergency landing at the Anchorage airport here in Alaska and…”
The sounds of complaining passengers erupted throughout economy class, and Jun’s seatmate sighed, shaking his head.
“…once the passenger has been safely removed from the plane, we expect to be cleared for take-off again within a few hours…”
“This is the worst,” Jun complained, tapping on the screen, disrupting his neighbor’s undersea documentary in favor of the flight map. They were almost to the western end of Alaska, but already he could see the little plane on the map turning to head southeast.
“Well,” his seatmate offered. “At least you’re not the one dying?”
“Thanks,” Jun said. “That’s a real comfort.”
-
North Terminal
Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport
Alaska, USA
“We have just completed the deplaning of our ill passenger. We thank you for your continued patience, and we expect to make a departure announcement shortly.”
There’d been some rather rough turbulence as the plane had turned around to land here in Anchorage. Jun’s head was aching, and he’d pulled down his tray table again, setting his pillow on top of it and laying on it. His seatmate, who had decided that it made sense to introduce himself while they were landing, was named Sakurai Sho.
Sakurai Sho was on his phone, making little “hmm” and “oh, I see” noises to himself while he read through some messages now that they were on the ground and could use them again.
“I’m on Twitter right now,” Sakurai said, giving Jun’s tray table a little tap. “Some people who saw what happened are tweeting about it. They’re tweeting at the Japan Airlines account to complain.”
“So what?”
“Apparently there was a very ill child on board, up in first class. They had to cart her off on a stretcher. Poor thing.”
“Great.”
Sakurai shook his head. “Wonder why she was even flying.”
“To ruin my life, I suspect,” Jun replied, knowing that he wouldn’t be as callous were he not exhausted and annoyed.
He had nothing much to stare at, only the gray slacks of Sakurai’s suit beside him. He listened in as Sakurai called ahead to Tokyo, presumably to his workplace, explaining what had happened. Once his call was complete, he asked Jun politely if he could use the in-flight entertainment again. Jun answered by turning his head and muttering curse words under his breath.
Sakurai took this as a yes, and he heard the man’s embarrassed little “please pardon me, once again” as he leaned over Jun’s back to plug in his stupid earbuds again. Jun was tempted to lean back up, to knock the guy’s earbuds out, but he was already in a rotten mood.
Jun was in and out of sleep, but it was getting difficult to stay asleep because he could hear the restlessness of the passengers around him. He turned his head again, his neck aching much like the rest of him. This had been a poorly planned nap. He poked Sakurai in the leg, kind of liking how it made the guy fidget.
“Hey, how long we been sitting here?”
Sakurai checked his watch. Even with his glasses off, Jun thought it looked like a really nice watch. Why was he sitting back in an Economy seat, a middle seat at that, with a watch like that on his wrist?
“Since we got to the gate, an hour and thirty-five minutes.”
“What’s taking so long?”
“Well, they didn’t get the little girl off for about forty minutes, and then…”
Jun sat up in a huff, feeling the stretch and tug of Sakurai’s cord. He yanked it out of the jack and shoved the cord at him. “This is a nightmare.”
“Sorry,” Sakurai answered.
“Are you the airline? This isn’t your fault,” Jun remarked.
Sakurai balled up his cord, finally shoving it into his bag and sitting back with a sigh. His optimism was slowly dying. “I’m not usually claustrophobic, Matsumoto-san, but this is rather awful.”
“Right?”
“They ought to at least give us some food.”
Jun pointed at the guy’s phone. “Put that on Twitter. Tell Japan Airlines they’re starving us.”
Sakurai grinned, a boyish little smile that made Jun realize that it really could have been worse.
There was a noisy ‘ping’ over the plane’s sound system.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the flight deck. I’m afraid I have some bad news to share with you all…”
-
North Terminal, Passenger Ticketing
Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport
Alaska, USA
They weren’t going to take off again, that much was clear. The captain had come over the speaker to let them know that because of the delay and because of the long distance still to travel to Tokyo, the flight crew would be going over their allotted hours if the plane was to take off again.
Thus, the flight had been canceled. Options, of course, had been made available to them, none of which Jun liked very much. Connecting flights to Seattle, Vancouver, and Los Angeles would be able to get them to Tokyo flights. The actual plane they’d been on would not be cleared to continue on to Tokyo until the following morning, due to crew rotations.
Getting off the plane had been a slow, agonizing process. It was definitely the worst time to have sat in the back of the plane. Though the airline would be paying for any connecting flights, they were not covering anything else. By the time he and Sakurai made it to the front of the airline counter, all the Seattle and Vancouver seats were gone and the Los Angeles ones were being held for larger parties, families traveling together.
“The only option is to wait for tomorrow’s flight?” Sakurai asked, standing ahead of Jun with his passport out. “Are you sure that’s all that’s left?”
The Japan Airlines official spoke with the American employees at the flight desk, and Jun was so exhausted his limited English was failing him completely. When they answered his question, Sakurai turned back to look at Jun with a strange look in his eyes. Their eyes met for a few seconds before Sakurai finally turned back.
“Please book me on the flight for tomorrow then. Could I maybe get an aisle seat? I was flying standby on this one…”
Ah, that explained why Sakurai had been so late to board back at JFK. It seemed like a really long time ago now. There were copious apologies as Sakurai was handed a new ticket, and he hoisted his bag, walking away from the counter. Now it was Jun’s turn, and they had the same answer for him. He’d have to try again tomorrow, unless he was flying with family. Ah, maybe that explained why Sakurai had turned to look back at him. For a brief moment, Mr. Documentary Watching Yogurt Guy had been prepared to lie and say he and Jun were traveling together.
He was handed a ticket and a promise that the airline would be depositing 200,000 miles in his account as an apology. Well, it sure didn’t get him home any faster. Ticket in hand and laptop bag in the other, he turned to walk away, only to find Sakurai Sho standing by a bank of arrival and departure screens, waving him over. Jun was tempted to walk in the opposite direction, pretend he didn’t see him, but then he remembered the ginger ale. The croissant and yogurt…
“Do you need me to hold your hand or can you not make it to baggage claim by yourself?” Jun asked as he approached, raising an eyebrow.
