Disclaimer - I don't own Rurouni Kenshin.
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Grocery Store
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Chapter 6 - Kid Arguments
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"Are you an only child?" she asked him on the last day of April. Her hair was three inches past her shoulder and she was thinking of cutting it again. It was an unusually warm Saturday and they'd taken one of Kaoru's rare free weekends to drive to the boardwalk in Atlantic City, NJ. Megumi and Sano had bailed out on them because of a wedding emergency. Two weeks until the big day and Kaoru figured Megumi's frantic planning and high-strung state of mind had to reach a plateau sometime, but it hadn't happened yet."You know I have an older brother."
Kaoru took a sip of her lemonade. "But you never talk about him."
"That's because he frustrates me," Kenshin told her, threading an arm through hers as they walked along the boardwalk sipping lemonades.
Kaoru turned her face to the beach and the ocean beyond it. She wondered if Kenshin and his brother looked alike. "Where does he live?"
"Back home in Missouri. You don't care that I said he frustrates me?"
Kaoru rolled her eyes. "Why does he frustrate you, Kenshin?"
"That was insensitive."
Kaoru grinned. "I know."
"What's my life come to when you're the best friend I've got?" Kenshin pulled her to the right to avoid two harried parents trying to keep six children under control. They weren't having much luck.
"You've reached the apex of your life, Kenshin. It's all downhill from here."
"And you're supportive too."
Kaoru laughed. "Come on." She pulled her arm from his and grabbed his hand, leading him through the crowd to one of the exits off the boardwalk and onto the beach. She tossed her empty lemonade cup into the trashcan at the bottom of the ramp.
"Wait a sec." Kenshin took a last drag from the straw of his lemonade as she let go of his hand and walked towards the ocean. The sand was brown and littered with trash near the boardwalk, but cleaner closer to the ocean. Kaoru walked towards a group of seagulls clustered near the water and the noise from the crowd on the boardwalk dimmed. She could smell the ocean air clearer now, under the boardwalk smells of French fries and hamburgers and fried dough. She hadn't been to the shore in years.
Kenshin grabbed her wrist. "You didn't wait. You're not planning on abandoning me are you?"
Kaoru shook her head. "Thanks for convincing me to come, Kenshin." This was the best trip she'd taken all year, and they hadn't been in Atlantic City for an hour.
She knew he'd been about to fuss at her for leaving him, but instead his expression softened and he dropped his hand from her wrist. "You have a thing for stalking seagulls don't you?"
"What?"
He pointed straight ahead towards the gulls Kaoru had been walking towards.
Kaoru grinned. "Maybe." She walked towards the birds, which squawked and flew in twenty different directions. She was underneath the flock for a second and then she was past them and the waves ran over the edge of her sandals and up onto her toes - cold water in the spring. The tide was going out, so she walked out farther and the water covered her feet and wet the bottom of her jeans for two inches. But then a wave broke and rushed towards her and she ran back to avoid the water because it was only the last day of April and she wasn't sure how quickly her pants would dry.
"That seagull almost shit on me," Kenshin accused as he met her at the tide line. "I blame you."
The water ran back, pulling at the sand underneath her feet. Kaoru shifted to keep her balance. "Don't you like the beach, Kenshin?"
"It's fine, but I'd rather gamble in Atlantic City."
Kaoru rolled her eyes. "I'd have thought you'd love the beach. All those women in bikinis..."
He grimaced. "All those old women in bikinis. And topless beaches aren't all they're cracked up to be."
"You've been to a topless beach?"
"Yes. I think I went on 'take your grandmother to the beach' day. Sometimes I dream about it, and sometimes I have nightmares."
"You deserved it."
"Probably. I was young. When I thought of women, I thought of sex. The topless beach was sobering."
"And by sobering, you mean scarring."
"You know me too well," he said with a smile. They fell into step along the tide line in the same direction they'd taken on the boardwalk.
"Not well enough, since I didn't know your brother still lived in Missouri until today."
Kenshin had the grace to look guilty. "We're not close. Jellyfish."
Kaoru glanced down and spotted a pale brown one lying directly in her path. She smiled as she stepped over it. She'd never been stung yet. "Thanks. Did he get married or something?"
"No, but he's lived with the same woman for six years. She won't marry him, or he won't marry her." Kenshin shrugged. "I figure I don't want to know. Why the sudden interest in my brother?"
"Not in him," Kaoru corrected. "I've decided I'm going to figure you out. And what better way than through your family?" Which was easy to say walking alone with him across the wet sand, past the occasional group of seagulls and the vacationing families and the groups of gamblers taking breaks from the casinos that lined the boardwalk. Here they were surrounded by people, but knew only each other. They didn't do things alone very often. He brought her out with his friends, or she brought him out with her friends, except he and Sano hung out when she wasn't around. Their friendship mostly centered on sports.
"You're way more complicated than I am," Kenshin said.
"I am not."
"See? Whenever we start talking about something serious, you try to start a kid argument." He sounded a little too triumphant for Kaoru's taste.
"Kid argument?"
Kenshin demonstrated. "Yes you are. No I'm not. Yes you are. No I'm not." He changed the pitch of his voice for each side of the argument.
Kaoru cut him off. "I get the point."
"Good, because you just tried to start one of those kid arguments so I wouldn't tell you why you're complicated."
"I told you, I'm not complicated."
"You're doing it again."
"No I'm not!"
Kenshin raised an eyebrow and shot her a pointed look.
"Oh my God, I do avoid serious conversations." Or at least she avoided serious conversations with Kenshin.
