Nonchalance, part 2
A/N: Still working on this. Hope you guys drop me a line regarding this story. I think these two deserve more love. Here's hoping you think the same. These two have so much potential.
Feedback: Si, please.
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The shallow pan of green paint is lying beside the ladder when he reaches the window. He finds her with a roller in one hand and a small paintbrush in the other as she reaches a corner on the wall, putting the finishing touches on the daylong project.
His unexpected presence startles her enough to lose her precarious balance four feet above the wood paneled floor.
Hitsugaya catches her before she hits the newspaper covered floor, earning a stripe of green running from his hair to the back of his shirt for his trouble. The ladder clatters noisily away from them as it hits the ground.
“Thanks,” she says, not minding in the slightest that his arms are under her knees and behind her lower back.
The next thing he hears are the two thuds when the brush and the roller drop from her hands. She’s quite strong as her arms tighten around his shoulders and she hides her face in his neck.
“Sorry,” she tells him, her voice muffled.
He frowns at her apology as she beats him to the punch once again and the scolding he had in mind floats away. He feels her inhale and he smells like freshly cut grass-clean and comforting and so achingly familiar. For a moment, it beats the stench of fresh paint.
“I ruined your shirt,” she explains without moving away.
Her breath warms his skin when she speaks and it’s not unpleasant. She looks up, moving away from him enough to look him in the eye.
“And your hair,” she laments gently as one hand moves upward to the sticky mess of paint clashing with the light color of his soft hair.
Her father takes that moment to make his presence known.
“Karin, my sweet daughter!” Isshin says, overflowing as usual with an embarrassing amount of self confidence. “Do not fear, Daddy is here!”
He froze in a position too reminiscent of a Greek statue, much to their chagrin. Isshin blinks upon hearing silence and his head turns, taking in the sight of his darling daughter in the arms of a teenage boy.
Hitsugaya’s eyebrow raises, unsure of how to even begin to broach the topic with dialogue.
Yuzu shows up during the ten seconds of apprehensive breathing and looks over her father’s shoulder. She shoots Karin and Hitsugaya a giddy, toothy smile and lifts her hands to give them a thumbs-up sign.
Hitsugaya’s hands are too occupied to shield his forehead with his palm at the absurdity of the situation.
“What do you think you’re doing, putting your hands on my prin-”
Isshin is cut off by Karin, who abruptly stands. It leaves a lingering warmth in Hitsugaya’s arms as he straightens up from his crouched position. He shakes his head once to forget the sudden absence.
“SHUT IT, OLD MAN!” her voice booms authoritatively. “Before you came barging in here, Toshiro-kun caught me when I slipped off the ladder. You have no right to be mad.”
Isshin fumes like a furious child in mid-temper tantrum. She turns back to Hitsugaya, who is slightly taken aback with the way she had just addressed him and coughs awkwardly into his hand.
Her fingers close around his wrist as she leads him out into the hallway, down the stairs and stops in front of another door.
“I’ll get you one of Ichigo’s shirts,” she tells him. “They should fit.”
-
The shower washed off most of the paint, Karin informs him as she scrutinizes the back of his head.
She picks carefully at the strands where a small concentration of green clumped together, sliding off as much as possible without pulling at his scalp. Hitsugaya sits patiently on the couch between her legs as he faces the staircase. The beat up pair of sweatpants she wears is dotted with white and green along with the occasional thick lines and thin swirls of acrylic paint on the blue fabric.
“It doesn’t look so bad,” she says, playfully angling his head in different directions.
He swats her hands away and hears her laugh. Her arms drop, sliding forward to lock around his collar and pulls him back. There’s something pressing against his shoulder blades he can’t ignore.
She’s soft.
Very soft.
The persistent warmth of her skin radiates through the cotton shirt she handed him as a replacement. It’s terribly distracting.
His dormant imagination is on overdrive, imagining them alone in a different, much darker room as soft lips kiss the back of his neck while pulling on his haori. The unbidden image immediately degenerates into something much worse with shed clothes and harsh breathing, as he unexpectedly shivers from the contact.
“Not that I’m ungrateful for earlier, but why are you here?” she asks directly in his ear. Despite the low voice, her words echo loudly in his ears.
His mind reboots after a moment, letting the question sink in. He’d had a meeting with Rangiku along with Urahara and Yoruichi at some point in the morning about his reassignment and then-
“Urahara sent me for something of Ichigo’s.”
He is going to hurt Urahara for giving Matsumoto the last of the soul candy and forcing him to look for the modified soul Ichigo used. He guesses the low cut of the blonde’s shirt had been the reason Urahara handed her the small package. Hormones, go figure.
