[JE] Recipe for Disaster
Title: Recipe for Disaster
Pairing: Akame with Kokame hints
Rating: PG
Genre: Fluff, humour
Word count: 3,174
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: When Kame winds up teamed with Jin and Koki in a cooking battle, a cup of jealousy, a few tablespoons of immaturity and a pinch of bad luck comprise a recipe for disaster.
Author's Notes: This was supposed to be a drabble for the Akame fic wave that maya_morning persuaded me to partake in, but when it got past a thousand words I figured I couldn't really tack it on the end of an LJ post! So here it is.
Recipe for Disaster
Kame wasn't sure what else could possibly go wrong, but he felt that with another hour left to film, something was bound to happen. A 'Cartoon KAT-TUN Special Cooking Battle!' had seemed like such a fun idea when it had been proposed - split into two teams, and each team had to come up with food suitable for a family. A surprise celebrity judge was going to appear at the end to decide on the winners.
Unfortunately, they'd been allowed to choose their own teams, and there the trouble had started. Everyone had wanted to avoid Taguchi, because his puns had been even more annoying than usual lately and besides, it would look weird if one of them actually chose him. Kame didn't care too much about who he worked with...but after Ueda had proven himself to be limited in the kitchen, he wasn't high on Kame's list of ideal cooking teammates.
Kame himself had been a popular choice. Too popular. Jin and Koki had almost come to blows over it until Kame had gently reminded them that it was three to a team, and therefore they could *both* cook with him.
Had he known how the filming was going to go, he'd have called in sick and let them fight it out amongst themselves.
First there was the business with the aprons, which tied at the back.
"Turn round and I'll tie yours for you," Jin offered.
Koki scoffed at this. "Your knots come undone in five seconds. I'll do it." He made a grab for Kame's dangling apron strings.
Jin didn't care for this at all and grabbed Koki's strings in return, yanking him back so hard he stumbled into Ueda, who landed heavily on Nakamaru who happened to be doing up his apron at the time.
By the time everyone had picked themselves up and gotten untangled, Kame had tied his own apron strings and was thanking every deity he could think of that there was no studio audience.
Then there was the matter of preparing ingredients for the stew. As usual, Kame had quickly fallen into the role of head chef, and as such had been quite comfortable dictating instructions to his minions. It was just a shame that they couldn't manage to follow them...
"I'm supposed to be chopping the carrots," Koki complained when Jin whisked his chopping board away from him.
"No, Kame said it was a very important task and there was only one person he could trust with it," Jin insisted.
"Yeah, and he meant me!"
"He wanted you to slice the steak!"
Kame sighed and rapped his wooden spoon sharply on the edge of the frying pan. "I want you both to stop yelling out what we're doing so our rivals don't know what we're cooking!"
Jin smiled sheepishly. "Um...Kame? What exactly *are* we cooking, anyway?"
Koki only stopped laughing when Kame pointed a knife in his direction and told him to chop the carrots or get the hell out of his kitchen. Jin stuck his tongue out gleefully, but Kame saw it reflected in the mirrored beaker and demoted him to making the rice until such time as he could behave himself.
Unfortunately, this proved to be impossible. Kame was so busy with the meat that he didn't notice the war taking place behind him until a grain of rice landed on his neatly-painted fingernail. He turned round to discover Jin surrounded by small circles of carrot, and Koki with rice highlights in his blond hair.
Kame swallowed the lecture he was about to deliver, forced a tight smile onto his face, and made them both clean it all up and start again.
It was a good thing they'd had all afternoon to film. With only an hour left to go, both teams were on desserts and things were not going according to plan.
"How can we be out of eggs already?" Kame demanded to know. "There were plenty when I looked earlier!"
It was Koki's turn to look embarrassed. "I might have...accidentally..."
Kame glowered at him, finally noticing the suspiciously shiny patch of floor. "You dropped them?"
Koki shuffled his feet awkwardly. "Akanishi tripped me!"
