In-Between
Literal title, moments between actual points in the first part of the series, before Rukia returns to Soul Society, etc, etc, etc.
Disclaimer: Bleach wheeee not mine, ya know.
Ichi.Ruki pairing, duh.
Under the cut.
Moments In-Between
She remembers the rain whenever she thinks of him and it is all she can do to keep from curling into a ball, arms clutched to her to stop her inner tremble. She remembers him whenever it rains and it is the only thing she can do to not lose decades in a second childhood and let herself cry. She breathes, and stops, breathes, and stops, controls her fate. It is a simple exercise of course, but then, some complexities can only be undone by things of a simpler build.
The clouds roll over the sky like horrible, inhuman fingers with teeth marks as large as she is making up the uneven pattern in its black, blue, and gray weave.
Biting her lower lip, fighting to concentrate on something else, willing herself to move on as others are...to class. That is what she is here for after all, technically.
She shuffles her feet, but doesn’t move, doesn’t turn from the vacant clouds...doesn’t know when to stop.
“Don’t interfere,” she whispers and her own voice spreads ice through her veins.
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He remembers his mother when it rains and he doesn’t appreciate the guilt that comes as its wrapper. Though plenty deserved (he tells himself) it’s not like that makes it any less endurable. His insides crawl with ‘what-if’ and ‘why’ and ‘but it should have been me’...the last of which is surely one of the things that makes him so careless on the battlefield he is now frequenting. He remembers his mother and he feels absence...absence of her unending faith, absence of her smile...absence of her heart...absence of her.
But she wouldn’t want him to.
He moves through the hall, ghost-like, though he doesn’t care for the comparison much. At the end of this particular hall is a familiar person, her back to him, her hand on the windowpane.
“Don’t interfere,” he hears her say and he stops as if time has slapped him in the face.
Because it’s like she’s reading his mind without meaning to.
He can’t decide whether to go to her...or run from her.
His feet won’t go in either direction, so he settles for his usual greeting: “Yo.”
When she jumps, startled by his presence, he frowns, because she is not the type to be caught so unawares and he wonders what has brought her so far away from her body so as to not notice someone approaching. When she turns, he notices her hands unclench slowly, as if with great effort, like she’s been holding on to something for so long that letting go is like losing her life. When she faces him, wide dark eyes covered in many years of things he knows nothing about, many moments that don’t include him, have nothing to do with him, he grits his teeth.
What’s that look anyway?
She looks...looks vulnerable...like a girl who’s had her heart broken for the first time, like someone haunted by her own decisions.
Ichigo doesn’t know when he started examining her so.
It is not a comfortable focus.
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“Ichi...go...” she says without meaning to and it occurs to her that she does that quite often. She won’t begin to imagine why. It’s not her style.
Looking at him now, her thoughts of that beloved captain in the rain fade...or mesh with her thoughts of this hotheaded substitute soul reaper. Neither is very reassuring and she swallows hard, working to keep her hands limp at her side and her expression unreadable.
For the most part, success is hers.
Everyone else buys it anyway...the class act that is her school self.
Ichigo does not buy in.
He also is waiting for her to answer him with more than his name. She can tell from that exasperated look, the furrow of his brow and the thin line his lips have been pressed into.
“What do you want?” she asks, desiring deeply, with suddenness to be alone again with the clouds.
Kaien moves like a shadow with each tilt and turn of Ichigo’s head...each move of his arm, shuffle of his feet...probing look in his eyes.
He is not Kaien and she knows it to be very unfair to even begin to think such things.
But Rukia bleeds for a defense...any defense...even if it is, cowardly she admits, using the past as her distorting shield.
Because she can’t handle becoming so attached to this world that it aches inside her when she thinks of going back to Soul Society.
It is not right. She knows.
She has a job, a duty, an honor to uphold.
She is a Kuchiki.
Glancing back over her shoulder through the window, she bites her tongue.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” she says at last and Ichigo’s nerves shatter. His face slackens into something expressionless and he brushes by her, eyes purposefully directed at their mutual friend: the ground beneath his feet.
Her chest is heavy with this show of disregard combined with what she knows is his own grief, his own despicable but permanent bond with memories in the rain.
She knows that and this is why she knows he understands, even without ever having mentioned the eldest Shiba.
Her fingers catch on the fabric of her skirt; she has been rubbing them anxiously in an unconscious show of uncertainty.
One more stare into the increasingly darkening clouds and she darts away toward her next class.
Don’t rain...please...don’t rain, she thinks.
