Danger Ahead

He kept shooting me not-so-subtle glances from the bar. I stubbornly held my gaze to the table in the middle of our booth, refusing to make eye contact. Stupid taichou, I thought absently as I reached out for my drink, my Bloody Mary, the only thing that could dull my senses enough to make this upcoming meeting tolerable. He returned in no time with his own drink, taking a seat next to me since Yoruichi and Isshin took up the other side more or less. Both of them couldn’t stop snickering and I dutifully ignored them.

“Can ya believe the idiot lost?”

“And I, for one, know the wager wasn’t too pleasant for Kisuke-chan. At all!”

Yoruichi howled with laughter after hearing that from Isshin, quite unladylike for a woman of her status. Such details had never stopped her from doing what she wanted in the slightest, anyway. “Can we watch?” She practically purred out the question, clearly knowing more than she let on. I scowled and half-considered throwing my drink in her face.

The joys of having best friends, I thought sourly. A sudden hand on my knee, however, startled me out of my all too derisive musings. I stole a furtive look at Shunsui, and then went back to glowering at the table when I noticed that smile of his directed at me.

“Kisuke-chan,” he gave my knee a quick squeeze, “why don’t you tell your friends what the bet was really about?”

I gave him another shrewd, calculating glance. The two across from us already knew what the bet was about … that, in all likelihood, meant Shunsui was goading me to lie. “Sir?”

“Well, fine. If you won’t do it, then I’ll just have to bite the bullet, won’t I?” This, I thought, I have to hear. “You see, the bet was basically that if Kisuke-chan couldn’t get a date with Akito-san, he’d have put something where his mouth was.” This wasn’t helping my case, not at all. I fought back the instinct to scowl again as the hand on my knee slid higher, slipping to thumb at my thigh. “Now, before you two go thinking anything perverted -” Isshin and Yoruichi both looked suitably caught. “- it wasn’t sexual in nature. We had started discussing a new wine I had wanted dearest Kisuke-chan to try before Isshin-san showed up, so he missed that part.”

“So the rumors ain’t true, then?” Yoruichi questioned dejectedly. “And here I was thinking Kisuke was finally getting some ass.”

Isshin piped up a second later, a bit iffy on the lie. “Didn’t look like a discussion about spirits to me,” quipped that dark haired obsession of mine. “Looked like a talk ‘bout some different kinds of spirits, if you ask me.”

Shaking my head with a sigh at Isshin’s corny attempt at making a pun, I raised my head to meet him eye for eye. “Isshin, it was just about alcohol.” I figured it would be better to go with the lie than the truth here. It was best not to have everyone thinking there was something going on. “Anything more than that and both Shunsui and I would be breaking the strict protocol set up between superior and subordinate.”

“And since when have you ever been all ‘bout protocol?”

Isshin had said it, but the other two were giving me looks that clearly told me they were wondering the same thing. Well, really. A guy wasn’t allowed to suddenly like the rulebook? “I respect Shunsui, yes. But we couldn’t possibly be more than -” That hand near my thigh, the one I had almost grown use to, hovered over something that made me swallow thickly before continuing. “- more than friends.”

With that statement, Isshin and Yoruichi backed off on the inappropriate jokes. I had the nagging suspicion they weren’t completely convinced, though. And I imagined Shunsui and I did nothing to dissuade this suspicion when we excused ourselves for the evening. It was time to ‘taste that new wine’, Shunsui had told them. I knew, even if the other two believed the captain’s story, what was really going to happen. I was thankfully there was real alcohol in my system; it was giving me the courage to see this through until the end – as well as a nice buzz. After all … I, Urahara Kisuke, did not just back out when the going got tough. Oh no! I would see this out and nothing more would come of it. Nothing.