Match Me - Claiming the Y
17. Claiming the Y
The Soul Society Canteen was a little less crowded than usual for the evening, the gentle rain outside having kept some of the usual diners in their respective Divisions. Renji decided it was better that way, less intrusions or witnesses to his match.
He put the coupon he'd gotten with the invitation on the table and sat back in the booth. He spread his arms across the top of the back, flicking away a strand of ivy that invaded his movement. Maybe someone from Fifth Division, he thought. He'd seen a few attractive women there on occasion. He glanced at the coupon.
Maybe Seventh Division. Maybe .. Nah, he thought. No one from Eleventh. Few women under Zaraki's command.
He looked around the senior members' room, spotting Shunsui and Yamamoto at another table, both looking his way periodically, making him wonder. He sighed, drumming his fingers to either side along the booth back, and then dropped his arms to the table top. Didn't want to look too inviting, he thought.
He watched the centerpiece on the table, a collection of three candles in bulbous glass holders with small fancy cutouts in the shape of diamonds that lent a dancing light to the alcove of viney greenery. He looked up as Ichigo paused at the table side, peeking through the draping foliage opening.
"Dammit, Kurosaki, get lost," Renji growled, looking past the guy. "I'm waiting on a date. Beat it before you ruin everything."
Ichigo looked down at the coupon in his hand, a sinking feeling in his stomach. "A date?" He scowled. "At this table?"
Renji was about to tell him in more colorful terms to move along, but his eyes went to the coupon. "No way. You?" He shook his head. "Is this a joke?"
"Ha! You?" Ichigo laughed, pointing at him.
"What's so funny? Sit down or get lost before you draw attention."
Ichigo sat, as far away as he could get across the table, his momentary amusement disappearing. "Is this a prank?"
"Gotta be." Renji looked around the room, eyes narrowing through the ivy and eucalyptus. No one was watching their table. "Don't draw attention. Just act normal and maybe no one will suspect ... this."
Ichigo frowned, looking at the coupon. "It's not even funny."
"No one knows." He nodded to the coupon. "Put that away before someone sees it." He stuffed his own coupon in his pocket. "Maybe you're supposed to be in your own world, not here."
"You think I can't read?"
Renji shrugged. "Probably Captain of Eight's idea of a joke."
"I'm out of here."
When Ichigo didn't move to leave, Renji nodded. "Well?"
Ichigo raised his shoulders in a shrug. "It is a free meal. No one knows it's a mix up."
For a few long moments they each glared at the other, until Renji chanced a glance at Shunsui's table. The Captain's normally lax face wore a look of amused disappointment. Across from him to the Captain-General was shaking his head.
A gray robed waitress approached their table, giving them a questionable scrutiny before checking the number on the side of the table edge to assure herself she was at the correct table, and pushing a smile onto her face as she bowed. "Good evening, may I take your orders?"
Renji and Ichigo both accepted the menus she handed them.
"A bottle of saké, an order of teriyaki chicken and a basket of grilled vegetable sticks," Renji said with a brief glimpse of the menu.
Ichigo took a long moment to look over the menu items.
Too long, in Renji's opinion. "Hurry up, Ichigo."
"Hey, I've never been here before, so shut your trap, Renji." Ichigo frowned at a menu selection. "Okay, I want the sesame pork with brown rice and vegetable sticks, too."
"Thank you, sirs," the waitress said, collecting the menus from them and bowing before taking her leave.
Ichigo scowled at the shinigami across from him. "How the hell did we get matched up? Isn't Captain Kyouraku checking these things?"
Renji muttered something Ichigo couldn't hear. "Why are you even filling out an application? You have that cute Inoue in your own world. You've got to invade mine, too?"
"Orihime?" Ichigo managed to look surprised. "What about her?"
"Are you blind or just stupid?" Renji figured the answer was a little of both. "She's been hung up on you forever."
Ichigo frowned, scratching the back of his hair. "I think you're imagining things, Renji. What are you doing filling out a form?"
Renji suddenly laughed, then lowered his tone before he could attract attention from the other diners. "You thought you'd get matched up with Rukia. That's what you thought!"
Ichigo looked around guiltily, leaning on his elbows on the table. "So did you."
The waitress returned with a bottle of saké and two cups. She smiled, bowed, and left with a giggle.
Renji pulled the cork from the bottle and poured one of the cups full. "This is embarrassing." He swallowed down the drink and poured another. "I live here. You can walk away from it."
Ichigo took the remaining cup and filled it from the bottle. "Like you said, no one knows."
Renji belched. "We know. That's bad enough."
Ichigo drank his saké, made a slight face at it, and poured himself more. "At least it's a free dinner."
The waitress returned soon with a tray and put a plate with their orders before each of them, and set several other dishes between them, careful not to knock the three candle holders.
For a few moments Ichigo and Renji busied themselves with the food, draining the last from the bottle of saké as the waitress brought another.
"What I want to know," Renji said ten minutes later, deeming himself sufficiently stuffed to remark on the issue they were both trying to ignore, "is what you wrote on your questionnaire that made Captain Kyouraku match you with me."
Ichigo snorted indignantly, frowning at him. "Me? What makes you think it was something on my application?"
Renji shrugged, opening the second bottle of saké. "It had to be you, Ichigo. Obviously on paper you sound like a woman."
