[aim log][kin tsuchi + abarai renji][at mickey d's][completed]
Tch. Even at night, it was too warm to sleep. Kin had opened all her windows as wide as they would go, but there wasn't even a breeze and she was suffocating in her own room. Annoyed, she had gotten up and tried to find something to occupy herself, but even playing the violin hadn't worked. Finally deciding that she craved some fries, she had gotten dressed and headed down the stairs.
There was a 24 hour McDonalds a ways down the road, and it was as good a place as any to get out of the building and get some food. While it was a couple hours past midnight, it hadn't occurred to Kin that perhaps it just might be a little too dangerous to go meandering around the neighbourhood on her own. Somehow, those things never did, and she mostly managed to look after herself just fine anyway. Thus, she clomped her way into the fast food restaurant at a quarter past two, clad in plain old jeans and a ratty wifebeater.
Renji was, unusually, not in the back. Night hours usually peaked around four and five PM, followed up by the steady stream of post-rush-hour families looking for a quick, cheap dinner. After that it was mostly downhill, with the most people in at around eleven or midnight. They were usually stoners.
So, in the empty restaurant (he was working alone again), he'd chosen to leave his usual post and lounge near the front in case anybody showed up. He didn't have anything to cook (there were plenty enough burgers for the next six months in stock somewhere, although they weren't actually edible yet), so why not hang out where it's not as sweltering? Even if the AC did suck, it was more than nothing.
Then the door chimed, and he looked up as a girl came in. It was after two in the morning and she looked as if she was either exhausted or stoned (but he bet more on the former one, as the stoners didn't come around this MD's. Not anymore, anyway). Renji pulled his leg off the counter and tapped a few buttons on the cash register to wake it up.
"Can I help you?" he asked, not entirely with the same cheerful demeanor most of the register brats had.
"Large fries and a coke." Kin had already figured out just what she wanted to get on the way. She found it a hell of a lot quicker than just standing at the register and staring at the menu for a good fifteen minutes waffling while the line grew longer and longer and the cashier waited pseudo-patiently with that patented fake smile on his face. "Make sure the coke's got lotsa ice. It's frigging warm out."
She dug around in her jeans pocket for the proper amount of change, crumpled dollar bills and coins cluttered the countertop as she counted out what she owed.
"Fries and coke," Renji mumbled, repeating it to himself as he hit the well-worn buttons on the register. The beeps were surprisingly loud in the silent restaurant, despite how large the room was. Why he noticed this, he wasn't sure; maybe it was just the lack of any other sound that really got to him.
"Four twenty-seven," he said, and waited until the right amount was on the table in warm coins and wrinkled bills. He swept them into one hand, counted again, and put them away. "Here's your change. Gimme a second."
Reaching behind him into the kitchen-area, he swept up a still-warm (how was that possible? Was it really that hot in here?) container of fries, large, as ordered. As he was filling the cup with both ice and fizzy brown liquid (lots of ice, as she'd asked, enough to fill at least half the cup), something bit at the front of his mind. She seemed familiar, but he didn't know from what. She sure as hell didn't work here, so where...?
"Here," Renji said when he was done, setting down the fries and drink on the counter. "You want a bag?"
"Nah, I'll eat here where there's AC." She promptly did so, nimble fingers plucking a soggy bit of potato from its cardboard container. "Cool tats," she told the cashier, her eyes roving over the tattoos emblazoned over his forehead. Kinda tribal looking, she thought. Had there been somebody else in line, Kin'd have moved onward, gathering her food and drink to some out of the way table, but it was well past midnight, and it looked to only be her and the red-head guy with the tattoos.
She wasn't particularly interested in eating alone and talking to the empty chair across from her, so she defaulted to the guy. He hadn't given her any sign of boredom yet, and thus was fair game for idle conversation.
"Thanks," Renji responded with, staring at the girl with a scrutinizing gaze. Most people were a little (or a lot, depending on their economic status) intimidated by the presence of his tattoos, so she was probably a lower-class student trying to make ends meet. But she still looked familiar, and if she wasn't in any of his classes, or worked here, or was a friend of Rukia's, then . . .
Well, she wasn't moving away, so she probably didn't mind talking. He rubbed a kink of his neck and asked the first quesiton that came up.
"Hey, question. Where d'you live?"
