Disclaimer: I don't own Samurai Champloo or any of its affiliated characters, nor do I make any money from this work; and I'm fairly certain Shinichiro Watanabe did not envision this for his characters. (Although he could have, what with his awesomeness.)

A/N: This is a completely AU farce, and not to be taken seriously in any form whatsoever: yaoi, het, eel bowls and canon butchery will all occur. Rated soft R/M, but this might be bumped up in later chapters. Many, many thanks to Gallo de Pelea, for sparkly beta-ness.

For FarStrider, 'cause it's her birthday (YAAAAAY! Woo!).

The Wedding

Act I: invitation

In hindsight, he should have known the whole thing was going much too easily for him.

"I thought you wanted one of those big, western-type weddings with those dresses that make the women look like cakes?"

Fuu picked a morsel of chicken off his plate and popped it into her mouth. "I can't get rid of those last ten pounds," she said, swallowing.

"Ah."

"So, who are you bringing?"

"What? No one."

"Oh, come on. You're going to be sitting by yourself at my wedding, Jin, and I'll feel bad and then Nagamitsu will try to cheer me up. Do you remember what happened last time he did that? "

He did, vividly — what had happened to that dog, anyway? "I could bring Uncle," he offered.

"Nooo! You can't."

"Why not?"

"Because that would be lame!" She turned sideways on her stool to face him, plucking at his sleeve. "Jin. Believe it or not, you're twenty-six. You aren't eighty years old, even if you dress like you are. What was the last thing you did that was fun?"

Jin sighed, straightening his blue pullover. "As far as I know, this is supposed to be fun. And no one cares what I wear under my lab coat."

"This doesn't count. If you didn't meet me here, I'd hunt you down and drag you away from your microscope."

"Working in the garden at the temple?"

She narrowed her eyes. "That really doesn't count," she told him.

"I signed up for a sparring partner at the dojo," Jin said.

"Jin. Your life is sad and boring," she told him, and swiveled back toward her food with a face of determination; the last time she'd looked like that, she'd entered them — and a hapless foreign exchange student from their school — in the local tryouts for Iron Stomach Japan, he remembered uneasily. "I'm going to fix that."

"This is going to involve eel bowls, isn't it?"

"No," she said, thoughtfully. "Unless you're into kinky stuff."

"What?"

"Nothing. The only thing this might involve would be getting you laid, which, considering how wound up you are, would be a good thing." She gave him a fondly exasperated look, as a businessman sitting next to her choked on his soda.

Jin rubbed at the bridge of his nose, sure his head was about to explode. "Will you be — I don't think the cook heard that."

"Come on. When was the last time?"

"That is none — "

"It was crazy Yuki, wasn't it?"

"I am not discussing this with you. And he wasn't crazy."

"Uh-huh. Look, he was gorgeous, but that was years ago and you can do so much better than pretty crazy boys." She leaned in closer, her face serious. "And he was too pretty, you know? When guys look like that, they don't have to know too much because someone will want to sleep with them anyway. I bet he was boring."

"Fuu — "

"I mean, just look at Nagamitsu. He's got Elvis hair and he makes the weirdest faces, but you would not believe what he can do. I asked him once and he said he read a lot of manuals," she told him thoughtfully, chewing on the end of her straw. "But really, Pilates and yoga didn't hurt him, either."

"Fuu," Jin said, desperate to stem the tide of conversation, as the businessman gave up all pretense of interest in his lunch or anything other than eavesdropping. "I can find someone on my own — thank you, but I don't want you to set me up with anyone."

"Oh, I'm not setting you up. You're going to find someone."

He raised an eyebrow. "No."

Fuu gave him an angelic smile. "Nagamitsu loves one of the music mixes from the aerobics classes," she said, apropos of nothing. "A lot."

His eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, 'a lot'?"

She shrugged. "There is going to be dancing. It's his wedding, too, you know."

"All right." Jin nodded at the server, who began totting up their bill. "How bad could it be?"

"You are familiar with the Bee Gees, I think?"

His hand froze inside his pocket as he reached for his money. "You wouldn't."

"I would."

"You hate disco!"

"So you should feel happy that I care enough," Fuu said, voice full of sincerity, "to put myself through this for you."

