Tatewaki Kuno blinked as he entered the store, his eyes taking a second to adjust to the unfamiliar fluorescent lighting. Despite knowing full well how automatic doors functioned (after an exhaustive explanation from an underpaid employee) he still found himself peeking out of the corner of his eye for the ninja a part of him insisted had to be employed by the store.
It would certainly explain why decent help was so hard to get for private individuals.
He shook his head to dislodge the idle thought. Now was not a time to distract oneself with such things, not when one had to deal with throngs of people in a strange land with such bizarre customs as "you cannot threaten the help". At least nobody dressed in khakis and a polo shirt made a move to take his precious bokken from him, this time.
Everyone had learned a valuable lesson that day. Tatewaki. The employees at the print shop. The Tokyo police.
With a purposeful stride towards the order counter, Tatewaki sniffed derisively (though, none too deeply) as he elbowed past a particularly pungent example of the huddled masses he found himself wading through.
"Oof!" the shorter youth grunted, before angrily turning to face him. "Hey! What was that for?!"
"A thousand apologies," Tatewaki flatly intoned, not bothering to look back. "But I am here to pick up a print and then leave. Good day to you, sir."
Before he could take another step and forget the encounter entirely, Tatewaki felt a strong, calloused hand grip his bicep in a way that made him hesitate. Slowly, as if being gently rotated on a millstone, he turned to actually face the boy he had simply pushed by before. Instead of the angry scowl he was expecting to find, Tatewaki was greeted by an expression so hopeful and earnest that it put him in mind of a lost puppy.
"You're going to the photo counter?" the boy asked. "Really?"
"Y-yes, indeed I am…" Tatewaki managed, his arm beginning to throb. It wasn't… painful, per se, but the pressure was slightly constricting blood flow, making him acutely aware of how his heart was suddenly pounding.
"And this is the Kinkos in Shinjuku-ku, right?"
Tatewaki felt a couple neurons fire, desperately trying to point out that someone not knowing whether or not they were in the heart of Tokyo was absolute lunacy. They were drowned out, however, by him finally being hit by the sheer wildness of the boy who was still gripping him. His hair was greasy and unkempt and his ratty tunic was so dirty that Tatewaki was finding it hard to determine if it was yellow fabric coated in dirt or if it was brown fabric that had succumbed to a terrible mustard-related fate. It all combined with a smell that could charitably be described as "woodsy", in the sense that campfire smoke and pine needles almost, but not entirely, covered up the fact that the woods were where a bunch of unwashed animals lived. Good Lord, he thought. How was it possible to let oneself get so rank? Racking his brains, Tatewaki summoned up all the knowledge that he had gleaned from descriptions in the particular genre of historical fiction he preferred to read. There were… lakes, surely? Babbling brooks, bubbling springs, crystal clear, ice cold streams fed by glaciers that heroes could conveniently drink fromand, more importantly, bathe in.
The overall effect was such that Tatewaki only barely registered when the other boy said that he'd been searching for a store that was walking distance from Shinjuku station "for weeks".
"Can I follow you?" he asked.
"...Very well…" Tatewaki mumbled, while to himself whispering "...weeks?"
The two young men made their way to the counter (one following very close behind the other), and Tatewaki immediately spied what he was looking for. Eyes flashing with triumph, he regained some amount of his normal air of self-assured aristocracy as he reached for his print, confident that nobody would stop him.
And then his hand collided with the other boy's.
Recoiling as if he had touched a hot stove, Tatewaki felt his face burn as he shot a glare towards the lad in the headband. Judging by how he was clutching his hand to his chest and the redness of his cheeks, he was feeling similarly to how Tatewaki was at the moment.
"And just what," he asked, "are your intentions with my photo order, peasant?"
"Your photo order?" came the shorter boy's retort. "That one's mine!"
Tatewaki scoffed. "I highly doubt that you'd be here for this." He grabbed his print, tapping at the face on it. It was of another young man, his hair in a braided pigtail and what would ordinarily be slate blue eyes glowing an eerie red from the flash of the camera. It was blown up to just-larger-than-life size, and looked like it was taken without warning. The overall effect was highly unflattering.
"This fellow," Tatewaki continued, "has been the bane of my very existence ever since his presence darkened the halls of Furinkan High School." His eyes took on a certain menacing gleam. "I intend to use this to refresh my dartboard."
To his surprise, the other boy's features darkened as he let out a low, humorless chuckle. "Oh, I know Ranma Saotome alright," he said. "He made my life a living hell, and I intend to make him pay! Or else my name isn't Ryoga Hibiki!"
While Tatewaki blinked in surprise and wondered why the warmth was returning to his face the way it was, an employee behind the register (who finally decided it would probably be for the best to get these two customers out of his work area) gave Ryoga an annoyed look. "You're Ryoga Hibiki?" he asked.
Ryoga's demeanor instantly pulled a near-180, with him scratching the back of his neck and grinning sheepishly. "Uh, y-yeah, that's me." he said with a nervous chuckle.
"We've been holding onto your order for like, a month, dude!" the employee said, fishing around behind more recent orders before pulling out a rolled-up print that, when unfurled, was unmistakably an identical picture of Ranma Saotome.
"O-oh!" Ryoga said, blushing. "Ahahahaha… Y-Yeah, that one's mine. Th-thank you for keeping it for me."
As the beleaguered employee regarded his two least favorite semi-regular customers, he took note of the identical posters clutched in each boy's hands, and the way the tall one kept anxiously glancing at the short one. Cocking his eyebrow, he asked, "So are you two like, a couple, or what?"
The response he got was as vehement as it was incoherent, with both boys doing their best impression of a kettle in full boil.