Kin didn't mind the talking one bit, but talking was one thing, giving out information like where she lived to some guy she didn't know at two in the goddamn morning was a whole other thing. She paused, hand halfway to her fries, feet already braced, for fight or flight, she wasn't sure just yet, but she would probably figure it out when he gave her his answer. "What's it to you?"
She suddenly looked like she was on the defensive. Hell, it was just a question. Then again, it was kind of a suspicious question. But hell, it wasn't like he was going to stalk her and try to kidnap her or anything. Did he honestly look like he would do that?
"You look familiar," he said, leaning back against the wall. "Like...hell, somebody who lives in the same damn 311 that I do. I don't think you were in any of my classes. Were you?"
"Don't know about classes unless you were in some crap philosophy class last semester. I'd've definitely remembered you for sure, what with your hair and tatts'n all." She shook her head. "I ain't never seen you around that I can remember."
Then what he said finally sunk in. 311? What the hell?! Did everybody and their pet dog live on damn Lysgar? She took a sip of her coke and eyed him. "You live down Lysgar ways?"
"First floor, even. Couldn't fall out the window if I wanted to, much less make it look like I don't live there." Renji kept his eyes on the girl as well. Okay, so she wasn't in any of his classes - he wasn't a philosophy major, or minor, or even considering it. He hated that shit. Pissed him off, especially when other people started talking about him.
"Why? You know someone there?"
"Hell, I fucking live there. 'M up on the fourth floor." Kin shrugged again and reached over to help herself to more fries and a long inhale of the coke, relaxed now that he probably wasn't some psychotic stalker or rapist or something equally bizarre. Yeah, that definitely hit the spot. "Funny, though, cuz I swear I'd never seen you before in my life. You just move in or something?"
She lived there? What the hell. Did everybody he met live there? Okay, so most people didn't, but you'd think he would have known if somebody lived there. Then again, on the fourth floor...that was three floors up. He didn't have much reason to go upstairs, except to visit Rukia.
"I've been livin' there for about a year now. Not quite, but close enough, right?" He tugged on a loose strand of hair hanging by his ear. "If you live on the fourth floor, 's probably why we haven't met before. Name's Renji, Abarai Renji. I live with Kira. What about you?"
"I ain't ever heard of or met Kira either," Kin remarked drily. She took another long swallow of her coke, letting the fizzy cold liquid settle before continuing on. "I'm with Ino and Asuma. Ino's the loud blonde chick. You've probably heard her scream. Asuma's pretty quiet. Smokes. Limps. Some kind of veteran dude or something."
A nonchalant handwave and a flip of long black hair haphazardly held up by elastic bands ended that little spiel. "Heh. 'Snot too bad a place to live in. 311. Seems like everywhere I turn around I bump into building folk though."
"Like fuckin' rabbits," Renji mumbled in accordance with Kin's last sentence. Then he cleared his throat and refolded his arms. "Yeah, I think I know Ino. Kinda. Read her journals sometimes. She does nothin' but talk about stupid shit, if I'm readin' 'em correctly." And hell were those posts boring. He didn't check people's journals often, just Rukia's and Ichigo's when he had the time.
"Job and clothes. Shit like that mostly. Most people post shit anyway." Not that she could complain, really. Large portions of what she ended up journalling was consisted of boring crap too. "Where'd you get the tatts?" she asked, more interested in his inked skin than their fellow neighbours.
"Huh? Oh. A lot of places. Started 'em when I was in high school, day I turned 18." He pulled up one sleeve to reveal the latest touches on his masterpiece, a few spikes protruding over his shoulder. "I've been gettin' the latest ones from the place down the street. Clean place, know the guy that usually does my shit. Why, you thinkin' about getting some?"
When it came to his tattooes, Renji was a bit of a proud man. He admired them, thought they were awesome, and if somebody like them, then there was a chance he'd get along with them a lot easier than someone who didn't.
They certainly were a bold, daring set, and Kin liked them for what they were. Somehow, they fit the man just right with the dark unapologetic slashes spearing across his shoulders and forehead. While she admired the tattoos on others, she wasn't thinking about getting any personally. Having somebody permanently etch a design into ones skin was a little too much commitment for her. "Eh. I thought about it, but just never came up with something I wanted to keep inked on me forever."
