Been sitting on my hard drive for umpteen months now. Figured it was time to air it out so that you guys can be reassured that I'm not dead. Probably not remotely close to canon, but it's my headcanon for the Duty and Honor series, to help explain Renji and Hitsugaya's friendship.

THE DEFAULT APPEARANCE OF GENIUS

He didn't look like much.

Then again, what did Renji know? Maybe all good prodigies looked like cranky, underfed, silver-haired kids. Certainly the default appearance of genius wasn't something that the Academy had covered in the past five years.

Plopping his tray down on the table, he ignored the wide-eyed look that the kid gave him and settled himself on the bench opposite. "Yo."

The casual greeting didn't seem to shake the kid out of his stupor, and Renji met the - turquoise? teal? aqua? What color would you call those eyes, anyway? - gaze, reading the disbelief in it, not quite masking the faint hint of alarm. "Hitsugaya Toushirou, right?"

"I - yes," the kid answered, finally blinking but still looking bewildered. "What are you doing?"

This was the genius that had the entire Academy in an uproar? Picking up his chopsticks, Renji very pointedly dug into his rice. "Eating. What does it look like I'm doin'?"

"I can see that you're eating," came the sharp reply, and, ah, there was that temper that Momo had talked so much about. "What I meant was, why are you eating here?"

Shrugging, Renji poked at his chicken, wondering how edible it was today. Ordinarily, he would have joined Kira and Momo for lunch, but his extra sessions with the Kidou master had left him scrambling to the second lunch sitting, while the others had eaten during the first and long since left for their study period. "Empty seats. Got a headache an' didn' wan' t' sit at a crowded table."

When the kid just stared at him - looking a little less incredulous and a little more annoyed - Renji realized a tad belatedly that he had never given Hitsugaya his name. "By th' way, I'm -"

"Abarai Renji. I know who you are."

Brr, chilly! Maybe those rumors about him having ice reiatsu were right.

...come to think of it, the air around this table was a few degrees cooler than everywhere else in the overcrowded cafeteria. Although, given that it was only the late end of summer, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing - it was still hot enough outside that you could work up a sweat doing not-much, so the cool was nice.

"You're the top student in the Kendo class."

His mouth stuffed too full to properly reply, it was Renji's turn to blink wordlessly at his lunch companion, at least until his mind caught up enough to prompt him to nod. "Yeah," he answered, once he'd chewed and swallowed. "How'd you know?"

One silver-white brow lifted into an ironic arch, and Renji grimaced slightly. "Sorry. Stupid question." A handspan or more taller than most of his classmates and sporting his distinctive crimson mane, Renji was easily as recognizable as the waist-high winter prince sitting across from him.

"Yes," Hitsugaya answered, "it was."

Shrugging, Renji turned back to his meal - the chicken actually was edible today, which was a plus - and continued to eat in silence. Hitsugaya watched him warily for a moment or two longer, hiding the look under scruffy silver bangs that made him look far younger than he probably was.

Listening to Momo's tales of her childhood friend, Renji had been expecting a viciously reclusive midget with a temper sharper than a Zanpakutou. The good-natured, grumbling affection that Hinamori had for her friend was touching, but it had taken Renji about thirty seconds past sitting down to realize that Momo only saw what the little ice-genius wanted her to see.

There was a lot of shy buried under the irritable, and a hell of a lot of lonely under the rest of it. He could recognize it easy enough; same thing he saw in his own eyes every morning. They were the ones that other people looked at with fear and anger in their eyes; the ones that weren't normal.

Renji overcame it by making himself the center of attention at every turn, being the best at everything he could, fighting for admiration and friendship, just so that something like affection would banish the hate from other people's eyes.

Hitsugaya just turned his back, pretending he couldn't see the ugliness in people's gazes, pretended it didn't matter and he didn't care. Put that ice of his reiatsu up in a shield around his heart, trying not to get hurt.

Bolting down the last of his meal, Renji shoved his dishes together with a clatter that made the younger man jump, his eyes wide and alarmed, and Renji bit down on the edge of his tongue.

"Hey," he said roughly, half-reaching out for the boy but quickly withdrawing his hand when the other flinched. Just what had people done to this boy, to make him so wary of others? "Relax, I ain't gonna bite. Promise," he added, when those blue-green eyes stared up at him, jaded and mistrustful. "Just... if ya ever need somethin', y' come talk t' me, a'right?"

The wide-eyed, fearful innocence vanished in a flash, shuttered behind annoyance and defensiveness. "I can take care of myself, Abarai."

"So can I," the redhead shot back. "Doesn' mean I don' talk t' my friends when I want to."

There was a moment of stunned silence before that sharp voice, softer now than he could have imagined, echoed the word. "...friends?"

"Sure thing," Renji answered casually, swinging his feet back over the bench and grabbing his tray. "See ya 'round, Toushirou."

And he would continue to see him occasionally - it was Renji's sixth and final year at the Academy, but Hitsugaya was a genius, after all, and their classes would occasionally intersect.

Toushirou was the only one who ever bested Renji in the sword ring. And even at the end of the year, Renji was still the only one who ever sat with him at lunch.