"Not on purpose!" Jin protested. "It's not my fault you were too busy staring at Kame to look where you were going!"
"I wasn't staring! I was...admiring his skill with a measuring jug."
Kame was very tempted to take said measuring jug and tip the flour it contained all over both of them. He settled for making Koki go round the divider and borrow a couple of eggs from the opposing team. The laughter coming from the other side made him wish he hadn't bothered.
Things went from bad to worse as Jin tried to prove that he could be as responsible as the next guy - provided the next guy was about five years old, and fascinated by shiny kitchen gadgets. The electric beaters were lots of fun, right up until Jin's index finger met the blade. He let out a yell that made Koki knock over the bag of sugar and Nakamaru stick his head round the divider to ask if they were okay.
"If you don't take your finger out of your mouth I can't examine it, can I?" Kame said sensibly when a mournful-looking Jin wandered over and made an indistinct plea for Kame to look at the injury because Jin couldn't bear to see the damage.
Jin closed his eyes and removed his finger from his mouth, holding it out for Kame's inspection. Kame hemmed and hawed a moment to tease him, then told him to open his eyes and stop being such a baby.
"But it hurts!"
Kame looked pointedly at the almost-invisible line of blood along the base of Jin's index fingernail. "Really?"
"Well...a little bit, anyway. And there's blood."
He was willing to concede that yes, there was blood, and therefore Jin needed a plaster before he could continue cooking. He obtained a first aid kit from a staff member and carefully tended to Jin's finger with an antiseptic wipe before applying a bright blue plaster, all the while pointing out that Jin was perfectly capable of doing all this himself.
"But it feels better when you do it," Jin said.
It was more than Koki could stand, watching them there, hand in hand - sort of. He just had to interrupt. "What temperature is the oven supposed to be on?"
Kame decided to err on the side of caution and not let the other two handle anything more dangerous than a wooden spoon, for fear of blowing up the studio entirely. "I'll do it! You just clean up the sugar."
"You help," Koki grumbled to Jin as Kame busied himself with the oven. "If you hadn't yelled like that I'd never have knocked it over."
"I'm injured," Jin said, and went to sit down on a stool, holding his finger carefully with his other hand.
At least it kept him out of the way while Kame finished mixing the dough. It had emerged unscathed from Jin's accident with the beaters - lucky, since they didn't have time to start from scratch, not the way things were going - and Kame was able to relax after he poured the light yellow mixture into his two prepared cake tins.
While both halves of the cake were rising nicely in the oven, it was time to take care of the icing.
"Leave it to me." Koki opened the bag of icing sugar and dumped half of it in a large bowl. "You sit back and relax - you've been doing so much of the work yourself." He grabbed another stool and placed it behind Kame, then pressed him gently down by the shoulders.
Surprised, Kame sat down, but leapt up again as soon as he saw how much icing sugar Koki had poured out. "You have to start slowly! It'll go everywhere now. Just...don't breathe too heavily."
Jin, who was breathing extremely heavily owing to his rage at seeing Koki dare to touch Kame's shoulders, immediately stilled his lungs.
"Not you."
"Oh." Jin took a deep breath. "Is there anything I can do to help fix Koki's mistake?" he offered sweetly. "Because I'd wait for your instructions and-"
"And then ignore them completely." Kame transferred some of the icing sugar into another bowl and measured out some butter to join it. "Tell you what - you pick the food colouring. We want children to be able to enjoy this cake, so you choose the colours for the icing, okay?"
Koki snickered at the Jin = child implications, earning himself a stern look from Kame and an order to go find the lemon juice and cocoa.
In addition to the chocolate and white icing, Jin decided that they were going to have pink and blue. Kame mixed up enough to split into smaller bowls, then left Jin and Koki to colour them while he checked on the cake. It was springy to the touch, pulling away from the sides, and when he tested both halves with a skewer, he felt fairly satisfied that they were done. He turned them out on a rack to cool - as far away from his teammates as he could get.