It is not a day she is ready to face the cold that comes with the thousand recurring drops of regret.
Because that is what they are after all...to her.
They aren’t water, and it isn’t weather, and the way the sky folds in on itself...that’s simply not it.
Each raindrop is a tear and she’s not vain enough to see it as her own.
There is one for every loss every person, alive or otherwise, has experienced in the rain that she knows is coming, but hopes it won’t anyway.
One for Kaien, who lost his wife...one for Ichigo’s family, for losing the center of their world...many for Ichigo, whose stoic nature does a fine job of hiding why there are so many.
But Rukia can relate to the hundreds of drops and so she sees past his mask...just a little.
She won’t call him on it...yet.
She said she would wait, and she will.
But she won’t be able to stop reading him like the rain.
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In class he watches her without knowing in every second he isn’t watching her, she watches him, and it is just another of life’s strange coincidences that their eyes should meet when the first horrendous strike of thunder happens and the room loses power for a moment.
Coincidence.
Excited, immature whispers snake around like fumes until the lights return and Ichigo is still watching her now watching him.
He thinks maybe she is trying to say something but he can’t be sure.
The pour of rain is instant and dreadful. He hears it. So does she. He watches her instinctively shut her eyes as if she never wants to open them again.
But he would have missed it if he wasn’t scrutinizing her like a lab experiment.
Her typical Rukia scowl she sends him now for looking too long without apparent reason is less harsh than usual and he senses exhaustion behind her effort to be displeased with him.
Part of him thinks that hell if he’ll ask her why or prod her for her reasoning, which is likely insane anyway. Another part of him thinks prying is the only option left. The other part of him remembers the small girl with eyes the color of midnight, remembers her saying, in that moon-drenched sundress that she’d wait. She had said it already, he thinks dryly to himself but she said it once more…as if promising him something more than that.
He will not ask her what is behind that look of hers.
He will ask his normal: “What?” with just the right amount of annoyance.
She hurls a pencil bag at him, opened, filled with newly sharpened ones.
He ducks.
And things are, to the outside world, the same as they have always been.
It is only, Ichigo knows, in his world...in her world...in the world they now share, for better or worse that these memories grow from their marrow and seep into their skin like rain.
It is their secret, whether they like it or not.
He tosses the pencil bag back at her shortly, zipped shut of course.
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It is after school. Everyone is gone.
But not Rukia. She blames her weakness on the fading of her gigai, but she knows that’s not it at all.
It is raining, hard, and she can’t move, won’t move, except to let her knees buckle as she lowers herself to the steps, holding her knees to her, unconsciously rocking back and forth. She told Ichigo she had work to do and while he raised an eyebrow at that, she simply sent him packing with a swift kick and some typical, Rukia-the-harlot insults. It always works, and she can’t help but chuckle a little at his predictability.
She is familiar with his movements, mind, body, and soul.
Maybe it is because she gave him her power that she is so in tune.
Maybe it is just luck of the draw.
Maybe...something else.
“Oi,” he says and she looks up from her crouch. He stands there, umbrella over himself and her.
“What?” she asks, working so hard for that annoyed tone but it just comes off as petulant and she knows it. He proves he knows it too by reaching down, grabbing her wrist and dragging her upward. They are so close that she falls against him briefly before springing back and shouting at him some more. He blows her off and demands that she stand under the goddamn umbrella right now so they can go home.
And she freezes.
He blinks.
Her heart is in her throat.
“...home?” she repeats and it isn’t supposed to be a whisper but she blames it on the rain.
His heart, without his permission, goes out to her, and he is severely out of sorts. The hell is it doing anyway...is she doing?
She steps backward once and stops.
“Yeah,” he says and it is so gentle he’s horrified, so he adds quickly, “Idiot.”
This earns him a fast, hard punch to the gut and she catches the umbrella mid-air when he drops it as a result.
They stand now, too close again, so close it hurts. But why? She can’t say.
Neither can he.
It’s not time.
But it is time, Ichigo is right, to go home.
Not like she’ll ever tell him he’s right, but she starts walking away with his umbrella and he’s forced to take a few running strides to catch up. The rain is so fierce he’s half soaked anyway regardless.
He glowers at her, but not with animosity so much as habit.
She smirks back at him, her trademark smirk that lifts one side of her mouth in a teasing smile to say: ha, ha, ha.
Muttering under his breath, he stuffs his hands in his pockets as they continue on.
“Is it supposed to rain tomorrow too?” she asks half way home and Ichigo shrugs.
“I never look to see.”
“Why not?”
They stop moving and the rain is all around their small haven beneath the metal and plastic structure.
“If it happens, it happens.” That answer is not satisfactory but she lets it go.
It may be the best he can do for now, and it’s a far cry better than she’s doing, in her opinion.
Such a coward, she calls herself inside and the last straw is the comfort she desperately wants to seek from this person she has a growing notion will provide it.
And so she ignores him the rest of the way ‘home’.
Home is soul society she tells herself firmly.
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I’m going back, she says, looking in the mirror that night.
...I am, she is trying to convince herself.
“Oi, are you done yet? Geez, girls...” his voice reverberates through the door and she lashes back with something she aims to be witty and cutting. She hears him sputter and she knows it’s just about right.
The rain is still pouring and when she pads out of the bathroom, she pauses to stare past Ichigo and at the darkness falling. Shaking herself mentally, she heads for the closet, climbs in, shuts the door, and falls back, exhausted but not sleepy.
Shuffling is heard and then feet approaching her door.
“What?” she wants to add ‘strawberry’ to it but refrains.
“What do you mean what?” he bristles at her snippy tone.
“What do you want?” she asks as if talking to a child.
“...no rain tomorrow,” he says quickly and she can just see him hitting the light switch and tossing himself in bed in a huff, she can see without even actually watching.
Only hours later, awake, listening to the rain, does she realize what he meant.
No rain tomorrow...
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I’m going back, can’t get comfortable, she tells herself firmly.
But it’s too late.
She is home.
And she can’t stay.
Selfish coward, she berates herself, and her sleep is a fitful one that night...so fitful that it keeps the boy on the other side of the closet door awake, looking at that door with mixed feelings, mixed ideas.
He doesn’t go to her, but he stays up as if to watch over her unrest.
It’s not like she’s special, he says to himself.
He’d do this for anyone he was close to.
But his more well hidden self asks him when she became a person he was close to, and he has no answer to it.
Later in life he might tell it something like: from the beginning.
But this is not later. This is now, and Ichigo simply shrugs to himself and scratches the back of his head as if lost.
He can’t afford to figure himself out at this stage in the game.
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As promised, there is no rain the next day...only a clear, palpably blue sky, dotted with sun.
“They’re together again,” students whisper.
“Look at that, did you see that?” others gasp.
“No way, what...since when...what?” the less observant exhibit their confusion.
“Oh shut up,” says an annoyed Tatsuki as she glances concernedly at her dearest friend. Orihime however, is otherwise engrossed, staring out the window at the sunny sky. She doesn’t notice the commotion, or the reason for it…not yet.
At the far end of the hallway, the objects of conversation stand against the lockers, side-by-side, and silent. Rukia has her arms behind her back. Ichigo has his crossed in front of him. And it’s a strange sight at first, but to anyone who has been watching closely enough, it pans out.
They are sharing peace.
Just a moment…because a moment of peace is all one can begin to expect in this world or the next, and even that is audacious to a degree.
She can feel the warmth of the sun through the window’s glass.
He can feel it too.
She is tired from her restless sleep.
He is exhausted from no sleep.
Her phone makes that sound.
His face turns to look down at her expectantly.
She meets his gaze, and uncharacteristically, pauses instead of hauling him like a sack of potatoes out to the hollow they’ve been assigned. She pauses and he realizes she is doing her best to read him.
But he can’t have that...not when he’s not willing to read himself yet.
He takes the lead, snatching her phone away, nodding, and then, grabs her wrist, dragging her behind him.
The role reversal catches her off guard and she swears at him internally for being the only one who can do that...throw off her senses to the point of surprising her over and over. It isn’t supposed to happen.
But he is dragging her out and telling her to do that stupid glove thing, and she’s rolling her eyes at him and explaining that it is a state of the art soul reaper tool, and he’s exclaiming he doesn’t give a damn when she does indeed do the stupid glove thing and they’re squaring off against a particularly nasty hollow.
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They escape mostly alright, but since her powers continue to dwindle, Rukia is the worse one off. Ichigo yells at her for being stupid. She returns that he would know plenty about being stupid, wouldn’t he? He plows on heedlessly, all the way back to school, to the point that they are still arguing when he is back in his normal form. They break apart in equally sulky manners and sit far away from each other at lunch.
The idiot, he thinks.
The fool, she thinks.
Does she think she can just do whatever she wants like that?
Does he think I don’t know w hat I’m doing?
Damn her.
Damn him.
They look at each other at the same instant, yards and yards away. Flushing, they both look away with record speed.
But the sun is shining and they’re both being exceptionally childish and they both, somewhere inside, know this.
