Their waiter comes around just as Ichigo is wrapping up his rambling tale of the day’s events, complete with his (entirely justified) complaints about how ridiculously helpless the denizens of Soul Society tend to be despite being powerful warriors in their own right.
They’re good people — or, mostly good people, Ichigo isn’t going to judge too hard now that certain elements have been removed — and many of them can hold their own, but it seems like the minute a villain decides to come after Ichigo in particular everyone conveniently forgets how to fight.
(Tatsuki has called them a ‘collective of damsels waiting for distress’ before and, well… he’s not entirely convinced it isn’t true.)
(He could, however, do without Orihime’s snickering comments about him therefore being Soul Society’s knight in shining armor.)
(Because he really, really isn’t.)
Ordering only takes a few minutes, since both of them have settled on fairly straightforward meals, and then they’re once more left alone. Silence settles over the table as Ichigo leans back in his seat and glances around, wondering what to talk about next; he’s never exactly been one for small talk, and he doesn’t really know James well enough to ask anything about his life, so…
“Bit surprised you all decided to show up after a mess like that,” James says before Ichigo can flounder for very long. “It were me, I’d tell everyone to take a hike and sleep for a week.”
Ichigo snorts and shakes his head. “Tatsuki insisted, since none of us were hurt bad—” a bit of a lie, but Orihime’s healing makes short work of any injuries, and no one really needs to know that— “and since we’d already accepted the invitation after skipping the past three gatherings she said it’d be bad form to skip this one.” Though now that he’s he’s here, sitting across a table from James, he’s beginning to suspect that Tatsuki had an ulterior motive; she certainly hadn’t been surprised to see James waiting for them, and had been pretty quick to tell them to get lost and go spend time together…
Hmm…
“Guess I’ll hafta thank her, then,” James says with a tiny smile curling at the corners of his lips. “I was about ten minutes away from wandering off on my own, after all. Present company’s much better than trying to find somewhere quiet in that damn hotel.”
Ichigo wrinkles his nose and says, “Unless you have a room there, I don’t think you’d find anywhere to hang out peacefully in that place.” He really doesn’t understand why they have to always meet at super fancy places, be it hotels or mansions or whatever, though at least some of the mansions have been fairly interesting to poke around in; it seems a bit counterproductive, if he’s being honest. Most of them aren’t exactly rich, or even close to it — he knows a couple heroes are barely making do, their hero-work getting in the way of holding down a steady day job and their compensation from that hero-work barely enough to make ends meet — so the constant exposure to all this is… uncomfortable, to say the least.
James groans and lifts a hand to run it over his face. “Don’t fuckin’ remind me,” he mutters grumpily. “Really wish we could meet anywhere but places like that. I know there’s other spots big enough for us all, we don’t gotta constantly meet up in places where everything costs more than the average person makes in a damn year.”
“Maybe you should bring that up to your local rich hero?” Ichigo asks with a touch of amusement. “Stark seems like a decent sort, just… a bit out of touch, maybe? If he’s the only setting these things up, I mean, or has any control over them.”
“That’s… huh, you know, I don’t actually know who’s the one deciding the places,” James says after a moment’s thought, his brows furrowing and his metal fingers tapping against the tabletop. “I always just kinda thought it was Tony, but we do got suits— uh, official UN reps I mean, showing up at ‘em too.” He tilts his head slightly, makes a considering noise, then shrugs and says, “No idea. I’ll ask, now that you got me thinkin’ about it.”
“Let me know how that goes,” Ichigo says with a nod.
James chuckles and nudges Ichigo’s leg with a foot. “You gotta give me your number if you want me to update you as I learn about it, otherwise it’s down to meet-ups like this.”
Ichigo very maturely sticks his tongue out at James, earning him another bark of laughter, and then reaches into his pocket to pull his phone out. “I suppose I can give you my number,” he says with a touch of fake haughtiness, even as he flips to the right screen, brings his number up and then slides the phone across the table to James so the man can input it into his own phone.
“Appreciate it,” James says dryly, even as he pulls out his own phone and carefully types Ichigo’s number in, before picking Ichigo’s phone up and clearly entering his own number. “There, now it won’t be some weird unknown number texting ya,” he says as he slides Ichigo’s phone back to him.
“Thanks.” Ichigo picks his phone up and glances at the screen, then makes an amused noise at the mostly correct katakana that James had picked out. “Didn’t know you knew Japanese at all,” he says as he corrects the name and saves it.
James shrugs awkwardly and ducks his head. “Know a bit. Can get around if I need to, but ‘m better at reading it than speakin’,” he mumbles, as if he’s embarrassed about knowing so little.
“That’s better than a lot of people,” Ichigo tells James firmly. “If you want to get some practice in, I don’t mind.”
“Uh… maybe next time?” James suggests with a small, wry smile. “Lemme brush up more, first.”
“Yeah, that sounds good.” Ichigo tucks his phone away in his pocket, absently checks for his wallet and—
Finds nothing in the pocket where he expects it to be.
“Something wrong?” James asks as Ichigo begins to check his other pockets.
“Eeehh… maybe,’ Ichigo admits with embarrassment, as each check comes up empty. “I uh… think I might have left my wallet behind in Japan.” In the shoten, probably, where he often left it and his keys whenever he had time before a combat; his phone was useful even in his spiritual form — it was one of Hat’n’Clog’s special phones — but he’d learned his lesson about letting mod souls have access to his personal effects after the first time Kon decided to spend all his loose yen on… well… unmentionable things.
James has the gall to snicker at him, the bastard, and his laughter doesn’t stop even with Ichigo scowls at him. In fact, that only makes it worse.
“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up,” Ichigo mutters as he rechecks his pockets one final time out of desperation. Not that he finds his wallet. Not that he really expected to.
(It would have been nice, though…)
(Ugh.)
“I’ll pay for both a’ us, don’t worry,” James tells him through his snickers. “I owe ya one for the first time we met, anyway.”
Ichigo huffs and shakes his head. “You don’t owe me anything for that, but… thanks. I appreciate it. It’d be a bit awkward otherwise.”
“Yeah, I bet.” James grins at him and then leans back and says, “So, want to hear about one of our recent messes that didn’t quite get in the news?” When Ichigo nods in agreement, James’ grin widens. “So, this whole mess started when Loki decided to taunt Tony with some sorta alien gadget…”