Match Me - Moment in Time
23. Moment in Memory
The Blue Lantern was one of Karakura Town's somewhat intimate restaurants, catering to a more after-hours crowd without becoming nightclub, and offering no dancing and only low-key techno music meandering around in the background among booths and a few tables.
The overstuffed upholstery of the teal seats and surreal atmosphere of bubbling liquid curtains in blues and pinks separating the booths was beginning to wear on Rangiku as she ordered her third spritzer of the evening. She put one
elbow on the table that was awash in pink and blue swirls from the lights, picking the straw out of her tall drink, her blue eyes leveling on the other table she could see in the eerily lit restaurant, having munched through half a plate of persimmon thins already.
And no sign of her match yet.
"Must be Shunsui's idea of prank," she mumbled aloud, stabbing a maraschino cherry in her drink with the end of her straw and drowning it in white wine, grenadine, and apricot juice. "This better not be a set-up with Ichigo or that Chad kid."
Not that Rangiku had been alone for the forty minutes of her increasingly frustrating wait. She'd turned the eye of every male in the room when she'd strolled into the restaurant and found the table indicated on the coupon. There'd also been a few men from the bar wander over to inquire of -- and then persist to replace -- her dinner companion.
She pulled at her mid-thigh length navy skirt that creeped up a bit on the high side, even for her, when she sat down. Even her ordinarily plunging neckline was decidedly more modest this time in the pale pink blouse. It hadn't been a calculated choice; the scoop neck blouse simply hadn't settled as far as it usually did.
She stuck the cherry end of the straw in her mouth and ate it. "Five more minutes," she promised herself as the music changed to a slightly more upbeat tempo. She pushed her hair out of her face, her hand appearing strangely colored in the decor lights. "Five more minutes, and then I start telling Shunsui's secrets for this joke."
She reached for another persimmon cookie on the glass dish center on the table, and then looked up as a shadow muted pinks and blues from the light curtain. For a fleeting second she was quite sure it was her imagination, and then Gin's grin of true appreciation made her swallow the half-chewed cherry abruptly, her heart double-skipping.
He smiled wider, looking a bit thinner than usual in the charcoal gray shirt and black trousers he wore, one hand on the booth's topside as he considered her surprise. "Ya ain't armed, are ya, Ran?"
She sighed, closing her eyes momentarily as he took the booth seat opposite her. She focused on him sharply. "You've got a lot of nerve, Gin. A lot of nerve."
"Oh, yeah, I figured ya be mad still," he said, rubbing the back of his neck. "Geez, these things itch. Does your gigai make ya itch?"
She shook her head, trying to rein in her delight and anger at seeing him again. "Must be Szayel's workmanship." She leaned her arms on the table, estimating the man across from her despite her shock. "That's what's on your mind, Gin? An itchy gigai?"
"Not really." He looked over her hair, a little longer than he remembered it to be, the color slightly off in the odd lighting of the room. "I missed ya."
"You're the one that left. As usual," she added, her eyes steadfast on him lest he disappear into the bubbly lighting like an ecliptic trick of the eye. But he was still there, watching her through those eyes she'd seen on rare occasion, but knew to be keenly observant.
"How ya been?"
She didn't tell him the truth, instead shrugging, seeing him grin at the movement. "Managing." She finished the last bit of her drink all at once as the waitress came up to their table.
"Hello, welcome to Blue Lantern," she said, placing a menu on either side of the table. "Are you ready to order now or would you like drinks first?"
"Two more of whatever the lady's drinking," Gin decided, attention going to the glass dish of cookie thins. "And another catch of persimmon crisps."
"Very good. I'll be right back with that." The waitress smiled and left.
Rangiku's heartbeat had settled only to a more moderate rhythm, the surreal jolt of seeing him again becoming less shock and leaning more toward something else. "Why are you even here? Not enough Arrancar women in Hueco Mundo?"
Part of the grin slipped from Gin's face. "I told ya, Ran. I missed ya." He frowned, leaning his arms on the table, fingers edging to the plate of thins. "I was hoping it would be ya. Hoping I put the right things on the order form to get matched up to ya."
"It was not an order form," she said with a sigh, watching him take a cookie.
"Nothing like these in Hueco Mundo," he said, looking fondly at the thin. "Food there is terrible."
"Serves you right. How'd you get an application, anyway?"
He grinned, shrugging. "Who were ya hoping for?"
She shook her head, wishing the spritzers were either more potent or that she'd never had one, unsure whether she wanted to plow through the evening with more questions Gin would dance around answering or drink enough to chalk his presence up to alcohol-induced wishful thinking.
"I am sorry," he said, squinting at the cookie in his fingers, the line of a smile crooking at one corner. "I am sorry about it all, Ran."
"Then why?" As she said it, the waitress returned with a platter. She placed two more tall pink drinks on the table, setting one before each of them, and another dish of persimmon thins by the first.
She took Rangiku's empty glass as the woman stared at Gin, who continued to toy with the cookie in his fingers. "Ready to order?"
Rangiku looked to the unopened menus, as did Gin. His attention went to her.
"Ya want to get something to snack on, get out of here?" he asked.
She nodded.
Ten minutes later Rangiku and Gin were back on the Karakura Town streets in the early evening, the sidewalk lamps winking on overhead in the growing dusk, the clammy air heavy around them. The pedestrian traffic was moderate, mostly couples. To the casual observer, the tall man and strawberry-blonde woman would have fit into the crowd, and fit together perfectly.
But they didn't, and Rangiku knew it. The small talk they'd made as they waited for the waitress to package up the carton of mixed ginger thins and dried persimmon slices had been lacking, neither saying what they wanted to really say nor what they knew they should say.
She walked at his side on the sidewalk, a proximity she'd yearned for for months but unsure what to do with it now. "Why'd you leave?" she finally said, the impact of the last spritzer catching up with her. "As smart as you are, Gin, it makes no sense."
He nodded, frowning down at the top of her head when she refused to look at him. "I've been wondering about that a lot lately myself, Ran."
"That's not an answer," she said, picking a ginger thin from the carton he offered. "You threw away our whole past for what? Follow some narcissistic windbag? You're smarter than that."
He shrugged, watching her lips close around the thin as she took a bite. "I used to think I was, but ... Hey, how's that bantam rooster captain of yours?"
She snatched the carton from him, bringing a genuine frown to his mouth. "He's not a bantam; he's nearly full-grown, and he's doing fine, Gin. Becoming a real man, with real responsibilities toward the things and people he cares for."
"Ooh, ouch, Ran. That was right to the heart," he said, grinning hopefully and putting a hand to his chest.
Her eyes followed the movement. "Didn't they make you get rid of that when you took up residence with that psychopath?"
He shrugged, taking another dried persimmon from the carton as they walked beneath the maple trees, eating the fruit in a single bite. "No, I left it in Soul Society."
She stopped walking, glaring at him as he took a few steps before halting, turning to look back at her on the now empty sidewalk. "You did, didn't you, Gin? You left everything back there. You left me, your life, your ... all of it... Me." She'd meant to say it all sharply, but it came out stilted. She tried to keep the frailty from seeping into her tone, forgetting the carton in her hand. "You left me alone."
He sighed, nodding slightly as he took the few steps back to her. For a moment the regrets outweighed his decisions, decades of youth and childhood spent together resurfacing. "I didn't intend to leave that way, Rangiku. I really didn't."
Her eyes focused on his lips as he said it. "But you did intend to leave." Her gaze rose to his. "What does he offer that you didn't have already? To sit among the stars? What then?" For the first time she voiced the unsettling thought that had plagued her the last few months. "Heaven is a long way down to fall from --"
"If ya fall," he began, but she didn't yield.
"He can't keep all those Arrancars on a leash forever." Her concern inched forward, glad there was no one around to overhear their conversation. "What about after you've outlived your usefulness to him? You've seen what he does to his own." Her voice softened as he took the final step closer. "Do you want to keep looking over your shoulder for who's next to move up, Gin?"
"I look over my shoulder now, Rangiku," he said with a sigh, the smile absent from his face, one hand resting lightly on her shoulder, just beneath the cascade of wavy auburn hair. "I look there and I see ya, all those years together and wonder what kinda fool I am for leaving, and for staying gone. I think of ya every night, and it's always night there, even when they make the sun shine for weeks on end," he said, hand sliding to the back of her neck, watching her eyes estimate him. "No life there, save for memories, and not enough of 'em, I can tell ya."
She looked down as his other hand went to the waist of her skirt, easing around her, gently pulling her closer. "Then come back," she said, placing one hand on his chest, hating that she still felt content in his arms, feeling his heartbeat quickening beneath her fingertips. "Come back," she said, then added as he shook his head, "come back to me. I miss you, Gin."
His arm tightened, anchoring her closer to him, her lithe form pressed to his, eclipsing mere recollection as the carton fell from her hand and her arm came around his waist. His lips met hers in warm contact, her hand running up his shirt to his neck, fingers curling against his skin to bring his face lower. She still smelled of almond oil as he recalled, tasted of ginger and the fruity alcohol, her hair soft beneath his hand, tempting him to create new memories to replace ones of forsakenness.
But then she pulled away from him, her lowered eyes still on his mouth for a moment before rising to his, which were now partly open, revealing a rare glimpse of light blue as he watched her.
"You won't come back?" she said lowly, more as a statement, resigned to already knowing the answer.
"I wanted to see ya again, Ran," he said carefully, his fingers entwined in her hair, falling through the length as she eased away from him. "Didn't say goodbye the right way last time."
She swallowed shakily. "That's all this is, Gin? Another farewell?"
He didn't like the finality of the words when they came from her. "Looks like it. For now."
She closed her eyes, sighing, her hand sliding down from the nape of his neck as she looked back to him, this time with raw regret instead of surprise in her gaze. "Then I guess it is. For now."
She stepped back, her arms dropping from him, one hand smoothing her blouse at her waist as she glimpsed the carton of spilled ginger and persimmon snacks. She looked back to him, smiling as much as she could. "Change your mind, Gin, and come back to me."
With more resolve than she recalled possessing, Rangiku turned and forced herself to move down the sidewalk, a dull ache already surging in her heart as she left him. She'd only taken a few steps when she looked over her shoulder to see him standing immobile, a look of confusion and longing replacing his typical smile.
He raised his hand in a half-hearted wave, and she nearly turned back to him. Instead she returned the gesture, attempting a smile, and moved on, hoping against hope for the day he'd fully return to her on more final terms.
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Next Match: Beyond Duty
-- from Match Me