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“Ichigo!” Rukia intones authoritatively. “Your assistance is required.”
They’re on the roof of the school, sitting up against the fencing, a couple arm’s lengths apart. They’re alone for lunch today; Mizuiro’s off on vacation somewhere fancy and expensive, and Keigo’s been bedridden since Monday with a bad cold. Ichigo makes a mental reminder to stop by after school and bring Keigo his notes- despite the latter’s insistence that cool guys don’t get good grades, Keigo’s math scores are a little too dire. Then again, he does live all the way out in Naruki…. But Ichigo’s a good friend. He’ll do it even if it sucks. He’s always doing things that suck.
He takes a bite of his tonkatsu and regards her. She’s holding out a juice box, and her gaze flickers expectantly between it and Ichigo.
He rolls his eyes. “You’re never gonna learn if you keep making me do this, you know.”
“Consider it part of your shinigami training,” Rukia replies, an expression of mock seriousness on her face as she scoots closer to him.
“How is this part of my shinigami training?” He leers at her, setting his bento on the ground to his left. “You can’t even do it!”
Rukia only wiggles the juice box impatiently at him in response.
She knows how juice boxes work by now, he’s absolutely sure of it, but he takes it from her anyways. He’s admittedly not paying much attention as he rips the top of the plastic wrapper and shimmies the straw out with his fingers. It’s a little chilly out, and the October wind is tousling Rukia’s hair and dusting her cheeks with the faintest blush. Something in the courtyard must have gotten her attention, because she’s staring over the edge of the roof, rosy lips pressed together in concentration. The vision occupies Ichigo’s mind a little more than he’d like to admit. (A lot more than he’d like to admit, actually.)
He’s heard the rumors about them, of course. They’re all over school. Are Kurosaki and Kuchiki dating? (They’re not.) I think I saw them kissing the other day behind the sports shed! (Definitely not true.) Do you think they’ve done it yet? (Fat freakin’ chance.) Yet as much- and as emphatically, in Ichigo’s case- as they both deny it, the rumors keep spreading. Maybe they’re getting into his head a bit. Obviously he knows Rukia’s pretty; he has functioning eyeballs, but it certainly doesn’t help how everyone keeps metaphorically (and sometimes literally) elbowing him in the side and going wow, Kurosaki, Kuchiki sure is cute, huh? That’s all it is, really; if he’s thinking about her any more than usual (which he isn’t ) it’s only because everyone won’t let him think about anything else .
He sees Rukia smile and wave down at something, and hears Kunieda’s voice drift faintly up on the breeze. So that’s what she was looking at. He hears Kunieda call his name, too, and he briefly turns to wave hello down to her, but his eyes are quickly and traitorously drawn back to Rukia. Half-focused, he skims his thumb over the top of the juice box, feeling for the texture and slight give of the aluminum seal. He lets out a hum of approval when he finds it, and with a twirl of his fingers he jams the straw in. Something cold and wet splashs against the skin between his thumb and forefinger, and Ichigo glances down. In his negligence, he must’ve stabbed the straw in too hard, and some juice had squirted up through the straw and onto him.
“ Shit, ” he hisses, and Rukia turns, regarding him with a quirk of the brow. He hopes she didn’t catch him staring. “Has the juice box defeated you too, Ichigo?”
“Sorry,” he admits with uncharacteristic sheepishness, and tilts his hand so she can see. “Spilled some.”
“Hmph. Looks like you still have a long way to go in your shinigami training,” Rukia says with a teasing smile, and plucks the juice box from his hand.
“Still think you’re making that one up,” Ichigo huffs, and moves to pull back, begins to turn and look for a napkin, but swift as lightning, Rukia grabs his wrist with her other hand and leans over to suck at the place where he spilled juice on himself.
It takes every ounce of willpower in Ichigo’s body not to jump thirty feet into the air. Her lips are soft and wet on his skin, and he prays to any and every god he can think of that he doesn’t pop a boner when he feels her tongue lap against him. It’s mostly successful.
Then, as quickly as it happens, she’s off him, and all Ichigo can think is that the air feels so unbearably cold against the spot where her lips were. She’s still holding on to his wrist, and the contact is unbearably hot. Quite frankly, the situation as a whole is unbearable, and Ichigo needs to say something before he passes out entirely.