Much to his surprise, neither the aforementioned teammates nor the counter had been given a rainbow makeover in his absence. Kame checked out the contents of the bowls - the colour had been mixed in evenly and all looked well. He grinned at Jin and Koki, heartened when both of them smiled back, though his pleasure turned to dismay when he saw Jin elbow Koki in the side.
"What was that for?" Kame demanded to know.
"He was leering at you!"
Koki rubbed the sore spot. "Can't I smile at a friend?"
Jin snorted. "There's smiling, and then there's looking like you want to jump him right then and there on the counter."
"Don't project your own fantasies on to me, Akanishi..."
Kame was pretty sure his cheeks were giving the pink food colouring a run for its money right now. "Nobody's jumping anybody, all right? And if you two continue with this stupid, childish behaviour I'm not going to let you lick the icing bowls when I'm done!"
Jin's face fell. "Not even the chocolate icing?"
"Not even the chocolate icing."
"I'll be good! If Koki promises to stop looking at you like you're the last slice of pizza-"
"I said stop projecting your fantasies!"
Kame slammed his hand down on the counter to shut them both up; this had the effect of making the bottles of food colouring shake and topple, and one of them, the nearest one, came open altogether, sending a wave of dark blue liquid across the surface to stain Kame's fingertips. He yanked his fingers away in a hurry, but not fast enough.
"I don't care which one of you forgot to screw the cap back on the bottle, but if the counter's still blue when I come back from washing my hands, not only do you not get to lick the bowls but neither of you will be getting any cake, either. I'm giving it all to Ueda - he needs the calories."
"Because he runs ten kilometres a day," Jin muttered. "Crazy guy."
"Wouldn't kill you to work out more often."
Jin ignored Koki's sniping and went to find a cloth so he could look like he was being all mature and helpful by mopping up the food colouring.
By the time the cake had finished cooling, both Kame's hands and the counter were spotless and they were running out of time. There was only one way they could finish on schedule, and that was for Kame to decorate the entire cake by himself. He knew that if he let the others help, he'd get delayed somehow. The cake would fall on the floor, or the building would blow up, or Jin would manage to break the icing syringe...
Kame sliced the top off the cake base, then sandwiched the two halves together with a thin layer of chocolate icing. He let Koki hold the syringe while he spooned pink icing in the top, then screwed on the lid tightly and set to work. No time for anything fancy, just pretty patterns in four colours using the flower nozzle. It was hell on his right hand and arm, but all the training for One Pound Gospel hadn't been for naught and he worked through the cramps, settling into a steady routine.
Gradually, a word emerged from the swirls of colour. Jin laughed when he saw it. "KAT-TUN. You've written KAT-TUN. I thought the cake was supposed to be for kids?"
Kame shrugged. "Fangirls can be kids too. Everyone's got to start somewhere." He set down the syringe, finished at last. "Isn't the judge supposed to be here by now?"
The director beckoned him over for a word; the celebrity guest judge was held up in traffic and wouldn't arrive for half an hour. "We're thinking of calling in Arashi as substitutes. They're filming next door. There's five of them, I'm sure we can borrow one for ten minutes or so."
Jin's ears pricked up at the mention of Arashi. "No good," he said. "They'll only come to hit on Kame and try to steal him away."
"You're paranoid." Kame shoved the pink icing bowl and a spoon at Jin. "Here, have this and stop imagining that everyone in Japan is after my body."
"I said I wasn't leering!" Koki said.
Kame gave him a puzzled look and the blue icing bowl. "I didn't say you were."
Koki continued to protest his innocence. "But you know, you've been in really great shape ever since you started shooting the drama, and it's only natural for friends to compare muscles, right?"
"Sure," Jin said through a mouthful of icing. "Me and Pi do it all the time."