Maybe that is why, at the end of the day, when Ichigo walks outside, ready to wait for her-not apologize, no way in hell-but to wait at least so they can go together, he finds she’s beaten him to it. Irked ever so slightly, he has to greet her with something less than cordial.
“You are an idiot,” he says but it’s a lot softer than he ever meant it to be.
“And you are a fool,” she returns and it is in this manner that they walk ‘home’ together.
Behind them, the gossip increases tenfold but Ichigo ignores it because it faces him with things he’d rather not consider right now, and Rukia, being Rukia, does not notice it at all.
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At home they have a close call, again. Yuzu comes in as usual to tell him dinner’s ready, which is fine. Rukia has his sister’s timing down to a science and discreetly closes the closet a second before Yuzu barges cheerfully in. Ichigo ruffles her hair affectionately and says he’ll be down soon. When his door is closed he opens the closet to be met with those eyes that undo him in a lot of disconcerting ways.
And it is early in their partnership.
He can’t imagine what it might mean if they know each other much longer.
But then he can’t imagine what it might mean if suddenly one day she’s gone, if suddenly one day it seems it was all one very long, very strange dream, if one day it’s nothing but his own memory.
“What?” she asks, her annoyed expression doing quite a good job of hiding her own discomfort.
“Hungry?” he asks blankly and she shakes her head. “You should eat something,” he insists and before he can be called a mother hen or worse, he continues, “You’re so scrawny.”
She sends him flying across the room with record speed. He is amazed he leaves no dents in the wall. But then, with his father’s way of waking him up, he’s amazed his room still exists. Rukia’s consistent actions like these are just testaments to his room’s resilience, apparently.
He is about to stand up when he realizes she is standing over him and glaring ice.
“So,” he says, carefully standing. He notices her flinch.
“So,” she replies cheekily.
“I’ll bring you some food,” he says as if he hadn’t just asked her, as if she hadn’t just kicked him soundly into a cement wall.
“...fine,” she says and a traitorous grumble from her stomach replies in kind.
He smirks. She looks away.
For whatever reason he takes a step toward her.
Then Yuzu’s voice pierces through and they both, for lack of a better phrase: freak out.
In split seconds Rukia is laying as flat as possible under a pile of Ichigo’s blankets and comforter. In split seconds, Ichigo is at his desk. In split seconds, Yuzu comes back in.
“It’s getting cold,” she says and fixes him with a stare only a little sister can accomplish and exits the room again, ladle in hand.
He shuts his door, again.
The slight lump on his bed does not move.
“Oi, Rukia,” he signals and she seems to have some trouble finding her way out of the tangle of blankets and stuff before she surfaces, hair all mussed and looking slightly like she just woke up. It’s kind of...
No, Ichigo, stops that thought right where it is.
“Doesn’t she ever knock?” she asks as she climbs out of his bed and makes her way towards the closet again. He doesn’t answer her at first as he wonders if the closet is comfortable for her, for the first time. It can’t be…it’s not a real bed after all...
But the alternative is obviously something that, when suggested will get him an early death, probably a slow one too.
On top of that, he doesn’t want to even know his own reasons behind that suggestion.
No, he thinks again and tosses some placid ‘back in a bit’ over his shoulder before making his way to dinner.
Rukia stands where she is, right in front of his closet, when he’s out of the room.
She stares back at the mess of blankets and sheets and comforter and is trying to place the warmth.
It’s him, she realizes and angry at herself, leaps into the closet, shutting the door with unnecessary haste. No one is there but her after all.
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That night she is not fitful and Ichigo sleeps well. She is instead staring up into the darkness.
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When he opens the closet the next morning when she doesn’t answer his ‘oi, Rukia’, he is surprised to see her eyes wide open, staring above her.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, without thinking.
“I’ll tell you later,” she says and shuts the door on him.
He hears the shuffle of clothes and he sighs, going to change into his uniform as well.
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The way to school does not have to be long but today it is. It is also a silent walk, and as they walk into the school courtyard, not bickering, the gossip from the day before, and the day before that, and so on, intensifies. There are even some wails from girls who, at the sight before them have given up entirely on the orange-haired boy who is, it would be a surprise to him, the object of many girls’ secret affections. Some moans come from the boys who also surrender to the fact that Kuchiki-san will never be theirs.
Ichigo, like Rukia for once, does not notice.
They are both, after all, otherwise occupied: stealing glances at each other.
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Thanks for reading, and sorry if it seems vague, but then, that’s how I intended it :P
-hakuren
Disclaimer: Bleach wheeee not mine, ya know.