“Rukia,” he chokes out, and he hopes she doesn’t notice the crack in his voice and the way his pupils are blown wide when he gawks at her. “What the hell? ” He’s pretty sure he’s sweating through his uniform.
She gives him a coy little smile, and pokes the straw between her lips to take a thoughtful sip.
“You spilled my juice. I wanted to get my money’s worth!”
“Rukia,” Ichigo says flatly- as flatly as he can, what with his heart still beating a mile a minute. “ I’m the one who buys your juice.”
She flashes him that coy smile again. Then she drops his wrist and launches into a lecture about Ichigo’s progress as a shinigami, how he just barely managed to scrape by against a D-list hollow the other day, I mean seriously Ichigo, he wasn’t even worth any kan and Ichigo probably should be paying attention, or at the very least remind her that actually I had the hollow under control until I had to get your ass out of the way of its attack but he can’t. He fumbles around aimlessly for his bento, and eats the rest of his tonkatsu in silence.
The rest of the day goes by in a blur. Ichigo does not pay attention to a single thing any of his teachers say, and he thanks his lucky stars that he doesn’t get called on to answer any questions. He’s hyper-aware of Rukia in his periphery the whole while, as she takes notes and makes terrible doodles in the margins of her papers and chews on the end of her pencil.
When the last class of the day finally ends, Rukia is among the first of the crush of students as they pile out the door. She’s not normally this quick to leave. Maybe she has to use the bathroom or something. Ichigo shrugs to himself and gathers his things, stopping to offer a quick greeting to Inoue as he passes her on his way out.
Rukia isn’t waiting for him outside the school. It’s no big deal, really; he doesn’t have a monopoly on her presence, but he catches himself frowning at the empty space on the wall where her absence is.
He decides to go to Keigo’s after all, and by the time he returns the streetlights are beginning to flicker on. Keigo had insisted that Ichigo tutor him- because despite his appearance, Ichigo is a good student, and a good friend - and so Ichigo had spent a lot more time than he would have liked to yelling questions across Keigo’s bedroom while the latter furiously scribbled in his notebook between coughing fits. So much for “cool guys don’t get good grades.” He doesn’t mention the incident on the roof. Keigo can't keep a secret for shit, and besides, Ichigo doesn’t think he’d be able to take more than 30 seconds of suggestive eyebrow wiggling and dirty questions about stuff that is absolutely not going on between him and Rukia before throttling the guy. Still, it would be nice to talk to someone , if only for the fact that Ichigo can convince himself that he isn’t crazy and didn’t imagine the whole thing.
Ichigo artfully dodges the flying kick Isshin launches as soon as the front door opens, sending the older man careening past him out into the street.
“Ichigo!” Isshin shouts, dusting off his shirt as he struggles to stand back up. “I was hoping you’d gotten lost!”
“Shut up, geezer! I was at Keigo’s!” Ichigo shouts back, stomping inside with a huff. “You’re gonna disturb the neighbors!”
Isshin merely laughs that big, booming laugh of his as he follows, and Ichigo rolls his eyes as he begins to make his way up to his bedroom.
“Good day at school today?” He hears Isshin from behind, and freezes in his tracks on the landing halfway up the stairs. Slowly, almost accusatory, Ichigo turns around to stare down at him. Isshin’s arms are crossed and there’s a twinkle in his eyes, and for a brief second Ichigo wonders if he knows.
“Same as it ever was,” he grumbles, and turns back around to trudge up the stairs. Isshin watches as he does, eyes twinkling all the while.
Ichigo tosses his backpack to the ground and slumps back down against his bedroom door as soon as it shuts, all the exhaustion of the day hitting him at once like a freight train. His shoulders feel like lead. He needs a shower and something to eat; he doesn’t care in which order. A quick glance at the clock tells him it’s not quite time for dinner, so he guesses the decision’s been made for him. He allows himself to rest on the floor for a few minutes longer in the silence of his room- a silence which he takes note of, Rukia’s normally back by now- before hauling himself back up to his feet and making his way to the bathroom.