Speaking of which…
Her forehead touches the nape of his neck, arms loosening gradually. For all the trouble Yuzu went to distracting her father by forcing him to taste test dinner, it’s Hitsugaya who ruins the mood.
“That’s why you came in through the window,” she mutters. “Duh.”
Her movements aren’t fast but still take him by surprise when she stands and then hauls him up by the hand like an uncoordinated toddler.
“You’re just in time,” she informs him as he follows her up the stairs. “Nearly auctioned off his stuff.”
He frowns at that last statement, confused by what she means and thinks he hears something about ‘porn stash’ but dismisses it. She leads him to a hall closet, opening the door a stack of lopsided boxes and oversized bags that spill out immediately.
“Need some help?” she offers.
He looks up at her, properly taking in the sight of paint splattered clothes, pigtails and a white bandana covering her hair. A corner of his mouth lifts, amused by her appearance.
“Sure.”
He pulls out some boxes as she drags of the large bags against the wall. A plastic lid comes off, revealing what is probably an entire drawer full of socks. Up to his elbows in hosiery, his fingertips find something not made of thick, stretchy cotton.
A thin, rectangular object emerges between his fingers. It reads Cowgirl Sluts, Ride 'Em Hard Part IV and contains barely dressed girls in provocative poses on the cover. He quickly pushes it back into the depths of white and gray socks.
“Mind telling me what we’re looking for?” she asks dryly after going through several bags of clothes.
For the first time ever, she sees the color rise to his cheeks. It’s endearing to see the normally aloof captain so flustered. She bites down on her lip to stop a smile that threatens to spread on her face.
“Umm,” he clears his throat. “Seen a stuffed animal anywhere?”
She cocks her head to the side, confused. Her brows furrow in concentration, thinking, recalling an instance in which Ichigo’s ever held anything cute and fuzzy.
None come to mind.
He sees her eyes light up for a moment.
“Ichigo did give Yuzu a teddy bear once,” she remarks. “Well, it was more like he orphaned it and Yuzu took it.”
He looks hopeful, feeling uneasy after accidentally finding that title among Ichigo’s things.
“But then, she got over that phase and I haven’t seen it since,” she adds.
Hitsugaya’s shoulders droop, head falling forward. A shoebox falls down from the third shelf in the closet, causing several more bags to shift and slide toward the floor. It is an ominous sign.
Karin tries not to enjoy the fact that he’s forced to stick around a little longer and makes a mental note to tell Yuzu to make room for one more at the dinner table.
“You know, Rukia used to stay in Ichigo’s closet and now that it’s vacated, you’re free to take it,” she offers.
He turns an indignant shade of fuschia.
“I am not short,” he retorts to the cheesy smile she flashes him.
“It wasn’t meant as an insult,” she laughs. “Just saying, if you needed someplace to stay, I wouldn’t mind having you around in my room.”
He doesn’t reply to the way her eyebrow raises suggestively.
-
It’s three hours into his search for an elusive stuffed animal that he finds out several things about the Kurosaki household.
One was that Isshin was unbelievably protective of his daughters, having dodged various ambushes. Karin commented that it was the usual method of greeting boys in the house.
Two was that Yuzu, despite her normally sweet and maternal disposition, could put her father back in line as good as Karin, having dragged him roughly downstairs on more than one occasion.
Three was that Ichigo had amassed a rather sizeable collection of porn in magazines and videos. He understood Karin’s earlier remark about selling the stuff.
“The idiot has a hot enough girlfriend not to need any of this shit,” she snapped when he found yet another title among old school work. She had snatched the thing of his hand, shoving it into a random bag as they continued the search.
Four was that Karin tended to bite her lip every so often, bringing his attention to it. He learns that aside from playing on the football team, she’s also taking kendo and karate lessons. She hates shrimp, makeup and cigarettes. The blank walls of the room that had once belonged to Ichigo bored her, which prompted her to paint it before moving in.
The hallway is cluttered with opened boxes and strewn with random junk ranging from weights to books and school uniforms. The small closet is mostly emptied from their efforts as he steps in to inspect the small space.
In the top right corner, he notices the odd tan color of a round object. He steps up on one of the larger boxes, keeping his balance as his fingertips dig into the soft plushy material. It falls easily into Karin’s waiting hands.
Yuzu carefully traipses into the disaster area to announce dinner is ready when she notices Karin handing the small lion to Hitsugaya.
“Bostov!” Yuzu cries happily.
Hitsugaya’s palm presses against his forehead as Karin talks her sister into giving up the stuffed animal.
A rather imaginative assassination plot begins forming itself as he unwillingly listens in on the Kurosaki twins. Uruhara’s head would look much nicer on a giant wooden stake as an example to anyone daring to piss him off, Hitsugaya muses vindictively.