Sakurai turned scarlet, waving a hand in front of his face. “No, no, I just…I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
“I just…I know we don’t know each other that well, but did you want to stay at the same hotel?” He held out his phone, gesturing to the screen. “I found a few that aren’t so bad, maybe a little pricey, but they have a free shuttle back to the airport. We could travel back together in the morning.”
Jun looked away, nervous. “I don’t…I don’t exactly…” Ugh, why wouldn’t this unbearably handsome person just leave him be?! “I was planning to stay here in the terminal…”
“Overnight?”
This trip had him hemorrhaging cash, and he didn’t need to drop any more money on some overpriced Alaskan ski lodge. “Yeah, overnight.”
Sakurai considered him carefully, looking again at his phone, his thumb apparently scrolling through hotel options. “Um, well, I’m on a business trip at the moment, you know? So with the inconvenience I know they’ll be covering my room wherever I stay, so long as I stay within spending parameters…”
Jun’s eyes widened. “Wait…”
“I mean,” Sakurai continued, shrugging, “it’s not like they’d know I was sharing, right? It’ll just show up on the bill as one room.”
“You don’t know me,” Jun protested. Was Sakurai for real? “I could be…I could be a crazy person.”
Sakurai just let out another of his bashful smiles. “A crazy person who let me use his earphone jack when he didn’t have to. Come on, let my company pay for you. Although you have to trust that I’m not a crazy person either.”
“Not too many surprises left between us, I guess. We’ve already slept together,” Jun said, getting a blank stare from Sakurai. And that was when he realized what he’d said. He’d really put his foot in his mouth with that one. God, he was so tired. “I mean, on the plane. You fell asleep and I was asleep and…”
“Here,” Sakurai said, blushing, holding out his phone to save Jun from saying anything worse. “This one’s got okay reviews. It’s a big chain here in the States. You in?”
He wondered if he ought to send Nino a message, saying that if he didn’t make it back to work in two days as planned that he’d been murdered in an Alaskan hotel by a really hot guy who found yogurt exciting. Nino would undoubtedly like to receive an email like that.
“Alright,” Jun agreed, taking a look at Sakurai’s phone. He was stuck in Alaska, but this might be better than being stuck alone.
-
Main Lobby
Courtyard by Marriott - Anchorage Airport
Alaska, USA
For some reason Jun thought Alaska wasn’t much more than one big glacier with a grizzly bear on it, but it was summertime and the only snow was on the mountains in the distance. They got out of the taxi, and Jun felt guilty letting Sakurai pay, even if it was his work covering the cost.
On the ride over, they’d exchanged business cards. Sakurai was a “Commerce Marketing Specialist” for Nike’s Tokyo office, working on their digital strategy in hopes of driving traffic to their e-commerce page. He’d been in New York for some marketing conference that he described as “worse than getting a root canal,” since his English was not as good as he’d told his boss it was. No, he told Jun, he did not get free sneakers.
Jun had then explained about the restaurant he’d opened with his two best friends from high school, Nino and Aiba, The Pancakery. It specialized in fancy hotcakes, sweet treats like chocolate honey toast, anything that could probably be topped with whipped cream.
Sakurai had pocketed the business card with a promise to visit, and Jun believed he was telling the truth.
“How good is your English?” Sakurai asked him, wheeling his bag into the hotel lobby. It was clean, full of obnoxiously orange chairs, but not otherwise offensive.
“It’s non-existent,” Jun offered.
They didn’t have a Japan Airlines rep with them now, but he was surprised by how smoothly Sakurai approached the reception desk, letting out a very confident “Excuse me, please!” Jun stood back, watching Sakurai and the clerk negotiate.
He sat on one of the chairs, fiddling with the JFK-NRT baggage sticker still attached to his suitcase. What a day. He could hear Sakurai’s voice becoming very upset as the negotiation continued, and he kept repeating something about “on the app, you had rooms” something something something.
He looked over finally, waving at Jun. He left the bags and approached. Sakurai switched back to Japanese. “They only have rooms with one bed. Big beds, king beds, but they’re out of double bed rooms. Did you want to go somewhere else?”
Jun could see the dark circles under Sakurai’s eyes, knowing he probably looked just as exhausted. “Well,” Jun said, not even surprised by how events had unfolded, simply shrugged. “A king bed’s bigger than two Economy seats. I’m sure we’ll manage. If that’s…okay? I could sleep in a chair, since I’m just freeloading off of you…”
“You don’t have to sleep in a chair,” Sakurai protested, pulling out his wallet. “Okay, we taking the room,” he told the clerk, switching languages again.
The room was an unbelievably welcome sight once they got upstairs, one king bed charged to Nike notwithstanding. Jun realized soon enough that he hadn’t been in a bed in more than 36 hours, and the first thing he did was fling off his suit jacket and flop onto the bed.
Sakurai laughed at him, watching from the side. “We’re in Alaska. Maybe we should see if they do any evening tours. Northern Lights or ice caves or whatever's popular up here.”
“Evening tours?” Jun cried, turning onto his back. “I’m going to take a shower and sleep until it’s time to go to the airport. Evening tours…”
He got up, grabbing his bag and heading for the shower. At least that would avoid the inevitable small talk that awaited them for a little while longer. Getting out of his suit was a true blessing, and following it up with a hot shower was even better.
Once he’d changed into pajama bottoms and a t-shirt that bore a much older version of their ‘Pancakery’ logo, one that Satoshi had designed before hitting the big time with his art, he discovered that the desk in the room was covered in small plates. American treats like sauce-slathered chicken wings, onion rings, some tortilla chips and a spicy-smelling cheese dip. They were going to fall asleep with all these crazy scents in the room.
Sakurai looked up with a big smile, his mouth covered in wing sauce, and Jun was suddenly grateful that this was the person who’d sat down next to him on the plane. Of course, he looked completely disgusting at the moment, but Sakurai gestured eagerly to the spread laid out before him. It was that big-toothed smile. Jun couldn’t resist it.
“There’s a restaurant down the road that delivers. This was what the front desk recommended. Courtesy of Nike, enjoy your dinner!”
Every last thing would probably give him heartburn, but Sakurai had been so stupidly generous that Jun knew he had a lot to be thankful for.
