Chapter Text
Shiba Ichigo scares Kuchiki’s admirers every day. It is a conscious thing: he actively scares Rukia’s hopeful admirers who arrive in droves like the coming of pestilence at her dormitory doorsteps; he and Rukia were engaged to be married then their clans broke them up.
And also because—
“These assholes are loud,” grits Ichigo, who can’t quite concentrate on anything because they always line up outside her door which means beside his door but he welcomes the opportunity to conveniently beat aggressive suitors seven to eight steps from his perch nonetheless. “Are you tripping on bush weeds? Get out.” He drags a poor soul out. They will be back.
The whole of Shinō Academy is abuzz with the news that the Shiba heir is severely hung up on the failed engagement and, well, he damn well is.
Ichigo stands rigidly in front of their nobles-only dormitory with his arms folded over his chest; he’s tall and all in black when he’s not in academy uniform, his hair is long and tied back —he’s handsome but glares at everyone so sharply as if he’s a polished knife gleaming threateningly under the sun. He’ll continue to scare these punks who come to take advantage and who dare think they have hopes of winning Rukia. In his mind, there is no doubt, fuck the elders, fuck the clans, she remains his fiancée, he’s not giving her up.
All those who know Ichigo and Rukia speculate on the reason: serious breakdowns in talks about clan diplomacy; branch family dissenters opposing a possible centralized leadership between the two powerful clans; or the entitled nobles simply refused to agree on the seating arrangement.
And then, of course, they think, the next natural question to speculate on is this: if not Shiba Ichigo then who is.
Not long after, Ichigo overhears something:
“I heard Isshin’s boy is getting replaced. My guess is because we're harder to exert influence on…based on who they chose to replace him.”
“Heeeeh, Ichigo’s probably crying his little eyes out somewhere—”
“Listen, the replacement is not as prominent as our clan, this one is smaller but respectable enough. They like to fund long-term operations which suggests the family coffers are deep and they never opposed anything ever which I find suspicious —I bet the Kuchikis think of them as easier to swallow and gullible. They have an heir older than Ichigo,” there’s a pause, a quiet huff of blowing smoke, then a click of the tongue, “not that I care but I don’t want to see that foolish boy stuck and moping around in my house for centuries. Be sure to get me some dirt, Ganju.”
“Yes, I will, sister! But…uhh…I gotta ask about their clan heir…what kind of stupid ass name is Ashido? Who looks at their kid and names him ‘acid’ really?”
Not long after, Ichigo climbs up on Rukia’s balcony:
It’s midnight.
Rukia, already in her sleeping yukata, still reads her Kidō notes sitting by the window at this hour; is surprised to see his head pop up. “Ichigo?”
“Rukia!” Ichigo’s eyes are bright in the moonlight. He ignores the open door and jumps over the open window ledge noisily, his sandals muddying her floors, and wastes no time bending down to her eye level and cupping her face between his hands.
Out of reflex, Rukia closes her eyes as he draws her forward and feels his lips lightly on hers —then he presses deeply, strangely needy. He nips on her lips for a bit before pulling away. He smells of watermelon, the coming of springtime, and faintly of handwashing soap. “I thought you went home…” she says, still a bit perplexed.
“Like I’ll leave you here with creeps camping out below.” He sits beside her.
Rukia is impressed, raises an eyebrow and thinks, who's the creep who actually climbed up to her window at midnight? Instead, she says, “what are you doing here?”
Ichigo makes a string of noises that suspiciously sound like he will beat up all the clan officials, then, “I will beat up all the clan officials,” he promises her darkly, “yours and mine.”
Rukia frowns at him, “and how would you do that? You may know Zangetsu but you are nowhere near mastering your attacks yet. Seven attempts blew up in your face last week, I counted."
“We’ll just continue to train,” he shrugs, taking her notebook from her hands and placing it on the table beside her, she should rest.
They are zanjutsu and hakuda training partners, to the bewilderment of their classmates. They say: she is as beautiful and as dainty as the first snow, no way she gets paired with a very physical man who could hurt her. Bullshit, he thinks, she doesn’t pull her punches and bruises him semi-regularly whenever they train together. Rukia will smell blood if he ever shows hesitation. She keeps him moving and he keeps her challenged.
"Huh, are there any more souls you know who know their zanpakuto's name?" he dares, sounding smug.
Rukia sighs. Of course, a Shiba. Every one of them is extraordinary. Already, his sword teachers hailed him as the next strongest shinigami who will come to make war on hollows. He could have graduated in under a year but he flunked his final calligraphy exam and blew up his ikebana class.
“Don’t get too full of yourself, you know I’m close to learning mine!”
Before Ichigo says something, he recalls seeing a silhouette of a white-haired woman gently cradling Rukia’s head on her lap when she sleeps. He briefly sees her from time to time sometimes looking fondly at Rukia, but then, he would blink and then she would be gone. She is beautiful.
“Yeah, she sings to you when you sleep at night —hell, I think I can even hear her whisper sometimes,” he tells her, then playfully flicks her forehead, “you should clean your ears.”
“How did you-?! I can hear her whisper, too, more than a whisper actually! We talk all the time while we have tea —or whatever that thing we’re drinking! I clean my ears and it’s not the ears!”
“Ha ha,” says Ichigo, looking at her with rarely-visible fondness.
