One Random Day A Year - Happy birthday, James~!
Title: One Random Day A Year
Fandom: Pokemon
Characters: James-centric, James + Butch
Rating: PG-13
Dedication: Happy belated birthday, James! I’m sorry it’s late!
Notes: Follows after the storyline of “Hunted”, which I’m in the process of rewriting, but it can stand alone, so you don’t need to know anything about it to read this, other than the fact that they are older here than they are in the series.
James woke up with confetti in his face. He hoped he hadn’t swallowed any during the night, or sucked any up his nose. He brushed it off as he sat up and realized how chilly it was, and what day it was. He groaned, forced himself out of bed, and into the cold shower.
-
The first birthday he could remember celebrating was with Jezebel. She’d explained to him, in her Southern drawl, that she was going to kiss him for every year he’d been alive, and that running away was against the rules and he’d get in trouble if did.
He didn’t celebrate it again until a few years after he’d run away, when he and Jessie were in the bike gang. And that wasn’t much of a celebration, really. That was more of alcohol being chugged down his throat, a wad of bills being collected and offered to a hand with fake nails, a strange woman with a name like “Paradise” sitting in his lap, and waking up with a headache and Jessie telling him he was a stupid male.
-
The main reason James didn’t mind sharing an apartment with Butch-at least, the main reason he let himself admit-was that the other man left for work early, so he pretty much had the mornings to himself. He could walk around in his boxers, or a towel, with his hair wet and dripping, and he could talk to himself without someone asking if he was a crazy person. He didn’t have to work at the gelato shop until after noon, and by the time he closed up the place, his roommate was only awake enough for dinner and maybe a few cans of beer. He could put up with the sneers and the arched eyebrows and the lack of any-sorts-of-manners for two or three hours a day, if it meant he got these mornings to himself. It was the perfect set up.
But the bad thing about birthdays is, everyone wants to treat it like it’s something special. So they take the day off work and arrange for you to do the same.
“You could’ve at least warned me before I got out of the shower, asshole!”
“Christ, you are such a pansy.”
-
Jessie and Meowth would make him cards every year, but he asked them not to get him presents. They didn’t go out of their way to do anything, because he didn’t care about it. All it took to commemorate the day was a toast of soft drinks, a high-five or a bad joke. And sometimes a little lipstick marking his cheek or jaw or neck, if Jessie was feeling generous. Birthdays didn’t mean much to him, at least not his own. He didn’t think there should be this one day a year when people basically went, “hey, we’re glad you’re alive.” If he needed a day for that, he didn’t want one.
-
It took at least thirty minutes for Butch to coax him out of his room by promising that he hadn’t “seen anything, so stop freaking the hell out like some thirteen year old who just found out what his balls are.” James came out in low slung jeans, tugging on a sweater as he walked, exposing a small expanse of lean stomach, lips frowning and face flushed from receding embarrassment. Butch turned and pinched his nose to stifle a nosebleed, muttered that he had something baking in the kitchen.
“Wait, you’re baking? What are you baking?”
“It’s your birthday, retard,” he snorted. “And I know how to use an oven.”
“There’s more to it than that-”
“I know! I know how to bake a bloody cake!”
James followed him to the kitchen. He stood in the doorway and watched as Butch bent over slightly and opened the oven to check on it. He chewed at his bottom lip uncomfortably.
“H-Hey.”
Butch glanced back at him over his shoulder.
“You didn’t have to-do that. Or anything. The confetti-” He raised and lowered his left shoulder. “I mean, it’s just a day. It’s really random, actually. It doesn’t-” Butch was staring at him like he’d sprouted antlers. “Why are you looking at me like that?”
“What are you, a freak? It’s your birthday. People get cakes on their birthdays. It’s just life. Just accept and say thanks.” He rolled his eyes and closed the oven.
James smiled a little, slightly lopsided, like a child.
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And you’re gonna eat that thing, too, because I did not wake up an hour earlier this morning and lose a whole day’s work of pay for nothing.”
“It smells like it could be all right.”
“I told you I can bake a stupid cake. I can cook a lot of things.”
“Then why do you make me pay for take-out all the time?”
“I ain’t your wife, stupid.”
“You’re baking me a cake.”
“You-shut up.”
The best thing about birthdays: that dark red color staining Butch’s face as he tried not to be flustered. He might be able to get used to that.