He was in Alaska, thanks to a sick child and Japan Airlines’ complete and utter scheduling failure. He was in Alaska, would be late for work and was causing trouble for his colleagues. But he was in Alaska, with a cute stranger who was putting him up for the night, feeding him, and might hopefully wear another of his fancy suits come morning.
Things weren’t really so bad.
-
Room 216
Courtyard by Marriott - Anchorage Airport
Alaska, USA
He wasn’t surprised to wake up at 2:00 in the morning to find Sakurai had rolled over in his sleep, snuggling up beside him, even in this bed that gave them both plenty of room. He’d gone to bed after Jun had, and apparently that had somehow given him the confidence to go to sleep in only a pair of boxers.
Jun smiled in the darkness, knowing that Sakurai didn’t expect anything in return. He was just one of those types of people, who did things for others because it was nice. Whether it was ginger ale, raspberry yogurt, or a hotel room.
Okay, maybe there weren’t that many people who’d go THAT far, hotel room and just one king bed far, so Jun figured that much of Sakurai’s generosity came from attraction. Jun hadn’t looked his best that day, between his airplane pillow hair and the thick frames of his glasses, but Sakurai was really into yogurt and bland documentaries, so maybe Jun looked just fine in his eyes. He was determined to test this hypothesis.
He gave Sakurai a little push, rolling him onto his back, not even deciding to comment on the drool Jun knew was probably on his shirt from the guy. Before Sakurai could let out another of his “oops, you caught me, I probably shouldn't have..." apologies, Jun ran his hand down, down, down, meeting the waistband of his companion's boxers.
"Sakurai-san."
"Hmm?" Sakurai murmured, his voice deep and scratchy from sleep.
"You're a very annoying person, at least on an airplane."
"Huh?"
"Thank you," Jun said.
"What?"
But then Jun's hand descended further, liking very much what he found inside the man's underwear.
"Oh?" Sakurai asked, surprised. "Oh...oh that's...that's very..."
"Very?"
"Very...oh god..."
At least the guy had brushed his teeth, brushing away the onion ring smell that had lasted through the evening. While they'd munched on the unhealthy food, while they'd talked about incredibly boring things like work and airplane delays and if it was horribly inappropriate or not to try Googling the child who'd gotten sick on the plane to see if she'd died.
That all slipped away rather quickly as soon as they started making out in the Nike-paid bed like a pair of desperate teenagers, Sakurai's hand on the back of his neck and tongue in Jun's mouth. Then later, once Jun had thrown off the covers to get between Sakurai's thighs, he heard Sakurai's grateful moan, hot and satisfied.
Sakurai was breathing heavily when Jun crawled back up to their pillows. Confirmation of a job well done. He slid his sweaty fingers across Jun's brow, lowering his voice as soon as he had control of his breathing again. Jun couldn't wait to hear what Sakurai wanted to offer now.
"If..if I had a condom with me, I'd say something about...about plugging into your earphone jack again."
Jun was glad Sakurai couldn't see the repulsed look he offered in reply. Dirty talk - not Sakurai's forte. "Go to sleep," Jun said, ruffling his hair. "Got a flight to catch in the morning."
Sakurai definitely wasn't perfect, but Jun figured they could work on that later. All in all, Alaska was kind of great.
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over Sea of Okhotsk
International Waters
"Was your in-flight entertainment system really broken? On the last flight?"
"Of course it was."
"Really?"
"Yes!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure!"
-
Terminal 2, Baggage Claim
Narita International Airport
Chiba, Japan
Jun waited for Sakurai-san to grab his bag from the carousel, grinning despite his best efforts not to. This flight hadn't been as eventful, of course. A little turbulence over Russia, but nothing Jun couldn't handle.
Before landing, Sakurai had asked for his business card back, but only so he could write his personal mobile number down. He'd handed it back with an all too nervous tremor, but Jun had taken it eagerly.
There wasn't much that was sexy about an international flight. But when you were on board a plane that was only half full, with most of the other passengers having left the Anchorage airport a day prior, it gave you plenty of room. Jun could have had an entire aisle to himself.
And yet the two of them had sat together, chatting and watching lame documentaries in between naps, holding hands under the blanket, sneaking a kiss once or twice when they knew the flight attendants weren't anywhere close. The public displays, even on a half empty plane, made Sakurai red, red, red, and it made Jun like him all the more.
It had been an ordeal, the JFK to NRT route, but maybe it had been a blessing in disguise too.
He was back in his suit, and Sakurai in his and they offered one another a nod of goodbye before splitting up - Sho for a car service his work had hired, Jun for a bus back into town. But he had a feeling their separation wouldn't last too long.
-
The Pancakery
Shimokitazawa, Setagaya
Tokyo, Japan
He had Nino on his left and Aiba on his right, the pair of them flabbergasted by the figure that had walked in the door twenty minutes earlier.
"Him? Him in the suit?" Aiba kept repeating, poking Jun in his all too ticklish side.
He did have to admit that Sakurai stood out, being the only customer over the age of 30 in the entire cafe - and the only one in proper business attire. But it only made Jun smile all the more.
Jun headed back into the kitchen, his two annoying business partners on his heels. "He's not really your type, Jun-kun," Nino was saying. "He looks a little...stiff."
"Oh, he's extremely boring," Jun said, finding the plate of pancakes Nino had just finished for their very special customer and decorating it with whipped cream. He then lifted the bowl of raspberries, arranging them neatly on top. "He watches documentaries about mass-produced onigiri."
"So then what's the attraction?" Aiba asked, following him out into the dining room.
It was then that Sakurai looked up, letting out an eager, friendly smile when he saw Jun come through the swinging door with his plate.
He looked back over his shoulder, grinning. "That."
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Matsumoto Jun/Sakurai Sho
Summary: A fourteen hour flight awaits, and Jun finds himself sitting next to one of the most irritating passengers imaginable. But he's cute too...
Notes/Warnings: I've wanted to write something inspired by Sakumoto's JAL spots for ages, but this ended up sillier than planned because I was in the mood for fluffy good times. If only all bad flights ended up this way, hehehe.
Terminal 1
John F. Kennedy International Airport
New York, USA
“Use my miles,” Shun had said. “Just use my fucking miles, I never do.”