"How nice for you." The cameras were switched off and everyone took the opportunity to have a break while they waited. Kame carried the cake platter across to the table set aside for the judging. He couldn't tell what the other team had made - their dishes were covered - but it was clear that they'd been finished for ages. Still, if the judge was running late, that didn't matter too much.
Word filtered through that Ohno would be delighted to serve as surprise guest taster, but that they'd have to wait ten minutes as he was currently drawing a sketch of Nino dressed up as a female flight attendant and couldn't be interrupted.
Kame groaned. "He'll eat anything. I guess we've got about as much chance of winning as the others now."
Jin shook his head. "We should definitely win; your cooking always tastes good. And besides, Arashi want you for themselves."
"Not this again."
"And so does Koki."
"He does not."
"You encourage him! You guys are always cuddling up against each other, and being all touchy-feely, and fake-kissing on stage and-"
"And," Kame interrupted, "none of it means anything more than that we're friends. We have fun together." He looked around, checking to see that Koki, the staff and everyone else were well out of earshot before continuing. "Koki only gets my fake kisses. I save my real ones for you."
Jin looked dubious. "Just me?"
"Just you," Kame promised. "Even if you do have pink icing smeared all round your mouth."
"Eh? I do?"
Kame didn't answer, just grabbed hold of Jin's apron strings and led him out the corridor to a small storage room he'd noticed on the way in. He nudged Jin up against the door, since it didn't have a lock, and proceeded to lick away the few smudges of icing, tongue lapping delicately at the soft skin around Jin's mouth.
"There. That's the last of it."
Jin started to put a hand to his mouth, then thought better of it. "Are you sure?" he breathed, voice low and sultry. "I wouldn't want to go out there for the cameras with icing all over my face."
Kame smirked. "Maybe I missed just a little bit. Here." He planted a kiss on the corner of Jin's lower lip. "And here." He did the same to the opposite corner. "And maybe some here, too." This time the kiss was full-on, forming a seal between them. Heedless of the time, their lips met again and again, here a change of angle, there a change of pressure, and here, just the taste of icing with its sugary sweetness.
"Convinced yet?" Kame asked. "You're the only person I touch like this. Koki will never know what he's missing."
"He'd better not," Jin said darkly. "Or he might have to get some gold teeth to match his jewellery."
Kame made a mental note to warn Koki to upgrade his dental plan, and decided it was about time they returned to the studio before someone thought to look for them. That would just be the icing on the cake, no pun intended.
They didn't receive so much as a first glance upon their return, never mind a second one. Koki strolled up to them, wearing a knowing smile. He stared hard at Kame's chin for a moment. "You've got pink icing just under your lower lip."
Jin stepped in front of Kame and spread his arms wide. "Don't even think about it. I know what you're up to and it's not going to work."
Koki gave him a baffled look. "I wish I knew how your mind works."
"Trust me," Kame said, "you don't. Is there any icing left? I'm starved."
"Our guest judge finally showed up - traffic improved. He started eating his way through the leftovers while we were waiting for you guys to come back for the judging. If you're quick, you might be able to catch some chocolate icing."
Kame darted round the divider, Jin hot on his heels, and stopped short when he saw Kanjani8's Yokoyama You sitting at the table, chocolate-covered spoon in his hand. Yokoyama spotted the pair, gave them an encouraging smile, and reached for the camera dangling round his neck.
That was all the motivation Kame needed to drag Jin back to the storage room, where they waited in terrified silence for the search party to pass them by.
"You think he's here to take weird photos of us again?" Jin asked timidly. "Like the time he wanted you to sit on my lap?"
Kame sank to the floor with a groan. "That wasn't so bad. It was when he started looking at Yamapi's AnAn shoot for inspiration that I got worried."
Jealousy blazed in Jin's chest. "I bet he just wants to see you naked too."
"Both of us," Kame amended. "Together. Still, there's one bright spot to having him here."
"I'm not seeing it."
Kame grinned. "He knows which meal we made 'cause he's got the icing now. We're guaranteed a win!"