“I’m taking a shower!” Ichigo yells down the stairs to nobody in particular. He gets a jumbled chorus of responses, and he’s pretty sure he can hear Karin saying something about hot water.
He scrubs himself down in the shower, and as he does he feels his right hand clench into a fist involuntarily. He absolutely does not think of anyone’s lips against that hand as he brings it up to stare at it. He doesn’t. Ichigo watches idly as water pools in the creases of his fist and splatters to the floor when he uncurls his fingers. He does this too many times to count, furling and unfurling his fingers, losing track of time underneath the spray of the showerhead, and by the time he turns the water off his fingertips are the wrinkliest he’s ever seen them.
Once he’s toweled off and changed into something more comfortable for the evening, Ichigo takes a look at himself in the mirror. His reflection looks slightly wrong , his frown too deep and his eyebrows knitted too tensely. He makes a bunch of ridiculous faces in the mirror, pulls at his cheeks, crosses his eyes, sticks his jaw out, his tongue, as if trying to reboot his appearance. Still, his scowl doesn’t quite seem to fit his face, and he grips the edge of the sink so hard his knuckles turn white.
He can hear the sound of commotion in the kitchen as he steps back out of the bathroom. Yuzu is calling for Isshin to bring her something; he can’t quite pick out what she’s saying, nor Isshin’s response, but they sound even more animated than usual, if that’s even possible. The smell of hamburg steak wafts up the stairs; Yuzu had mentioned that there was a sale on aibiki-niku at the supermarket last night. Ichigo takes an experimental sniff, and his stomach growls in response. He hasn’t eaten anything since lunch, and dinner smells delicious. He quickly throws his clothes in the hamper and takes the steps two at a time.
“There you are, Ichigo!” Isshin booms as Ichigo enters the kitchen. “We were gonna eat without you!”
“That’s not true, Dad! He’s not even late for dinner!” Yuzu protests from her position by the rice cooker, where she’s just finished scooping a portion of rice into the last of four bowls. Ichigo sidles up next to her, leaning back against the counter, and she smiles brightly at him. “Ichi-nii, can you bring these to the table?”
He voices an affirmative and gently scoops the rice bowls into his hands, moving carefully over to the dinner table so as not to drop them.
“You better not have used up all the hot water,” Karin says pointedly, already seated at the table. Ichigo sets her bowl in front of her in an equally pointed manner and drops into the seat opposite her. Isshin and Yuzu follow shortly after, placing plates of hamburg steak in front of everyone and taking their own seats at the table. Ichigo thinks he can see Karin’s mouth watering, and he quickly wipes his face with the back of his hand to make sure his mouth isn’t watering, too. Isshin gets everyone settled for a quick itadakimasu , and Ichigo digs in as soon as his chopsticks are in his hand. He briefly debates whether he should recuse himself from the table to bring his food back up to his room to share with Rukia, but she doesn’t seem to be around tonight. Outside of when he needs to perform shinigami duties, her whereabouts aren’t really his business, but it doesn’t stop him from wondering if she’s had anything to eat.
Yuzu and Karin went on a school trip to the zoo, and Ichigo can see Karin fighting back a smile of excitement as she feigns nonchalance. “It was okay, I guess,” she shrugs, and takes an abnormally large bite of her hamburg steak.
“That’s not true!” Yuzu squeals, pointing her chopsticks dramatically. “Karin was staring at the monkey exhibit for so long that the rest of the class almost left without her!”
“Th-thats-!” Karin splutters, and Ichigo can’t help the chuckle that escapes his throat. “That’s only ‘cause they reminded me of Ichigo and Goat-Chin!”
“Oh, Karin!” Isshin crows, leaping to his feet so quickly he bumps into the table, earning an irritated glare from Ichigo. “Did my precious youngest daughter miss me? C’mere, give Daddy a hug, sweetie!”
“ Absolutely not, ” Karin grinds out, but Isshin is unfazed. Ichigo preemptively lifts his dishes as his father crouches slightly, arms outstretched as if he’s preparing to leap across the table to crush Karin in his patented Isshin Kurosaki Overbearing Father Hug. Karin takes one more bite of her hamburg steak and puts her hands up in a defensive stance, chewing defiantly at Isshin.