Ichi.Ruki pairing, duh.
Under the cut.
Moments In-Between
She remembers the rain whenever she thinks of him and it is all she can do to keep from curling into a ball, arms clutched to her to stop her inner tremble. She remembers him whenever it rains and it is the only thing she can do to not lose decades in a second childhood and let herself cry. She breathes, and stops, breathes, and stops, controls her fate. It is a simple exercise of course, but then, some complexities can only be undone by things of a simpler build.
The clouds roll over the sky like horrible, inhuman fingers with teeth marks as large as she is making up the uneven pattern in its black, blue, and gray weave.
Biting her lower lip, fighting to concentrate on something else, willing herself to move on as others are...to class. That is what she is here for after all, technically.
She shuffles her feet, but doesn’t move, doesn’t turn from the vacant clouds...doesn’t know when to stop.
“Don’t interfere,” she whispers and her own voice spreads ice through her veins.
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He remembers his mother when it rains and he doesn’t appreciate the guilt that comes as its wrapper. Though plenty deserved (he tells himself) it’s not like that makes it any less endurable. His insides crawl with ‘what-if’ and ‘why’ and ‘but it should have been me’...the last of which is surely one of the things that makes him so careless on the battlefield he is now frequenting. He remembers his mother and he feels absence...absence of her unending faith, absence of her smile...absence of her heart...absence of her.
But she wouldn’t want him to.
He moves through the hall, ghost-like, though he doesn’t care for the comparison much. At the end of this particular hall is a familiar person, her back to him, her hand on the windowpane.
“Don’t interfere,” he hears her say and he stops as if time has slapped him in the face.
Because it’s like she’s reading his mind without meaning to.
He can’t decide whether to go to her...or run from her.
His feet won’t go in either direction, so he settles for his usual greeting: “Yo.”
When she jumps, startled by his presence, he frowns, because she is not the type to be caught so unawares and he wonders what has brought her so far away from her body so as to not notice someone approaching. When she turns, he notices her hands unclench slowly, as if with great effort, like she’s been holding on to something for so long that letting go is like losing her life. When she faces him, wide dark eyes covered in many years of things he knows nothing about, many moments that don’t include him, have nothing to do with him, he grits his teeth.
What’s that look anyway?
She looks...looks vulnerable...like a girl who’s had her heart broken for the first time, like someone haunted by her own decisions.
Ichigo doesn’t know when he started examining her so.
It is not a comfortable focus.
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“Ichi...go...” she says without meaning to and it occurs to her that she does that quite often. She won’t begin to imagine why. It’s not her style.
Looking at him now, her thoughts of that beloved captain in the rain fade...or mesh with her thoughts of this hotheaded substitute soul reaper. Neither is very reassuring and she swallows hard, working to keep her hands limp at her side and her expression unreadable.
For the most part, success is hers.
Everyone else buys it anyway...the class act that is her school self.
Ichigo does not buy in.
He also is waiting for her to answer him with more than his name. She can tell from that exasperated look, the furrow of his brow and the thin line his lips have been pressed into.
“What do you want?” she asks, desiring deeply, with suddenness to be alone again with the clouds.
Kaien moves like a shadow with each tilt and turn of Ichigo’s head...each move of his arm, shuffle of his feet...probing look in his eyes.
He is not Kaien and she knows it to be very unfair to even begin to think such things.
But Rukia bleeds for a defense...any defense...even if it is, cowardly she admits, using the past as her distorting shield.
Because she can’t handle becoming so attached to this world that it aches inside her when she thinks of going back to Soul Society.
It is not right. She knows.
She has a job, a duty, an honor to uphold.
She is a Kuchiki.
Glancing back over her shoulder through the window, she bites her tongue.
“I hope it doesn’t rain,” she says at last and Ichigo’s nerves shatter. His face slackens into something expressionless and he brushes by her, eyes purposefully directed at their mutual friend: the ground beneath his feet.
Her chest is heavy with this show of disregard combined with what she knows is his own grief, his own despicable but permanent bond with memories in the rain.
She knows that and this is why she knows he understands, even without ever having mentioned the eldest Shiba.
Her fingers catch on the fabric of her skirt; she has been rubbing them anxiously in an unconscious show of uncertainty.
One more stare into the increasingly darkening clouds and she darts away toward her next class.
Don’t rain...please...don’t rain, she thinks.
It is not a day she is ready to face the cold that comes with the thousand recurring drops of regret.
Because that is what they are after all...to her.
