pinkynishi | [FIC] Race to the crosswalk (Reply)

Title:Race to the crosswalk
Genre: Humour
Rating:E
Pairing: Akanishi/Kamenashi
Disclaimer: Ionly own the plot.
Summary: Without Kazuya even knowing, Jin was been winning the race to the crosswalk for two months now. But when Jin puts him aware of this said race, Kazuya decides to take the matter into his own hands.
Pre A/N: Based on a Tumbrl post that I cba to find right now. Just wanna post this before I go to bed XD Maybe Aleks still has it? Or I have it? Idk. Anywho.

His phone in his hand, Kazuya stepped out of the train and sighed. Another big day was waiting for him at the office but at least it was Thursday and that meant that Friday was tomorrow. At least he had that to look forward to.

As soon as he put his phone in his pocket, a man with fluffy brown hair passed him from the left and he immediately frowned. The guy basically shoved him. It’s not like there were a lot people too - the guy could’ve just gone around him and -

“Sorry!” He said over his shoulder as he walked away.

“Huh,” Kazuya shrugged and watched the man leave. Okay, so the guy had apologized in the end… but still. It wouldn’t’ve killed him to take a step more to the left.

The man went down the steps and so did Kazuya. The man took a right and Kazuya frowned. It’s like the man knew where Kazuya wanted to go but he makes it seem like Kazuyais doing all of the following. It’s weird, to say the least. It all reminded Kazuya of a book he’d once read when he was in highschool. He couldn’t for the life of him remember the title of the story. All he remembered was that the genre was fantastique and that in the story, a guy was walking home and someone in front of him was taking the same turns. The guy ended up following the stranger to his building and realizing that he had been following himself the whole time - only to realize that he couldn’t get into his flat. It was a confusing story and years later it still creeped him out.

Kazuya shook the thought away and took out his phone again and tried to distract himself. He was trying to read an article online but he noticed that the guy was still in front of him 10 minutes later. About three steps ahead. He noticed the man started to sprint and he looked up to see that the man had crossed the street. Kazuya was just about to put a foot in the street when a loud honk made him back up. He frowned and narrowed his eyes at the driver that had turned and that was currently flipping him off. So he’d been distracted for a second - big deal. The guy was just in too much of a hurry.

As he waited for the crosswalk light to go off, Kazuya found himself looking at the back of the man that had been walking in front of him earlier. That guy was the reason he’d almost gotten killed. Had he been more aware of everything around him, Kazuya would’ve noticed how irresponsible the stranger had been and he would’ve stayed put in the first place. But the moment was gone now, the guy was far away - Kazuya couldn’t even see him anymore.

The next day, just as he was walking, Kazuya noticed that the man from yesterday was in front of him again. He quickly looked over his shoulders, not really sure what he was looking for and turned to face forward again. Had the man alwaysbeen there? Had he only started to notice the man now because they’d bumped into each other or was this new? Either way the man was still taking the same turns as him. Again, they were separated by the road that the man crossed but that Kazuya didn’t. One honk a week was enough.

This went on for at least two months. Kazuya had stopped reading on his phone while he walked too - mostly because it wasn’t really safe but also because he was curious to see where this man went. Everyday, with no exception, the man crossed the street before him and turned a corner before Kazuya could catch up. Then again, maybe it was a good thing that they ended up separated - and maybe it was on purpose too… maybe the guy thought that Kazuya was following him and crossing that street was his way of escaping. But that wasn’t it - it really wasn’t. It was just a coincidence. Well, ten minutes worth of coincidences but still. Coincidence.

But one day - after getting of the train and taking a few turns, Kazuya noticed that his walking-buddy wasn’t there. Maybe he was sick? Maybe he’d changed jobs. Kazuya didn’t know why he was questioning himself on this or why he cared for that matter but it’s like he’d gotten used to this presence in front of him. To have it gone made him feel weird.