He glared at her over the top of his glasses, not answering.

"Okay. Do I need to point out that it would be one date? One. I'm not telling you that you need to get married. It's just for fun." She deftly snagged the grease-stained bill as soon as the server dropped it on the counter. "I've got it, as long as I get to torture you today. Besides, it's Nagamitsu's money."

"Hn."

"Come on, Jin," she wheedled, thrusting a fistful of yen and the bill at the cashier as she herded him outside onto the sidewalk under a plane tree. "I'll help you."

"No."

"Pleeeeeease?"

It was remarkable, he decided, how she could go from polished office lady to orphaned five-year-old in the space of seconds; even on an average day, she was inhumanly cute, but to add in a quivering lower lip and tears welling in wide doe eyes — he probably looked like some horrible anime villain about to tell Princess Sparkly-Fuu Kawaii he'd made curry out of her pet kitty, while twirling the evil anime moustache he could almost feel sprouting from his upper lip. Great. All I need now is gray hair, a katana, a case full of Red Eye, and an archnemesis with a green afro.

An elderly man out walking his dachshund brushed past, giving him a baleful look after catching sight of Fuu.

Jin held up his hands in surrender. "Fine. I'll do it."

"Really?" She grinned. "He should be cute, too."

"Fine."

"And nice."

"Okay. Yes."

"And like dogs."

"Pushing your luck, now," he said.

"Hm." She gave him a warm smile as she took his arm.

The next day, Jin allowed himself to get ready for work, leave his tiny apartment, and board the subway before thinking about the promise Fuu had extorted.

The wedding was five weeks away. In that time, he had to: one) find someone; two) find someone he could stand for a whole evening; and three) find someone he could stand for a whole evening, and who he could convince to go with him as his — gaaaah! — date.

He ruthlessly squashed down consideration number four — that the easily convinced someone, who was pleasant company, also would have a nice ass — and turned his attention to making up a timetable for himself.

Five weeks, he repeated to himself, staring out the train window as stations flickered past. He'd managed to sequence the proteins for H. annuus in four; finding a date should be —

— well, impossible, really.

It wasn't until the fat woman sitting next to him gave him a sharp look that he realized he'd been unconsciously rubbing at his chest, trying to soothe away the heartburn that was lurking there.

Jin gave her an apologetic smile. Great; he was scaring the other passengers on his train, thinking about this. Maybe he could get the department secretary to go with him, she knew he was gay, and this would be over and done —

"Girl trouble?" The fat woman cocked her head to one side, looking like a pigeon considering a particularly juicy beetle.

"Mm?"

"I have a son your age," she said, eyeing him critically. "You're too healthy to be worrying about being sick, so that isn't it. You look like you teach somewhere, so you're probably used to being poor; and the only other thing my son would ever look that worried about would be a girl."

Well, it wasn't untrue, strictly speaking — "Ah."

"If she makes you that unhappy, maybe you should look for a nice girl somewhere else," she said. "There could be one where you work?"

Jin let his eyes drift to the station map plastered above the door. Four more stops, so there was no chance of escape. What was this, Ask Takeda Jin Personal Questions week? "No."

"Oh." She frowned down at the plastic carrier bag resting on her broad lap. "A friend?"

He shook his head.

She made a thoughtful noise. "What do you do for fun?"

His eyebrow twitched involuntarily. "Aikido."

"Oh." She reached over and patted his hand. "I'm sure you'll find the right girl someday."

Jin wondered if the lab manager still kept a bottle of antacid tablets at her station.

Jin shut the incubator door, peeling his gloves off as he walked to the sink at the end of the worktop. "Morning, Isaac," he said to the man sitting at the table.

Isaac finished making a notation on the paper and looked up from his microscope, smiling. "Good morning! I was thinking about you this last weekend," he said.

Jin's eyebrows drew together. "Mm?"

"I was out with my guidebook — there's a theater that dates back to Edo that I wanted to see; the book said it's supposed to be somewhere around that curry place we all went to last year. You remember, when we finished up Pelagibacter." The foreigner shook his head. "I was lost for hours. "

Jin frowned. "I don't know that area very well, but Edo . . . the buildings may be numbered in the order in which they were built. I'm not surprised you were lost," he said.