Pairing: Akame with Kokame hints
Rating: PG
Genre: Fluff, humour
Word count: 3,174
Disclaimer: Not mine, damnit.
Summary: When Kame winds up teamed with Jin and Koki in a cooking battle, a cup of jealousy, a few tablespoons of immaturity and a pinch of bad luck comprise a recipe for disaster.
Author's Notes: This was supposed to be a drabble for the Akame fic wave that maya_morning persuaded me to partake in, but when it got past a thousand words I figured I couldn't really tack it on the end of an LJ post! So here it is.
Recipe for Disaster
Kame wasn't sure what else could possibly go wrong, but he felt that with another hour left to film, something was bound to happen. A 'Cartoon KAT-TUN Special Cooking Battle!' had seemed like such a fun idea when it had been proposed - split into two teams, and each team had to come up with food suitable for a family. A surprise celebrity judge was going to appear at the end to decide on the winners.
Unfortunately, they'd been allowed to choose their own teams, and there the trouble had started. Everyone had wanted to avoid Taguchi, because his puns had been even more annoying than usual lately and besides, it would look weird if one of them actually chose him. Kame didn't care too much about who he worked with...but after Ueda had proven himself to be limited in the kitchen, he wasn't high on Kame's list of ideal cooking teammates.
Kame himself had been a popular choice. Too popular. Jin and Koki had almost come to blows over it until Kame had gently reminded them that it was three to a team, and therefore they could *both* cook with him.
Had he known how the filming was going to go, he'd have called in sick and let them fight it out amongst themselves.
First there was the business with the aprons, which tied at the back.
"Turn round and I'll tie yours for you," Jin offered.
Koki scoffed at this. "Your knots come undone in five seconds. I'll do it." He made a grab for Kame's dangling apron strings.
Jin didn't care for this at all and grabbed Koki's strings in return, yanking him back so hard he stumbled into Ueda, who landed heavily on Nakamaru who happened to be doing up his apron at the time.
By the time everyone had picked themselves up and gotten untangled, Kame had tied his own apron strings and was thanking every deity he could think of that there was no studio audience.
Then there was the matter of preparing ingredients for the stew. As usual, Kame had quickly fallen into the role of head chef, and as such had been quite comfortable dictating instructions to his minions. It was just a shame that they couldn't manage to follow them...
"I'm supposed to be chopping the carrots," Koki complained when Jin whisked his chopping board away from him.
"No, Kame said it was a very important task and there was only one person he could trust with it," Jin insisted.
"Yeah, and he meant me!"
"He wanted you to slice the steak!"
Kame sighed and rapped his wooden spoon sharply on the edge of the frying pan. "I want you both to stop yelling out what we're doing so our rivals don't know what we're cooking!"
Jin smiled sheepishly. "Um...Kame? What exactly *are* we cooking, anyway?"
Koki only stopped laughing when Kame pointed a knife in his direction and told him to chop the carrots or get the hell out of his kitchen. Jin stuck his tongue out gleefully, but Kame saw it reflected in the mirrored beaker and demoted him to making the rice until such time as he could behave himself.
Unfortunately, this proved to be impossible. Kame was so busy with the meat that he didn't notice the war taking place behind him until a grain of rice landed on his neatly-painted fingernail. He turned round to discover Jin surrounded by small circles of carrot, and Koki with rice highlights in his blond hair.
Kame swallowed the lecture he was about to deliver, forced a tight smile onto his face, and made them both clean it all up and start again.
It was a good thing they'd had all afternoon to film. With only an hour left to go, both teams were on desserts and things were not going according to plan.
"How can we be out of eggs already?" Kame demanded to know. "There were plenty when I looked earlier!"
It was Koki's turn to look embarrassed. "I might have...accidentally..."
Kame glowered at him, finally noticing the suspiciously shiny patch of floor. "You dropped them?"
Koki shuffled his feet awkwardly. "Akanishi tripped me!"