But Jun hadn’t used them and was already regretting it as he finally set foot onto the massive plane. Ahead of him, it seemed like every other Economy Class passenger was stalled. It was the worst part of boarding, the Battle for the Overhead Bins.
Jun had once been one of those warriors, booking himself a seat in the ass back of the plane but shoving his bag into the first spot that opened up. But things had changed considerably the last few years. More people paid extra for the extra legroom, and for priority boarding, so the front bins always filled up before his section of the plane was even called and by the time he got to the back, so had those. He checked his bags now, eating the cost, and only carried his laptop bag onto the flight and kept it with him.
Thankfully this was an international flight, so at least his checked bag was free. Not much else about this flight was. He’d turned down Shun’s offered miles, paying his own way over to see Satoshi’s exhibit. He’d opted for Economy over his usual “splurge” on Premium Economy, if only so he could take in a Broadway show while he was all the way over in New York.
The show had sucked.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, Jun made his way to the back of the plane, shuddering about the fourteen hours of flight time that was waiting for him. It was just after 9:00 AM, and he was regretting the choices he’d made in the last 12 hours - staying out way too late with Satoshi, not changing out of the suit he’d worn to the exhibit, getting back to his hotel only to check out and have to race to the airport on no sleep.
While he waited in the aisle, he tried to be subtle, sniffing his suit jacket as he’d been doing in the terminal, wondering if he still smelled like the bar from last night. There wasn’t a really noticeable funk, thankfully.
A small miracle awaited when he got back to his seat, the window on the right, row 49. Nobody in the middle seat. The woman seated on the aisle had her hand out, was trying to take a toy out of the hands of the child across from her. Mom, apparently, taking fun away from the kids. He waited patiently for her to notice him, and he slunk over to his window, shoving his laptop bag under the seat.
Well, he’d made it.
He buckled his belt, taking off his glasses and holding them in his hand. He’d nearly felt like dying on the way over, having worn his contacts, spending half the flight putting drops in his eyes. This would be an improvement at least. He listened to the hum of the plane, the murmured noise of people boarding, grumbling as they tried to shove their bags in the overhead compartments. Jun was almost asleep when the announcement came over the speaker that the doors were closed, that they had a full flight today, and please be considerate to those next to you.
Full flight? He opened his eyes, blinking in irritation when he heard a “pardon me, please” just to his left. Mom, annoyed, was unbuckling her seat belt and getting up to let a man into their aisle. Jun’s precious buffer zone vanished in an instant, and he wanted to crush his glasses in his hand. Then again, that would solve nothing.
It was another man in a suit, that much Jun could tell without any corrective lenses. A gray suit, nicer than his own, and the guy smelled…well, he smelled much better than Jun probably did. He sat down a bit heavily, fumbling around awkwardly to get his belt on, realizing he hadn’t shoved his bag under the seat, unbuckling to do that, then buckling again.
And then he realized he needed something from that bag, so off went the belt again.
“Sorry,” the guy was saying. “Very sorry.”
Jun pulled down the window shade with a barely audible huff. This was going to be a long fourteen hours.
-
In the Air
Somewhere over Southern Ontario
Canada
“Excuse me?”
Jun tugged the thin airline blanket around him tighter. No, no it was too soon for this.
“I’m sorry to wake you, but…”
“No,” Jun mumbled.
The guy was way too persistent. “I’m really sorry, but…”
He turned to his left, ready to let out a stream of unpleasant things, censoring himself only because he remembered the Mom with her kids across the aisle. He came face to face with the guy beside him, so close they almost bumped noses. The guy leaned back hurriedly, had probably not expected Jun to turn so suddenly. Served him right.
Jun, breathing in the recycled plane air, instantly wished his vision was worse. Because the annoying guy next to him, Mr. Unbuckle Buckle Up Unbuckle Again, was really good looking. Pretty, tired eyes. Tousled black hair. Plump lips he apparently kept well-moisturized in flight. The suit that fit him so well, he could have been right at home in a menswear catalog.
“Huh, what do you want?” he complained, knowing he probably looked as awful as he felt.
The guy was a little sheepish, holding a can of ginger ale out to him. “The drink service came by. I wanted to make sure you got something. Meal service will follow soon.”
Jun stared at him, at his cute, exhausted face.
“Do you…not like ginger ale?” The guy was looking at him curiously.
“I was sleeping,” Jun complained, looking away from the unbelievably handsome catalog model slash salaryman beside him. He did, however, snatch the can of ginger ale from his hand. He put down his tray table, setting the can down and turning to sleep again.
“Uh, excuse me?”
Hot or not, there was murder in Jun’s face and in his heart when he turned back to the guy again. “What is it now?”
“Meal service. Shall I have her leave a tray for you, too?”
Jun had never sat beside someone so…helpful before. Usually, if he wanted to sleep on a plane ride, his fellow passengers seemed to get the hint. He’d woken with a bottle of water on a tray before, but nobody had ever actually woken him, save for a flight attendant waking him for landing.
“Do whatever you want,” Jun complained, rearranging the crappy pillow against the bulkhead and trying to get back to sleep.
“It’s breakfast,” the guy said needlessly. “I think it’s yogurt and a croissant, at the very least.”
Jun said nothing, telling himself over and over that soon he would be back on home soil, and the agony that was the JFK-Narita flight would be a distant memory.
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over Northern Manitoba
Canada
Jun woke once again, this time with the sense of barely being touched. He jolted when he saw the sleeve of a white dress shirt reaching across him.
“What the hell are you doing?” he hissed, smacking at the guy’s hand.
The guy pulled back, clasping his hands together, almost in prayer. “Forgive me. Forgive me, I’m so sorry.”
Jun shoved his glasses on, taking a better look at the weirdo beside him. Mom to his other side was completely out, the kids across the aisle each playing with an iPad of their own. His neighbor had removed his suit jacket at some point, and since Jun couldn’t see it anywhere, he’d apparently put it up in the overhead bin. Without the jacket and in just his white dress shirt and red tie, Jun could see he had very angular shoulders. Wearing backpacks must have been difficult for him, but whatever, why the hell was he thinking about these things when the guy was trying to touch him in his sleep?