They aren’t water, and it isn’t weather, and the way the sky folds in on itself...that’s simply not it.
Each raindrop is a tear and she’s not vain enough to see it as her own.
There is one for every loss every person, alive or otherwise, has experienced in the rain that she knows is coming, but hopes it won’t anyway.
One for Kaien, who lost his wife...one for Ichigo’s family, for losing the center of their world...many for Ichigo, whose stoic nature does a fine job of hiding why there are so many.
But Rukia can relate to the hundreds of drops and so she sees past his mask...just a little.
She won’t call him on it...yet.
She said she would wait, and she will.
But she won’t be able to stop reading him like the rain.
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In class he watches her without knowing in every second he isn’t watching her, she watches him, and it is just another of life’s strange coincidences that their eyes should meet when the first horrendous strike of thunder happens and the room loses power for a moment.
Coincidence.
Excited, immature whispers snake around like fumes until the lights return and Ichigo is still watching her now watching him.
He thinks maybe she is trying to say something but he can’t be sure.
The pour of rain is instant and dreadful. He hears it. So does she. He watches her instinctively shut her eyes as if she never wants to open them again.
But he would have missed it if he wasn’t scrutinizing her like a lab experiment.
Her typical Rukia scowl she sends him now for looking too long without apparent reason is less harsh than usual and he senses exhaustion behind her effort to be displeased with him.
Part of him thinks that hell if he’ll ask her why or prod her for her reasoning, which is likely insane anyway. Another part of him thinks prying is the only option left. The other part of him remembers the small girl with eyes the color of midnight, remembers her saying, in that moon-drenched sundress that she’d wait. She had said it already, he thinks dryly to himself but she said it once more…as if promising him something more than that.
He will not ask her what is behind that look of hers.
He will ask his normal: “What?” with just the right amount of annoyance.
She hurls a pencil bag at him, opened, filled with newly sharpened ones.
He ducks.
And things are, to the outside world, the same as they have always been.
It is only, Ichigo knows, in his world...in her world...in the world they now share, for better or worse that these memories grow from their marrow and seep into their skin like rain.
It is their secret, whether they like it or not.
He tosses the pencil bag back at her shortly, zipped shut of course.
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It is after school. Everyone is gone.
But not Rukia. She blames her weakness on the fading of her gigai, but she knows that’s not it at all.
It is raining, hard, and she can’t move, won’t move, except to let her knees buckle as she lowers herself to the steps, holding her knees to her, unconsciously rocking back and forth. She told Ichigo she had work to do and while he raised an eyebrow at that, she simply sent him packing with a swift kick and some typical, Rukia-the-harlot insults. It always works, and she can’t help but chuckle a little at his predictability.
She is familiar with his movements, mind, body, and soul.
Maybe it is because she gave him her power that she is so in tune.
Maybe it is just luck of the draw.
Maybe...something else.
“Oi,” he says and she looks up from her crouch. He stands there, umbrella over himself and her.
“What?” she asks, working so hard for that annoyed tone but it just comes off as petulant and she knows it. He proves he knows it too by reaching down, grabbing her wrist and dragging her upward. They are so close that she falls against him briefly before springing back and shouting at him some more. He blows her off and demands that she stand under the goddamn umbrella right now so they can go home.
And she freezes.
He blinks.
Her heart is in her throat.
“...home?” she repeats and it isn’t supposed to be a whisper but she blames it on the rain.
His heart, without his permission, goes out to her, and he is severely out of sorts. The hell is it doing anyway...is she doing?
She steps backward once and stops.
“Yeah,” he says and it is so gentle he’s horrified, so he adds quickly, “Idiot.”
This earns him a fast, hard punch to the gut and she catches the umbrella mid-air when he drops it as a result.
They stand now, too close again, so close it hurts. But why? She can’t say.
Neither can he.
It’s not time.
But it is time, Ichigo is right, to go home.
Not like she’ll ever tell him he’s right, but she starts walking away with his umbrella and he’s forced to take a few running strides to catch up. The rain is so fierce he’s half soaked anyway regardless.
He glowers at her, but not with animosity so much as habit.
She smirks back at him, her trademark smirk that lifts one side of her mouth in a teasing smile to say: ha, ha, ha.
Muttering under his breath, he stuffs his hands in his pockets as they continue on.
“Is it supposed to rain tomorrow too?” she asks half way home and Ichigo shrugs.
“I never look to see.”
“Why not?”
They stop moving and the rain is all around their small haven beneath the metal and plastic structure.
