Author's note: This fic is over 50,000 words long I am so fucking done with myself.

Renji woke up the next morning to find himself bed-partners with two of his oldest hook-ups, Regret and Cripplingly Low Self-Esteem.

He shouldn't be surprised even in the slightest, because Renji's no idiot nor was he so drunk that he couldn't comprehend that there would be serious consequences to his actions. Even so, Renji had been expecting something of a reaction that was… bigger, he guessed? Maybe a slap to the face or something equally appropriate. The last thing Renji thought was going to happen would be Shuuhei just running away.

But that was better then, right? At least if Shuuhei hates Renji now, he doesn't hate him enough to say it to his face. And they're both mature, grown men so Renji could man up and toughen it out without waking up in the morning, replaying the entire previous night in his mind and feeling like he wanted to curl up under the covers and cry.

Renji tries to feel around for his blanket to pull over his eyes, groaning slightly at the effort as he did so. His pawing around, however, reveals no blankets and a very un-bed-like shape underneath him. Curious, Renji squirms until he gracelessly falls from the couch he had apparently been planted on since last night.

Sprawled out on the floor, Renji glares listlessly at the ceiling. What happened at the bar after Shuuhei left? It was all a black blank. A big black blank blur and other such b-words.

Renji's not really awake just yet.

Footsteps trail in from another room, carrying what smells to Renji's hang-over addled brain to be tea. The smell is strong and bitter and makes his nose recoil but considering the circumstances this situation is probably better than waking up face-down on a sticky, gross bar floor.

A head of what Renji's red-rimmed eyes note is unreasonably, blindingly bright blond hair pops in sideways to Renji's field of vision directed at the ceiling. Izuru looks almost as frazzled as Renji feels, hair mussed from sleeping so that his bang is askew and Renji can actually see both blue eyes giving him a simultaneously kind and mocking look. "Please, do make yourself right at home. Would you like tea, or are you going to vomit again first?"

"I puked?" Renji asks, voice sounding hoarse as he tried to blink back into focus, "Aww man. I had a streak going!"

"Well, at least I can be sure you're alive now." Izuru sighs, kicking Renji's side a little with a slipper-clad foot. "Sit up and let me give you tea so you'll smell a little less like sake and throw-up."

Renji groans as he does so, propping himself up against the side of the couch. After a moment of cradling his head in his hands, Renji feels the world stop spinning long enough to take the warm teacup from Izuru's hands. At the first sip, Renji's face twists into a pained grimace and he makes a face as he let tea dribble down his chin onto the front of his shihakusho like a child.

"How dare you take advantage of a man in my condition by trying to poison me, you sick fuck." Renji demands with venom in his voice.

Izuru rolls his eyes, folding his arms over the front of his sleeping yukata. "Strong, black tea is the best thing for a hang-over, and considering how drunk you got at the bar last night you must bereally hung-over."

"I am really hung-over." Renji concedes, looking down at the tea considerably. "Uh, Kira, I didn't say or do anything too embarrassing at the bar last night, did I?"

Izuru pauses to think, stroking his chin with his hand. "Not that I can remember. You just drank a lot and massacred everyone's eardrums in an impromptu karaoke competition before getting kicked out and falling over asleep. Then I carried to here to my place, since it was closest and everyone else was too drunk to help me bring you all the way back to the Sixth's quarters. It was a pretty standard night."

"Say what you will, my skills at karaoke are unmatched by any soul." Renji protests, risking another sip from the cup.

Izuru slinks down against the couch to sit next to Renji, wearing a somber look. Knowing Izuru for as long as he did, Renji can't find such an attitude out of the ordinary, and he should probably be grateful since the slighter shinigami acting up-beat probably meant that Renji had done something truly mortifying and Kira was only trying not to laugh at him.

"Can I ask you something?"

Renji huffs in response, "If I say no, is that going to make you any less curious or determined to butt in?"

"Okay, so," Izuru continues, ignoring Renji's jibing. "Did you and Hisagi have an argument last night? I was really weird of him to vanish like that as soon as everyone showed up."

Ah, now there was the meat of the issue. Renji winces as he tried to summon words that would adequately display his feelings over the previous night. Izuru is a close friend of both him and Shuuhei, but Renji doesn't really want to lay out what felt like their personal business in front of the guy.

"Lemme ask you something first." Renji asks, decidedly, "Do you ever say or do something so terrible that you can't actually believe you'd do it, but at the same time it feels like a thing you should do?"

Izuru gives him a befuddled look. "… No."

"Okay, so, like." Renji struggles with comprehensive sentences. "Say you got… this pet monkey, right? Like the tiny kind that fits into your pocket and you can carry it around with you. This monkey means a lot to you. This monkey is your best friend. You love the monkey. So then you meet someone and they seem pretty good with animals, and your monkey is pretty small but sometimes it feels so heavy that you just can't carry it anymore so you give the person your monkey. And you know it's a pretty dumb thing to do, because nobody wants your stupid, smelly monkey. It's annoying and loud and stinks but it still means a lot to you."