Just as he was turning the final corner, Kazuya heard fast footsteps behind him. Before he had time to turn around, the man with the fluffy brown hair had passed him and stopped at the crosswalk, bent over, his hands on his knees as he panted. Clearly, something was up and ideas started popping into Kazuya’s head like mad.

Maybe the man had been secretly following him all this time to protect him and today he was late. Someone was telling him Kazuya’s exact route so that’show the man knew when and where he needed to turn.

Or maybe the man was a murderer and this time, he’d been late on purpose to get Kazuya to talk to him and then kill him! Thinking that, a shiver went down Kazuya’s spine. No-one would do that in broad daylight. It would be stupid.

Or… someone was chasing him and he was in danger.

No - he had it. The perfect reason. It had all been an elaborate prank to set up by his co-worker/best friend Nakamaru. The man knew how much Kazuya liked his routine and Maru knew Kazuya’s trajectory for when he came to work so he had obviously hired the man with the fluffy brown hair to ‘tail’ him and get him used to the idea of having someone walk in front of him.

At some point, in a few months, Maru would tell the guy to stop and Kazuya would be left confused - just as he’d been a few minutes ago when he realized that the stranger wasn’t in front of him anymore. Clearly this was it - the man was out of breath because he was late, and if Maru found out - he wouldn’t get payed. It all made sense. But ha!Kazuya had cracked the case! He should’ve done detective work instead of advertising. Thinking about it, he was sure that if Maru had told the man to stop in four months, Kazuya would’ve been even more bothered by the situation. He wouldn’t tell his friend that he’d seen through his ruse, the man with the fluffy hair needed to be paid after all. They all had to eat.

“Don’t worry,” Kazuya simply said to the man with a smug grin as he stopped in front of him, “I won’t tell him.”

The man swallowed hard and looked up at Kazuya, his brows furrowed and his bangs plastered on his forehead with sweat, “Huh?” he simply said, still out of breath. “Tell who what?” He asked.

Kazuya chuckled, “Maru of course. I won’t tell him.” He studied the man’s face and his smile faded. Either this guy was a great actor or he really had no idea what Kazuya was talking about. The man was clearly confused and Kazuya could almost see question marks in those big brown eyes of his.

“Who’s Maru?”

“Um…” Kazuya bit down on his lower lip and smiled again, “Nevermind, I guess… are you alright? Why were you running?”

“I’ve been winning for two months now,” the man breathed, standing up straight and placing his hands on his back. “Can’t stop now,” he added with a chuckle before turning around. There was a car coming - albeit not very fast - so the man crossed the street and turned to grin at Kazuya. “Have a good day!” He called out as cars were now passing between them, “See you tomorrow!” he said before walking away, leaving Kazuya absolutely confused, but grinning a second later.

Tomorrow, he was going to wear his running shoes to work.

The next day, Kazuya eyed his dress-shoes, wondering if he really wanted to go through with his idea or not. He grabbed them, stuffed them into a plastic bag and then into his shoulder bag. It’s a good thing he didn’t carry too many things with him - otherwise he would’ve been stuck running in them and that would’ve ruinedthem.

He took his usual commute and didn’t change anything in his routine. He was pretty sure that he was getting odd looks from people here and there but he didn’t care. Who cared if he was wearing sneakers with a nice suit? He had a race to win dammit!

Two stops before his own, he placed his phone back in his bag and secured it over his shoulder and across his body before standing up. Come to think of it, the man with the fluffy brown hair was probably on this train - considering he was alwaysahead of him when he walked. Even when Kazuya’s commute was a bit slower, the man was always there. He stepped onto the platform and already his eyes were looking for the man. Maybe he was trying to hard and had to do like he usually did and just... walk.

A few seconds later, he spotted the man, walking exactly three steps ahead like always and Kazuya couldn’t help but grin. It was now or never. Once quick glance and the man’s footwear and he knew he was good to go. The man was also wearing a suit but he hadn’t bothered changing his shoes.