Ichigo nearly spewed masticated pork and rice on the table. "A woman? Ha! You're the one who would sound like a woman on paper, Renji." He chuckled, pointing across the table. "Lovely red locks kept in a ponytail? You don't think that's womanly?"
"Shut up," Renji growled, fingers tightening on the chopsticks until the bamboo threatened to snap. "I'm more man than you are any day of the year, any year!" He made an exaggerated sniff. "Is that aftershave you've got slathered on? Oh, must be cologne, seeing as you're not even old enough to shave."
Ichigo swallowed his bite before quipping, "I shave."
"Hmph. What?"
Ichigo glared at him. "If you're such a man, what're you doing here? Why hasn't some woman snatched you up? Maybe because you're half pineapple, half baboon?"
"Listen, if this mess was real, I'd be the man, you'd be the female."
"I'm not the one with a ponytail," Ichigo bit back.
"And don't be calling my hair lovely." The chopsticks snapped in Renji's hand.
Ichigo chuckled as Renji stole the chopsticks out of a serving plate. He took a bite of the pork and rice. "I'd be a good boyfriend."
"Don't even start. You'd have to man-up some first." Renji picked up a shish kabob of grilled vegetables.
"You don't think I am? I'm man enough for the both of us." Ichigo grimaced as the words left his mouth.
Renji glared at him. "Shut up, you moron. You know how that sounds?"
"You know what I mean," Ichigo mumbled.
"Yeah?" Renji moved the plates from the center of the table to the sides and pulled one of the candle holders closer, the tall flame inside not quite reaching over the decorative glass edge. "Let's see who can take the heat, boy."
Ichigo's eyes narrowed on the candle, but, not to be outdone, pushed his plate to one side and pulled a candle holder to himself. "What's up, Abarai?"
Renji grinned, having spent time in Eleventh Division with Ikkaku who got bored easily, and Zaraki, who found pastimes to ease the boredom. He put his left hand over the top of the glass holder, the flame reaching to within an inch of his hand. "Let's go, strawberry."
Ichigo scowled, but set his hand over his candle holder, immediately feeling the warmth from the flame inside. A thought came to his mind. "Obviously I make for better boyfriend material, Abarai." He grinned. "Rukia did live in my closet for several months."
Renji growled, eyes narrowing on him. "Yeah, well, just out of necessity."
Ichigo chuckled. "Who says?"
"I say."
For a moment they sat staring at each other, palms growing too warm, a strange smell emitting from the cut glass's decorative openings, fingers on both hands starting to twitch nervously.
Renji grinned, leaning over the table as Ichigo looked apprehensively to his hand over the holder of trapped heat. "First of all, strawberry, you don't use your sword hand. Even Hanatarou knows that."
Ichigo looked to his right hand, smelled the irritated flesh, and then looked to the waitress as she returned with another bottle of saké.
"We're not finished with the last one," Renji said tightly to her, trying to ignore the slow scorching in his palm.
She smiled slightly. "We have thirty bucks on you in the kitchen, Vice-Captain Abarai," she said meekly, giggling as she looked to each of their hands.
"The kitchen help is betting against me?" Ichigo asked in surprise, turning to look to the kitchen doorway but unable to see anything through the foliage draping around them.
"Oh, the dishwasher has ten bucks on you," she added, hesitantly pouring each of them a cup from the half empty bottle before pulling the cork from the new bottle. "This is compliments of the corner table."
She nodded to a far table against the wall, and Ichigo groaned when he saw Ikkaku, Yumichika, and Shuuhei sitting at it, all grinning and watching his table expectantly.
Renji chuckled, gritting his teeth against the heat as the waitress left. He looked to Ichigo. "Well, dandelion?"
At Shunsui's table, Yamamoto was shaking his head, having witnessed the fiasco of table Eight.
"This is your work, Kyouraku?" the General asked, shaking his head before taking a drink of the premium quality saké in his cup.
Shunsui scratched his jaw where the two day's worth of beard was begging for attention. "Not my best work, General. Not my best." He sighed, drinking down the saké in his own cup, trying to ignore the distinctive smell of burning flesh starting to pollute the room. "Oi, but Captains Unohana and Zaraki seem to be friendlier."
Yamamoto nodded. "I noticed that, too." His aged eyes went to the pouch of coins at his side of the table, and then to the bag at Shunsui's side, made of flowered material to match his haori.
"However this ends," he said to the younger man, "I think you can call it a failed match."
Shunsui nodded in disappointment. "I'm afraid so." He added quickly as the general's attention sharpened on him, "Not that I think they were a match, General, but I'd like to think I could have done better for both of them."
"I hope that's what you meant."
Shunsui looked reluctantly to his bag of coins. "Did we agree on an amount?"
"Aghh!" erupted from Ichigo across the room, followed by several words best left unuttered. He grabbed his burnt hand as Renji pointed and laughed at him.
"Ha!"
Yamamoto shook his head, not even looking to table Eight as the two occupants held their damaged appendages and summoned the waitress for bowls of ice water. "In all my years, Kyouraku, in all your years, I haven't seen such a public display of senseless stupidity, and you've had some points in your time."
Shunsui nodded, untying his bag of coins as a shout went up from the corner table and Ikkaku, Yumichika, and Shuuhei joined table Eight and called for another bottle of saké.
"You could say it's still building morale," Shunsui said hopefully as he counted out the coins.
Yamamoto chuckled. "You could."
~~~ ~~~ ~~~
(from Match Me by x nihilo)