Renji pauses, letting Izuru soak in what he had just said. After a moment of thos, Izuru tries to open his mouth to say something, but Renji just launches straight into his ramble again. "So you give this person your monkey and what do they do? They take your monkey in one hand and throw it against the wall like it's a goddamn baseball but you have nobody to blame but yourself because you were pretty sure you were just kidding yourself into believing that they wanted it in the first place, because you suck." Renji stopped with a heavy sigh, then looked at Izuru searchingly, "Do you see what I'm saying, here?"

Izuru looks dumbstruck for a moment, mouth parted as if it wasn't capable of words. Finally, he verbalizes, "Are you still drunk?"

"If I say yes will you make me breakfast and promise not to repeat my monkey-ramble to anybody ever?"

Walking into the office is hell incarnate. Not because of the headache because Izuru was right, the tea did wonders for Renji's hang-over. The food less so, because while it satiated Renji's hunger, it sits in his stomach heavily like he had ingested rocks.

On the way in, Renji's subordinates give him admiring looks and congratulated him on a job well done on the mission. It's a good thing most of the Sixth division's shinigami don't frequent the bar that Renji and his friends are known to dwell in, bless their innocent little souls.

Captain Kuchiki is as stoic and regal as ever, but if Renji rubs the blur out of his eyes correctly he could swear his workload of paperwork from the mission looks maybe just a little lighter than usual. He almost wishes it wasn't though, because that only leaves Renji more time to think as he works.

He runs through all possible excuses for how to make out with- make it up to Shuuhei for what happened last night. Sorry man, that was totally an accident my mouth just fell and landed on your mouth. We still cool?

But Shuuhei had… kissed back, Renji realizes. Renji had kissed him and Shuuhei let him and they had been kissing, not just Renji kissing but both of them together. Considering the circumstances, Renji feels he was afforded leeway on not knowing what to do based on mixed signals.

"Abarai." Renji's head whipps up from where it had been bent down towards his desk in thought, and turned to Captain Kuchiki perched professionally at his desk. "It's a refreshing change to see you take such intense interest in your work, but shouldn't you be going?"

Renji realizes that he had been so caught up in his thoughts about Shuuhei, he had been oblivious to the happenings around him. "Um, going? What do you mean, Captain?"

Captain Kuchiki folds his hands in front of his person, looking quite serious as he casually intoned. "I believe today a meeting among the vice-captains is being held, seeing as I've attended enough on them in your stead to know. Given the current time I'd say it's due to start in-" Captain Kuchiki glances at the clock on the wall briefly enough that Renji doubts he had even really looked at all, "-about ten minutes."

A flutter of papers caused in the slight breeze was the only sound left behind by a black and red blur shooting out of the door.

Renji's sandals slide against the floor and he sharply turns the corner, feet flying clumsily in an attempt to maintain both balance and velocity. The Lieutenant's meeting is drawing ever closer and the report to his fellow vice-captains on the now publicly disclosed happenings of the portal debacle would be due and he and Shuuhei hadn't even begun to plan and what they would say. Last night at the bar would have been the perfect time to throw together an idea of how they would tell the tale, but as it happened they had been sidetracked from that topic. Thanks to Renji.

Because he is awful.

Hopefully, Izuru and Rangiku cam cover for them with their side of the story long enough for Renji to talk to Shuuhei, except what would he even say considering the circumstances? The excuse about Renji's mouth falling onto his was looking like a better and better opening line.

Renji manages to get to the meeting room designated for vice-captains in a mere hop, skip and jump while only managing to trip about four times. Okay five. Eight, more or less.

If Renji wasn't so emotionally drained and feeling a little ill, he might have considered waiting for just a few moments outside to listen in before flinging the rice-paper door open to the meeting already in progress.

Whoops.

Nanao gives Renji an acidic look from where she had been standing by a white-board to outline the squads' access to the training fields for the next week, drawing everyone's eyes to the redhead. The hairs on the back of Renji's neck stand up from the sensation of being watched as he slid to his seat between Hinamori and Iba.

With only a few smothered snickers at Renji's expense, the majority of eyes go back to Nanao at her board.

On Renji's side, Hinamori taps his shoulder for attention. Renji looks at her long enough to try for a reassuring smile because honestly he is a-okay.

The numbers at the table are set with a row of the first six squads lined up on one end, which puts Renji in the back of the table, while the other six are placed on the other side. The First Division Lieutenant took the head of the table. Renji liked this layout, because usually Rukia would sit across from him since her promotion and they could pass notes like immature, stupid kids in the academy bitching about how boring the meetings were and playing hang-man. One time Nanao had been late to the meeting, held up by some crucial matter with the Captain-Commander at Division One and Rukia and Renji had gotten remaining vice-captains completely engrossed in the most intense pictionary tournament to ever grace Seireitei. It was awesome.

