Disclaimer: Don’t own. For full disclaimer please see Part 1.
Author’s note: And on I babble.
A Meeting of Minds
By Colleen
Part 7
Kaoru looked down at herself and felt her cheeks flame up in embarrassment. Being tackled to the floor had caused her yukata to gape open in places that just shouldn’t be allowed to gape. Listening as Kenshin intimidated her student and the resident freeloader in the hallway she pulled the two halves of her robe tightly together and carefully stood up, mindful of the noise that would occur should she end up tripping by catching a foot in the fabric of her clothing.
She fidgeted, uncertainty hopping from one foot to the other as she tried to figure out what to do. One part of her, the part that had shuddered when Kenshin and she had been lying together on the floor wanted her to jump him as soon as he re-entered the room. The rest of her told her to just apologise for invading his room and get out, get changed and find something to do for the rest of the day that would be as far away from him as possible.
She really hated that second part of her, mostly because she suspected that what it wanted was exactly what she would end up doing.
Darn it she wasn’t a little girl and it wasn’t as if she’d never offered before. Of course Kenshin had either failed to understand the offer or had as usual skilfully evaded taking her up on it, not that she’d pressed him to do so.
She blushed again. Of course the offer she’d made had sounded more like a debt of gratitude rather than an act of desire. Although to be truthful both emotions had been tied up in it at the time.
The door slid open then and she started slightly as Kenshin slipped through. Outside she could just make out Sano telling Yahiko to go grab the grocery list, which meant that in a few minutes she would be alone in the house with Kenshin.
But alone to do what?
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When Battousai re-entered the room he firmly squashed down the disappointment Kaoru was standing there, clothing firmly in place rather than still laying on the floor, waiting for him. Actually he ought to consider himself lucky that she hadn’t been waiting to attack him the moment he came back in, certainly he deserved it.
“Kaoru I’m sorry for.../ Kenshin I’m sorry for...”
The two of them stepped back, flustered that they’d both just tried to apologise at the same time.
“Kaoru,” he said, having managed to start speaking again before she did, “I apologise for my earlier unseemly actions. I hope that you will pardon my reacting to your being here in such a way.” Mentally Battousai cringed. Saying sorry was not something he was good at; generally it tended to be the Rurouni’s specialty.
“No Kenshin, it’s I who should be apologising for coming into your room, although I did knock it was obvious that you were asleep and I shouldn’t have intruded.”
The silence that followed was one long moment of uncomfortable.
“Why did you need to see me anyway?”
“Oh, it was nothing. I was just worried when I heard you talking in your sleep, something about fishing?”
“Ah.”
“Anyway I had better get to my room and change,” Kaoru said, edging around Battousai on her way to the door. He backed slightly away from her, believing that she was frightened of him as he didn’t have any possible way of knowing that she was actually afraid of the part of herself that was telling her to jump him and strip off his clothing with her teeth.
Battousai shadowed his eyes with his bangs, distancing himself even as he watched her through the strands of his hair. She slid the door open to leave but hesitated before she could step through.
“Kenshin?”
“Yes,” he replied, hiding a little more in his hair.
Kaoru turned towards him and took a deep breath. “Would you join me for lunch at the Akabeko?” She asked in an explosive rush.
Battousai blinked twice, first at the deep breath, he suspected she really didn’t know what that did for her. The second blink was for the question as it surprised him.
His first reaction was to say no and get as far away from the dojo and Kaoru as he could. He was feeling more and more certain that the only danger she would be in today would be from him. Still both of them out of the house, in public and... properly dressed might be safer. Kaoru in something that didn’t allow him to hungrily eye every curve she possessed would certainly be of benefit to his fragmenting sanity.
“It’s just that we’ve had two meals together that really didn’t go that well and I thought that maybe the third time would be the charm,” Kaoru said, speaking carefully and apparently worried as he hadn’t answered right away.
Battousai bowed to her slightly. “I would be happy to join you for lunch; will an hour from now be enough time?”
“Um,” Kaoru looked down at herself and appeared to run some kind of calculations in a math no man would ever understand.
“Perhaps an hour and a half,” she said, not sounding all that convinced but willing to try.
“Very well I will meet you on the engawa in an hour and a half.”
Kaoru gave him a little smile and finally left the room, something that Battousai shook the hair out of his eyes to watch. When she slid the door closed he felt his body slump, and he had to wonder just when he’d become such a pervert.
If one of them were going to act like that he’d always expected the Rurouni to be the more likely candidate. Not that either of them tended to be like that.
