Title: Stupid With Sentiment
Pairings/Characters: Kenshin/Kaoru, past Kenshin/Tomoe; peripheral Sano/Megumi. Various characters.
Rating: T, for language and strippers. (Yay!)
Notes: I don't know where this came from, but I'd had about fifteen pages written when I realized that it should be a multi-parter. I don't know how long it's going to be, or how it's going to end, but I suppose we'll get there when we get there. Excuse me, the MCAT needs to get back to grinding my soul to dust now. Please remember to review, and enjoy.

"Let me get this straight," Kaoru says, rubbing the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger. "You want me—me, Kaoru Kamiya—to dress up as a stripper, get stuffed in a cake, and ride in an unheated truck to Shura and Sayo's bridal shower?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Megumi says. "The truck will be heated."

"That's not the point!" Kaoru snaps, and takes a fortifying gulp of her white chocolate mocha frap. "Has it occurred to you, maybe, that I'm not a stripper?"

"Of course you're not, Kaoru," Tae puts in as she slips into the booth. "It's all going to be in good fun."

Kaoru shakes her head. "I'm not doing this, guys. No way."

"C'mon, Kaoru," Misao wheedles. "We'll have a blast."

"Please. You'll have a blast, while I get covered in frosting while wearing nipple pasties!"

"Don't be ridiculous," Megumi says again, sipping a caramel macchiato with the air of an urbane professional. "No one ever said you had to wear nipple pasties."

"I don't even know why I bother talking to you people," Kaoru says sourly in response to Megumi's grin. "Why don't we pool our money and hire a real stripper?"

"Because Sayo would never approve. You know how she feels about that, and it is her party," Tae says, the very picture of reason.

"So why bother having a stripper at all? No matter how you try to spin it, this doesn't make any sense."

"Because, Kaoru," Misao says, rolling her eyes, "Sayo and Shura are getting married and we're throwing a bachelorette party, and you can't have one of those without strippers, and since Sayo disapproves of monetizing female bodies and reducing women to the sum of their anatomical parts, we can't hire a stripper, but it'll be fun if one of us gets dressed up as one. You know. To keep the occasion festive."

Kaoru resists the urge to slap her forehead, but it's a close thing. "Then you do it."

"Can't," Misao says cheerfully. "I'm decorating the place. I'm needed beforehand. And Okon and Omasu are helping me after work, so they're out."

"Then, you," Kaoru says to Megumi.

"Can't," the doctor says, smiling. "I'm on ER call until about an hour after the party starts, so I'll be late."

"Tae?" Kaoru asks, knowing already that resistance is futile.

"I can't either, Kaoru," Tae says, and while her expression is sympathetic, her eyes are dancing with suppressed laughter. "I'm catering the shindig, and Sae isn't going to be back from France for a while, so she can't, either."

"I still don't get why we have to do this at all," Kaoru says sourly, but, realizing that her so-called friends would never let the matter die, decides to give in with grace. "And I'll probably live to regret this, but I'll do it, so long as no one walks away with recorded evidence. I don't need this getting me fired if pictures end up on facebook, or worse—" she levels a glare at Misao—"on Okina's hardrive."

"They wont, I promise," Misao says. "And he really is a sweetie. He doesn't perv on you, uh, as much since you did that thing to his beard. How did you manage that, anyway?"

"Trade secret. And I'm not denying it," Kaoru says. "He's adorable, but his porn collection extends into the terabytes."

Misao concedes the point by sucking on her smoothie.

"Anyway," Kaoru says, addressing the table at large, the occupants of which are now smiling brightly at the prospect of her popping out a cake, "my services do not come free. There are conditions. One—" she holds up a finger—"there will be no photos or videos takes during the popping."

"Done," Misao promises. "I'll confiscate cell phones myself."

Kaoru nods. "Two. I will not dress up as anything ridiculous. No maids, no pirates, no gypsies, no sex-kitten nurses—"

"Got it," Megumi says, rapidly flipping through pages on her iPhone. "We'll find you something perfect. You and I have to go shopping for your clothes anyway. Next weekend?"