“If it happens, it happens.” That answer is not satisfactory but she lets it go.
It may be the best he can do for now, and it’s a far cry better than she’s doing, in her opinion.
Such a coward, she calls herself inside and the last straw is the comfort she desperately wants to seek from this person she has a growing notion will provide it.
And so she ignores him the rest of the way ‘home’.
Home is soul society she tells herself firmly.
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I’m going back, she says, looking in the mirror that night.
...I am, she is trying to convince herself.
“Oi, are you done yet? Geez, girls...” his voice reverberates through the door and she lashes back with something she aims to be witty and cutting. She hears him sputter and she knows it’s just about right.
The rain is still pouring and when she pads out of the bathroom, she pauses to stare past Ichigo and at the darkness falling. Shaking herself mentally, she heads for the closet, climbs in, shuts the door, and falls back, exhausted but not sleepy.
Shuffling is heard and then feet approaching her door.
“What?” she wants to add ‘strawberry’ to it but refrains.
“What do you mean what?” he bristles at her snippy tone.
“What do you want?” she asks as if talking to a child.
“...no rain tomorrow,” he says quickly and she can just see him hitting the light switch and tossing himself in bed in a huff, she can see without even actually watching.
Only hours later, awake, listening to the rain, does she realize what he meant.
No rain tomorrow...
“Thank you,” she whispers.
I’m going back, can’t get comfortable, she tells herself firmly.
But it’s too late.
She is home.
And she can’t stay.
Selfish coward, she berates herself, and her sleep is a fitful one that night...so fitful that it keeps the boy on the other side of the closet door awake, looking at that door with mixed feelings, mixed ideas.
He doesn’t go to her, but he stays up as if to watch over her unrest.
It’s not like she’s special, he says to himself.
He’d do this for anyone he was close to.
But his more well hidden self asks him when she became a person he was close to, and he has no answer to it.
Later in life he might tell it something like: from the beginning.
But this is not later. This is now, and Ichigo simply shrugs to himself and scratches the back of his head as if lost.
He can’t afford to figure himself out at this stage in the game.
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As promised, there is no rain the next day...only a clear, palpably blue sky, dotted with sun.
“They’re together again,” students whisper.
“Look at that, did you see that?” others gasp.
“No way, what...since when...what?” the less observant exhibit their confusion.
“Oh shut up,” says an annoyed Tatsuki as she glances concernedly at her dearest friend. Orihime however, is otherwise engrossed, staring out the window at the sunny sky. She doesn’t notice the commotion, or the reason for it…not yet.
At the far end of the hallway, the objects of conversation stand against the lockers, side-by-side, and silent. Rukia has her arms behind her back. Ichigo has his crossed in front of him. And it’s a strange sight at first, but to anyone who has been watching closely enough, it pans out.
They are sharing peace.
Just a moment…because a moment of peace is all one can begin to expect in this world or the next, and even that is audacious to a degree.
She can feel the warmth of the sun through the window’s glass.
He can feel it too.
She is tired from her restless sleep.
He is exhausted from no sleep.
Her phone makes that sound.
His face turns to look down at her expectantly.
She meets his gaze, and uncharacteristically, pauses instead of hauling him like a sack of potatoes out to the hollow they’ve been assigned. She pauses and he realizes she is doing her best to read him.
But he can’t have that...not when he’s not willing to read himself yet.
He takes the lead, snatching her phone away, nodding, and then, grabs her wrist, dragging her behind him.
The role reversal catches her off guard and she swears at him internally for being the only one who can do that...throw off her senses to the point of surprising her over and over. It isn’t supposed to happen.
But he is dragging her out and telling her to do that stupid glove thing, and she’s rolling her eyes at him and explaining that it is a state of the art soul reaper tool, and he’s exclaiming he doesn’t give a damn when she does indeed do the stupid glove thing and they’re squaring off against a particularly nasty hollow.
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They escape mostly alright, but since her powers continue to dwindle, Rukia is the worse one off. Ichigo yells at her for being stupid. She returns that he would know plenty about being stupid, wouldn’t he? He plows on heedlessly, all the way back to school, to the point that they are still arguing when he is back in his normal form. They break apart in equally sulky manners and sit far away from each other at lunch.
The idiot, he thinks.
The fool, she thinks.
Does she think she can just do whatever she wants like that?
Does he think I don’t know w hat I’m doing?
Damn her.
Damn him.
They look at each other at the same instant, yards and yards away. Flushing, they both look away with record speed.
But the sun is shining and they’re both being exceptionally childish and they both, somewhere inside, know this.
