Hey! Say! JUMP, Better Than a Book Token

Title: Better Than A Book Token [Okamoto/HSJ]
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for dorkery.
Summary: Keito is worried about what to get the other members in the gift exchange to show what they mean to him. Yuto just fails at romance.
AN: Thanks to my beta and to the mods for running the exchange. Merry Christmas, Lockability!

Christmas time was approaching in Tokyo, the air turning cold and the stores piping mangled versions of Western carols cheerfully into the streets. Inside the Jimusho, amidst the rapidly multiplying bunches of mistletoe and unfortunately costumed juniors, Johnny’s newest debuted group was wrapping up their practice for the day.

“And that’s the schedule for the next couple weeks,” Yabu finished, then without looking up from his sheaf of papers, added, “Dai-chan and Yama-chan, stop pouting.”

Keito chuckled as Daiki and Yamada scowled at being caught and pulled faces at Yabu; Takaki made a face right back at them.

“So, I guess we can all go home, unless I’m forgetting something?”

“You’re forgetting the most important thing!” Ryutarou spoke up, making everybody turn towards him. “When are we trading presents?”

“Presents?” Takaki laughed. “You really are a kid, aren’t…”

“Yeah!” Chinen interrupted from near Takaki’s waist. “Presents!”

“Presents!” Hikaru and Yuto echoed, eyes bright.

“…you.” Takaki finished, rolling his eyes.

“Maa, that is important, isn’t it? Hmm,” Yabu tapped his chin and exchanged a glance with Hikaru, “how about we exchange presents before we film the Christmas episode of Hi! Hey! Say!? That gives everyone two weeks to find gifts.”

Everyone seemed satisfied with that, and went on about their business, changing and packing up their things and going their separate ways either to catch the train home or get something to eat.

Everyone except Keito, that was. Lost in thought, he didn’t notice that he was the last person still in his practice clothes until Yabu clapped him on the shoulder, making him jump six inches in the air.

“Y-yabu-kun?” he gasped.

“You might want to drink less coffee milk, ne,” Yabu advised. “Something wrong? Everybody else is changed already.”

“No.” Keito shook his head. “I was just thinking about the present exchange.”

“Really?” Yabu tilted his head at Keito as he pulled his coat on. “You didn’t seem to have any trouble with it last year.”

“I gave everyone a book token,” Keito answered, wrinkling his nose.

Yabu nodded. “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s just that last year,” Keito tried to explain, “I barely knew any of you. And this year, now you’re my friends.”

“Aw, Keito-chan,” a familiar voice cooed behind Keito. He tried to scramble away, but Hikaru caught him with a casual arm around his neck and roughed up his hair. “You really do love us!”

“You’re strangling me!” Keito wailed, but Hikaru’s grip only tightened.

“After all,” Hikaru continued, ignoring him, “Christmas is a time to show how much people mean to you, right? So if we really do mean a lot to you, you should probably put a lot more effort into it than book tokens, right? Only a real idiot would get book tokens for his band members that take care of him and support him and see him naked so often during the year, don’t you think?”

“There’s nothing wrong with book tokens,” Yabu advised, peeling Hikaru away from a flailing Keito. “Stop giving Keito-kun a complex.”

But as Hikaru and Yabu strolled off together, Hikaru mouthing “Book tokens are for weenies” over his shoulder before Yabu punched him, Keito really couldn’t help but agree. Still thinking about it, he finished changing and slung his bag over his shoulder before heading out into the hallway.

Farther down the hallway, Yamada was scolding Yuto loudly, and Keito nearly ducked back into the dressing room to give them some privacy, but neither of them seemed to notice him anyway.

“Christmas is a very special time in a relationship,” Yamada was saying. “And since this is our first Christmas as an official couple, you definitely have to get me something really special.”

“I…” Yuto started.

“Because if you show up here with a book token, there definitely won’t be any mistletoe in your future,” Yamada finished, voice very serious. “Got it?”

“Got it,” Yuto answered in a small voice.

“Great!” Yamada leaned up on his tiptoes to kiss Yuto’s cheek. “See you tomorrow!”