Kaoru nods. Lord only knew what Megumi would try to fit her in if Kaoru didn't go along to exercise her veto-power. "Sure. And three," Kaoru says, "There will be no frosting involved. Not one me, not on the cake, not on anything."

"Of course," Tae nods. "They're usually made out of cardboard, but I'll put in the order personally, just to make sure."

"Well then," Kaoru grumbles, and sucks on her frap some more.

The day of the party finds Kaoru staring dubiously at the three-foot-tall cardboard box her so-called friends plan on sticking her in. It's festive enough, she supposes, with adorable bits of fruit stenciled on the sides, even if the strawberries looked a bit anemic, and a bright red trim. It was almost cute, but she is going to have to stuff herself in there and get delivered to a party by a delivery service that apparently specialized in this sort of thing, so all she really wanted to do was kick it.

"Tae," she says into the phone, "are you sure about this?"

"Is it too small?" Tae's voice crackles over the connection. "They told me that most adults could fit in it."

"I fit," Kaoru says, but aside from general unease and the acute sense that the evening was sure to be the most embarrassing of her life, she can't find a good reason to back out. "I'm just not sure about this."

"It'll be fun, Kaoru. Legendary. The Night Koaru Kamiya Popped Out of a Pastry. Hey, that'd be great title for a romantic comedy."

"I'd pay money to see that," Kaoru agrees, "but not if I'm the one doing the popping. Did you see what Megumi convinced me to buy?"

"Yes, she texted me a picture of you wearing it. You look great." Tae laughed. "Well, your ass my not be covered all the way, but you do look good in it. Oh, hey, I've got to go, the boob cake's almost done."

"What cake now?"

"You'll see!" Tae laughs and hangs up.

Kaoru chews on her bottom lip some more, and then decides that she's had enough of feeling wishy-washy about this cake business. She'll dress in that scrap of fabric some trick in the dressing room mirror had enticed her into buying, and she'd sit in that cake, and she'd pop out of it with finesse, damn it, even if it kills her.

She stomps off to shower. She may not have Megumi's cool, sophisticated beauty, nor Tae's classic bone structure, nor Misao's delicate, impish features, but she is fierce. Fierce, Kaoru reminds herself. She may not be gorgeous, but if she had managed to become a national kendo champion by eighteen, she could do this.

She could do this easy.

Kenshin, meanwhile, is scowling at the phone. "Sir, tell me you didn't."

"Of course I did," Hiko responds imperiously. "It's New Year's Eve. I knew you'd be alone in that little rat hole of an apartment. Don't you tell me I don't care about you after this."

Kenshin thinks back over the years of borderline child abuse to which he'd been subjected in the name of building strength of body and spirit and snorts. "I never said that. Sir. But this is completely unnecessary. And it's not a rat hole."

"Of course its necessary," Hiko answers, cool as cucumber and arrogant as Faustus, except without the terrible downfall and eternal servitude to the Devil attached. "You haven't had a steady relationship since that Yukishiro girl. It really is time to move on with your life."

"So you decide to send me a stripper?" Kenshin grinds out and pulls his word-a-day calendar towards him. What do you know, it really is nearly ten tears to the day. Five years ago, he would have been drowning in his own sorrows; this year, he only set about plowing through his paperwork. "You couldn't send me a bottle of sake or something, you know, reasonable to commiserate?"

Hiko snorts, and Kenshin notes that when Hiko snorts, it's imperious. Of course it is. "You can't even taste sake, moron. You say it tastes like chalk to you."

"That's besides the point."

"No, it's not. I'm not wasting fine sake on a brat who can't even enjoy it."

"And what makes you think I'll enjoy this stripper's services?"

"Did you turn gay while I wasn't looking?"

"That's not the point either!"

"Have you decided to become a monk, then?"

Kenshin sighs through his teeth. As thankful as he is to Hiko for rescuing him out of truly horrific conditions early in life, he isn't grateful for the fact that Hiko has decided that kicking Kenshin's ass throughout the remainder of it is his due.

"You live like one, so you could have fooled me. Then again, you could be gay. I wouldn't know, what with that hair of yours," Hiko continues.

