sirenspull_logs | It's what I want that's easy

Entry tags:

It's what I want that's easy

Who: Hinamori Momo (

ibreakrules), and Hitsugaya Toushirou (

icy_heavens)
When: Saturday, March 31st, Morning
Where: 22 Keene Lane, Sector 4, at a garage sale
Summary: Hinamori goes thrift-hunting and meets a bishop.
Warnings: None!

The garage sale was much bigger than Hinamori had anticipated. Furniture, clothing, toys, electronics and what seemed like an endless amount of bizarre unidentifiable knick-knacks were scattered in an incredibly haphazard fashion across a sprawling yard. Hinamori hardly knew where to start. She could teach these people a thing or two about planning.

Some of the other shoppers were like her, looking for a few things in particular but in no hurry to find them. Others seemed desperately competitive, hunting for bargains like their lives depended on them. Hinamori tried to avoid these ones, as they seemed likely to glare or start a fight if she encroached too closely on their space.

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a small dresser that looked like exactly what she was looking for. Hinamori started towards it, but before she could get there, she felt herself being shoved aside. "A-ah!" she cried, stumbling and starting to fall. She threw her hands out wildly for something, anything to grab onto. (Given the precarious piling of some of the items near her, this could end quite badly.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What bait? He was just talking. Deliberately baiting people wasn't something he did often. He did it when he teased Hinamori, and he'd done it to Yukio to keep him blabbering and distracted while he'd engineered the battle to his benefit. It wasn't a habitual thing.

He could have said something vaguely antagonistic about people deserving to be called by their actual names, but he didn't. He wasn't that much of an ass. Clearly, whoever the man was, he'd meant something important to Frau and he wasn't going to go deriding someone else's important people.

So he just let the conversation carry. Hinamori was always better at keeping one of those going than he was. There just didn't seem to be anything for him to say at the moment.

"He sounds like he was a good person." Someone who worked with orphans, and had somehow been a help to Frau. She carried over his use of was, wondering silently if that meant he had passed away, or merely that he was left behind in Frau's world. Either way, it wasn't the kind of thing to ask; too solemn.

"Did you like being a bishop then?" She wondered what it was like, to work in a church. Even though she had never been a member of any particular faith, Hinamori approved of the work they did, caring for the poor, and giving people something to believe in. Hope was important, and offering that to those who needed it most was an admirable thing to do.

"Yeah, he was."

Until he'd fallen so far that he'd started working as a warsfiel and tried to kill Teito. Yet even then there was goodness left in him. Bastein may have fallen from the path, but he had wanted Frau to be the one to end it for him. Frau had freed him from the corruption and pain. Killed him.

Thankfully Hinamori asked another question that dragged Frau's thoughts out of that direction.

"Hell no. At least not all the time. Though I make the most of it."

By breaking almost all of the rules among the clergy and not even caring if the other bishops thought badly of him.

"I'm sure you're glad to be free of the duties you'd hated about it, then."

That could sound judgemental, if one were to take it that way. It wasn't really intended to be. You couldn't pick and choose what parts of a job to do once you had it, and since he didn't officially have it while he was here . . .

Hell, even Hitsugaya disliked the amount of desk work he had to do as a captain, despite what other shinigami might have thought. He just had to do more of it because of Matsumoto's laziness. He much preferred the field work himself, but papers needed to be filed to keep things running smoothly.

And he couldn't abide it when things didn't run smoothly.

"Mmhm." Hinamori nodded in agreement. "A bishop to a bouncer's a pretty big change in direction."

"Yup, very."

Frau didn't take it as judgmental at all. Even if it was meant that way, Frau didn't much care. He dealt with people not liking the way he thought and acted all the time at home. He came to a stop outside of the little diner before answering Hinamori.

"It's not that big of a change. Same skill set in some ways. Besides, I used to work at a bar when I was a kid."

"When you were a kid." There was only faint disbelief in his tone, because . . . well, this was Frau he was talking to. Not as much surprised him coming out of Frau's mouth.

He eyed the front of the place critically, but it seemed decent enough. As long as the place was clean, had decent food, and the staff didn't treat him like he was in elementary school, he wouldn't be too picky.

Though that last requirement always seemed difficult to achieve, for some reason. Even after the haircut he'd gotten specifically to look older. Not that he'd ever admit the rationale behind it.

