Title: Error Message
Characters/Pairings: Inui, Yanagi
Rating: PG
Word Count: 900
Warnings: None in particular
Disclaimer: Standard disclaimers apply.
Notes: First InuYana fic. Written for the LJ comm 100prompts (#01 "Crash")

"It's open," was Yanagi's answer to the knock on his door, before even turning around from his desk. "Sadaharu. I would not have expected you before tomorrow."

"Renji. You did not tell me you were moving again." He had seen cabinets and boxes being lifted into a moving truck right in front of the house. And Yanagi's mother had looked somewhat restless and impatient as she bid him to come in.

"My father is. Come, sit down. I'm sorry for the mess our house is in right now."

"Not at all. Do you mind if I stay for the night?" Inui asked as he took a seat on the edge of the neatly made bed.

"Do your parents know that you are here?"

"I left them a note about where I am, how they can reach me, what Shinkansen line I used and when they can expect me tomorrow." Now that these things were cleared, Inui took out his laptop. "As to why I'm here."

"It would not have been a problem to send the battery over."

"It would not have arrived in time for me to finish the physics presentation I have to give on Monday." Besides which, picking up notebook batteries was as good an excuse as any to drive all the way to Kanagawa. Yanagi had known he would come anyway, even if not tonight. So why not prove him right?

Yanagi exhaled 6 louder than usual. "Do you want tea?"

"No, thank you. Your mother already asked me," Inui said as he took the offered screwdriver from Yanagi's hands.

"I cannot believe you still use a nickel-metal hydride battery," Yanagi stated in mild disbelief, while taking a seat next to Inui on the bed. "Considering that dinosaur of a notebook though, I guess I shouldn't be surprised."

"Until now my laptop hasn't disappointed me. Although I have been saving for a newer model for some time now." His processor might be a little slow and his memory minuscule, but his Windows 95 operating system was still running smoothly. As long as he was able to virtually record his data, that was the main thing.

The remainder of the operation was spent in companiable silence, neither of them having the need to say any more than was already said. Between them, words were just empty sounds, anyway. Used to draw attention to superficial matters, while the real conversation lay elsewhere. If anywhere at all. Sometimes there was truly nothing to tell.

When the batteries were finally exchanged, the AC adapter connected and Inui slightly more relaxed, he pressed the power button, impatient to finish his presentation. Never in his life had Inui Sadaharu pushed a deadline and he would not start ruining his statistics now, not over a defect battery.

He breathed a sigh of relief when the display flickered on, but then promptly stopped breathing when his eyes fell on an error message: "Disk boot failure. Insert system disk and press enter."

Inui tried to stay calm, there had to be a logical way to solve this and panicking would definately help nothing. Breathe, Sadaharu, breathe.

"We have a couple of options," Inui jerked when Yanagi suddenly spoke up. "You either have a damaged Master Boot Sector, DOS boot sector or File Allocation Table. Of course, your CMOS parameter values could be incorrect, too. There is also the possibility of a cable problem or a failing drive. Did you create a back-up?"

What a disturbing question. Inui gulped and nodded slowly. He did have a back-up. But it had been created before he had started working on his presentation. What a terrible miscalculation to think that he would not need extra copies. Too late for that, now. If his hard drive was really damaged he had no chance of retrieving his notes.

"Can I?" Without waiting for verbal affirmation, Yanagi snatched the notebook to make sure the hard drive power connector and ribbon cable were connected, entered the BIOS setup program to check the settings and ran commands Inui never had had the chance to try out before.

In a flash, his operating system was up and running together with his notes, still in the state he had last saved them as.

"Renji, I am in your debt." Inui was so relieved, he could not thank Yanagi enough. There had only been a 17 possibility of the problem being remediable.

"Let's not start with this."

"But I insist."

"Do you remember the time when I got off the train at the wrong station and you had to skip tennis practice to come pick me up, because I had no money with me to buy a new ticket? We're even."

"No, you saved me from a bad grade in PE three days prior, when I forgot my swimming trunks. It was a matter of course that I would help you out," Inui's glasses glinted triumphantly.

"Sadaharu," Yanagi sighed, his shoulders sinking a whole two centimeters. Before Inui could utter anything more, his mouth was otherwise occupied. Threading his fingers through Inui's slightly coarse hair, Yanagi used the opportunity of the other's parted lips to delve his tongue through, sliding their wet appendages together in a slippery kiss.

"Alright," Yanagi said slightly out of breath when he drew back, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Now we're even."

Synapses on fire, Inui did have nothing to reply to that.