"Your hair is longer than mine," Kenshin says testily. Damn it, he thinks. Twenty-eight years old, and ten years since he'd lived with Hiko, but even the shortest conversation is capable of reducing him to a snarling teenager.

"Besides the point."

"I'm hanging up now. Sir."

"Listen, idiot." Hiko's voice loses its nonchalance and he pauses. Kenshin listens despite himself. "It's been ten years now. She's dead. Gone."

For a second, Kenshin doesn't know what to say. He knows that the years have stretched long and alone since Tomoe's death, but to hear it makes them seem interminably longer. Then: "I know, sir."

"Then you need to pull your head out of your ass and get over it." Hiko's words are curt and sharp, and all the more powerful for being true.

"I know, sir," he repeats. The pain is not so bad. He doesn't want to hurl the phone out the window in anguish, nor is the urge to drink himself into a stupor loud and overwhelming. He hears what Hiko is saying, because Hiko is an expert at not saying things—get up, get out, stop hiding behind your work, you idiot, because her spirit cannot possibly be happy to see you like this.

He's known that for years now.

"Think of this as a twelve-step program," Hiko says. "Don't waste the opportunity, idiot."

The click is loud in Kenshin's ear. He sighs and shakes the cobwebs from his mind. "With all due respect, sir, I think you need that more than me," he mutters into the phone and tosses it onto his desk.

A stripper, he muses, of all things, a stripper. He sighs and rubs his forehead. He'd thank the girl for the thought and her time, send her home, and get back to work. It may be time to move on, he thinks, as he looks over documents relevant to the Tsukayama deposition; Tomoe is a shadow of the woman she had once been in his life, and while he has known that for a while now, he's allowed himself to stagnate. This is the life he had been given, when she had lost hers, and he needs to live it.

But he wouldn't start it with a stripper, he thinks, making a note on the document on his desk. While he had nothing against people making money any way they chose so long as it was legal, he preferres not to have to pay for a woman's attention, even if the thought of asking a woman out and making—Heaven forbid—small talk across a dinner table makes him break out in hives.

He continues making notes—Mr. Tsukayama faltered here, embellished here, probably because he acquired his collection of antique Japanese weaponry in less than legal ways, so he'd have to schedule yet another deposition, and probably sit in on it just to make sure all was in order before the initial hearing next month—when he hears a loud knock on his door.

He sighs. Time to get rid of the stripper.

Instead of some scantily clad woman, though, he comes face-to-face with a very, very large cake, decorated in what seems to be bright red tinsel and pale strawberries, and a burly deliveryman who shoves a clipboard in his face.

Kenshin swallows a groan and feels a headache start worming its way between his eyes. He signs it anyway and longs for a stiff drink. What the hell, maybe he'd even offer the stripper one.

Kaoru curses her infernal dress for the nth time, and tries to tug it down her thighs. It's ridden up horribly, and Kaoru is sure that half of her bottom is going to be on display to God, the Universe, and various inebriated party guests when she pops out.

She hears a knock, and the slightly muffled voice of the deliveryman as he wheels the cake in, the slight bumps as she passes over a threshold. She squints at her watch—it's so dark in here, she can't see—and tries to estimate. She's supposed to emerge exactly five minutes after she's been set down.

As the seconds tick by, Kaoru wonders—where is the squealing, the laughter, the popping of Champaign bottles? This is the quietest bachelorette party she's ever been party to, and once again tugs on her dress.

Someone clears a throat, and there's a discreet knock on the smallest tier, somewhere to the right of her head. Change of plans? Well, it's now or never, and Kaoru screws up her courage, hitches a smile on her face, hopes to God that Misao did manage to confiscate cell phones and surges upward. Her head tears through the tissue cover of the cake easily enough.

"Surprise!" she shouts and she pops out, but instead of a room full of her friends in various stages of sugar inhalation and numerous other intoxications, she comes face-to-face with a smallish man with red hair.

He blinks.

She blinks.

And then thinks, I'm going to kill all of them! before clapping her hands on her face and sinking back down into the cake.