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KFP Modern AU Story #1: When Po and Tigress go out for dinner one night, things get out of hand. Not a TiPo/Pogress fic.
Piano music and conversations filled the atmosphere in the city’s newest restaurant. It’s orange and brown brick background, pendant lights, and sleek brown wooden floors gave the new restaurant a modern feel that brought many curious customers to snoop around. These snooping customers gave the restaurant many days and nights full houses and wonderful food reviews for weeks to come. This particular night however was different. Among the restaurant’s regular customers, the staff and current customers had not noticed there were special guests in the restaurant tonight. On one of the many tables of this very restaurant sat two of the city’s legendary and popular kung fu masters.
“When you told me you were taking me out for dinner. This wasn’t what I was expecting.” admitted Tigress as she put her cell phone to the side, eyeing the whole restaurants' look.
Po and Tigress were seated on a small table covered with a mantle with two napkins folded neatly on each other’s side. Tonight, she wore an open red jacket with a black undershirt and sported a pair of very black denim jeans. Right across from her, Po wore a black graphic tee with a tuxedo and tie designed under the collar.
“Glad you’re surprised. I knew you’d like it here.” Po paused, “You didn’t eat here before did you?”
“No, I haven’t. Places with names like Edible Delights aren’t exactly my type of food joints.”
Putting a hand to his chest, Po took a sigh of relief. “Oh good. Good.”
“Still, choosing a not-so-average restaurant with a nice atmosphere is a surprise for me. I’m impressed Po.”
“You deserve it. I got my paycheck for the week so I thought about repaying that,” Po coughed, “▬ y’know favor.”
Tigress leaned onto her hand and lidded her eyes. “You mean for the time you borrowed the Sword of Heroes as a prop for your dad’s restaurant and then played around with it for a good hour until I caught you.” Tigress deadpanned.
Po quickly looked to the ceiling lights, avoiding Tigress’ stare as he scratched the back of his head. “Uh, yeah.. that!” He chuckled until his small moment of embarrassment died down to look at Tigress again. “Hope this’ll make up for all that?”
Tigress smirked and picked up her menu.
“We’ll see.”
Po gulped and picked up his own menu. He pulled down the laminated paper and back up again from his view, seeing if there was any change oh his friend's face. No negative change so far. So far so good. He went back to his own menu. Skimming through the menu’s first page, he found the meal options ranged from salads to pastas. None of those seemed satisfying until he reached the Hearty Meals portion of the menu.
A gazelle waitress walked up the table with a smile on her face accompanied with a perky attitude. “Hello! My name is Carol, I’ll be your waitress this lovely evening. What can I get you two?”
“One Portobello Mushroom Meal please. With a Coke!” Po said putting the menu down.
Po eagerly turned back to Tigress and saw she was still overlooking the menu. He bit his lip. Did she not like anything? He hadn’t thought about what food she hated. This was not a good time to mess up. Po’s overthinking came at a stop as soon as Tigress put down her menu.
“I’ll take a Eggplant Parmesan with a lemon water to drink please.”
Po sighed as the waitress wrote the last orders. He remembered seeing Tigress’ choice on the menu and realized it fit his budget. This was going to be perfect. The perfect dinner for Tigress and a most important moment to prove he was a good friend that kept his word.
“Got it! One Portobello Mushroom Meal and one Eggplant Parmesan for the lovely couple. You meal will come shortly.”
Po and Tigress eyes bulged their eyes out at the end of the waitress’ sentence. “Oh we’re not▬” they both blurted out louder than either of them wanted to.
Startled by their outburst, the waitress looked at each of them. “Pardon?”
Po tried opening his mouth but was so flustered nothing that made sense came out.
“We’re not exactly… It’s nothing like that…” Tigress managed.
“Oh I’m sorry. I assumed you two were here for our Couples’ Out Night special. It’s a couples only special for today and your orders are part of the special. You two did see the sign, right?” the waitress said pointing out with her pen.
Po and Tigress turned towards the pen’s direction to see a blackboard with an elaborate Couples Welcome sign designed with hearts all over. Po looked to the side as he saw couples seated at the tables around them. Some were clinking their glasses, others were gazing to each other’s eyes, and one of those couples were even kissing. That made Po’s face burn even more. Okay, he messed up bad. Real bad.
“I’ll fix up your order then. If you want I can swat you somewhere else. But due to this change of events, the price will have to change a bit. Without tonight’s special, your order would be a la Carte. Making your total …”
Po glanced over the waiter’s calculator and felt his face drop. This was bad and he needed to take care of this quick. Tigress, on the other hand, took notice of Po's state and closed her menu, grabbed her phone case and promptly got off her seat.
“Po, if you’re not comfortable, we can▬”
“Of course we’re a couple!”
“What?” Tigress blurted out.
Po put a hand over his mouth, only giving a response to the waitress. “W-we’re a bit nervous about this. This was supposed to be, y’know… our first date.”
Tigress’ jaw dropped as her eyes widened at Po’s sudden statement. The waitress, however, was suddenly starry eyed and clenched her pad tightly to her chest.