She continued munching on her fries, the little container was mostly empty now and the ice in her paper cup swirled noisily around in the coke. The drink was starting to get slightly watered down from the melting ice ice. She'd been there a while talking already, but she didn't mind. She didn't have to work tomorrow. Today. It was her day off, and she could do with some sleeping in. If the damn heat would let her. A few more minutes in the air conditioned sanctuary of the fast food joint wouldn't hurt her one bit.
"It's kind of a hard thing to start," Renji said, reminiscing about his own days when he had pondered what he should get as a tattoo. "But once you find somethin' you like, it's not that hard. Afterwards, anyway." Ah, but how other people would react . . . that was another story entirely. His parents hadn't been too happy, to give an extreme understatement.
(He remembered that first day, his birthday, when he'd walked into the tattoo parlor and stared at the walls for what had felt like hours; and then, when inspiration had finally hit him, he'd pointed at his forehead and demanded that they put that pattern there, but make it a little more like this, could they do that? And yes, they had, and when he'd gone to school the next day Kurosaki had nearly crushed a freshman in his shock.)
"Eh. Guess I'll have to find something I like enough to ink on my body." She shrugged and finished off the last french fry. She took another sip of her coke; it was definitely watered down now, from all the melted ice, but all she really wanted was for it to cool her down. Biting back a yawn (guess it might be time to head back and crash), she picked up the now-empty cardboard container and looked around for one of the trash bins standing around the restaurant.
Finding one, she headed over and shoved the carton in, then turned and nodded at Renji. "Well. See you 'round or something. Nice to meet you and stuff."
"Yeah, anytime." Renji shifted his weight away from the wall and glanced dubiously at the fryers - did he need to make more food, or just heat up whatever was already there? Usually he did the latter, but . . .
He wasn't sure what else to say, so he just raised his hand in a mock-salute-wave. With no real conversation to continue (she'd ended it fairly quickly with the farewell), he only felt the need to give his own silent goodbye.
Maybe he'd see her in the apartment. Hell, might even give her some more tattoo advice. After all, tattoos made almost everybody look good. (Key word there being almost. He imagined that someone like Byakuya would neither appreciate or consider it.) Painful but interesting.
Renji coughed and wiped his hand off on his apron. Hell. Maybe he could get more done tomorrow. It wasn't like people were actually expecting him to cook food in the middle of the night, were they?
There was a 24 hour McDonalds a ways down the road, and it was as good a place as any to get out of the building and get some food. While it was a couple hours past midnight, it hadn't occurred to Kin that perhaps it just might be a little too dangerous to go meandering around the neighbourhood on her own. Somehow, those things never did, and she mostly managed to look after herself just fine anyway. Thus, she clomped her way into the fast food restaurant at a quarter past two, clad in plain old jeans and a ratty wifebeater.
Renji was, unusually, not in the back. Night hours usually peaked around four and five PM, followed up by the steady stream of post-rush-hour families looking for a quick, cheap dinner. After that it was mostly downhill, with the most people in at around eleven or midnight. They were usually stoners.
So, in the empty restaurant (he was working alone again), he'd chosen to leave his usual post and lounge near the front in case anybody showed up. He didn't have anything to cook (there were plenty enough burgers for the next six months in stock somewhere, although they weren't actually edible yet), so why not hang out where it's not as sweltering? Even if the AC did suck, it was more than nothing.
Then the door chimed, and he looked up as a girl came in. It was after two in the morning and she looked as if she was either exhausted or stoned (but he bet more on the former one, as the stoners didn't come around this MD's. Not anymore, anyway). Renji pulled his leg off the counter and tapped a few buttons on the cash register to wake it up.
"Can I help you?" he asked, not entirely with the same cheerful demeanor most of the register brats had.
"Large fries and a coke." Kin had already figured out just what she wanted to get on the way. She found it a hell of a lot quicker than just standing at the register and staring at the menu for a good fifteen minutes waffling while the line grew longer and longer and the cashier waited pseudo-patiently with that patented fake smile on his face. "Make sure the coke's got lotsa ice. It's frigging warm out."
She dug around in her jeans pocket for the proper amount of change, crumpled dollar bills and coins cluttered the countertop as she counted out what she owed.