Yamada skipped happily off, Christmas tree-patterned scarf flapping behind him, and Yuto sighed heavily as Keito approached.

“What’s wrong with book tokens?” Yuto asked Keito plaintively, and Keito patted his shoulder. “I don’t know what to get him at all! Ne, Keito-kun, what should I do?”

“We’ve got the same problem,” Keito said, then explained about wanting to show the other members this year that they meant a lot to him. “Want to go shopping together? It might even be fun.”

They agreed to meet in Shibuya the following Sunday, and when Keito got off the train, he found Yuto already waiting for him, bundled up in a puffy white coat that made him look like a tall snowman with a very silly hat.

“What’s wrong with my hat?” Yuto frowned, reaching up to touch the purple wool and making the bell dangling off the point of it jingle. “It’s important to keep your head warm so you don’t get sick! Eighty percent of your body heat escapes from your head, you know.”

“I can see your romance problem is deeply rooted,” Keito said gravely, then tugged Yuto off down the sidewalk before he could do anything more than frown harder.

They went in and out of a handful of shops, but nothing seemed right to either of them. Yuto thought the clothing was all silly and Keito thought that all of them had enough jewelry as it was. They even tooled around in the Tower Records for a little while, figuring that at least they could find something good for Daiki and Hikaru in the Rock section, but in the end Keito decided that really a Tower Records token wasn’t any better than a book token.

Several hours later, freezing and still empty-handed, Keito and Yuto agreed that it was time for a break, and ended up thawing out in a little coffee shop.

“And a cookie!” Yuto added to the end of his order. “Chocolate chip!”

“Oh, I want one too!” Keito said, and the waitress scribbled it down and bustled off. Keito chuckled at Yuto. “As soon as you said that, I wanted one too.”

“Of course!” Yuto tilted his head, as though Keito were stating a basic fact of life. “Everybody loves cookies.”

“Everybody does love cookies,” Keito agreed. “Do you remember last time Yaotome-san baked some for Hikaru to bring in and Daiki took one over to where Takaki was sleeping and…THAT’S IT!”

Yuto jumped at Keito’s sudden outburst. “What’s it?”

“Cookies!” Keito grinned. “We’ll bake everybody Christmas cookies!”

“That is a good idea,” Yuto said, and they both thought about it for a second as the waitress returned with their coffee and cookies. “Ne, but that’s definitely not romantic enough for Yama-chan.”

“At least it takes care of the other members,” Keito offered, blowing on his coffee before taking a sip. “Then you can concentrate on Yamada.”

“Mm.” Yuto bit off a mouthful of cookie and chewed, still thinking. “Maybe I could get him a hat.”

Having deep concerns about leaving Yuto’s romantic life in Yuto’s hands alone, Keito said that maybe they should go back to that last jewelry shop and take another look.

So it was that Keito found himself in Yuto’s kitchen, surrounded by baking supplies and wearing a pink apron with an English slogan that he sincerely hoped Nakajima-san couldn’t understand printed on it in silver.

Yuto, whose apron had a neon green Christmas tree with a horrifying rainbow of sparkly ornaments, asked, “Tell me again why we’re in my kitchen?”

“My kitchen’s useless. My mother’s an ex-supermodel,” Keito snorted, flipping through a handful of pages that he’d printed out from the internet. “Did you think my father married her because she could cook?”

“My mother says that if we touch her Cuisinart,” Yuto’s face was very serious, “she’ll mail us to the North Pole, and the packages will be small to save on postage.”

“So, I thought we’d try a bunch of different kinds of cookies,” Keito explained, then showed Yuto some of the notes that he’d scribbled on one of the pages.

Yuto examined the pages for a moment, then nodded, grinning. “That’s a really good idea! Keito-kun’s really smart, ne.”

“More importantly than being smart, you’d better hope I’m better at baking than my mother,” Keito brushed off Yuto’s compliment, blushing.

He wasn’t, as it turned out, but in the end Nakajima-san, no doubt fearing for the safety of her Cuisinart, stuck her head in to ask how things were going. After a glance between the two flour-dusted idols and the state of the concoction inside the mixing bowl, she tied on another disturbingly sloganed apron and pitched in to help, commenting only that a hidden camera would be worth a lot of money right about then.