Kazuya sprinted a little bit and reached the man’s side, “Hey,” he said with a smirk.

“Oh! Hi,” the man simply answered with a smile, looking a bit confused. he was about to say something but Kazuya cut him off.

“I think your luck’s run out.”

“What do you mean?”

Kazuya grinned at him and quickly patted him on the back and broke into a run, “See you later!” he called over his shoulder before taking the first turn to the right.

He didn’t know if the guy would follow him or not but he was getting one hell of an adrenaline rush for something so small. He couldn’t take the smile that was on his face as he ran, avoiding pedestrians as he did, shouting ‘sorry’ every once in a while. He never looked back and never stopped running.

With luck on his side, Kazuya managed to cross in infamous crosswalk that always made him lose his so-called races while the pedestrian light was on. He ran across with the last remaining seconds running out and finally stopped running. Panting harder than ever, he bent down, hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. He could taste iron in his mouth but he was still way too happy about himself to care.

Once he straightened up, he placed a hand on the metal pole and turned around. To his surprise, the man with the fluffy hair was on the other side of the road, panting as well, bent over like he’d previously been. Kazuya grinned even more and waved at the man, only to get the middle finger in return. To that, Kazuya couldn’t help but laugh.

Cars were passing in the street so the guy couldn’t cross just yet - but Kazuya decided to wait for him. In the meantime, he changed out of his running shoes, leaning on the pole as he did.

“Man you run fast,” The guy with the fluffy hair panted as he joined Kazuya on the other side of the street. “I really wasn’t expecting that,” he added with a chuckle.

“Used to run a lot, played a lot of baseball when I was younger. Got that going for me at least,” Kazuya said as he watched the guy straighten up. “You gonna be okay?” he asked teasingly.

“Used to run too,” The man breathed, “Soccer. But you’re something else you’re - did you change your shoes?!” He asked, cutting himself off in his own sentence as he looked down at Kazuya’s feet.

“Hm?” Kazuya looked at his feet and then back up at the man, “I did yeah. No way was I going to run in these. I brought my running shoes!” He said happily, holding them out to showthem.

“That’s cheating!”

“No, that’s thinking ahead,” Kazuya said with a wink, chuckling a second later as he noticed that the guy had a cute blush appearing on his face.

“Well fine, tomorrow I’ll bring mine too!”

“You do that,” Kazuya said, smirking at the man before he turned on his heels to and started to walk away. “At least then it’ll be fair. Because let’s face it,” he started, looking over his shoulder just as Jin was jogging up to him to follow, “Those past two months that you’ve been ‘winning’ weren’t exactly fair game. I wasn’t even aware that it was a race!”

“ That’swhat makes it fun!” The man chirped.

“For youmaybe! I was just going through different scenarios of why we’re taking the same exact route. Are you following me without actually followingme? Is it a prank that one of my co-workers thought of to mess with my routine?”

“Wow,” The man laughed, “You really thought this through, didn’t you?”

“I’ve had two months of thinking this through, of course I did.”

“I’m Jin, by the way.”

“Kame,” Kazuya smiled, he saw the look on Jin’s face and laughed, “It’s Kazuya, actually. But I mostly go by Kame.”

Jin nodded and grinned, “Makes sense. I was wondering who would name their child Kame, didn’t seem very nice.”

Kazuya got used to walking with Jin every morning. It wasn’t a race anymore. Sometimes they were in the same carriage sometimes not - it really just depended on how many people were there. Kazuya never really paid any attention to which he got on. He knew that Jin got in a few stops later and he knew that they’d walk together when they got off and that seemed to be enough for the both ofthem.

A month or so later, Kazuya was waiting at the exit of the train station for Jin, like he always did when he got up the stairs first (another type of race they had), but the other man never showed. Kazuya waited for five, ten, twenty minutes even - but the guy never showed. At first Kazuya had thought that Jin had maybe missed his train but after four trains passing, he decided to let it be.