At least not until lately.
With a snort Battousai attempted to dismiss his current problem and instead focused on what to do for the next hour and a half. Given how sweaty he was maybe a bath would be in order.
A really cold one.
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An hour and a half, was she nuts, there was no way she’d be ready in an hour and a half. Not if she was going to do this right.
Ah, her hair was a mess, the kimono she’d intended to wear had dirt on the hem, she couldn’t find the padding she used under it to smooth out her shape and the obi was wrinkled.
Okay Kaoru, just stop for a moment and breath.
In and out, in and out, in and out.
Calm.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh.” A maelstrom of clothing and accessories flew through the air compacting in a tighter and tighter whirlwind until an hour and a half later Kaoru emerged.
She tripped out the door of her room while still trying to get a hair pin in place, panicked that Kenshin would have given up waiting for her by now.
She caught herself at the door to the outside and took a few deep breaths before taking on the appearance of calm and sliding the door open. It took superhuman strength of will to not wilt and collapse when she found the engawa empty.
Kenshin was nowhere to be seen.
“Kaoru?”
It would have taken even more than superhuman strength of will not to jump as Battousai came up behind her but to her credit Kaoru did manage to keep it down to a slight jerk of her body and not the full jump with shriek that she wanted to do.
“Kenshin, don’t do that to me,” she said turning around to take in the amusement that glowed in his amber eyes. With a second, much smaller jerk she wondered when she’d stopped thinking of him as Battousai and just saw him as Kenshin.
If she thought about it she might be able to track her thoughts back to when she’d stopped separating them in her mind but she didn’t bother. All she needed to know at this moment was that the light of humour in his eyes that she suspected even he didn’t realize was there was all Kenshin.
“I’m not sure I can’t do that Kaoru. In fact if I didn’t I’m not sure I would be me.”
Kaoru almost snorted at his statement but it would not have been very lady like and she was trying her best to impress. It was also, she had to admit, true. Kenshin sneaked. Although he did it in different ways depending on his... mood, whether he was feeling Rurouni like or Battousai like. To someone who didn’t know him the Rurouni seemed like a very straight forward person, but he wasn’t. In fact for all of Battousai’s silent movement through the shadows he was by far the more direct of the two, although at times blunt might have been a better way of putting it.
So instead of snorting she just nodded slightly as if to say she understood. One of Kenshin’s eyebrows rose at that and he nodded back ever so slightly before suggesting that they make their way to the Akabeko for lunch. She agreed and they both headed out to travel down the road and across the bridge towards the restaurant.
It was a pleasant day, one that would have been more pleasant if she could have gotten Kenshin to walk beside her instead of in front of her in a ‘guard’ position. She sighed quietly, there were some things she’d probably never be able to change and Kenshin being protective was one of them. Thankfully he’d never been stupid enough to be over protective, at least not as the Rurouni. That thought caused her to wonder just how Battousai would be protective wise, not that she intended to do anything to test her musing. The fact that he had been willing to spar with her, where the Rurouni wouldn’t was a good sign, one in his favour even, although she still didn’t know whether to blush or be annoyed at how that match had gone.
Both perhaps, especially if she kept aside the annoyance for Yahiko and Sano.
Speaking of which.
As they entered the Akabeko Kenshin artfully manoeuvred her around a pile of rice, miso, green tea and assorted vegetables before she could trip over any of it. Frowning she looked from the pile of goods that bore more than a passing resemblance to the items she’d had on her grocery list to see Yahiko and Sano sitting at the table behind the pile, faces frozen in horror, their eyes wide with their mouths stuck in mid chew.
From outside the restaurant everything seemed peaceful until a gale force wind tumbled two people out the door and into the street. They were followed by a huge amount of groceries that miraculously piled themselves up without damage and ready to be carted away.
The momentarily stunned people on the streets watched as a young woman came to the door and yelled. “And when you’ve finished with the rest of the chores you will come back here and work off the bill for your lunch.” She turned and stomped back inside and everyone who had been frozen in place just gave a mental shrug and continued on with what they had originally been doing.
Yahiko got to his feet, dusting himself off as he did. “Let’s go to the Akabeko he says, Kaoru will never know he says, let’s charge it to a tab he says.”
Sano gave Yahiko a tap to the back of his head. “Shut up I say, and help me with this stuff.”
Groaning the two of them picked up the piled groceries and staggered off towards the dojo.
“Damn it, why does Jo-chan always have to buy so much at a time anyway?”
Chapter Six
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