By the time the day of the present exchange rolled around, Keito and Yuto were practically bouncing from trying to keep their idea a secret, and when they’d all gathered and Yabu finally asked who wanted to go first, Keito waved his hand in the air almost before he’d finished asking the question.

Everyone watched with curiosity as Yuto produced a bag and Keito reached inside to pull out a series of bundles, wrapped in red and green cellophane and tied with gold and silver ribbons. They handed one bundle to each member, but said they had to wait to open them until everybody had one and then do it all at once.

“Okay, go!” Keito said when everybody had theirs, and as they all dug into the cellophane, suddenly he was overcome with the fear that everyone would think that their idea was really silly.

“Cookies!” Takaki exclaimed in glee, and the others echoed the sentiment one after the other.

“Wow, so many kinds!” Chinen whistled. “Did you guys bake these?”

“Yup!” Yuto beamed, pleased with the world because he’d already warned that Yamada would get his real present later, when they were alone, and had gotten a little pre-reward. “It was Keito’s idea.”

“There’s a different kind for each member,” Keito explained, feeling self-conscious, but the others immediately demanded to know which kind they were. “Yabu-kun is the butter cookies, cause it’s the oldest recipe, and he’s been around forever but we all still like him. Hikaru-kun is the peanut cookies because he’s nuts.”

Keito paused while Yabu and Hikaru made faces and everybody else laughed.

“Takaki-kun is the kabocha cookies, since the recipe came from Kansai, and Inoo-kun is the miso cookies because the flavors kind of quiet, but all of the sudden you realize that you really like it.”

“Dai-chan is the sesame seed cookies,” Yuto took over when Keito had to clear his throat from all the talking. “Because they came out the smallest.”

“HEY,” Daiki exclaimed, but everybody else laughed.

“Me!” Chinen demanded, tugging on Yuto’s sleeve. “Do me next!”

“You’re chocolate chip,” Yuto answered willingly, “because nobody can resist you, especially when you’re all soft and squishy.” He squished Chinen into a hug to demonstrate, ignoring Chinen’s half-hearted protests that Yabu was squishing his cookies too. “And Yama-chan is sugar cookies, because he’s really sweet~.”

“God, you two are gross,” Ryutarou complained while Hikaru made gagging motions, but Yamada just chewed one of his cookies smugly and watched Yuto out of half-slit eyes until Yuto was blushing with embarrassment and pleasure.

“You’re the jam cookies,” Keito informed Ryutarou. “Because you seem like a normal cookie on the outside, but there’s a lot of weird stuff going on in the middle.”

Proving Keito’s point, Ryutarou seemed pleased with that description.

“What about you two?” Yabu asked. “Which two are you?”

“I’m green tea,” Yuto answered. “Because I’m kind of weird, but everybody seems to like me anyway.”

“And I’m the shortbread cookies, because they come from England,” Keito finished. He cleared his throat and looked around at the others. “So…how is it?”

“You put a lot of thought into this, didn’t you?” Yabu asked, putting an arm around Keito’s shoulders when Keito nodded and dropped his eyes, cheeks turning pink. “It feels like Keito-kun spent a lot of time thinking about each of us, so I feel really touched.”

“Yuto-kun too!” Chinen added, squeezing Yuto tighter. “Thank you!”

Everyone else echoed Yabu and Chinen’s sentiments, and Keito blushed even harder, but couldn’t stop from grinning as the others sampled the different kind of cookies and told each other how tasty they were.

“Maa, but we really have to keep going!” Yabu clapped his hands after another minute. “There’s still a lot of members with presents, and we have to do the filming! Hikaru, why don’t you go next?”

Hikaru looked a little flustered, and Keito wondered why until Hikaru dropped identical little cards into each member’s hands.

“Is this…” Keito raised an eyebrow. “…a book token?”

“I ran out of time!” Hikaru protested, blushing furiously. “I was busy!” And Keito took more than a little satisfaction out of Inoo telling Hikaru that he wasn’t seeing much mistletoe in Hikaru’s future.