“Oh, but I liked the rabbits the best!” Yuzu chirps, and Isshin and Karin both straighten up and turn to her.
Ichigo cocks an eyebrow in her direction. “You went to the zoo and the rabbits were your favorite?”
“Yes, you big meanie!” Yuzu pouts, and Ichigo immediately puts his hands up in surrender.
“Okay, okay, I’m sorry. Tell us about the rabbits,” he apologizes, and Yuzu immediately perks back up.
“They’re so cute! Did you know they eat hay? I didn’t! It must’ve been feeding time, ‘cause they were all eating like this-” and Yuzu mimics the movement, nibbling on an imaginary piece of hay. “It was like they were all eating together! Just like us!” She beams. Karin smiles softly at Yuzu. “Yeah, Yuzu. I guess they are.”
Yuzu gives an affirmative mhm! before turning her attention back to Ichigo. Her chopsticks level at him, and he gulps.
“Seriously, Ichigo, I can’t believe you don’t like rabbits! You don’t even think they’re cute?!”
Ichigo’s mouth is suddenly very dry. “I didn’t say all that.” Isshin, still standing, guffaws.
Sure enough, Rukia’s still absent when he gets back from dinner, a fact which definitely doesn’t worry Ichigo in the slightest. He auto-pilots through his homework, of which there is entirely too much. At some point, Karin and Yuzu come to give him a hug goodnight, and Isshin lingers by the door as they scamper off to bed.
“What,” Ichigo says, more of a statement than a question, not looking up from his notebook.
“If you get hungry for a midnight snack, there’s leftover hamburg steak in the fridge,” Isshin whispers secretively. That gets Ichigo’s attention. He puts down his pencil and turns to face Isshin, slouching back in his chair with what he hopes passes as disinterest. This is the second time Isshin’s been weird today- and don’t get him wrong, Ichigo thinks his father is weird basically all the time, and a colossal moron besides, but sometimes he shows a strange perceptiveness that belies his general demeanor. It’s like Isshin knows what’s going on in Ichigo’s mind, maybe even better than Ichigo himself, even when there’s no possible way he’d have any reason to. He raises his eyebrows, a gesture for Isshin to continue.
“You’re a growing boy, Ichigo! You’re gonna have to eat a lot more if you want to be big and strong like your father,” Isshin winks and flexes a bicep, and Ichigo scrunches his face at him.
“Ew.”
Isshin chuckles and gives him a small wave. “Just thought I’d let you know. Have a good night, Ichigo.”
“Unlikely,” Ichigo says as Isshin shuts the door on the way out with another chuckle. When the sounds of his father’s footsteps have disappeared down the hallway, Ichigo practically collapses against his desk with a hiss of frustration, hands fisting roughly through his hair. He might actually be going insane. Unfortunately for him, the still-unfinished homework staring back up at him from his desk cares little for Ichigo’s sanity. He mumbles an obscenity or three (or fifty) down at it. Great. Now he’s talking to inanimate objects. With one final curse, just for good measure, Ichigo cracks his knuckles and gets back to work.
The clock has just ticked over to 23:00 by the time Ichigo closes his notebook, dropping his pencil resignedly on his desk and stretching back with a yawn. “That sucked,” he mutters to himself, slipping out of his chair and into the hallway, shutting the door behind him as quietly as possible. He can hear his sisters snoring softly from their room, and Isshin snoring much louder from his, as he tiptoes down the hall into the bathroom. After he finishes washing his hands and face, Ichigo takes another look at himself in the mirror. His scowl seems to fit his face properly this time, and he lets out a sigh of relief he didn’t know he was holding in.
She’s there when he returns to his room, languidly stretched out on his bed in a pair of pajamas he's never seen her wear before. They're certainly not Yuzu's. Did she get them from Urahara? Is that where she was this whole time? The pajamas look really soft. Seriously? Why does he even care about this?
They’re indigo blue, the color of the night sky, and dotted with what Ichigo assumes at first to be stars. It’s only on a second look that he realizes they’re tiny cream-colored rabbits. Of course they are.
Her arms are crossed behind her head, and her top rides up just enough to expose a pale stretch of her stomach. Ichigo tries not to look. He’s a good friend, dammit.