"Not on purpose!" Jin protested. "It's not my fault you were too busy staring at Kame to look where you were going!"
"I wasn't staring! I was...admiring his skill with a measuring jug."
Kame was very tempted to take said measuring jug and tip the flour it contained all over both of them. He settled for making Koki go round the divider and borrow a couple of eggs from the opposing team. The laughter coming from the other side made him wish he hadn't bothered.
Things went from bad to worse as Jin tried to prove that he could be as responsible as the next guy - provided the next guy was about five years old, and fascinated by shiny kitchen gadgets. The electric beaters were lots of fun, right up until Jin's index finger met the blade. He let out a yell that made Koki knock over the bag of sugar and Nakamaru stick his head round the divider to ask if they were okay.
"If you don't take your finger out of your mouth I can't examine it, can I?" Kame said sensibly when a mournful-looking Jin wandered over and made an indistinct plea for Kame to look at the injury because Jin couldn't bear to see the damage.
Jin closed his eyes and removed his finger from his mouth, holding it out for Kame's inspection. Kame hemmed and hawed a moment to tease him, then told him to open his eyes and stop being such a baby.
"But it hurts!"
Kame looked pointedly at the almost-invisible line of blood along the base of Jin's index fingernail. "Really?"
"Well...a little bit, anyway. And there's blood."
He was willing to concede that yes, there was blood, and therefore Jin needed a plaster before he could continue cooking. He obtained a first aid kit from a staff member and carefully tended to Jin's finger with an antiseptic wipe before applying a bright blue plaster, all the while pointing out that Jin was perfectly capable of doing all this himself.
"But it feels better when you do it," Jin said.
It was more than Koki could stand, watching them there, hand in hand - sort of. He just had to interrupt. "What temperature is the oven supposed to be on?"
Kame decided to err on the side of caution and not let the other two handle anything more dangerous than a wooden spoon, for fear of blowing up the studio entirely. "I'll do it! You just clean up the sugar."
"You help," Koki grumbled to Jin as Kame busied himself with the oven. "If you hadn't yelled like that I'd never have knocked it over."
"I'm injured," Jin said, and went to sit down on a stool, holding his finger carefully with his other hand.
At least it kept him out of the way while Kame finished mixing the dough. It had emerged unscathed from Jin's accident with the beaters - lucky, since they didn't have time to start from scratch, not the way things were going - and Kame was able to relax after he poured the light yellow mixture into his two prepared cake tins.
While both halves of the cake were rising nicely in the oven, it was time to take care of the icing.
"Leave it to me." Koki opened the bag of icing sugar and dumped half of it in a large bowl. "You sit back and relax - you've been doing so much of the work yourself." He grabbed another stool and placed it behind Kame, then pressed him gently down by the shoulders.
Surprised, Kame sat down, but leapt up again as soon as he saw how much icing sugar Koki had poured out. "You have to start slowly! It'll go everywhere now. Just...don't breathe too heavily."
Jin, who was breathing extremely heavily owing to his rage at seeing Koki dare to touch Kame's shoulders, immediately stilled his lungs.
"Not you."
"Oh." Jin took a deep breath. "Is there anything I can do to help fix Koki's mistake?" he offered sweetly. "Because I'd wait for your instructions and-"
"And then ignore them completely." Kame transferred some of the icing sugar into another bowl and measured out some butter to join it. "Tell you what - you pick the food colouring. We want children to be able to enjoy this cake, so you choose the colours for the icing, okay?"
Koki snickered at the Jin = child implications, earning himself a stern look from Kame and an order to go find the lemon juice and cocoa.
In addition to the chocolate and white icing, Jin decided that they were going to have pink and blue. Kame mixed up enough to split into smaller bowls, then left Jin and Koki to colour them while he checked on the cake. It was springy to the touch, pulling away from the sides, and when he tested both halves with a skewer, he felt fairly satisfied that they were done. He turned them out on a rack to cool - as far away from his teammates as he could get.