Sadly, now Rukia has been stationed back in Karakura town for longer assignments, meaning Renji has lost his biggest distraction from the real source of today's glaring problems.

From this position, Shuuhei is seated across from Renji and only a few seats to the side. In a potentially awkward scenario such as this, this is a tactical advantage for Renji, because he can look at Shuuhei without anyone noticing and Shuuhei can't do the same without turning away from the presentations at the front and drawing attention to himself. Score one for Renji being a creep.

Regardless, Shuuhei risks turning his head back to look at Renji for a mere second. Their eyes meet, and Shuuhei quickly whips his head back to the front of the room. Renji has absolutely no idea what this is supposed to mean.

Shuuhei looks almost as terrible as Renji feels, his spikey hair flattened in awkward places in an obviously unkempt bedhead. Two dark spots bloom from underneath his red-rimmed eyes as if he hadn't slept all night, and even though his eyes are fixed on the presentations they flutter beneath his lids every time he blinks like he's fighting to stay awake. There's no way for Renji to know what any of this means, either. Is the idea of kissing Renji honestly so gross that it keeps people up all night?

As hard as those good old personal insecurities are hitting him, Renji can't help but feel a little guilty for Shuuhei's state. All the poor guy had wanted to do was help Renji with his stupid issues. Shuuhei never asked to get macked on by a friend out of the blue. He'd never asked for Renji to just suddenly unload all this stupid needy kissing junk onto him. Renji had spent all morning feeling sorry for himself because Shuuhei hadn't reacted the way he wanted him to, without even thinking of how Shuuhei must have felt to have this suddenly thrown on to him. Shuuhei was probably up all night thinking of the easiest way to let Renji down gently without hurting his feelings.

Wow, only about five minutes into the meeting and Renji was already convinced he was an asshole. Good job, great progress made. We're finished here, folks, everyone go back to your squads.

Renji can only hope that when he met the inevitable end of having a very awkward talk with Shuuhei about- shudder- feelings, Renji would be over this weird rambly phase he has apparently stumbled into at this point in his life. The phase where he talked about his weird dreams in bars or rambled to Izuru about monkeys that the blond vice-captain just didn't get. Didn't the dumbass understand that the monkey was a metaphor? He was supposed to write poetry for gods' sakes.

"And now," Nanao announces from the blackboard, dragging Renji out of his spiral of thoughts, "Lieutenants Abarai, Hisagi, Kira and Matsumoto will debrief us on their mission to Huenco Mundo regarding the portal phenomena."

Oh shit, that's them, isn't it? There is no way Renji was going to get out of this by winging it, was he?

All four Vice-Captains stand up, but none of them made any effort to begin. Renji's eyes meet Rangiku's, Kira's, and Shuuhei's frantically, who all stood in similar states of panic. Had no one thought of what they were going to tell the others?

Of course not. They had all been at the bar. Why did they group Renji with the three biggest alcoholic lieutenants in Soul Society?

Izuru coughs lightly into his hands, looking anxiously at the floor. "Forgive us, Lieutenant Ise, but we didn't have time to put together a formal report. We only just arrived back from the mission last night."

Lies, all filthy lies. At least Renji and Shuuhei had been attending a funeral, what was the other two's excuse for not writing a report? To think Renji trusted Izuru with his metaphor rant.

Rangiku chuckles at the tense air of the room. "Well, it's not like we couldn't tell you guys anything on paper that we couldn't here and now, right? We can just tell the story from the beginning." She looks over to Renji and Shuuhei, urging them to say something. "How did it all begin, again?"

"A good question." Shuuhei chuckles, locking his hands behind his back. "Renji was actually the first person to take up the investigation. How'd that start, Renji?"

Traitors. All of them, traitors.

Renji can do this. Renji has half-assed his way through plenty of meetings and he can do it again. He is damn well capable of blowing everyone away with how great his retelling of their intense and at times downright scary pursuit of the portals led them into the suitably dramatic tunnels to the heart of the energy. He is beyond pumped.

But then he opens his mouth, and for a second he's worried he's going to do that awkward word-vomit thing again. But wait- no, that's not word vomit. That's just actual vomit. "Excuse me for just a second."

Because Renji's life is hard, the meeting room doesn't have a conveniently located bathroom to duck into. Renji gets about as far as the potted plant in the corner of the room next to the door before the horror of last night's ingested contents mixed with the utter betrayal of this morning's breakfast pulls a second coming of the a-puke-alypse.

In the blur of being physically sick, Renji thinks that Shuuhei tries to come over and help him stand back up. Wow, that is a really nice thing to do for someone in Renji's position, especially when the rest of the meeting attendants seem to be frozen in horror. The scarred man recoils in terror when some of Renji's sick hits Shuuhei's sandals.

Because Renji's life is hard.