Maybe that is why, at the end of the day, when Ichigo walks outside, ready to wait for her-not apologize, no way in hell-but to wait at least so they can go together, he finds she’s beaten him to it. Irked ever so slightly, he has to greet her with something less than cordial.
“You are an idiot,” he says but it’s a lot softer than he ever meant it to be.
“And you are a fool,” she returns and it is in this manner that they walk ‘home’ together.
Behind them, the gossip increases tenfold but Ichigo ignores it because it faces him with things he’d rather not consider right now, and Rukia, being Rukia, does not notice it at all.
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At home they have a close call, again. Yuzu comes in as usual to tell him dinner’s ready, which is fine. Rukia has his sister’s timing down to a science and discreetly closes the closet a second before Yuzu barges cheerfully in. Ichigo ruffles her hair affectionately and says he’ll be down soon. When his door is closed he opens the closet to be met with those eyes that undo him in a lot of disconcerting ways.
And it is early in their partnership.
He can’t imagine what it might mean if they know each other much longer.
But then he can’t imagine what it might mean if suddenly one day she’s gone, if suddenly one day it seems it was all one very long, very strange dream, if one day it’s nothing but his own memory.
“What?” she asks, her annoyed expression doing quite a good job of hiding her own discomfort.
“Hungry?” he asks blankly and she shakes her head. “You should eat something,” he insists and before he can be called a mother hen or worse, he continues, “You’re so scrawny.”
She sends him flying across the room with record speed. He is amazed he leaves no dents in the wall. But then, with his father’s way of waking him up, he’s amazed his room still exists. Rukia’s consistent actions like these are just testaments to his room’s resilience, apparently.
He is about to stand up when he realizes she is standing over him and glaring ice.
“So,” he says, carefully standing. He notices her flinch.
“So,” she replies cheekily.
“I’ll bring you some food,” he says as if he hadn’t just asked her, as if she hadn’t just kicked him soundly into a cement wall.
“...fine,” she says and a traitorous grumble from her stomach replies in kind.
He smirks. She looks away.
For whatever reason he takes a step toward her.
Then Yuzu’s voice pierces through and they both, for lack of a better phrase: freak out.
In split seconds Rukia is laying as flat as possible under a pile of Ichigo’s blankets and comforter. In split seconds, Ichigo is at his desk. In split seconds, Yuzu comes back in.
“It’s getting cold,” she says and fixes him with a stare only a little sister can accomplish and exits the room again, ladle in hand.
He shuts his door, again.
The slight lump on his bed does not move.
“Oi, Rukia,” he signals and she seems to have some trouble finding her way out of the tangle of blankets and stuff before she surfaces, hair all mussed and looking slightly like she just woke up. It’s kind of...
No, Ichigo, stops that thought right where it is.
“Doesn’t she ever knock?” she asks as she climbs out of his bed and makes her way towards the closet again. He doesn’t answer her at first as he wonders if the closet is comfortable for her, for the first time. It can’t be…it’s not a real bed after all...
But the alternative is obviously something that, when suggested will get him an early death, probably a slow one too.
On top of that, he doesn’t want to even know his own reasons behind that suggestion.
No, he thinks again and tosses some placid ‘back in a bit’ over his shoulder before making his way to dinner.
Rukia stands where she is, right in front of his closet, when he’s out of the room.
She stares back at the mess of blankets and sheets and comforter and is trying to place the warmth.
It’s him, she realizes and angry at herself, leaps into the closet, shutting the door with unnecessary haste. No one is there but her after all.
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That night she is not fitful and Ichigo sleeps well. She is instead staring up into the darkness.
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When he opens the closet the next morning when she doesn’t answer his ‘oi, Rukia’, he is surprised to see her eyes wide open, staring above her.
“What’s wrong?” he asks, without thinking.
“I’ll tell you later,” she says and shuts the door on him.
He hears the shuffle of clothes and he sighs, going to change into his uniform as well.
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The way to school does not have to be long but today it is. It is also a silent walk, and as they walk into the school courtyard, not bickering, the gossip from the day before, and the day before that, and so on, intensifies. There are even some wails from girls who, at the sight before them have given up entirely on the orange-haired boy who is, it would be a surprise to him, the object of many girls’ secret affections. Some moans come from the boys who also surrender to the fact that Kuchiki-san will never be theirs.
Ichigo, like Rukia for once, does not notice.
They are both, after all, otherwise occupied: stealing glances at each other.
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Thanks for reading, and sorry if it seems vague, but then, that’s how I intended it :P
-hakuren