Much to his surprise, neither the aforementioned teammates nor the counter had been given a rainbow makeover in his absence. Kame checked out the contents of the bowls - the colour had been mixed in evenly and all looked well. He grinned at Jin and Koki, heartened when both of them smiled back, though his pleasure turned to dismay when he saw Jin elbow Koki in the side.
"What was that for?" Kame demanded to know.
"He was leering at you!"
Koki rubbed the sore spot. "Can't I smile at a friend?"
Jin snorted. "There's smiling, and then there's looking like you want to jump him right then and there on the counter."
"Don't project your own fantasies on to me, Akanishi..."
Kame was pretty sure his cheeks were giving the pink food colouring a run for its money right now. "Nobody's jumping anybody, all right? And if you two continue with this stupid, childish behaviour I'm not going to let you lick the icing bowls when I'm done!"
Jin's face fell. "Not even the chocolate icing?"
"Not even the chocolate icing."
"I'll be good! If Koki promises to stop looking at you like you're the last slice of pizza-"
"I said stop projecting your fantasies!"
Kame slammed his hand down on the counter to shut them both up; this had the effect of making the bottles of food colouring shake and topple, and one of them, the nearest one, came open altogether, sending a wave of dark blue liquid across the surface to stain Kame's fingertips. He yanked his fingers away in a hurry, but not fast enough.
"I don't care which one of you forgot to screw the cap back on the bottle, but if the counter's still blue when I come back from washing my hands, not only do you not get to lick the bowls but neither of you will be getting any cake, either. I'm giving it all to Ueda - he needs the calories."
"Because he runs ten kilometres a day," Jin muttered. "Crazy guy."
"Wouldn't kill you to work out more often."
Jin ignored Koki's sniping and went to find a cloth so he could look like he was being all mature and helpful by mopping up the food colouring.
By the time the cake had finished cooling, both Kame's hands and the counter were spotless and they were running out of time. There was only one way they could finish on schedule, and that was for Kame to decorate the entire cake by himself. He knew that if he let the others help, he'd get delayed somehow. The cake would fall on the floor, or the building would blow up, or Jin would manage to break the icing syringe...
Kame sliced the top off the cake base, then sandwiched the two halves together with a thin layer of chocolate icing. He let Koki hold the syringe while he spooned pink icing in the top, then screwed on the lid tightly and set to work. No time for anything fancy, just pretty patterns in four colours using the flower nozzle. It was hell on his right hand and arm, but all the training for One Pound Gospel hadn't been for naught and he worked through the cramps, settling into a steady routine.
Gradually, a word emerged from the swirls of colour. Jin laughed when he saw it. "KAT-TUN. You've written KAT-TUN. I thought the cake was supposed to be for kids?"
Kame shrugged. "Fangirls can be kids too. Everyone's got to start somewhere." He set down the syringe, finished at last. "Isn't the judge supposed to be here by now?"
The director beckoned him over for a word; the celebrity guest judge was held up in traffic and wouldn't arrive for half an hour. "We're thinking of calling in Arashi as substitutes. They're filming next door. There's five of them, I'm sure we can borrow one for ten minutes or so."
Jin's ears pricked up at the mention of Arashi. "No good," he said. "They'll only come to hit on Kame and try to steal him away."
"You're paranoid." Kame shoved the pink icing bowl and a spoon at Jin. "Here, have this and stop imagining that everyone in Japan is after my body."
"I said I wasn't leering!" Koki said.
Kame gave him a puzzled look and the blue icing bowl. "I didn't say you were."
Koki continued to protest his innocence. "But you know, you've been in really great shape ever since you started shooting the drama, and it's only natural for friends to compare muscles, right?"
"Sure," Jin said through a mouthful of icing. "Me and Pi do it all the time."
