Work Text:
The summer creeps towards Karakura Town softly like syrup: thick, slow, and sticking. It’s not quite here yet, but the days are already starting to melt into each other, the fresh blossomings of spring curdling into a June heat that gets into everything. It clings to the back of Rukia’s neck.
Being stuck in the human world is unbearable, and it’s fascinating (embarrassing), the things that have become important to her in just a month. The exact angle of the desk fan, the last popsicle in the freezer…
“Can y’ quit hogging the fan?” Rukia groans. She angles it back with her foot another few inches towards where she’s sitting on the carpet of Ichigo’s bedroom, keeping her eyes fixed on the manga spread across her lap. To make things worse, Ichigo has been leaning over the fan and blowing into it so it makes a low, warbling, wah-wah-wah sound that he just knows annoys her. It’s awful.
“This is awful,” she declares pointedly.
What a season—she’s lost her powers, sleeping in a closet, and forced to become roommates with an obnoxious boy. If there’s one thing she needs to do before the summer comes around with its full, scorching heat, it’s get her Shinigami powers back, return to the Soul Society, and pretend that none of this ever happened…
When she doesn’t hear a response to her previous complaint, she glances up despite herself, and looks into dark brown eyes, already watching her over the edge of the manga he’s holding. The fan has begun its slow rotation towards Ichigo. It tousles his too-orange hair, and just above the quivering pages of his book, she notices that his cheeks are a little flushed. Probably because of the temperature. The room is far too small for the both of them, for this heat. She’s wearing one of Ichigo’s old T-shirts, the hem pooling somewhere around her knees. The damp cotton clings to her shoulders and collarbone, it sticks to her spine where she’s been sitting still for too long. He stares at her, at the T-shirt, as the small window unit rattles uselessly in the background.
“What,” she says, deadpan.
“Nothin’.” He raises his chin at her in righteous indignation, like he wasn’t just caught staring. The flush climbs higher on his cheeks. A bead of sweat drips down his temple and he wipes it off, irritated.
Rukia looks back down at her manga, and thankfully doesn’t have to move the fan again.