Well, maybe there was an explanation. There was a thin, black cord in between the guy’s fingers.
“What is going on here?”
The guy inclined his head apologetically before tapping the little screen on the back of his seat. “My in-flight entertainment system is experiencing a malfunction.”
Jun raised an eyebrow. ‘Experiencing a malfunction.’ Was this guy a robot? A sexy robot who fetched ginger ale for strangers?
“And?”
“And,” the guy said, holding out his cord, “since you’re asleep, sir, I was trying to plug in to your earphone jack. To use your in-flight entertainment system. Since you’re, you know, not using it.”
“Well, I’m awake now.”
“I’m truly sorry. I figured after the last time that it was best if I didn’t wake you.” The guy offered a sheepish smile, gesturing to Jun’s still-down tray table. He had a round face, and his smile full of big teeth made him look a little…chipmunk-y. But in a good way, Jun decided. “You got raspberry yogurt with yours. Lucky day, I’d say. Mine was strawberry.”
Jun looked at his sad little airplane meal with a frown, surprised his friendly neighbor had actually grabbed one for him. He found raspberry to be “just okay,” but telling the guy that would probably just keep him talking at length about yogurt, which Jun wasn’t in the mood for. And Jun hadn’t even answered his actual question.
The guy held up his earphone jack. “So…do you think I could possibly…?”
He turned back to him. “No.”
The guy’s smile disappeared, the handsome sparkle dying in his eyes. “Right. Of course not. Of course not…”
“When I’m done with my croissant, you can though.”
Jun ignored the happy, content noises coming from the cramped middle seat beside him, wondering just how long the guy had been suffering without any bad movies or bad TV shows to watch. Jun knew he had his laptop fully charged in his bag, but he wasn’t going to offer that. With a long flight, you always had to prepare for the worst. This guy could have prepared back-up entertainment.
He was just very lucky he was good looking. And had a nice smile. Jun was too much of a sucker for a pretty face, Nino had always said so.
He inhaled the croissant and the accompanying orange juice, leaving the “lucky” raspberry yogurt behind, seeing as it had been sitting there on the tray for at least an hour or more by now. He’d been hungrier than he’d realized, and he was kind of grateful the guy had gone to the trouble of helping him.
He balled up the wrappers, his empty plastic containers, handed the guy his tray. “You take care of this.”
The guy obediently obliged, reaching up and pressing the call button for the flight attendant. The flight attendant who apparently had quite the crush on him, because she smiled almost a bit too big when she came by.
Jun settled his blanket back around him, fumbling beneath to unbuckle his belt and get a bit more comfortable. “Alright,” he said, “plug away.”
“Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you, truly.”
“I get it,” Jun grumbled. “Hurry up before I change my mind.”
He tried to breathe evenly, although the handsome stranger reaching across him again put them in super duper extremely close proximity. The guy somehow got his earbuds plugged into the jack on the arm of Jun’s seat, and Jun could hear the tapping of the guy’s fingers on the screen. He was falling back asleep when the noise finally calmed, when the guy seemed to settle on something to watch.
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over the Northwest Territories
Canada
He had to pee.
But there was something on his left side, and his shoulder felt funny. Which was how Jun woke up to discover that the guy beside him had fallen asleep, passed out with his head against his shoulder. “You’ve gotta be kidding,” he mumbled, wishing he didn’t like the warmth of the other guy beside him so much. He was snoring lightly. Completely out, one of his earbuds having fallen out and onto the top of Jun’s blanket.
On the screen in front of him was what appeared to be a documentary about manufacturing, the camera panning painfully slowly across some factory floor, machines whirring and assembly line workers putting something together. He was using Jun’s in-flight entertainment for something like this?
“And you’re boring too,” he whispered, unable to hide a smile.
Jun did his best to forget about his panicking bladder, using his right hand to tap to something else on the screen. First was the map, showing there was a lot of ground to cover between here and Tokyo. Shuddering at how much time was remaining, he tapped to the movie selection.
Nothing stood out, so he clicked back to the guy’s weird documentary. By now, it was revealed that the factory was making and packaging onigiri. Jun’s eyes fixated on the triangular items being spat out of the machine, fully wrapped and stickered and ready to go.
He didn’t know how long he sat there, watching the assembly line before he couldn’t hold it any longer. Feeling a bit mean, even though it had been a desperately long time since anyone had fallen asleep beside him (in general, not just on a plane, Jun lamented), he took his finger and flicked the guy in the forehead.
“Ow,” the guy grumbled before realizing just what had happened. “Aaaah, I’m so sorry.”
“I’m not a pillow,” Jun protested, and though his shoulder felt better, he already kind of missed the guy and his leaning, wishing he wasn’t so easily led astray by a pretty face. God, when was the last time he’d been on a date? Work kept him so busy and his last break-up had pissed him off so much he’d sworn off playing the field indefinitely and…
Wait, he had other priorities right now.
“I have to use the bathroom. Get up.”
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over Alaska
USA
“Hey.”
Jun stirred, letting out what he knew was a pathetic whine, but at this point, he didn’t care what his seatmate thought of him.
“Hey, something’s going on.”
The words ‘crash’ and ‘catastrophe’ and ‘oxygen masks’ all flooded into Jun’s head and he snapped to attention, fumbling again for his glasses. His neighbor leaned over, using more of Jun’s armrest than he ought to.
“Something’s happening up front, everybody’s talking about it. They asked for a doctor about 10 minutes ago.”
Jun clutched the guy’s arm, discovering a rather firm, muscular bicep underneath his dress shirt. He ignored that information in favor of something more immediately pressing. “Are we crashing? Are we going down?”
“What? No!” the guy said, seeming a bit uncomfortable with how Jun was clinging to him. As though an hour or more ago he hadn’t been using Jun’s shoulder for a pillow. “I said they asked for a doctor. You’re not a doctor, are you? I didn’t want to wake you and ask but…”
“I’m not,” he answered, finally letting the guy go, adjusting his blanket once again. By now the guy had moved on to yet another boring documentary on Jun’s screen, this time one about deep sea fish. A hideous looking creature with a massive mouth and pointy teeth went swimming by, and Jun shuddered. “I work in a restaurant.”
