[AIM Log] [Byakuya + Rukia] [Complete] [Babies and Baseball]

[dramabunny]

[Takes place directly after Ichigo's drunken tomfoolery, rated PG]



There were times when Byakuya knew he had gone too far. This was one of those times. He seemed to be making it a habit when dealing with Kurosaki. More specifically, when dealing with him and Rukia. Shit. The elder Kuchiki didn't swear. At least, he didn't swear out loud. It just wasn't seemly, nor appropriate. Swearing in silence, however, was entirely within reason once in a long while. The current situation seemed to warrant such strong (and incredibly vulgar) language.

Reknowned for his self-control, still he had lost it when dealing with that intoxicated brat. Byakuya sat in his chair for a long while, staring at the flickering pixels on the screen. Both comments there, Rukia's and Kurosaki's had cut a little too deep, a little too close, though they might not know it. Old guilts he'd thought safely tucked away had returned; ghosts of a past life and past regrets had come to haunt him again. His head turned to look out the window where a sliver of moon cut through the bleak sky. Leaving seemed better and better. If he could, he'd just walk away and never return.

It wasn't something that he would ever do, though. There were too many ties here that kept him chained, so he would settle for the brief respite of a long walk to nowhere. When he had cleared his head, he would offer an apology to Kurosaki. And to Rukia. With that thought firmly in mind, he pulled on his coat and left his bedroom, shoes tapping softly towards the front door and a temporary freedom.

It was a really temporary freedom. Rukia had become suspicious when her brother stopped replying to Ichigo (if not slightly grateful for it, he too was cutting deeper than he knew), and with her own bedroom door open, was listening for the sound of the handle turning on his. Act in haste, repent at leisure, that was the saying. Rukia was all too aware of her tendency towards bluntness - also the unfortunate habit of berating those close to her when they required sympathy, and mocking them when they offered sympathy to her - not so much a lack of tact as responding rationally to a situation that required emotion.

But that was the hurdle she always fell at.

Still, she was telling Ichigo to wait for her when she finally heard Byakuya sneaking from his room, grateful for the squeak of the door to inform on him, rather than his silent footsteps. Within moments she had beaten him to the apartment door, slipping under his outstretched arm and spreadeagleing her own across the frame, an all too moveable barricade.

He always did this. Dealt with his feelings, or failures by distancing himself from them, quite literally walking away. Rukia understood the response well enough, although it was more usual that she would only pull back within herself. His method of removing himself from the scene of the crime entirely seemed to her only a method of procrastination - letting problems rot never made them go away, they were only more unpleasant to deal with at a later date. No, as was usual, Rukia favoured talking.

"Bee. Please don't go."

"I will return in a little while." The reply she got was an oblique denial to her plea. He needed to leave. The clawing, tearing emotions needed the exertions of a walk, a fast one where he could forget for a short while and calm himself down. His face was a mask, blank as a fresh sheet of paper with nothing in the way of markings to distinguish frustration or internal guilt.

She was going to insist he sit and talk. He could feel it in the way she held herself and see it in the determination writ on her face. There was nothing to discuss. He had erred (and quite unforgiveably, at that). He would apologise, as was expected, and he would do better to control his wayward reactions towards one Kurosaki Ichigo. Preferably by not condescending to reply to any further provocations on the younger boy's part. Belatedly, in an attempt to hopefully stave off her insistence on a talk, he added quietly, "I apologise for my comments in that post. It was uncalled for."

"I think we could both say the same, with regard to that. Ichigo too, although he has more of an excuse." she leant back where she stood, tipping onto her heels with her toes pointing up at acute angles, back levelled firmly against the door. The mountain would have to be moved before Mohammed could go and sulk on his own. This established, she folded her arms across her chest, watching the downward tilt of his expressions (slight twitches, nothing more) seen from this angle.

"That was not an attack on you, Byakuya, it was an attempt to defend myself. