Author's Note: I have a confession to make: I know next to nothing about sewing. u_u
Under, pull back, under, pull back. Again. And again. Fluid retreat each time, no pauses. Keep an eye on the spacing of each thrust. Steady, steady until the end, don't rush it. Fifteen even heartbeats before the turn, then lift and plunge deep. A little resistance here, but nothing to worry about. Follow through with a firm hand, visualize its path, know without seeing where it will emerge. Careful of your finger placement, now release and seize again in one motion. Twist back as far as you are able and change directions quickly, without hesitation. Grip tightly, repeat. Under, pull back, under, pull back…
Renji finally closed his half-lidded eyes, assured that he had the practiced movements memorized should he ever need to recall them. Though I'd rather die of embarrassment first, he thought with a grimace.
Across the low table, Ishida continued on with a single-mindedness that Renji had learned to expect from the bespectacled boy. Who would have thought sewing could be so tactical?
The past hour or so at Urahara's had been extremely sedate. No calls on the spirit phone meant no Hollows skulking around the city. And no Hollows meant boredom in a faux body that didn't wear quite as well as his shinigami robes, regardless of Urahara's genius.
For some reason, the Quincy boy had decided to stick around Urahara's too. The ex-Captain himself was strangely absent, and Renji remembered hearing that witty little snot—Jinta—tell Ishida to just take a load off and wait for him here since it wasn't like the Quincy had anything to do without his powers. Ishida hadn't responded, but the shoji door slid open and close with a lot more force than necessary. He sat down at the table Renji was lounging at and whipped out a mass of fabric from a small, handled box. Since then he had been sewing furiously, though Renji had absolutely no clue what the end result was. And it wasn't like he was going to ask, tch.
But as lame as his hobbies were, Ishida wasn't bad company for a human. He wasn't loud like Ichigo, or long-winded (though good-natured) like Orihime, or even awkwardly void of conversation skills like Chad. He was direct, if a little curt at times, but Renji had spent a good portion of his life as a shinigami taking orders and extracting the important parts. And let's not forget that time spent in the 11th squad with Kenpachi, no matter how brief, taught one the merits of "short and sweet".
The sudden ring of the phone in the back of the shop made Renji crack an eye open. He saw Ishida pause, listening. Ururu's timid voice answered it, murmuring gently but incomprehensibly from their seated location. It was several moments before they heard her light steps approaching and the door barely made a sound when she slid it open to address them.
"Ishida-san, the Manager deeply apologizes for not being here when you needed him. He has urgent business with Yoruichi-sama, but he will be returning shortly. You are welcome to wait here for however long you need." She bowed respectfully, pigtails jerking with the movement, and turned to Renji. "Freeloader-san, Tessai will serve dinner when the Manager returns. Please endure your starvation until then."
The vein in Renji's forehead throbbed. It wasn't his fault, where else was he supposed to stay…
Ishida merely nodded politely at Ururu and went back to sewing. Back to quiet. Back to boredom. The Quincy boy wasn't bad company, but he was pretty boring all the same. Maybe, for the sake of entertainment, Renji could look past his embarrassment for once.
"So, do you always sew when you're pissed?" There. It wasn't like anyone could poke fun at him for talking about sewing to a person who so unabashedly participated in such an activity.
He half-expected the boy to ignore him. "There isn't really an emotion tied to it. I just do it when there is time to." Ishida's hand never stopped working the fabric with the needle.
"Hn." This was a bit strange…But what the hell. "What are you making?"
"An Italian Renaissance Gown."
"…"
That…made no sense at all. Absolutely no sense. Sure, the boy was frail-looking, and he sewed, but did he really have to take it so far as to—"Why?" he asked before his brain could start picturing something wholly unsavory.
"I'm in charge of costume design for the play at school next week."
"Oh," Renji responded, with not just a little relief in his voice. He propped his head up with a palm and drummed the table a few times with idle fingers. "I didn't think you had time for all that."
"You'd be surprised what you can accomplish when you're feeling less than yourself, Abarai-san."
"You mean the loss of your powers." Renji didn't make it a question.
"…Yes." The look on the Quincy's face was less than friendly now. In fact, the Vice-Captain would lean more toward "icy". Maybe this wasn't such a good idea.
"Ah. Well, I'm sure if anyone could find a way…" His empty encouragement went unfinished. The boy's hands had seized up in the fabric, bunching it into what was sure to be a riot of wrinkles.
Great idea, Renji, you jackass. He'd become that guy, the guy who carelessly brought up painful subjects in the face of tragedy just to get a conversation going in an awkward moment. Ikkaku from the 11th Squad killed people like that.
"Um. So, that dress—"
"Gown," Ishida corrected, slowly relaxing his fingers and pushing up his glasses with a sigh. "It's a gown. A dress implies a less complicated hemline and altogether less sophisticated composition."
"Right. Well, I understand the complicated part. Reminds me of katas, with all the wrist movements and timing. Heh, just not nearly as…"
Ishida looked up at him squarely.
"…forceful. Yeah." Renji cleared his throat.
"It's not something everyone can do, especially by hand. Take this damask stitch," Ishida said, looking back down at his work. "One misplaced stitch and you can ruin the whole symmetry of the gown. It's hard to believe that seamstresses in the 16th century could produce a gown of this quality in a day. Skill of that kind is unheard of in this day and age."
"That's nothing. I once stitched up Ikkaku's head with a sharpened toothpick and a piece of thread from my robe after he got hit by a nasty-looking Hollow. Wound healed up so nicely, you can't even tell. Good thing too, since he's so vain about his head."
Renji could have sworn he saw Ishida's jaw twitch before the boy pushed his glasses back further on his nose.
"Clearly, that's not the same, Abarai-san."
"It's not? You try stitching up a guy with a temper like Ikkaku's. If you had seen how much blood there was, a guy like you probably would have fainted." He probably looked like Jinta with his arms crossed and his face turned away haughtily, but Renji couldn't find the shame to care. The boy needed to show some respect.
"I'm sure stitching a straight line with hands like that was quite a feat," Ishida said with a smug little smile. Renji resisted the urge to look down at his hands and instead wondered whose bright idea it was to start a conversation with this yahoo. "Besides," the boy went on, "Quincys aren't boasters, especially when we know without question that we can skewer thirty Hollows in a row with one of our arrows."
Renji humphed and feigned boredom. "Thirty Hollows isn't that impressive. Captain Kenpachi once killed forty-fi—"
"I've killed seventy-four Hollows with one shot." There was a tense stretch of silence. Renji sneered. There was no way he was getting upstaged by a kid who sewed dresses.
"Yeah? Well, I ate three helpings of Orihime's Chocolate Tabasco Herring Sundae Surprise. I couldn't taste anything for three days." Renji smirked in triumph as he waved three fingers around while Ishida visibly paled. He knew the boy felt just as helpless as he did when Orihime invited her acquaintances to dinner. It was a true test of friendship.
"That's…well, enough chocolate sauce and you can eat anything, right?"
"What do you think the leftovers tasted like the next day?" He watched Ishida swallow harshly as the imagined taste threatened to gag him.
"That's ALMOST as…delicious…as her Deep-fried Liver and Pickle Salad with Raspberry-Chili filling. I spilled a little of the filling on her table cloth. It bleached the color from the linen." Sweat was breaking out on Ishida's forehead, but he grinned maniacally at Renji.
Renji felt his teeth grind and his stomach roil. "I guess you've never tried her Peanut Butter Squid and Habanero Lemonade then? It's to die for."
Ishida's hand spasmed on his stomach as he choaked out, "Is it? It can't be nearly as good as Pork Nacho Mousse Swirl with Lima Bean Butter."
"You'd….be surprised. But I can handle anything she throws at me. I've got taste buds made of steel!" Renji wasn't sure why he was yelling, but it felt right.
"That doesn't mean anything!" Ishida yelled back, leaning all his weight on his clenched fists. "It's all about quantity, not quality. Anyone can eat a bowl of Barbacued Mayonaise Banana Stew with Vinegar-Snail garnish, but it takes a man to eat a whole pot!"
Renji wasn't giving up though. "Really? I'm sure I could eat twice as much as you!" He jabbed a finger at the Quincy boy. "I'm trained to meditate the pain away in the most adverse conditions."
"Yeah? Prove It!" Ishida had finally drawn the line in the sand.
"Fine!"
"You can't beat me!"
"I sure as hell can!"
"This dress is one size fits all!"
"BULLSHIT!"
***
Urahara's hand paused on the shoji door as he heard the faint sounds of struggling coming from the room inside. Briefly he cast his senses out, fairly certain he would have felt the Hollow from miles away had it somehow infiltrated his home, but it never hurt to be cautious. Nothing triggered his senses, so what was going on inside this room? Ururu mentioned that the Quincy boy and Renji had both been waiting to speak to him. Could it be that the two boys were…Urahara quickly yanked the door open.
At first, it was unclear to the shopkeeper what was transpiring. Ishida had one foot braced on the table and one knee on Renji's back, his face contorted with physical exertion. Renji was hunched beneath him, his face almost a mirror image of Ishida's, though his eyes bulged just a little more. Both males were grunting loudly. Ishida's hands were wrapped in what looked like pink ribbon and he seemed to be pulling them hard enough to hamper the circulation of blood to his fingers. It was then that Urahara's gaze traveled over Renji's stooped form, shrouded in thick billowing folds of bright crimson fabric with little trimmings of pink lace edging the sleeve—
Renji and Ishida froze, and slowly, as if controlled by the same puppeteer, turned toward the open door. Urahara suddenly flipped open his fan and raised it, peeking over the edge. He appeared to be choking behind it, but Renji recognized the sound for what it was: Urahara was about to explode, and Renji was pretty sure his dignity would be shot to hell if he did. He looked down at the beautifully-made dress he was wearing. What dignity?
Without so much as a word, Urahara slowly slid the shoji door closed. Barely a moment passed before he threw back his head and laughed as he never had while he was living.
***
As far as Renji was concerned, sewing was going to be a taboo subject for a very long time.