“Oh, well, either way. I’m thinking someone’s ill. All the flight attendants are up there,” the guy said, pointing. “First class, maybe?”
“Pfft,” Jun mumbled, “if one of us was sick back here, they’d just try and give us a wet wipe for our faces.”
“That’s not true,” his seatmate chuckled. “Although I suppose it would have to be quite serious and…”
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are currently working with air traffic control and…”
“No,” Jun mumbled, shaking his head. “No, please don’t…”
“…due to a sick passenger, this plane will make a temporary, emergency landing at the Anchorage airport here in Alaska and…”
The sounds of complaining passengers erupted throughout economy class, and Jun’s seatmate sighed, shaking his head.
“…once the passenger has been safely removed from the plane, we expect to be cleared for take-off again within a few hours…”
“This is the worst,” Jun complained, tapping on the screen, disrupting his neighbor’s undersea documentary in favor of the flight map. They were almost to the western end of Alaska, but already he could see the little plane on the map turning to head southeast.
“Well,” his seatmate offered. “At least you’re not the one dying?”
“Thanks,” Jun said. “That’s a real comfort.”
-
North Terminal
Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport
Alaska, USA
“We have just completed the deplaning of our ill passenger. We thank you for your continued patience, and we expect to make a departure announcement shortly.”
There’d been some rather rough turbulence as the plane had turned around to land here in Anchorage. Jun’s head was aching, and he’d pulled down his tray table again, setting his pillow on top of it and laying on it. His seatmate, who had decided that it made sense to introduce himself while they were landing, was named Sakurai Sho.
Sakurai Sho was on his phone, making little “hmm” and “oh, I see” noises to himself while he read through some messages now that they were on the ground and could use them again.
“I’m on Twitter right now,” Sakurai said, giving Jun’s tray table a little tap. “Some people who saw what happened are tweeting about it. They’re tweeting at the Japan Airlines account to complain.”
“So what?”
“Apparently there was a very ill child on board, up in first class. They had to cart her off on a stretcher. Poor thing.”
“Great.”
Sakurai shook his head. “Wonder why she was even flying.”
“To ruin my life, I suspect,” Jun replied, knowing that he wouldn’t be as callous were he not exhausted and annoyed.
He had nothing much to stare at, only the gray slacks of Sakurai’s suit beside him. He listened in as Sakurai called ahead to Tokyo, presumably to his workplace, explaining what had happened. Once his call was complete, he asked Jun politely if he could use the in-flight entertainment again. Jun answered by turning his head and muttering curse words under his breath.
Sakurai took this as a yes, and he heard the man’s embarrassed little “please pardon me, once again” as he leaned over Jun’s back to plug in his stupid earbuds again. Jun was tempted to lean back up, to knock the guy’s earbuds out, but he was already in a rotten mood.
Jun was in and out of sleep, but it was getting difficult to stay asleep because he could hear the restlessness of the passengers around him. He turned his head again, his neck aching much like the rest of him. This had been a poorly planned nap. He poked Sakurai in the leg, kind of liking how it made the guy fidget.
“Hey, how long we been sitting here?”
Sakurai checked his watch. Even with his glasses off, Jun thought it looked like a really nice watch. Why was he sitting back in an Economy seat, a middle seat at that, with a watch like that on his wrist?
“Since we got to the gate, an hour and thirty-five minutes.”
“What’s taking so long?”
“Well, they didn’t get the little girl off for about forty minutes, and then…”
Jun sat up in a huff, feeling the stretch and tug of Sakurai’s cord. He yanked it out of the jack and shoved the cord at him. “This is a nightmare.”
“Sorry,” Sakurai answered.
“Are you the airline? This isn’t your fault,” Jun remarked.
Sakurai balled up his cord, finally shoving it into his bag and sitting back with a sigh. His optimism was slowly dying. “I’m not usually claustrophobic, Matsumoto-san, but this is rather awful.”
“Right?”
“They ought to at least give us some food.”
Jun pointed at the guy’s phone. “Put that on Twitter. Tell Japan Airlines they’re starving us.”
Sakurai grinned, a boyish little smile that made Jun realize that it really could have been worse.
There was a noisy ‘ping’ over the plane’s sound system.
“Ladies and gentlemen, this is the flight deck. I’m afraid I have some bad news to share with you all…”
-
North Terminal, Passenger Ticketing
Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport
Alaska, USA
They weren’t going to take off again, that much was clear. The captain had come over the speaker to let them know that because of the delay and because of the long distance still to travel to Tokyo, the flight crew would be going over their allotted hours if the plane was to take off again.
Thus, the flight had been canceled. Options, of course, had been made available to them, none of which Jun liked very much. Connecting flights to Seattle, Vancouver, and Los Angeles would be able to get them to Tokyo flights. The actual plane they’d been on would not be cleared to continue on to Tokyo until the following morning, due to crew rotations.
Getting off the plane had been a slow, agonizing process. It was definitely the worst time to have sat in the back of the plane. Though the airline would be paying for any connecting flights, they were not covering anything else. By the time he and Sakurai made it to the front of the airline counter, all the Seattle and Vancouver seats were gone and the Los Angeles ones were being held for larger parties, families traveling together.
“The only option is to wait for tomorrow’s flight?” Sakurai asked, standing ahead of Jun with his passport out. “Are you sure that’s all that’s left?”
The Japan Airlines official spoke with the American employees at the flight desk, and Jun was so exhausted his limited English was failing him completely. When they answered his question, Sakurai turned back to look at Jun with a strange look in his eyes. Their eyes met for a few seconds before Sakurai finally turned back.
“Please book me on the flight for tomorrow then. Could I maybe get an aisle seat? I was flying standby on this one…”
Ah, that explained why Sakurai had been so late to board back at JFK. It seemed like a really long time ago now. There were copious apologies as Sakurai was handed a new ticket, and he hoisted his bag, walking away from the counter. Now it was Jun’s turn, and they had the same answer for him. He’d have to try again tomorrow, unless he was flying with family. Ah, maybe that explained why Sakurai had turned to look back at him. For a brief moment, Mr. Documentary Watching Yogurt Guy had been prepared to lie and say he and Jun were traveling together.