Hinamori's disbelief was far more dramatic. "A b-bar's no place for a child!" But then her eyes went soft with sympathy. "Were... you an orphan? Is that why you ended up with the church?"

She took her little cart over to the side of the diner where it would be out of the way and placed a couple of binding kidou spells on it. There. Now no one would run off with it. She didn't think anyone would take it on purpose, but they might think it had been abandoned. And then what would she tell the nice lady across the street who she had borrowed it from?

"Yup. Bused tables, brought beer, harassed customers."

And generally got his ass kicked by his guardian when he sneaked out to steal hawkzile parts. He'd never really enjoyed working there, but that had more been because of his desire to fly than the job itself.

"The woman who looked after me owned the place. I ended up at the church for a different reason."

And one he wasn't going to go into no matter how much Hinamori asked. Yes, he'd been an orphan for most of his life and he'd been one of the orphans Bastien had looked after. Becoming an orphan wasn't what brought him to the church though. The war had. It was something Frau wouldn't share with anyone.

Instead of giving either of them a chance to ask more questions, he led the way into the little diner. It was generally quiet, with only a few tables. As Hitsugaya had hoped, it was clean and orderly. Plus, it carried a wide variety of homemade foods.

Well, Hinamori didn't tend to pry into sensitive subjects, so Frau was probably safe from her on that one. And Hitsugaya frankly didn't care much one way or the other. How he'd ended up orphaned and at the church was immaterial to him.

Clean and orderly was good. Now all that remained was to see if the staff were going to be patronizing fools about his age. He never knew how that was going to go at a new place. Unless he couldn't help it, Hitsugaya didn't make it a habit of frequenting places where he got treated like a little boy. He preferred to avoid that kind of aggravation.

They probably made an interesting sight to begin with, the three of them. They were almost close enough in visual age to be taken for siblings; or a babysitter with two charges. (Best to avoid comparisons with that one.)

But Hinamori was primarily concerned with the smells. Bread, and meat frying, and onions... "Mmmmmmmm," she said, inhaling deeply. "Let's eat!"

She bounced eagerly over to a booth by the window and slid in, picking up a menu. "Any recommendations, Frau?"

"The hamburgers are good, so is the barbecue something sandwich, and some chicken thing with bacon and other stuff."

Noticing the trend here? Pretty much anything that had meat in it was on Frau's recommended list. It was one of the benefits of not living at the church anymore. There was nobody here to yell at him for eating things he wasn't supposed to be. Plus, he didn't have to try to hide it.

He sat down beside Hinamori. Of course. "Specific, aren't you?"

Not that he cared. That was what menus were for. He'd learned to tolerate a greater variety of food since he'd been in this city, especially considering how Maya dragged him around so often. A little fact that meant he was avoiding hamburgers. Like any sane person, he got tired of them after a while.

He looked over the menu almost like he would a mission report. Probably far too serious-looking, but that was basically how he always looked. It wasn't like he could help it.

Hinamori giggled at that. "Hmmm... I— oh, wow, there are a lot of choices, aren't there." She perused the menu. It was mostly unfamiliar to her, which was exciting but also a bit intimidating. "What are you getting, Sh—Hitsugaya-kun?" As always, she was more interested in what others wanted than what she was going to get herself, and she figured she could use all the input she could get.

Frau picked up on the start of a different word when Hinamori had addressed Hitsugaya and couldn't help being a little bit interested. He wasn't sure what the word was supposed to be, but Grell had called Hitsugaya something earlier. What had it been? Sheer something? Shiro? Ah, that was it. Shiro-chan. So this is who he'd gotten it from.

He smiled and grabbed his own menu without a word. The beaming would likely worry Hitsugaya more than any comment would. At least he hoped.

He winced a little when he heard the beginnings of Shirou-chan. Oh hell, not in public, not around someone who teased him already . . .

Phew. She stopped herself. But Frau was smiling. Nothing good ever came from that. Hitsugaya eyed that smile warily before getting back to the menu.

... Wow, there were a lot of messy things on here. Those got ruled out immediately. He didn't eat like that. At least not in public. Besides, how healthy could it all be? He watched what he put into his body when he didn't have Maya sad-eying him into eating burgers.

"Probably the grilled chicken sandwich."

