“You left without telling me.”

“Shopping is boring,” Kisuke said absently and readjusted the clamp he’d placed the bottle in, tightening the nut just a tiny bit more; just as the shopkeep had claimed, the bottle had resisted all attempts to break it open and the metal stopper refused to budge. So he’d prodded Benihime in question, gotten a grudging acceptance back, and was just about ready to—

“Are you trying to break a bottle with Benihime?!” Tessai barked, then sighed so heavily Kisuke could feel his friend’s exasperation even with Tessai’s reiatsu bound by his gigai. “No, never mind, I don’t want to know. Just clean up after yourself. I don’t want to dig glass out of your feet because you were careless.”

Kisuke shot his friend a betrayed look and adjusted his grip on Benihime as he said, “Everything will be just fine. I know what I’m doing.” The look he got from that statement was all judgment and also entirely unfair; it wasn’t like Tessai had never made terrible decisions in his life, he just covered it up better than Kisuke had ever been able to.

Or he managed to make people think that Kisuke or Yoruichi had been the instigators instead of himself.

(The damn cheater.)

(Ah well.)

With a soft huff, Kisuke turned back to the bottle, lifted Benihime in position and—

Struck.

Metal clanged against glass, grinding-shrieking-jarring as Benihime’s blade hit, skittered along the curve, and then cleaved through the wooden clamp like butter. The bottle tumbled to the table and rolled across the top, toppling over the edge and striking the floor with a series of clinks until it finally came to rest against Kisuke’s foot.

Smug-amused-taunting flickered across Kisuke’s senses and he scowled at the bottle as he bent over to snatch it up once again. “I will get you open,” he hissed at it, giving the thing a shake. “Don’t think I’m going to give up so easily.” Smug-amused-tauntingpressed harder against his senses, all but daring him to do his worst, and he grit his teeth in frustration.

(He was being bested by a bottle.)

(A bottle!)

“Have you tried just opening it?” Tessai asked innocently, expression perfectly open and perfectly lying, the bastard; he was laughing inside, Kisuke knew it.

“Would you like to try?” Kisuke asked with as much of Yoruichi’s ‘I’m talking to a bastard who I can’t call out’ tone of voice as he could muster, offering the offending bottle to Tessai as he did.

Tessai gave the bottle a contemplative look, then smiled one of Yoruichi’s political smiles at Kisuke and said, “No, I don’t think I’ll take your fun from you.”

“Tch.” Kisuke turned away and set the bottle back on the table, then turned his attention to Benihime and ran his fingers down her blade to check for damage; he’d have to spend the evening making it up to her, he knew, but he couldn’t quite regret it and he knew she was now almost as curious as he was. For glass to utterly resist her, without even a single sign of damage…

(What was it?)

(What secrets did it hold?)

(And how could he get into it?)

“The stopper won’t come out,” Kisuke said as he sheathed Benihime and picked the bottle back up, turning it over and over in his hands yet again; he was almost coming to like the odd dissonance of heavy-not-heavy that the bottle gave rise to, along with the perpetual coolness of the glass. No matter how long he held it, or what he tried to use against it, the glass never heated up, not even when he engulfed the thing in a fire kido. “The glass won’t break, the stopper won’t come out, and I can’t see through it even if I hold it in front of a bright light.”

“And where, exactly, did you get this bottle?” Tessai asked as he came to stand at Kisuke’s side and eyed the mysterious bottle thoughtfully.

Kisuke hummed. “Shop near where you were buying groceries. The owner didn’t even ask for money, just said he’d charge me for it when I eventually tried to return it.”

“And yet you took it,” Tessai said dryly.

“It has reiatsu, Tessai!” Kisuke protested, shoving the bottle at his friend. “I can feel it!”

The look Tessai gave him was more exasperation than anything. “The bottle has reiatsu,” he repeated slowly, gaze sliding from Kisuke’s face to focus on the bottle itself. “Beyond resisting Benihime’s strike, I’ve sensed nothing out of the ordinary around it.”

Kisuke blinked in confusion. “Nothing? Nothing at all?” he asked, then frowned when Tessai shook his head; the bottle had pushed its reiatsu at him twice right in front of Tessai, but his friend… hadn’t sensed it? Did that mean he was the only one who could? Maybe it was touch based? But no, it had caught his attention before he was touching it, so it wasn’t touch based. Though he had been pretty close when it had ‘spoken’, so maybe distance was a factor?

He wiggled the bottle a bit a in front of Tessai’s face, trying to prompt the whatever-it-was to respond, but… nothing. “Come on,” he muttered at it, “You’ve been teasing me for hours now. Are you suddenly shy?”

Silence greeted his question, and one of Tessai’s eyebrows began to creep towards his hairline.

“I know you’re still in there,” Kisuke said with a scowl and another little shake of the bottle. “Hiding when I’m trying to introduce you isn’t nice, or so I’ve been informed,” he told it archly, ignoring Tessai’s quiet huff of laughter. Still, nothing answered him. “Come on, please?” he practically begged, then pursed his lips and continued, “Or I’ll… I’ll—” he wracked his mind, trying to come up with a good threat that a bottle would react to before abruptly remembering the flash of longing that had struck when he threatened to drop it in the store— “Or I’ll stop trying to open you!”

Exasperation-frustration-annoyance abruptly lanced across his senses, hard enough to make him stagger back and to make Tessai raise his hand, power gathering around him in preparation for a kido and—

“That was the bottle,” Tessai said in amazement as what had happened finally registered. “That…” he pursed his lips and let his hand fall back to his side as the gathered power dissipated. “Fascinating,” he murmured as he moved closer and reached out to touch the bottle, only for a jagged slash of anger-indignation-refusal to hit both of them at the same time.

They both froze in place, staring at the bottle, before Tessai carefully stepped away and tucked his hands behind his back.

“What’d Tessai ever do to you?” Kisuke asked the bottle warily, unsure why it had reacted to his friend so strongly. “He can be annoying sometimes, but I’ve known him all my life.” And he currently owed the man more than he could ever articulate if he was being honest, so the violent refusal was… jarring to say the least.

Indignation-refusal-possession pressed against his senses, reminding him of nothing more than the first time Yoruichi had taken her feline form and the cat’s instincts had overwhelmed her; she’d essentially clambered onto his shoulder, nipped his ear, and then refused to be budged for hours, even by her own family.

(He still had the scars from where her claws dug deep in an attempt to keep herself anchored on him.)

(It had been… an interesting few days, to say the least.)

“I think I’d better leave you to it,” Tessai said with a hint of amusement. “I’ll bring you dinner.”

Kisuke rolled his eyes and made a shooing gesture. “Go on then. Have fun in the kitchen,” he shot over his shoulder as he dragged a chair out from the table and dropped to sit in it.

“Have fun with your mysterious bottle,” Tessai shot back as he walked out of the room and slid the door closed behind him.

“Well, I guess we’re alone again,” Kisuke murmured as he set the bottle down and slumped across the table, chin resting on his crossed arms as he stared at the damn obstinate bottle. “What to do, what to do…”

He’d already tried everything that immediately came to mind, but… there had to be something.

There had to be.

He’d figure it out.

He would.