"In which they were built? That . . . makes no sense," Isaac said. "Anyway, I thought if anyone would know, you would. I would have phoned, if I'd had the lab directory with me."

"Ah." Jin stood a moment, thinking.

True, the man was someone from the lab — it wasn't that spending time with co-workers was discouraged, exactly; it was more that he'd be drawing from a pool of people with social skills as limited as his — and muscular Dutch dissertators weren't his first choice, but . . . his exuberance was charming, at times.

And it would be nice to have something to talk about at Fuu's wedding, because cake as a topic only went so far.

Jin made up his mind.

"I'm not doing anything tonight," he said. "If you aren't busy, we could walk down there and see if we can find it."

The other man's eyes sparkled, as Jin gave him a hesitant smile.

The phone started to ring as he turned his key in the lock; he toed off his shoes quickly and picked up the receiver. "Hello?"

"I know I said you were going to do this yourself," Fuu's voice came in a rush. "But, oh my god — hot, hot, super nice guy."

"I don't know if I'm talking to you," Jin said, tucking the phone between his shoulder and ear before he turned the tap on to wash his hands. "I just got in from doing this myself."

"What, seriously? Why didn't you call me?"

"Mm," he hedged. "It was someone from work."

"Well, how'd it go?"

"No."

"Ohhhh! Why not?"

"Because after the play, he left with one of the actors." He shut the tap off and sat down.

"What?" she squawked. "Are you kidding? That's so stupid!"

"Ah."

"I mean, obviously there had to have been something wrong with him," she said thoughtfully. "It wasn't as if he knew this person before, was it?"

"I don't think so," he said. "After it was over, he insisted on going backstage to meet her — "

"Wait. What?"

"Kabuki."

"Oh. But you asked — ?"

"No, no, he's gay. I don't think he knew that wasn't a woman," he said. "Once he realized, though — I think I could have set fire to the theater and he wouldn't have noticed."

"Oh, Jin. That's horrible."

"Not really," he said honestly. "It would've been just for the wedding. It could've been awkward at work. He's all right, just not for me."

"I suppose . . . what did he look like?"

"Hn." He rubbed the back of his head. "Disturbingly like Arnold Schwarzenegger."

A muffled snicker came from the other end. "You went on a date with Ah-nold?"

In her absence, Jin glared at the sink. "What? No. It wasn't a date."

She giggled. "I'm telling Nagamitsu, you know," she said, and gleefully launched into a joke about David Hasselhoff as Jin rummaged in his pocket for another antacid.

Maybe, he thought, listening to Fuu as she botched the punchline ("'No, I tore down the Berlin Wall!' Oh, wait, I forgot, the horse was at the bar too."), I could bring earplugs to the wedding.

Mercifully, the next day passed without event — the rest of the subway passengers left him alone on his way in, and Isaac had been too occupied with a tray of colonies to do anything more than grin and wave at him — until it was time for aikido; Jin set off from the lab, feeling better than he had since lunch with Fuu.

Tonight was a seminar night, as well, with students from another dojo coming to practice; it made a good change, he thought. He'd been at the dojo long enough with the other students there that he could have gone through the falls blindfolded, but with new people — it reminded him of what it had been like to start lessons when he'd still been wearing gakuran to school. He smiled at Master Mariya, who nodded at him from the center of a crowd of people in white gi.

He was just early enough, he realized. Jin changed quickly and made his way to his usual place, squeezing in next to a rumpled-looking man. The man gave him a dismissive look and went back to digging in his ear; Jin frowned disapprovingly at him as Master Mariya started the warm up. In response, the man yawned, widely enough for Jin to see his back teeth, and scratched his rump through his black hakama.

Jin's eyebrows drew together. The man couldn't deliberately be that rude here, could he?

Master Mariya shouted out the command to begin; the rude man turned to Jin and grinned. "Yo," the man said. "You gonna stand there with that stick up your ass, or you gonna come over so I can smack it out of you?"

Jin gave him a frosty smile. What a jackass.

This . . . would be fun, he decided, and advanced on the man for the first throw of the evening.