Rukia dismounts her icy high horse when she’s with him and comes at him with the ferocity of a Rukongai gang debt-collector, clear-eyed, and speaks like one, too. Ichigo likes to think Rukia responds like that only to him. Rukia thinks she is only able to be like that with him.
The midnight breeze picks up and the massive number of trees outside rustle like hundreds of loud whispers, they are quiet for a moment.
“Rukia, I know who they’re replacing me with…” he tells her seriously some time after, “this acid guy, I heard from Kukaku-san and Ganju. Something about a power struggle.”
Rukia sighs again. And, like always, she reasons, with a similar rare display of affection, “Ichigo, I know you are disappointed but you seemed to be overreacting.”
“Rukia…” he starts weakly and takes her hand. He is deeply unsettled, and she’s always been the harder to convince between the two of them.
She grimaces but continues anyway, “—I am waiting for the formal cancellation—”
“—that sounds even worse, Rukia."
“—before I do anything."
Ichigo looks grim, he's always been very impulsive. He picks on the calluses and thin scars on her hands, the parts that know hard work; he has all the matching calluses and scars. Like a lovesick man, he says, "they're taking you away.”
Ahh, her heart constricts, she doesn't cry but it is a close thing, "Ichigo, until my brother talks to me, I really won't listen to anyone.”
“But would he? Didn’t your old stupid elders, oh wait a representative because Kuchiki-sama is too important to tell us himself, called us to a meeting room and brought the news down? They —they said, goat-chin and your brother walked out of a planning meeting, both mad as hell, and then, him, your elder, he, wait, what the fuck he said again? Oh, yeah, took the initiative to lay it on us and warn us.”
“...hmm.”
“And I don't know where my father fucked off.”
Rukia is doubtful of the entire ordeal and has always learned to be rational first (not always true, there are plenty of times she would dive headfirst just as rashly as him—she would give up a shoulder and an arm for him, like that one time).
"I still prefer a more formal announcement and a reason then I'll file a complaint," she says evenly.
"Pshh, that will take 100 years, I'd rather beat them all up now, just like your suitors."
Rukia understands that he is probably looking for an outlet, however, that is something else, she warns him firmly, "Ichigo, if you don't stop scaring the people below, I'll wring your head. Don't let me tell you again."
Ichigo looks at her with such a pained expression, "...fine," he grumbles out, then remembers his supposed replacement broodingly, "but if they insist…"
He says that, but even so, he doesn’t still feel exactly settled.
Rukia nods, he both annoys and amuses her. They've been engaged for two years but knew each other much, much, much longer than that.
“Hey,” she says suddenly, mischievous.
“Rukia?” he says, then mindful of the hour, he looks at the open night sky and then to her, still holding her hands.
(secretly, he keeps his lovesick tendencies when no one is around, and secretly, she enjoys the attention; doesn’t push his arms away, or his hand away, he is warm all the time anyway, perhaps, he likes being teased, too)
“Come sleep with me?”
“Ahh.”
Shiba and Kuchiki seemed destined anyway: from rivalry, having the same tutors, to downright rivalry, to a bit of friendship, then, this. They are bashful on some nights, bickering in lethal ways and swords at hand on most, but they are quietly counting the years until they share the same home all the same.
“Ichigo…I think my brother finally likes you, so I don’t really think…” Rukia says, pulling him up and guiding him towards her bed.
“What-?” he croaks. Rukia reaches up to his shoulders —on her tallest tiptoes, then kisses him on the lips.
They topple onto her bed after, they don’t talk much but they make a lot of noise.
. . .
There’s that wild, mysterious burst of an idea at 2:30 in the morning: Ichigo looks at Rukia seriously and suddenly proposes a definitive solution.
Even with a warning from her clan elders, Ichigo and Rukia keep:
- being in love
- sneaking around
- being very sexually active
- sneaking time off to plot a very secret plan
Rukia is feeding the large gathering of koi in the academy garden pond during one Saturday morning. Ichigo appears and stands beside her, and then looks down on the pond. There are a lot of pinks and oranges, flashes of glittering silver koi in the sunlight, and a lone red koi at the rocky lower corner of the clear water.
“Don’t get attached to any of them, please, not the bunnies, you’re running away with me and there's no way to take them with us.”
Tossing rice crackers into the pond markedly closer to the large red koi, she defends, “but I already named them, I might bring that one with us, he’s always losing the food struggle…see? and everyone else picks on him, the red one, he’s—”
“Not the damn red one!”
She huffs, elbows him hard, and tosses the rest of the crackers to the waiting koi while Ichigo doubles in pain beside her.
When he recovers, he tells her hurriedly, “Rukia, I’m packed, I'm ready - I didn't bring a lot, won't fit in my bag, it's not practical. Are yours ready? Let’s pick it up, no one would notice if we leave now, everyone is having breakfast or sleeping, I don’t care. I already spoke to the western gatekeeper, he’s a friend, he’s not gonna tell on us.”
Rukia only looks at him, dusts her light blue yukata, and sighs as if she’s a patient parent, “not yet, wait a little more.”
He protests weakly, “Rukia…? Didn’t we agree to force their hand?!”
“Ichigo, what I agreed to, was a tentative yes, if my diplomacy failed,” she shrugs, “you don’t know, it could be very soon.”
They are very secretly running away tonight, or tomorrow morning, or soon —just as soon as he persuades Rukia to pack her bags.