He was handed a ticket and a promise that the airline would be depositing 200,000 miles in his account as an apology. Well, it sure didn’t get him home any faster. Ticket in hand and laptop bag in the other, he turned to walk away, only to find Sakurai Sho standing by a bank of arrival and departure screens, waving him over. Jun was tempted to walk in the opposite direction, pretend he didn’t see him, but then he remembered the ginger ale. The croissant and yogurt…
“Do you need me to hold your hand or can you not make it to baggage claim by yourself?” Jun asked as he approached, raising an eyebrow.
Sakurai turned scarlet, waving a hand in front of his face. “No, no, I just…I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?”
“I just…I know we don’t know each other that well, but did you want to stay at the same hotel?” He held out his phone, gesturing to the screen. “I found a few that aren’t so bad, maybe a little pricey, but they have a free shuttle back to the airport. We could travel back together in the morning.”
Jun looked away, nervous. “I don’t…I don’t exactly…” Ugh, why wouldn’t this unbearably handsome person just leave him be?! “I was planning to stay here in the terminal…”
“Overnight?”
This trip had him hemorrhaging cash, and he didn’t need to drop any more money on some overpriced Alaskan ski lodge. “Yeah, overnight.”
Sakurai considered him carefully, looking again at his phone, his thumb apparently scrolling through hotel options. “Um, well, I’m on a business trip at the moment, you know? So with the inconvenience I know they’ll be covering my room wherever I stay, so long as I stay within spending parameters…”
Jun’s eyes widened. “Wait…”
“I mean,” Sakurai continued, shrugging, “it’s not like they’d know I was sharing, right? It’ll just show up on the bill as one room.”
“You don’t know me,” Jun protested. Was Sakurai for real? “I could be…I could be a crazy person.”
Sakurai just let out another of his bashful smiles. “A crazy person who let me use his earphone jack when he didn’t have to. Come on, let my company pay for you. Although you have to trust that I’m not a crazy person either.”
“Not too many surprises left between us, I guess. We’ve already slept together,” Jun said, getting a blank stare from Sakurai. And that was when he realized what he’d said. He’d really put his foot in his mouth with that one. God, he was so tired. “I mean, on the plane. You fell asleep and I was asleep and…”
“Here,” Sakurai said, blushing, holding out his phone to save Jun from saying anything worse. “This one’s got okay reviews. It’s a big chain here in the States. You in?”
He wondered if he ought to send Nino a message, saying that if he didn’t make it back to work in two days as planned that he’d been murdered in an Alaskan hotel by a really hot guy who found yogurt exciting. Nino would undoubtedly like to receive an email like that.
“Alright,” Jun agreed, taking a look at Sakurai’s phone. He was stuck in Alaska, but this might be better than being stuck alone.
-
Main Lobby
Courtyard by Marriott - Anchorage Airport
Alaska, USA
For some reason Jun thought Alaska wasn’t much more than one big glacier with a grizzly bear on it, but it was summertime and the only snow was on the mountains in the distance. They got out of the taxi, and Jun felt guilty letting Sakurai pay, even if it was his work covering the cost.
On the ride over, they’d exchanged business cards. Sakurai was a “Commerce Marketing Specialist” for Nike’s Tokyo office, working on their digital strategy in hopes of driving traffic to their e-commerce page. He’d been in New York for some marketing conference that he described as “worse than getting a root canal,” since his English was not as good as he’d told his boss it was. No, he told Jun, he did not get free sneakers.
Jun had then explained about the restaurant he’d opened with his two best friends from high school, Nino and Aiba, The Pancakery. It specialized in fancy hotcakes, sweet treats like chocolate honey toast, anything that could probably be topped with whipped cream.
Sakurai had pocketed the business card with a promise to visit, and Jun believed he was telling the truth.
“How good is your English?” Sakurai asked him, wheeling his bag into the hotel lobby. It was clean, full of obnoxiously orange chairs, but not otherwise offensive.
“It’s non-existent,” Jun offered.
They didn’t have a Japan Airlines rep with them now, but he was surprised by how smoothly Sakurai approached the reception desk, letting out a very confident “Excuse me, please!” Jun stood back, watching Sakurai and the clerk negotiate.
He sat on one of the chairs, fiddling with the JFK-NRT baggage sticker still attached to his suitcase. What a day. He could hear Sakurai’s voice becoming very upset as the negotiation continued, and he kept repeating something about “on the app, you had rooms” something something something.
He looked over finally, waving at Jun. He left the bags and approached. Sakurai switched back to Japanese. “They only have rooms with one bed. Big beds, king beds, but they’re out of double bed rooms. Did you want to go somewhere else?”
Jun could see the dark circles under Sakurai’s eyes, knowing he probably looked just as exhausted. “Well,” Jun said, not even surprised by how events had unfolded, simply shrugged. “A king bed’s bigger than two Economy seats. I’m sure we’ll manage. If that’s…okay? I could sleep in a chair, since I’m just freeloading off of you…”
“You don’t have to sleep in a chair,” Sakurai protested, pulling out his wallet. “Okay, we taking the room,” he told the clerk, switching languages again.
The room was an unbelievably welcome sight once they got upstairs, one king bed charged to Nike notwithstanding. Jun realized soon enough that he hadn’t been in a bed in more than 36 hours, and the first thing he did was fling off his suit jacket and flop onto the bed.
Sakurai laughed at him, watching from the side. “We’re in Alaska. Maybe we should see if they do any evening tours. Northern Lights or ice caves or whatever's popular up here.”
“Evening tours?” Jun cried, turning onto his back. “I’m going to take a shower and sleep until it’s time to go to the airport. Evening tours…”
He got up, grabbing his bag and heading for the shower. At least that would avoid the inevitable small talk that awaited them for a little while longer. Getting out of his suit was a true blessing, and following it up with a hot shower was even better.
Once he’d changed into pajama bottoms and a t-shirt that bore a much older version of their ‘Pancakery’ logo, one that Satoshi had designed before hitting the big time with his art, he discovered that the desk in the room was covered in small plates. American treats like sauce-slathered chicken wings, onion rings, some tortilla chips and a spicy-smelling cheese dip. They were going to fall asleep with all these crazy scents in the room.