"Mmmm. That sounds good. But I think I'm more in the mood for beef..." She scanned the menu until she found something that looked appealing. "Grilled vegetables, carrots, peppers, mushrooms and onions with sliced sirloin steak. Your choice of sauce or dressing."

She gave a friendly little wave to catch the waiter's eye and call him over. "Do you know what you want, Frau?"

"Steak and potatoes. They have these fried ones that are like sticks that I really like."

French fries didn't exist where Frau was from, and he'd found out quite quickly that he rather liked them.

"I'll probably get the cole slaw too."

He avoided vegetables like the plague now. Since that was about all he ate at home, he had very particular tastes when it came to veggies. Nothing could come anywhere close to Labrador's. Most of the edible flower meals served at the church didn't exist here either, so he stuck with the meat since it was his favorite food, and he couldn't have it at home.

He looked up when Hinamori waved the waiter over. And had to stop himself from grinding his teeth a little when the man led off with:

"Hey there. What can I get you kids?"

Damn it, he was not a kid. Hinamori wasn't a kid. And he somehow doubted that anyone would mistake Frau for a kid. Perhaps he was being oversensitive, but he just hated hearing that word used in reference to him. It was inaccurate and demeaning. The fact that most people weren't doing it on purpose didn't make it any better.

But beyond his usual flat look, he didn't show his irritation. "I'll have the grilled chicken sandwich."

"Ah, the grilled salad, please," Hinamori said, pointing it out on the menu for the waiter to see. "Thank you!"

She hardly needed to wait for everyone to finish ordering to start the conversation up again. "Did you ever say where it is you work, Frau? Here, I mean, as a... bouncer?" That word was such a funny one. She knew what it meant, but the mental images it conveyed were more hilarious than anything else. She imagined Frau bouncing around a bar in his best imitation of a bunny, and smiled, though she didn't share the thought. "I didn't hear it if you did."

Frau grinned when he noticed Hitsugaya's reaction to the greeting. It was another reason why he'd chosen the place, though only a minor one. He kept his laughter in check though and simply ordered his own meal before adding one more thing. He couldn't help himself.

"I'm sure neither one of these two would mind some crayons either."

The waiter glanced between Hinamori and Hitsugaya and just shrugged.

"Sure. I'll see what I can do."

That said, he walked away, Frau grinning at his back the entire time. Teasing Hitsugaya would never get old, and it was just so easy! He kept half an eye on the other man while he answered Hinamori's question.

"Ah, Purgatory. It's a bar and nightclub in sector five."

Okay, that was about the last thing he'd have expected to hear at a restaurant. It took his brain a moment to process it, and thus he missed his window to protest. Damn it, Frau.

And there was so much scowling in his direction. "Don't you ever get tired of this?"

Privately, he would entertain the thought of cramming the stupid crayons down Frau's throat. He'd have said something more to that effect, but Hinamori was here, and he didn't feel like being scolded for sounding so violent.

"Crayons?" Hinamori just blinked for a moment. "Ah, no, that's not really necessary!" She tried to call out after the waiter, but he was already in conversation with another table.

"I can't believe he didn't even question... I thought I was starting to look older..." She looked sternly at Frau. "You shouldn't do things like that! Now he's going to take the trouble of getting those, over a silly joke. And we're n-not children! We might even be older than you!"

Now he had two bitty shinigami up in arms. It was just Frau's lucky day, wasn't it.

Edited 2012-04-10 19:09 (UTC)

"Nope. Never get tired of it at all."

He flashed Hitsugaya a beaming smile, not at all concerned with his irritation. Frau wasn't really concerned with Hinamori's either. It wasn't like he didn't already know that Hitsugaya and Hinamori were likely older than he was. Frau, in all honestly, wasn't really all that old himself.

"You probably are, which means I can also tease you about being old geezers. I'll need to keep that in mind, huh, Frostbitty?"

Frankly, Hitsugaya found it more offensive that Frau didn't care about how Hinamori felt about this. Himself? Sure, it was annoying, but his feelings were secondary to hers.

"Or maybe you could knock it off altogether."

No, he didn't expect that statement to make any difference. But it had to be said. And nevermind that both he and Hinamori were very much youngsters as far as shinigami went. 'Old geezers', indeed. Tch.

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Frau can do most of the waiter NPCing? Seeing as this is one of his haunts?

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Aye aye!

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