"W-WE'RE NOT-" "YOU DARE TO PRESUME-"
The twin protests died in their respective speakers' throats as they both shrunk into themselves in an embarrassed silence, faces glowing like hot coals. The cashier looked unimpressed.
"Listen, I ain't here to judge. I'm here to print this candid photo of your mutual crush and not ask questions."
Ryoga's blush turned incandescent. "Cr-cr-crush?!" he stammered, crinkling his print in his fist.
An incensed (or, at the very least, red) Tatewaki said nothing, opting to simply slam a bill from his wallet before turning on his heel and storming out of the building. Ryoga, panicking about getting lost again so quickly, hurried after him.
The cashier almost called after him to pay too, before noticing that the bill that had been left behind was a 10,000 yen note.
"H-hey, wait!"
Tatewaki turned around to see Ryoga running after him, chest heaving with the effort of catching up on his comparatively shorter legs. He returned his gaze to the street ahead of him, but he did slow down to let the other boy catch up.
"You're following me." he said after a while. "Why? It's not as if you know where I'm headed."
"I… I don't want to get lost again so soon." Ryoga replied. "It's been so long since I've been in a city, and I can't really bathe very easily in the woods because, um…" he began to trail off, realizing that he was revealing the nature of his curse to a perfect stranger. "Because… well… I-I just can't, okay? Cold water and me don't mix well."
If Tatewaki found his explanation lacking, he didn't make any indication of it. Instead, after a period simply spent walking, he asked "Are you infatuated with Saotome?"
Ryoga was about to shout his denial, before sighing and saying "I don't know. I was pretty sure I hated him for so long, but I followed him to China when his training journey took him there. Sure, it was for revenge, I guess, but…"
"Really?" Tatewaki said, interest piqued. "How fascinating! I've always wanted to visit, myself."
Ryoga chuckled. "You… wouldn't want to end up where I did, I don't think."
"Oh? And why's that?"
"It's… well, it's related to why I can't bathe easily on the road. Kind of a long story."
"Very well," Tatewaki replied. "I did not have any more plans for the afternoon. Ryoga Hibiki, I would be honored to hear your tale."
It took Ryoga a few seconds to process this, and to work out a suitable response to someone actually showing an interest in his problems. The unfamiliarity of the sensation paired with his recent stint without human contact, however, meant that his "suitable response" came out of his mouth as "Wuh?"
"I want to hear what happened to you," Tatewaki said, looking down at Ryoga, who was coincidentally looking up at Tatewaki at the same time. The resulting eye contact made the kendoist quickly look away and clear his throat. "I-if only to plumb the true depths of Saotome's deviousness." Giving Ryoga another glance, he wrinkled his nose slightly. "Might I suggest we discuss your aversion to cold water somewhere where hot water is readily available? And facilities to clean your clothes?"
"Um, Yeah, good idea." Ryoga said.
"So your first date was at his house?" Ranma asked, munching on a rice cracker as his two most persistent rivals finished their story. "And you got naked there? Damn, Porkchop, you work fast."
Ryoga's chair skidded on the flagstone of the outdoor picnic area in the park where he and his boyfriend had agreed to meet their mutual rival. As he stood up, however, a hand on his shoulder stayed his brewing outburst.
"Be at ease, my dear." Tatewaki said. "Now is not the time to deal with this cur."
Begrudgingly, Ryoga nodded, sitting back down. He stole a fond glance at Tatewaki for a moment, before returning his attention to Ranma. "So, anyway, that's the uh, the story, I guess."
"I take it by your choice of nickname for my beloved that you are familiar with his… personal affliction?" Tatewaki asked.
"Familiar- yeah, I know about Ryoga's curse!" Ranma said. "Frankly I'm surprised you managed to work it out, Kuno."
Tatewaki held a hand to his chest in shock. "You would insult me, Saotome? My porcine paramour made his circumstances quite clear to me the day we by chance met in Shinjuku."
"Yeah, but I've been trying to tell you about my curse for as long as I've known you, and it never seemed to make it through that thick skull of yours!"
"Your… Oh!" Tatewaki said, pounding a fist into his palm as realization dawned. "I see! Well, Saotome, the difference between you and Ryoga's situations is that I had no reason to suspect that he had any ulterior motives in telling me this, while you on the other hand seemed to simply be trying to keep me from both my beloved Akane and my pigtailed girl."
Ranma felt a vein throb on his forehead, but he suppressed the urge to escalate things. "Right. Well. I'm, uh. I'm happy for you. Both of you."
The boyfriends blinked in surprise, apparently not expecting this sort of response.
"V-verily? You wouldst support us so readily?"
"Well, yeah." Ranma said, with a slight blush tinging his cheeks. "I mean, I'd be lyin' if I said I never had a crush on Ryoga, so like. I get it."
The fanged boy himself looked almost on the verge of joyful tears, while Tatewaki looked surprised yet pleased by Ranma's reaction.
"I am… touched, Saotome. Verily, this will make what happens next all the more awkward."
"...Wait, what?"
Tatewaki and Ryoga both stood up, looming over Ranma with another, much slower sound of metal scraping against flagstone. Tatewaki drew his bokken as he unfolded himself like a towering deck chair, while Ryoga hefted his umbrella from his back and casually bounced it in his palm with a quiet menace.
"Art thou ready, dear?" Tatewaki asked.
"You know it, babe." Ryoga replied.
Ranma was scrambling out of his seat just in time for it to be crushed under the weight of Ryoga's umbrella. Just my luck, he thought as he dodged a slice from a wooden sword that transformed a decorative water feature into an exposed, gushing water pipe. Not daring to stop even though he heard the squeals of Ryoga's cursed form behind him, accompanied by Tatewaki crying out in shock, he hitched up his pants to ensure they didn't fall down on his now much smaller form and continued running. Just my goddamn luck.