“Well, well, well,” Rukia croons, propping herself up on her elbows to look at him. “What brings you here?”
“It’s my room, dipshit,” he snaps, trying to fight the heat he feels spreading across his cheeks. “And that’s my bed.”
Rukia’s lips and eyebrows arch into a grin. “Oh? I don’t see your name on it.”
Surely she’s fucking with him at this point. She has to be.
“Okay, that’s enough. Up you go,” Ichigo grunts, leaning down to jostle the mattress. “Shoo.”
“You know, Ichigo, it’s bad manners to force your guests to sleep in the closet,” Rukia chides good-naturedly, but she’s already sitting up and kicking her legs off the edge of the bed.
“Guests are usually invited, ” he grouses in response, straightening himself up as Rukia hops off the bed and peers up at him.
“Yes! I invited myself through your window!” She points, and as if in response, a breeze blows into his room, and the clouds part, bathing her features in the pale glow of the moonlight. “You really should keep that locked, by the way. You never know who could sneak in!”
Rukia’s eyes catch his, and he’s transfixed. She’s almost ghostly in the light, and her jet-black hair shimmers like the finest silk against her skin, the wings of a raven against freshly fallen snow. Her features soften, the teasing grin dropping into something gentler. Ichigo’s mouth is suddenly very, very dry.
Unconsciously, he takes a step closer, and she mimics the movement. His gaze is still pinned to hers. Her eyes are jewels, twin amethysts flecked with aquamarine. He’s never seen anyone with eyes like hers.
“Like trespassing shinigami?” When he finally speaks, Ichigo’s surprised at how breathless his voice comes out.
“Precisely.” Rukia’s hand is on his wrist again, but this time he’s the one bending over as she leans up on her toes and pulls him down towards her. Ichigo’s brain shuts down entirely when her lips meet his. He has definitely gone insane.
He can feel how chapped his lips are against hers, which are of course perfect and soft and taste faintly of strawberry chapstick, a fact which Ichigo will probably think about until he dies. He slides his free hand against the small of her back, against pajamas that are even softer than they look, and feels Rukia gasp into his mouth at his touch. It’s a chaste affair, all things considered, but it’s still entirely too soon when she pulls away, slipping out of his grasp.
She’s a tiny little thing, really; he towers over her as they stand there, wordless in the night, but in this moment Ichigo feels like an ant at the foot of a giant. The breeze picks up, and a couple of loose papers blow off his desk and rustle to the floor. He doesn’t move, doesn’t think he could even if he tried. (But God, does he want to.)
“You know,” she says, finger pressed to her lips in mock thought, still radiant in the moon, “I think you taste better when you’re covered in juice.”
Before Ichigo’s brain can form a response, Rukia’s already in the closet, sliding it shut with a gentle click. He stands there for a while, jaw clenching and unclenching. He wants to march over there, to yank the closet door off and plop down in there with her and ask her what the fuck is going on? One minute she’s slobbering all over his hand or kissing him, and the next she’s pretending like nothing happened? Does this even mean anything to her? Does she know just how casually she upends his entire world? How easily she makes him, the man who jumps into action at the slightest notice, freeze completely in his tracks? He doesn’t, of course. He’s not sure if he’s ready to.
Eventually, when Ichigo’s motor functions return to him, he turns and shuffles over to the window, kneeling on his bed and propping his elbows up against the sill to gaze outside at the street below. It’s a perfect, silent night, and were it not for the wind blowing against his face, Ichigo could almost believe that Karakura itself was frozen in time, preserved eternally in the amber glow of the streetlights. He was wrong on two counts, he thinks absentmindedly. He’s not always doing things that suck, and it was a good night, after all.
He doesn’t lock the window when he finally shuts it.
He flops down on his bed, the mattress creaking against his weight. He is absolutely burning up , and he throws an arm over his face to cover it. Rukia can’t see him- at least he’s pretty sure she can’t- but he can imagine how he looks right now, and that mental image is embarrassing enough that he needs to hide from it.
“Goodnight, Ichigo,” comes Rukia’s voice through the closet door after a while, voice soft in a way he’s never heard from her before.
“Yeah,” Ichigo says, “Night, Rukia.”
He’s not going to be able to fall asleep after this. Not a chance.