A/N: Hello again! I'm grateful for all that attention. Also, I continue to find little weird scenarios to toy around AnE and the Exwires. This is another one from the older things, I think it's the second one-shot I actually wrote ^^'
I was just unsure about publishing this, since it's quite stupid little thing with a whole bunch of unsaid but important stuff going on.

"With The Ribbon On Top"

It was a very warm summer day and there was a monster in the lake which was a really lucky thing to happen. If you were an exorcist, that's it.

Normal people were told, that there was something wrong with the water - a problem with E. Coli or something like that, so the exorcists could do their job without too many distractions and not worrying about civilians getting in the line of fire.

It also meant that they had all the lake just for themselves, so after dealing with the demon they could relax all they wanted. It was one of the few occasions when Rin could lose up a little bit and let his tail wave around freely instead forcing himself to keeping it around his waist for the whole day.

Yukio, of course, was muttering something about how that short moment of freedom could lead to breaking all the secrecy in the worst possible moment and how he really shouldn't getting used to waving his bonus part of anatomy around, but Rin decided to ignore his brother completely. It wasn't like the whole Vatican hadn't already know about him, so what was the deal? But still, he felt slightly worse after that exchange of opinions. It was almost like Yukio of all people was unable to really accept the whole half-demon thing.

Rin was so worked up on being angry at his brother, that he noticed Suguro only after the other boy poked him in the ribs.

"Ouch, what's the deal?!" He groaned, jumping away, because Ryuji was about to poke again, and man, he wasn't even trying to be delicate.

"I have something for you," Bon said with his usual menacing voice.

"Let me guess, a fist in the face?"

"Tempting, but no," Ryuji smirked slightly at the joke. Or the mental image the joke presented. "Here."

He pulled something out of his pocket. It was long, shining piece of some sort of bright red material, lace maybe, way too narrow to be a scarf or anything else, but...

"What is this?" Rin blinked, staring at the ribbon with a confused face.

"Well, a dare, obviously," Suguro answered, raising an eyebrows. "Unless you want to chicken out, that's it."

"You're looking for a vengeance after that crown, aren't you?"

"And what if I am?" Ryuji's grin was rather nasty. Toothy and menacing, going hand in hand with his tendency to glare, painting the image of true menace and hooligan. Which was quite ridiculous when one actually knew Bon.

"Whatever, putting this in my hair isn't so bad," Rin shrugged. He could walk around with a red headband without a problem. That wouldn't be even as girly as the crown was. It seemed, Ryuji was losing his touch.

"I'm not thinking about your hair."

"Then what do you want?" Rin blinked in confusion.

Suguro merely smirked, then his gaze slowly shifted, wandering down from Rin's face, over his shoulder, to stop at his...

"No way!" Rin gasped.

"Aw, so you don't want to do that?" Suguro snorted. "What happened to that 'oh not so big of a deal' of yours?"

"But this is my...!"

"Well, obviously it is yours. It's sticking out of your butt, you dolt."

"My tail is not sticking out of my butt!" Rin protested. His tail, as if called to an action, was wildly waving around, almost smacking Bon in the face at one point. Ryuji just stepped back a little, not acting like the almost-smack bothered him at all.

Then he grabbed the ribbon and tried to create a nice bow and not bind his fingers by doing so. Naturally, it just had to be more complicated than it looked like. Why the hell it wasn't working? When he was packing bento his bows were just fine!

"Oh, for crying out loud, get over here!" Suguro growled, after he was finished cracking up over Rin's failures.

"And you're Scorpion since when?"

"Since the moment I realized this is going to take the whole day if you're going to do it on your own," Bon grunted.

Rin decided it would be stupid to argue. Sure, he could wrestle with his tail all day if he wanted but that definitely would look way more ridiculous that simply walking around with that stupid bow. So he just groaned and let Bon do the deed.

It was one of the oddest sensations in the world, letting somebody actually doing something around his tail. Even Yukio was keeping his distance, and being force to hide it almost all the time wasn't helping either. But Bon wasn't acting like it was something special at all. He just wrapped the material like he wanted, created puffy bow and was done with it. It was almost underwhelming.

Rin was just fine with underwhelming.

Later on, Rin found himself in the water, swimming around and enjoying warm waves. The ribbon was hopelessly wet, but somehow it was still on his tail and not going anywhere. He could even take it off now, since Bon was too occupied by baking himself in the sun to really care about the ridiculous thing, but he decided against it.

A dare was a dare and it wasn't like it was hurting him or anything. So, just for the mere satisfaction of smearing it up Bon's face he was going to stick with it for awhile.

xxx

Yukio never had enough time to just sit down and relax for a moment. There always was something to do, some tests to check and grade or something new to learn for his own classes, no mention keeping up with his actual job as an exorcist and watching over his brother who was true trouble–magnet.

Because of that, right now Yukio felt like he was slightly lost. Suddenly, there was time to sit down, but his legs were so used to carrying him for way longer that he ended up restless. He was wandering down the beach back and forth, trying to walk out a bit of that unnecessary energy, stopped here and there for a small talk with one person or another. Finally, Yukio ended up sitting down next to Bon, slightly hyper on caffeine from all the sweet drinks he swallowed when he was trying to kill time and trying to follow the lead of Suguro. And just stay in place, catching a bit of sun while he still could, watching his brother shenanigans from afar. And his brother was running around with something cheerfully red on the top of his tail, right there, where the longer hair were starting to grow.

"Why my brother is running around with a ribbon wrapped on his tail?" Yukio asked.

Suguro tried not to grin, but failed miserably.

"...seriously?" the younger Okumura blinked, then sighed. "Why would you even make him to do something like that?"

Suguro huffed. "There's just no reason to keep tiptoeing around it, teach."

"And you think that wrapping a ribbon around his tail would solve every single problem?"

"Definitely not. But it certainly make them seem less terrible, don't you think?"

Yukio looked at Rin for a long moment, observing his brother running happily around and trying to get Shima as wet as possible. Shima was doing exactly the same thing, but he couldn't do the extra splash that Rin could produce with his tail, so he seemed to be losing this battle.

"Okay, I see your point. It's actually kinda stupid," he smiled slightly. Because Son of Satan wasn't looking all that unnatural with that ribbon on top. In some weird way the bow made Rin seems to be more normal.

"Yeah, suits him really well," Suguro deadpanned.