It was stupid, he knew that. They were just ‘walking-buddies’. They hadn’t even exchanged contact information - and Kazuya didn’t even know Jin’s last name so even if he wanted to be that guy, he wouldn’t be able to go check Jin’s Facebook to see if the guy had maybe written something on it.

But even so, Kazuya was a little bit… sad. He’d gotten used to talking to someone every morning and Jin had been a great friend. Now that he thought about it, they had really talked about everything and nothing. Kazuya knew what were Jin’s plans for the summer, he knew about his parents, his brother, he also knew where Jin went to school. Same goes for the other way around - nearly every question Jin had asked, Kazuya had given an answer. But that was over now.

Little did he know that across town, Jin was sick in bed doing everything he could to leave it but his roommate wouldn’t have it. He’d started coughing during the weekend and by Sunday night the flu had spiked and he’d been in bed since early that evening.

But, Jin had been determined to get up on Monday morning so he could walk with Kazuya. Sadly, Tomohisa would have none of that.

“Pi,” Jin said, his voice rattled with phlegm as he tried to sit up on his bed, only to be pushed back down by the other man. “Pi listen - Kame’s waiting for me.”

“I know buddy,” Tomohisa said as he sighed, bringing Jin’s blanket back up. “You’ve said that twenty times and counting. But you can’t go see Kame with that cough. You’re sick, he’ll run away from you.”

“I’m not sick!” Jin whined, breaking into a coughing fit for nearly a minute right after as he’d put too much energy into trying to convince Tomohisa...and himself.

“Okay, not that that wasn’t superpleasant,” Tomohisa said with a cringe, taking a tissue and handing it to Jin, “But you’re gonna stay in bed for the whole week.”

“But Kame!”

“No ‘but Kame’, Jin, he’s just some guy you walk with to go to work. You guys didn’t even exchange numbers - had you done that, you could’ve told him you weren’t gonna be there.”

“But-”

“No!” Tomohisa said, more sternly this time. “No buts and ors and ifs or ands! You’re not going anywhere! Don’t you even try to give me the puppy eyes Akanishi!” He warned, pointing a finger at his friend, “Your eyes are all glassy, your nose is red and irritated and you actuallylook like a puppy that got hit by a car! But it won’t work! Not this time! You’re running a fever so you’re staying in bed!”

“You have work too,” Jin grumbled, coughing into his elbow again, grimacing right after as he sunk into his bed. “You can’t keep me here against my will! Why are you grinning, that never leads to something good!”

“I’m just realizing that you’re right, I can’t keep you here all day… but your mother can.”

“YOU CALLED MY MOTHER?!” Jin wheezed as he attempted to shout, coughing and sneezing three times right after.

“Do you not hear yourself?! You legit soundlike death, Jin. Death. Also, you look like it. So yesI called your mother. Sue me.”

Jin sunk in his bed and covered his eyes with his arm as he wailed, “I can’tsue you! You’remy lawyer!”

“Damn right I’m your lawyer,” Tomohisa grinned, his arms crossed over his chest. “Although I don’t actually want to be of use one day so stay out of trouble,” he added, trying to look as serious as he could despite the fact that Jin wasn’t even looking at him. “So, I called your job for you~ And your mother will be here shortly so just… stay there and don’t talk anymore. You sound like you’re going through puberty in reverse and we both know you don’t wanna be fifteen again.”

After three days of walking alone, Kazuya had decided that waiting was useless. The first day, he’d waited for a few trains to pass, hoping that Jin would wobble off one at some point, he’d done the same on the second day too. On the third day he’d only waited five minutes and now, he was just doing as he used to do.

He was still annoyed with himself. He had no reason to feel mad at Jin but he couldn’t help it. The other had created a routine with him and Kazuya couldn’t just move on from that that easily. Maybe the friendship meant more to him than it meant to Jin.