"How nice for you." The cameras were switched off and everyone took the opportunity to have a break while they waited. Kame carried the cake platter across to the table set aside for the judging. He couldn't tell what the other team had made - their dishes were covered - but it was clear that they'd been finished for ages. Still, if the judge was running late, that didn't matter too much.
Word filtered through that Ohno would be delighted to serve as surprise guest taster, but that they'd have to wait ten minutes as he was currently drawing a sketch of Nino dressed up as a female flight attendant and couldn't be interrupted.
Kame groaned. "He'll eat anything. I guess we've got about as much chance of winning as the others now."
Jin shook his head. "We should definitely win; your cooking always tastes good. And besides, Arashi want you for themselves."
"Not this again."
"And so does Koki."
"He does not."
"You encourage him! You guys are always cuddling up against each other, and being all touchy-feely, and fake-kissing on stage and-"
"And," Kame interrupted, "none of it means anything more than that we're friends. We have fun together." He looked around, checking to see that Koki, the staff and everyone else were well out of earshot before continuing. "Koki only gets my fake kisses. I save my real ones for you."
Jin looked dubious. "Just me?"
"Just you," Kame promised. "Even if you do have pink icing smeared all round your mouth."
"Eh? I do?"
Kame didn't answer, just grabbed hold of Jin's apron strings and led him out the corridor to a small storage room he'd noticed on the way in. He nudged Jin up against the door, since it didn't have a lock, and proceeded to lick away the few smudges of icing, tongue lapping delicately at the soft skin around Jin's mouth.
"There. That's the last of it."
Jin started to put a hand to his mouth, then thought better of it. "Are you sure?" he breathed, voice low and sultry. "I wouldn't want to go out there for the cameras with icing all over my face."
Kame smirked. "Maybe I missed just a little bit. Here." He planted a kiss on the corner of Jin's lower lip. "And here." He did the same to the opposite corner. "And maybe some here, too." This time the kiss was full-on, forming a seal between them. Heedless of the time, their lips met again and again, here a change of angle, there a change of pressure, and here, just the taste of icing with its sugary sweetness.
"Convinced yet?" Kame asked. "You're the only person I touch like this. Koki will never know what he's missing."
"He'd better not," Jin said darkly. "Or he might have to get some gold teeth to match his jewellery."
Kame made a mental note to warn Koki to upgrade his dental plan, and decided it was about time they returned to the studio before someone thought to look for them. That would just be the icing on the cake, no pun intended.
They didn't receive so much as a first glance upon their return, never mind a second one. Koki strolled up to them, wearing a knowing smile. He stared hard at Kame's chin for a moment. "You've got pink icing just under your lower lip."
Jin stepped in front of Kame and spread his arms wide. "Don't even think about it. I know what you're up to and it's not going to work."
Koki gave him a baffled look. "I wish I knew how your mind works."
"Trust me," Kame said, "you don't. Is there any icing left? I'm starved."
"Our guest judge finally showed up - traffic improved. He started eating his way through the leftovers while we were waiting for you guys to come back for the judging. If you're quick, you might be able to catch some chocolate icing."
Kame darted round the divider, Jin hot on his heels, and stopped short when he saw Kanjani8's Yokoyama You sitting at the table, chocolate-covered spoon in his hand. Yokoyama spotted the pair, gave them an encouraging smile, and reached for the camera dangling round his neck.
That was all the motivation Kame needed to drag Jin back to the storage room, where they waited in terrified silence for the search party to pass them by.
"You think he's here to take weird photos of us again?" Jin asked timidly. "Like the time he wanted you to sit on my lap?"
Kame sank to the floor with a groan. "That wasn't so bad. It was when he started looking at Yamapi's AnAn shoot for inspiration that I got worried."
Jealousy blazed in Jin's chest. "I bet he just wants to see you naked too."
"Both of us," Kame amended. "Together. Still, there's one bright spot to having him here."
"I'm not seeing it."
Kame grinned. "He knows which meal we made 'cause he's got the icing now. We're guaranteed a win!"