Pancakes, a bleach fanfic

So, who else loves pancakes for breakfast? Just a little one-shot for IR-month'18's prompt: 'It's not what it looks like'.

"Oh, pancakes for breakfast? I see-heee." Isshin sang after he had peeked over Rukia's shoulder to see what she was doing. He knowingly looked over to Ichigo, who was busy with the coffee machine: "Glad my son did a good job." The head of the family grinned at Rukia before taking his seat at the table and picked up the newspaper.

Rukia turned her head to look at Ichigo, deeply frowning and completely clueless: "What did he mean by that?"

For a few seconds only the noise of brewing coffee could be heard.

Ichigo cleared his throat. Did he really have to talk about something like that before even having the slightest bit of caffeine in his system?

"You… really have no idea, have you?" he tried, hoping she might only be playing dumb - what was unlikely because she rarely did that.

"Am I supposed to know about each and every cultural convention you humans have?" She put one hand on her hip in a huff while skillfully flipping the pancake with her other hand.

He knew he couldn't escape this.

"Well, it…does have a certain meaning." he beat around the bush.

Her head moved around to him as if in slow motion: "Really?" The sarcasm in her voice was obvious. He couldn't fool her.

Ichigo sighed, scratching the back of his head: "You know, it's… kind of a movie stereotype-thing." Another pancake found its way onto the plate to join the others. "If… a woman…" He couldn't believe he was doing this. "…is making the effort… of making pancakes for a guy… for breakfast…" He narrowed his eyes: "Or the other way round… then it's to say 'thank you'."

Isshin giggled into his newspaper.

"Say 'thank you' for what?" Rukia asked completely innocent, not taking her eyes off the pan.

He should have known that his explanation was a bit weak – damn it.

"For last night." he blurted out trying to sound nonchalant.

"And?"

"And?" He looked at her in disbelief.

She pointed the spatula at him with a raised eyebrow: "Do you expect me to get your blabbering?"

Ichigo looked left, then right, then back to her: "Well, isn't… it obvious?" And he had always thought he was the prude one.

"Obviously not, because…"

"Sex." He interrupted her unnerved.

She blinked at him, taken a little off guard: "Oh… I…"

"I think you're burning that."

He nodded to the pan and the slight smoke, happy this embarrassing situation was – ironically –broken by those pancakes that had caused this mess in the first place.

Rukia flipped around, removing the frying pan from the hot plate: "No! This is all your fault!"

"How is it my fault, when you left the pan unsupervised?!"

"Unsupervised?! I didn't lose track of a hollow! I just took my eyes off a pancake for a second! You distracted me!"

"Well, sorry I didn't know talking about sex made you that uncomfortable!"

Isshin's head shot up. His teasing had worked a lot better as he had expected, so that even he was a little taken aback.

"What's going on? Another lover's quarrel?" Karin just entered the room.

Her father grinned, nodding: "Yep."

"No!" Ichigo had noticed in time what was going on behind their backs to object.

The fight had suddenly come to a halt.

"Oh, making pancakes for breakfast?" Karin shot Rukia a knowing glance just like Isshin had done.

"It's not, what it looks like." Ichigo voiced through gritted teeth.

It wasn't the first time he had to point that out.

Since Rukia had been reinstated as Karakura's guardian and was again regularly staying at the Kurosaki house he had said that particular sentence quite often – to Ishida, Mizuiro, Keigo, Tatsuki and his family repeatedly:

"Kuchiki-san is staying with you again?"