Placing his earbuds into his ears, Kazuya walked towards his job and started to think about the possible scenarios that would explain Jin’s sudden disappearance. Going from bad to worst, the first would be that Jin changed jobs and thus didn’t take the same train anymore. He’d told Kazuya that he didn’t really like being a database manager, that it was just until he found something better but Kazuya wanted to believe that Jin would’ve told him if he’d had interviews or something. The second option was that Jin had just moved. Maybe with his secret girlfriend or wife. Kazuya didn’t know, Jin had never mentioned anything about his romantic life. Next would be that Jin had been kidnapped - but Kazuya hadn’t seen anything in the newspaper or on television. So he had no way to know. Thinking about it only led him to think that maybe Jin had been murdered… There hadbeen reports of a serial killer on the loose these days.

Thinking about all of that made a shiver go up Kazuya’s back. He was just overreacting, he knew that. But still, the idea was there.

He reached the crosswalk and sighed, at least tomorrow was Friday so that meant he could leave early. At least. He placed a foot down in the street and right then, a hand placed itself down on his shoulder and he turned around. Slowly. Frowning, Kazuya looked at the fingers that were still on him and followed them up the arm, only to finally realize that Jin was the one that had stopped him.

A second later and Jin pulled him forward and a car honked behind him. Kazuya noticed that Jin was trying to tell him something and he suddenly remember his earphones. He quickly took them out and Jin spoke up again, “Are you trying… to get yourself killed?!” The man asked, visibly out of breath.

Kazuya frowned and brought a hand to Jin’s bicep. He ignored Jin’s question and asked something else instead, “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Jin replied, waving his hand dismissively before he started to cough into his elbow.

“Clearly you’re not,” Kazuya chuckled.

“I had to run away from my roommate,” Jin explained, “Wanted to keep me in bed again but I didn’t want to.”

Kazuya frowned, his imagination running again, “Wanted to keep you in bed?” He repeated. Somehow, the only scenario that was coming to mind wasn’t family friendly. “Why would she do that?”

“He, actually,” Jin corrected, leaning forward onto his knees, trying to catch his breath.

“Alright, he,” Kazuya said, correcting himself. Not that it made that much more sense. Going on what he had, it mean that Jin had either skipped work or had been late to work because his roommate kept him in bed. “So he kept you in bed…?”

Suddenly realizing that it sounded somewhat wrong, Jin’s eyes went wide and he blushed a little bit, “Nothing like that! Really! Just my roommate! Totally single! I meant,” he cleared his throat, “I was sick, still sorta am, but I couldn’t stay in bed… and today I caught a late train but it was just the one after our usual one so I had to run and,”

“Jin,” Kazuya chuckled, interrupting the man.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to go on an actual date with me? And well, exchange contact information, that way I won’t think you got kidnapped or murdered the next time you show up late?”

Jin’s face lit up and he grinned at Kazuya, “I would lovethat,” he said, taking out his phone, “You thought I got kidnapped?” He asked as he exchanged his phone with Kazuya.

The smaller man shrugged, “It’s not like I had a lot to go on you know. We didn’t exchange any contact information, I don’t have your last name, you don’t have mine so I had no way to contact you to see if you were still alive or well, if you’d moved away. My mind wanders pretty easily… shut up!” He hurried to say when he saw the grin on Jin’s face.

“Well, now you have all of that.”

Kazuya looked down at his phone and smiled up at Jin, “That I do, Mr. Jin Akanishi.”

Marie/N: SO. This isn't long and this isn't Apple Pie, sorry~ Been working on other stuff recently. Notamment collabs and well, this haha. I re-read quickly, will re-read tomorrow for mistakes... as I mentioned in the pre- A/N, I just wanted to get this posted before going to bed :)

Don't worry, I'm already thinking of a sequel for this - the boys have to get together after all o.o

anywho, I hope you liked this short little thing that we'll call a one-shot.... ttfn!

xx Marie