"Fries and coke," Renji mumbled, repeating it to himself as he hit the well-worn buttons on the register. The beeps were surprisingly loud in the silent restaurant, despite how large the room was. Why he noticed this, he wasn't sure; maybe it was just the lack of any other sound that really got to him.
"Four twenty-seven," he said, and waited until the right amount was on the table in warm coins and wrinkled bills. He swept them into one hand, counted again, and put them away. "Here's your change. Gimme a second."
Reaching behind him into the kitchen-area, he swept up a still-warm (how was that possible? Was it really that hot in here?) container of fries, large, as ordered. As he was filling the cup with both ice and fizzy brown liquid (lots of ice, as she'd asked, enough to fill at least half the cup), something bit at the front of his mind. She seemed familiar, but he didn't know from what. She sure as hell didn't work here, so where...?
"Here," Renji said when he was done, setting down the fries and drink on the counter. "You want a bag?"
"Nah, I'll eat here where there's AC." She promptly did so, nimble fingers plucking a soggy bit of potato from its cardboard container. "Cool tats," she told the cashier, her eyes roving over the tattoos emblazoned over his forehead. Kinda tribal looking, she thought. Had there been somebody else in line, Kin'd have moved onward, gathering her food and drink to some out of the way table, but it was well past midnight, and it looked to only be her and the red-head guy with the tattoos.
She wasn't particularly interested in eating alone and talking to the empty chair across from her, so she defaulted to the guy. He hadn't given her any sign of boredom yet, and thus was fair game for idle conversation.
"Thanks," Renji responded with, staring at the girl with a scrutinizing gaze. Most people were a little (or a lot, depending on their economic status) intimidated by the presence of his tattoos, so she was probably a lower-class student trying to make ends meet. But she still looked familiar, and if she wasn't in any of his classes, or worked here, or was a friend of Rukia's, then . . .
Well, she wasn't moving away, so she probably didn't mind talking. He rubbed a kink of his neck and asked the first quesiton that came up.
"Hey, question. Where d'you live?"
Kin didn't mind the talking one bit, but talking was one thing, giving out information like where she lived to some guy she didn't know at two in the goddamn morning was a whole other thing. She paused, hand halfway to her fries, feet already braced, for fight or flight, she wasn't sure just yet, but she would probably figure it out when he gave her his answer. "What's it to you?"
She suddenly looked like she was on the defensive. Hell, it was just a question. Then again, it was kind of a suspicious question. But hell, it wasn't like he was going to stalk her and try to kidnap her or anything. Did he honestly look like he would do that?
"You look familiar," he said, leaning back against the wall. "Like...hell, somebody who lives in the same damn 311 that I do. I don't think you were in any of my classes. Were you?"
"Don't know about classes unless you were in some crap philosophy class last semester. I'd've definitely remembered you for sure, what with your hair and tatts'n all." She shook her head. "I ain't never seen you around that I can remember."
Then what he said finally sunk in. 311? What the hell?! Did everybody and their pet dog live on damn Lysgar? She took a sip of her coke and eyed him. "You live down Lysgar ways?"
"First floor, even. Couldn't fall out the window if I wanted to, much less make it look like I don't live there." Renji kept his eyes on the girl as well. Okay, so she wasn't in any of his classes - he wasn't a philosophy major, or minor, or even considering it. He hated that shit. Pissed him off, especially when other people started talking about him.
"Why? You know someone there?"
"Hell, I fucking live there. 'M up on the fourth floor." Kin shrugged again and reached over to help herself to more fries and a long inhale of the coke, relaxed now that he probably wasn't some psychotic stalker or rapist or something equally bizarre. Yeah, that definitely hit the spot. "Funny, though, cuz I swear I'd never seen you before in my life. You just move in or something?"
She lived there? What the hell. Did everybody he met live there? Okay, so most people didn't, but you'd think he would have known if somebody lived there. Then again, on the fourth floor...that was three floors up. He didn't have much reason to go upstairs, except to visit Rukia.
"I've been livin' there for about a year now. Not quite, but close enough, right?" He tugged on a loose strand of hair hanging by his ear. "If you live on the fourth floor, 's probably why we haven't met before. Name's Renji, Abarai Renji. I live with Kira. What about you?"
