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Whenever Ichigo is home, his daughter follows him everywhere around the house. In the garden patch, when he’s putting away unused futons, or when he’s cutting overgrown hakone in their backyard. Though young, Airi is old enough to know that her dad is not an untravelled house fixture and that cleaning and cooking aren’t the only things he knows how to do. She doesn’t fully understand it yet but she knows: dad is strong, so strong that he works with mom, mom sends him away sometimes. Sometimes usually means a good few trips in-between weeks, not months.
Airi is standing in the open kitchen, staring blankly at the breakfast of rice and fish and kabocha tempura. Mom doesn't cook much, they get pancakes topped with ice cream for breakfast and make flavored popcorn off the stove to snack on while on their way to her office. For dinner, they make omurice with clumsily drawn ketchup hearts and go through an entire package of store-bought chocolate mochi at least three times a week.
She hasn't seen an elaborately cooked meal in about a week. She looks out the window and then sees her dad setting up the laundry drying rack. He looks her way. She turns to him and waves cheerily, her heart is waving hello, too. Silly, silly, she remembers, it is easy to know when her dad is returning or leaving for a trip: there would be food containers neatly stacked on the table for them to reheat, grocery lists, and trash collection schedule for mom when he's going away, but there is —she looks back at the table— a beautiful breakfast spread when he's staying. He is home today. She runs outside.
Ichigo feels a subtle, quiet pride: his daughter is starting to ask him questions normally reserved for Rukia. It’s nowhere near the level of awe she has for her mother but she is starting to ask him if strong rainstorms occur in Hueco Mundo, that thing that chases them in the passageway to Soul Society, and the concrete alleyways in the Human World and their funny clothes.
Unlike Rukia’s imaginative explanations with illustrations, Ichigo answers her patiently: something factual, tempered to her age, and better explained yet still boring.
“...mmkkay.” His daughter nods at him but then rubs her eyes sleepily, probably expecting him to pull out a paper and draw.
“I’ll just ask mom to draw it when she gets home,” she tells him, fully expecting him to pull out a paper and draw.
“Ahh,” slight dismay settles like a tiny punch on his chest but he shrugs it off. She grew up with her mom’s illustrations after all, he wonders if it’s too late to read to her. They have a room plastered with all their drawings together which they sign, as if they were professionals. Still, he doesn’t mind if he’s the boring parent. Boring is good. Boring means everyone is safe. It means he and his daughter could idly sit on the engawa and wait for the linens to sundry when he’s home for the day. Airi scoots closer to him, yawns a little.
(if Rukia is a wonderland full of beautiful and imaginative knowledge, complete with her illustrations, Ichigo is a steady, reliable hand whom their daughter goes for the most trivial manners. If Airi needs a blanket, she turns to Ichigo, but that is not a bad thing, if Rukia needs a blanket, she also turns to Ichigo)
The weather is warm and there’s a basket of ripe plums beside them. Later in the afternoon, there will be light rains but they will still make time to visit Rukia.
Ichigo takes a plum, slices it, inspects the texture, and gives his daughter a wedge, “do you like this?” he asks gently.
Airi takes the slice, eats it, and beams up at him, “uh-huh!”
Earlier, a few minutes before 4 a.m., Rukia wakes up and just knows. She abruptly meets Ichigo at the gate, surprising him with a stern look while he attempts to kiss her lips, it lands on the side of her forehead instead. “Shh!” It could wait, she gives him another stern look. She leads him inside, shoves his tall frame to the kitchen, and sits him down. He is returning from a month-long mission.
"Why didn't you go to the 4th first?" She says, inspecting the long gash on his arm. It doesn’t look very deep but it bled significantly, she could tell. She is dressed only in a yukata and her long hair hastily put in a messy side bun and Ichigo is still in his shinigami uniform, blood stains aren’t visible. Cold radiates from him, from the weather, he smells faintly of rain and steel and smoke.
"Well, you're not there." He tells her simply.
It is still some minutes past the hour, the still-dark morning is quiet except for the sound of rustling leaves. The street lamps spill into their kitchen and Rukia is glad with the limited light, she might be a bit blushing. “Don’t be stupid,” she debates whether to use kido or haul him to the 4th or stuff him full of analgesics or sting him with really strong antiseptics. She prepares to use kido—
“Use antiseptics instead…spend time with me?” he says, his face drawing up to a side smirk. Though the one-month heartache from being away from them is melting away, he is tired and uncharacteristically agreeable.