“We’ll still be having dinner here.” Po told with a weary smile. “You don’t need to change anything! Everything’s fine.”
“Po.” Tigress called.
A smile slowly formed across the waitress' face and unknowing to herself, Carol quietly let out, “You’re so sweet.” It wasn’t until both Po and Tigress turned to her Carol had caught her self. The waitress composed herself, grabbing her pen and staring at the writing pad. “Oh uh, Anything else you’d like?”
Tigress opened her mouth. “Actually we▬”
“Can I get a glass of water with that? That’s free right?”
Tigress fixed a glare at him. “Po.”
“Of course sir. Regular or with lemon?”
“Regular please.”
Tigress furrowed her eyebrows. She took her seat and sat down again, frowning and cocking at eyebrow at Po. The waitress quickly came back with a glass of water and placed it onto the table. Carol gave Po a wink and left the pair in an awkward silence. Po glanced at the glass and then to Tigress. She folded her arms but said nothing. Po grabbed the glass and drank its content in a gulp. Placing his glass on the table, Po then fiddled with his thumbs and suddenly found the far table to his left very interesting.
“Po.”
“Mhm.” Po, now pursing his lips, gave his full attention rather quickly to Tigress.
“Do you just realize what you did?” asked Tigress.
“I promised you a meal here and I am getting you one.” he stated firmly.
“And you had to lie to do so?”
“It’s just for tonight.“
Tigress groaned. “Po, what if someone heard what you just said? We’ll be all over the news and every gossip site on the internet!” Tigress slapped her forehead.
“We’re not that hugely famous.” countered Po. Tigress slid her hand down to her nose, looking at Po with concern.
“Or worse, Shifu. What’s Shifu going to say?”
Po froze. An image of Shifu ordering him to do extra intense training as punishment appeared out of nowhere in his mind. Sudden realization broke that train of thought. Po immediately composed himself as he leaned back comfortably in his chair.
“Don’t worry about Shifu. Tigress, I run most of the Furious Five forums, blogs, and pages out there. If anyone knows more about that stuff, it’s me.”
Tigress scoffed. “Really? If you know that much, then who runs the Dragon Warrior, the and I quote “Bodacious dude of Bodaciousness” forum on Forum Frontier dot com?”
Po opened his mouth but quickly closed it. He pondered for a full second until opening his mouth again. “I have a forum?” Tigress said nothing. Po quickly took out his smartphone and started pressing on the screen.
Tigress rolled her eyes, “For your information, it was on my Bobble recommendations page. Get with the program Po. We have to be careful with everything we do. A lot of reporters go into those forums to get a simple scoop for a quick buck.”
“Don’t you worry about it! Everyone in here hasn’t noticed us. They’re so busy looking at each other for crying out loud. Besides, ” Po put his smartphone up to Tigress’ face. Stunned from the sudden phone in her face, Tigress now focused on the phone’s screen to see a poster ad displaying two red pandas holding each other in a loving embrace. “… any reporter alive right now is at the press release for Through the Spirit’s Heart grand season finale. Everybody’s going nuts over it now. Trust me one this.”
Tigress shoved Po’s hand away from here face and went back to crossing her arms.
“Be that as it may, this whole situation could’ve been avoided. Po, I could’ve paid part of this overpriced dinner. Tip included.”
It was now Po’s tun to cross his arms.
“I am not letting you do that. You’re getting treated tonight and I’m going to do that for you.”
“I’m also apparently dating you now. So tell me how are we going to deal with this, dear?”
Po dropped his arms and grimaced, “Can you not do that?”
“What do you prefer then? Darling, honey, sweetheart…. Oh I have one! Honey bear?”
Po grabbed the mantle as the awkwardness dug deeper inside him. “Okay okay! I got it. I messed up. Can’t we just enjoy this though? No one’s noticed us yet so that means we’re in the clear!”
Tigress’ face softened. She looked to the sides again but regained her intimidation look right back at Po.
“Eat as fast as you can. The minute we’re done, we’re getting back to your car and straight home. Not a word to the Five.”
“You mean Four now?”
Tigress growled and glared daggers at him.
“Fine but please don’t kill me for this later.”
“Straight home.” Tigress declared again.
“Got it! Got it.”
“Dinner is served!” Carol stated as she came back with two plates. She set a heart shaped candle onto the table’s middle, quickly lighting it with a long multipurpose lighter she carried.
“Bon Appetit! If you need anything just call!” Carol stated, putting the light back into her apron. She gave Po a quick thumbs up as she left.
Left in the awkward semi-romantic atmosphere, Po felt the corners of his mouth go down as he looked at Tigress. Tigress deadpanned and blew out the candle. Po took this as a sign to stuff two mushrooms into his mouth.
“You’re lucky this smells good.” Tigress said grabbing her fork and brought some eggplant to her mouth. As soon as she started chewing, her eyes widened as her pupils got bigger and darker. A small smile slowly crept onto her lips and a moan of delight escaped her vocal cords. Unfortunately, her moment of delicacy was cut short by Po squeeling in the background.
“Consider your butt sort of saved.” Tigress said and grabbed another bite.