Sakurai looked up with a big smile, his mouth covered in wing sauce, and Jun was suddenly grateful that this was the person who’d sat down next to him on the plane. Of course, he looked completely disgusting at the moment, but Sakurai gestured eagerly to the spread laid out before him. It was that big-toothed smile. Jun couldn’t resist it.
“There’s a restaurant down the road that delivers. This was what the front desk recommended. Courtesy of Nike, enjoy your dinner!”
Every last thing would probably give him heartburn, but Sakurai had been so stupidly generous that Jun knew he had a lot to be thankful for.
He was in Alaska, thanks to a sick child and Japan Airlines’ complete and utter scheduling failure. He was in Alaska, would be late for work and was causing trouble for his colleagues. But he was in Alaska, with a cute stranger who was putting him up for the night, feeding him, and might hopefully wear another of his fancy suits come morning.
Things weren’t really so bad.
-
Room 216
Courtyard by Marriott - Anchorage Airport
Alaska, USA
He wasn’t surprised to wake up at 2:00 in the morning to find Sakurai had rolled over in his sleep, snuggling up beside him, even in this bed that gave them both plenty of room. He’d gone to bed after Jun had, and apparently that had somehow given him the confidence to go to sleep in only a pair of boxers.
Jun smiled in the darkness, knowing that Sakurai didn’t expect anything in return. He was just one of those types of people, who did things for others because it was nice. Whether it was ginger ale, raspberry yogurt, or a hotel room.
Okay, maybe there weren’t that many people who’d go THAT far, hotel room and just one king bed far, so Jun figured that much of Sakurai’s generosity came from attraction. Jun hadn’t looked his best that day, between his airplane pillow hair and the thick frames of his glasses, but Sakurai was really into yogurt and bland documentaries, so maybe Jun looked just fine in his eyes. He was determined to test this hypothesis.
He gave Sakurai a little push, rolling him onto his back, not even deciding to comment on the drool Jun knew was probably on his shirt from the guy. Before Sakurai could let out another of his “oops, you caught me, I probably shouldn't have..." apologies, Jun ran his hand down, down, down, meeting the waistband of his companion's boxers.
"Sakurai-san."
"Hmm?" Sakurai murmured, his voice deep and scratchy from sleep.
"You're a very annoying person, at least on an airplane."
"Huh?"
"Thank you," Jun said.
"What?"
But then Jun's hand descended further, liking very much what he found inside the man's underwear.
"Oh?" Sakurai asked, surprised. "Oh...oh that's...that's very..."
"Very?"
"Very...oh god..."
At least the guy had brushed his teeth, brushing away the onion ring smell that had lasted through the evening. While they'd munched on the unhealthy food, while they'd talked about incredibly boring things like work and airplane delays and if it was horribly inappropriate or not to try Googling the child who'd gotten sick on the plane to see if she'd died.
That all slipped away rather quickly as soon as they started making out in the Nike-paid bed like a pair of desperate teenagers, Sakurai's hand on the back of his neck and tongue in Jun's mouth. Then later, once Jun had thrown off the covers to get between Sakurai's thighs, he heard Sakurai's grateful moan, hot and satisfied.
Sakurai was breathing heavily when Jun crawled back up to their pillows. Confirmation of a job well done. He slid his sweaty fingers across Jun's brow, lowering his voice as soon as he had control of his breathing again. Jun couldn't wait to hear what Sakurai wanted to offer now.
"If..if I had a condom with me, I'd say something about...about plugging into your earphone jack again."
Jun was glad Sakurai couldn't see the repulsed look he offered in reply. Dirty talk - not Sakurai's forte. "Go to sleep," Jun said, ruffling his hair. "Got a flight to catch in the morning."
Sakurai definitely wasn't perfect, but Jun figured they could work on that later. All in all, Alaska was kind of great.
-
In the Air
Somewhere Over Sea of Okhotsk
International Waters
"Was your in-flight entertainment system really broken? On the last flight?"
"Of course it was."
"Really?"
"Yes!"
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I'm sure!"
-
Terminal 2, Baggage Claim
Narita International Airport
Chiba, Japan
Jun waited for Sakurai-san to grab his bag from the carousel, grinning despite his best efforts not to. This flight hadn't been as eventful, of course. A little turbulence over Russia, but nothing Jun couldn't handle.
Before landing, Sakurai had asked for his business card back, but only so he could write his personal mobile number down. He'd handed it back with an all too nervous tremor, but Jun had taken it eagerly.
There wasn't much that was sexy about an international flight. But when you were on board a plane that was only half full, with most of the other passengers having left the Anchorage airport a day prior, it gave you plenty of room. Jun could have had an entire aisle to himself.
And yet the two of them had sat together, chatting and watching lame documentaries in between naps, holding hands under the blanket, sneaking a kiss once or twice when they knew the flight attendants weren't anywhere close. The public displays, even on a half empty plane, made Sakurai red, red, red, and it made Jun like him all the more.
It had been an ordeal, the JFK to NRT route, but maybe it had been a blessing in disguise too.
He was back in his suit, and Sakurai in his and they offered one another a nod of goodbye before splitting up - Sho for a car service his work had hired, Jun for a bus back into town. But he had a feeling their separation wouldn't last too long.
-
The Pancakery
Shimokitazawa, Setagaya
Tokyo, Japan
He had Nino on his left and Aiba on his right, the pair of them flabbergasted by the figure that had walked in the door twenty minutes earlier.
"Him? Him in the suit?" Aiba kept repeating, poking Jun in his all too ticklish side.
He did have to admit that Sakurai stood out, being the only customer over the age of 30 in the entire cafe - and the only one in proper business attire. But it only made Jun smile all the more.
Jun headed back into the kitchen, his two annoying business partners on his heels. "He's not really your type, Jun-kun," Nino was saying. "He looks a little...stiff."
"Oh, he's extremely boring," Jun said, finding the plate of pancakes Nino had just finished for their very special customer and decorating it with whipped cream. He then lifted the bowl of raspberries, arranging them neatly on top. "He watches documentaries about mass-produced onigiri."
"So then what's the attraction?" Aiba asked, following him out into the dining room.
It was then that Sakurai looked up, letting out an eager, friendly smile when he saw Jun come through the swinging door with his plate.
He looked back over his shoulder, grinning. "That."