"I ain't ever heard of or met Kira either," Kin remarked drily. She took another long swallow of her coke, letting the fizzy cold liquid settle before continuing on. "I'm with Ino and Asuma. Ino's the loud blonde chick. You've probably heard her scream. Asuma's pretty quiet. Smokes. Limps. Some kind of veteran dude or something."
A nonchalant handwave and a flip of long black hair haphazardly held up by elastic bands ended that little spiel. "Heh. 'Snot too bad a place to live in. 311. Seems like everywhere I turn around I bump into building folk though."
"Like fuckin' rabbits," Renji mumbled in accordance with Kin's last sentence. Then he cleared his throat and refolded his arms. "Yeah, I think I know Ino. Kinda. Read her journals sometimes. She does nothin' but talk about stupid shit, if I'm readin' 'em correctly." And hell were those posts boring. He didn't check people's journals often, just Rukia's and Ichigo's when he had the time.
"Job and clothes. Shit like that mostly. Most people post shit anyway." Not that she could complain, really. Large portions of what she ended up journalling was consisted of boring crap too. "Where'd you get the tatts?" she asked, more interested in his inked skin than their fellow neighbours.
"Huh? Oh. A lot of places. Started 'em when I was in high school, day I turned 18." He pulled up one sleeve to reveal the latest touches on his masterpiece, a few spikes protruding over his shoulder. "I've been gettin' the latest ones from the place down the street. Clean place, know the guy that usually does my shit. Why, you thinkin' about getting some?"
When it came to his tattooes, Renji was a bit of a proud man. He admired them, thought they were awesome, and if somebody like them, then there was a chance he'd get along with them a lot easier than someone who didn't.
They certainly were a bold, daring set, and Kin liked them for what they were. Somehow, they fit the man just right with the dark unapologetic slashes spearing across his shoulders and forehead. While she admired the tattoos on others, she wasn't thinking about getting any personally. Having somebody permanently etch a design into ones skin was a little too much commitment for her. "Eh. I thought about it, but just never came up with something I wanted to keep inked on me forever."
She continued munching on her fries, the little container was mostly empty now and the ice in her paper cup swirled noisily around in the coke. The drink was starting to get slightly watered down from the melting ice ice. She'd been there a while talking already, but she didn't mind. She didn't have to work tomorrow. Today. It was her day off, and she could do with some sleeping in. If the damn heat would let her. A few more minutes in the air conditioned sanctuary of the fast food joint wouldn't hurt her one bit.
"It's kind of a hard thing to start," Renji said, reminiscing about his own days when he had pondered what he should get as a tattoo. "But once you find somethin' you like, it's not that hard. Afterwards, anyway." Ah, but how other people would react . . . that was another story entirely. His parents hadn't been too happy, to give an extreme understatement.
(He remembered that first day, his birthday, when he'd walked into the tattoo parlor and stared at the walls for what had felt like hours; and then, when inspiration had finally hit him, he'd pointed at his forehead and demanded that they put that pattern there, but make it a little more like this, could they do that? And yes, they had, and when he'd gone to school the next day Kurosaki had nearly crushed a freshman in his shock.)
"Eh. Guess I'll have to find something I like enough to ink on my body." She shrugged and finished off the last french fry. She took another sip of her coke; it was definitely watered down now, from all the melted ice, but all she really wanted was for it to cool her down. Biting back a yawn (guess it might be time to head back and crash), she picked up the now-empty cardboard container and looked around for one of the trash bins standing around the restaurant.
Finding one, she headed over and shoved the carton in, then turned and nodded at Renji. "Well. See you 'round or something. Nice to meet you and stuff."
"Yeah, anytime." Renji shifted his weight away from the wall and glanced dubiously at the fryers - did he need to make more food, or just heat up whatever was already there? Usually he did the latter, but . . .
He wasn't sure what else to say, so he just raised his hand in a mock-salute-wave. With no real conversation to continue (she'd ended it fairly quickly with the farewell), he only felt the need to give his own silent goodbye.
Maybe he'd see her in the apartment. Hell, might even give her some more tattoo advice. After all, tattoos made almost everybody look good. (Key word there being almost. He imagined that someone like Byakuya would neither appreciate or consider it.) Painful but interesting.
Renji coughed and wiped his hand off on his apron. Hell. Maybe he could get more done tomorrow. It wasn't like people were actually expecting him to cook food in the middle of the night, were they?