Shinji×Ichigo, time travel

[tozette]

At the time of writing, I had been tossing up Shinji×Ichigo (shinjigo?) time travel concepts. I do not think I'll use this one but I liked it —

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Shiba Ichigo was evidently willing to take orders from Shinji, a fact which seemed to give every teacher and superior officer he'd had to date a massively inflated notion of Shinji's leadership skills. It was also a point of totally irrational pride, because Shinji was his captain and it was Ichigo's damn job to take orders from him.

However, sneakily checking up upon a single meeting between the two proved that Ichigo was downright docile with Urahara Kisuke.

Ichigo followed him without any evidence of complaint. He let Urahara pick their eatery. He let him pay. He followed him to the table he chose.

Shinji perched on the roof of the building across the street, looked straight down in through the window, and watched Ichigo just... easily permit Urahara to pick their table and casually gesture Ichigo into the seat with its back to the sturdy stone wall. (He would have tried to bully Shinji into that seat, as if Shinji wasn't a centuries-old veteran captain.)

But Ichigo didn't even stop to think about it. He just followed Urahara Kisuke's — well, they weren't even orders, were they? They were just... nonverbal cues. Just nonverbal cues that left Urahara's back exposed to the street (and also to the sullen glare Shinji was aiming at his fluffy blond skull).

Ichigo did as he was told like he was just naturally tractable or something. For Urahara.

He only looked mildly annoyed a few times and didn't even try to keep Urahara at a reasonable distance. Shinji was pretty sure he saw him actually smiling. Well. Once. But frankly, he'd never seen that before, ever, so once was enough.

"Huh," said a familiar black cat, settling in on the roof tiles next to him. She craned her neck to peer down into the window at the correct angle, and then gave up on the tiles and bounced up onto Shinji's shoulder. He shifted to accommodate her. "Great minds think alike, I see. I was wondering what a workaholic like Kisuke was getting up to when he left on time for the third night in a row."

"Can you be a bit quieter?" Shinji asked. "I'm tryin' ta eavesdrop."

"You mean you can't read lips?" she wondered, sniffing in catlike disdain right in his ear. "Hmm." She didn't actually say you amateur, but he could hear it all the same.

One of his eyebrows twitched, but he regarded this stupid provocation as less important than the stomach-turning way Ichigo looked at Urahara like he was fondly exasperated, like they were old friends, like he knew him so well —

"Interesting," mused Yoruichi, blandly, like it didn't matter.

Maybe to her it didn't. Probably she couldn't even hear Shinji's heart thumping angrily in his chest, as if his own body was hostile territory.

"By the way," she said, in a rough, quiet, secretive kitty voice. She turned her face into his jaw. "Do you know why Central 46 is paying such attention to Shinhouin-sama's accusations? At this rate we'll be lucky if he only humiliates himself. The Shiba clan's tolerance isn't endless."

"Not a clue," Shinji admitted. He was still trying to catch what Ichigo was saying, but it seemed Yoruichi had come on the same general mission as him: real reconnaissance, and only ostensibly stalking her third seat for personal entertainment.

"I only ask," she said, pensively, "because I spotted your third seat running errands to the council hall last week."

Shinji stiffened. That was news to him. How had he missed Sōsuke wandering off to volunteer his so-valuable time to C46?

He licked his teeth thoughtfully. How suspect. How fascinating all his wonderful subordinates were, lately. He couldn't wait to knock them off the table and learn what the fuck was going on.

"Huh. If we're sharing so much, I thought Ichigo might be catching up with Urahara-san to lean on his connection to you."

"Not that I've noticed," she said slowly, as if thinking hard. "...In fact, Kisuke hasn't mentioned anything about Shiba-fukutaichō at all."

She looked back at the pair in the window, yellow gaze intent.

"Is that odd?"

"Yes." Shinji could feel her tail twitch, sliding against his long hair.

Huh. Interesting. Who knew the two of them were so entwined and dependent as all that?

"This doesn't look like a business meetin'," Shinji admitted, watching Ichigo scowl half-seriously and wield a disposable chopstick like a weapon while Urahara held his hands up and tried to look innocent. From his body language, he was about as good at that as Shinji was, which was to say: not.

They were playing.

It wasn't the razor sharp, tense way Ichigo and Sōsuke teased each other, either. That was barbed and hostile, amusing and headache-inducing by turns.

These two were...

Well. Shinji was no longer worried about professional poaching or stupid aristocratic manoeuvring. Now he was instead concerned that his young, earnest lieutenant might actually be entangled in some nightmare romantic liaison with a shady guy like Urahara. This unreasonably upsetting thought made him briefly but incandescently annoyed, for reasons we shall not discuss here.

"I should think not," sighed Yoruichi. "Which is very funny for me personally, but I really thought I'd be getting answers to a different question here."

Shinji hummed non-committally. He did not find this scenario very funny at all.