Ichigo thinks his wife looks lovely in the low early morning light, so he settles on watching her work.
“Fine.”
Rukia takes out a medical kit and arranges the chair opposite him. She brushes a few strands of his hair aside which has gotten long and gets a good look at his face. Ichigo doesn’t look too bad, though obviously tired and his shoulders drop a bit.
“How is she? I can’t go in, I’m not…I’m not tracking mud in her room,” he asks quietly after she pulls down left sleeve and gets a good look at the gash. She is right, it doesn’t run deeper, like from a narrowly-missed talon, but it certainly hits small arteries but doesn’t look like it needs stitches. She begins dabbing it with water and then cleaning it with antiseptic carefully.
Still, Rukia lets a small smile slip and peers at him, “oh, she misses you. Asked about your return every day.”
“I’m here now.”
“Yes.”
Rukia sees Ichigo lights up, his eyes the most, however tired he is. Something nice like blooming spring fields settles on her chest. She is dispassionate when it comes to missions, she maintains that there would be no special treatment for Ichigo, she will send him whenever a matter calls for someone like him. Reason, however, doesn’t cover for the ache in her soul when he is away. She and her daughter make do when he’s away: they draw his expressions and eat his favorite food.
Rukia doesn’t apologize to her daughter whenever she sends him away, neither does he, but they explain to her why he has to go and why she lets him go including a reasonable time to expect his return. But they tell her where he’s going, what it's like, desert rainstorms, blooming gardens, funny clothes, some other daydreams —all sorts of childlike wonders.
She’s finished putting gauze on his wound and instructs him to remain sitting.
“We ate ice cream for breakfast, she seemed to enjoy it, so we did it a few more times,” Rukia says, after a while, and watches Ichigo’s expression. She could see the lecture about health and nutrition and growth forming. She’s set on spoiling her daughter whenever she can. They can enjoy chocolate mochi and ice cream whenever they like or plaster one of the rooms full with all their drawings or play in the pile of leaves or dance in the rain. She is the fun parent, after all.
“What?” he rasps.
“Oh, we also ate popcorn.”
After, Rukia heats water on the stove, waits for it to boil, then adds tea leaves in the strainer to steep. They drink tea until sunrise. Ichigo sleepily narrates to her the incidents he’ll write in his report later at work, which Rukia interrupts. She tells him it's reasonable for him to have the day off, rest, and spend time with their daughter instead.
Soon, he falls asleep with his head on the table, and Rukia caressing his head.
Later, when Ichigo wakes up from his morning nap, Rukia is preparing to leave and their daughter is still sleeping. When he inspects his relatively clean kitchen and the colorful produce he sees, he is surprised that his wife actually followed through with his grocery lists and made good on his wishlist. She got him vegetables that don’t grow in his patch and different flour types. Planting season has passed and the rains a day ago probably made the lettuce crisp, they are good. Rukia doesn't forget them but he frowns at the popcorn boxes sitting at the lowest drawer of his pantry for easy reach. He’ll deal with that later, first, he’ll make a full breakfast for his family.
After folding and ironing his and Rukia’s freshly laundered two weeks’ worth of shihakusho, and an additional batch of haori for her, Ichigo hangs them neatly in their closet. He’s made his rounds, inspected the surfaces for dust, feather-dusted the house plants they keep inside, scrubbed the lower part of the refrigerator, and soak the pots and pans that she lightly blackened in baking soda and vinegar.
The gash on his arm doesn’t hurt anymore, that or Rukia simply poured all the antiseptic —or maybe some other stronger stuff— on his wound and it somehow burned all the nerves out.
Airi follows him throughout, which he welcomes —waits for her and lets her ask as many things. She sat him down to draw his frowning face, she said Rukia told her it has variations. (in another time, the same day: “dad! You’re drawing? Let me see!” his daughter follows him outside after her nap, he’s not even past Wednesday's meal plan yet, “let’s have a contest and show it to mom after, she’s great, she’ll be the judge!”)
He supposes it’s too late to go to the market for late shopping and take his daughter with him, Rukia has been entirely efficient when he’s away but very lax with treats. In retaliation, they’re going to eat 10 different vegetables every day and he’ll put the near-expiry junk food out first and at the topmost drawer.
He borrows Rukia’s paper and pencil, finds a sunny spot outside, plops down, and begins to draft meal plans: he will be the fucking paragon of excellent childhood nutrition.