"You do. Now are you going to let me talk or not?"
"I'm not going to like this."
He grinned down at her. "It'll be fun. I'll buy you ice cream afterwards."
"Chocolate?"
"Sure."
Kaoru sighed, resigned. "Go ahead."
"It's not a big deal," he said lightly. "Just observations. Like avoiding serious conversations. And you hate violence, but you love those movies where the characters get picked off one by one, by something outrageous like killer ants."
"They're fun!"
Kenshin reached over and touched his finger to her lips for a moment. "Your job runs your life from January to May and you have almost no free time, but you're in love with it. You love food, but you won't bother to learn how to cook. You hate fighting with your friends, but you taunt Megumi just so she'll take out her frustration on you instead of Sano. You're a romantic, but you push people away."
There was something about the moment, the way his voice had lowered for that last sentence, had quieted. The way he looked at her, his eyes and expression serious. He looked like he wanted to kiss her. She'd never thought she'd see that expression on his face again, but there it was. Breath caught in her throat and she watched as his eyelids slid shut. He lifted his finger from her lips, leaned in, but just then a wave washed over her feet, cold, and she jumped. The tide was coming in now. And she looked up and he was everyday Kenshin, as if the moment had never happened. Kaoru mentally shook herself. Nothing had almost happened.
"Larry," he said. She blinked at him in confusion, but his voice was normal again and he was looking at her like he always looked at her. She realized he had just accused her of pushing Larry away. Which was true.
"But he had fish lips!" she protested, relieved that he wasn't going to comment on what might or might not have just happened. Already it seemed like something that had happened to someone else. Her and Kenshin? It wasn't going to happen, even if she wanted it to.
"Seth. Adam. Arthur. Martin."
Kaoru was surprised he remembered. "Oh come on. You hated Martin."
"But there was nothing wrong with Adam," Kenshin pointed out.
"He was too perfect. It was a cover for something," Kaoru said, speaking confidently now. This was familiar, she could handle this conversation.
"And Seth?"
"He was way too insecure." Not like you, she added mentally. "I didn't have time to deal with his issues."
"Arthur?"
Kaoru tried to remember what had been wrong with Arthur, besides the fact that he was nowhere near as interesting as Kenshin. "There was nothing there. No chemistry. And he was a horrible dresser."
Kenshin sighed. "Seth dressed horribly, not Arthur."
Kaoru laughed. "Oh yeah. I get them confused." When everyone else paled in comparison to one person, dates got kind of blah. And just like that something switched in her and she wished she could go back to the moment that damn well had happened.
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In May, seven days before the wedding, he knocked on her door until she woke up and answered it.
"It's four in the morning."
Kenshin closed his eyes and held up a finger. "Still early, love. I have insomnia."
Kaoru snorted, not with her usual energy, but hey, she'd already been asleep for four hours. "You're tipsy."
"Not drunk though. Everyone else at the party was drunk. Really drunk. Can I come in?"
Kaoru raised an eyebrow. "Fine."
He kissed her awkwardly on the cheek as he passed her. His breath smelled like alcohol.
She watched as he made his way inside and down the hallway to the living room. He might have told the truth when he'd said he wasn't drunk. He could probably walk a straight line if he had to, but he never called her 'love' and he'd never knock on her door at four in the morning if he was sober. Kenshin was usually more considerate than that. Shaking her head, she locked the door behind him and followed him into the dark living room.
She flicked on the light. He was sprawled across two thirds of the couch. She sat across from him in the armchair, just in case he was drunker than he looked and he decided he had to puke. He didn't say anything, just stared at her through half closed violet eyes. She was still jealous of those eyes.
"Did Sano have a good time?" she asked when he still didn't say anything.
He shook his head and blinked repeatedly. "Best bachelor party I've ever been to." His words came out slower than usual. "He loved the stripper."
"Don't tell me anything I'll have to report to Megumi."
He grinned. "I'm not a fool, love, not a fool."
"Did you just call me 'love'?"
He tried to shake his head and nod at the same time and wound up looking ridiculous. "This guy in some movie says that to all the girls. I always thought it was cool. Kinda British-ish."
He grinned at her. Kaoru only stared at him. "Why are you here?"
His eyes widened. "The stripper told me to come, so here I am!"
Kaoru took a deep breath. "Kenshin, I want you to promise me you'll never be drunk in my presence again."
"I told you, I'm not drunk."
His head kept nodding up and down and she realized he was fighting off sleep.
"Lay down."
"Okay." He spread out on the couch on his side, facing her, his head resting on the pillow that rested on the armrest. Kaoru shook her head and stood to go and grab a couple blankets from the linen closet. It was best that he slept on her couch. He'd never make it to his apartment if she kicked him out, and there was no way she was walking him over there. Still – the stripper told him to come?
His eyes were almost closed when she walked back into the living room. He was staring blearily at his hand as if he'd never seen one before.
"Kenshin, close your eyes and go to sleep," Kaoru ordered with a yawn as she draped the sheets over him.
He sighed and closed his eyes. "My brother's coming to visit."
"Really? When?" Kaoru asked.
"Tomorrow," Kenshin said sleepily. His voice grew faint. "He's going to make my life hell..."
"He won't. I'm sure he'll only be happy to see you," Kaoru assured him, but he was asleep. She snorted. Some people had a lot of nerve, waking other people up at four in the morning because they were drunk and then falling asleep in the middle of a conversation. Even if such people were kind of cute drunk, it didn't give them an excuse. She glanced at Kenshin once, then turned off the light and went back to bed.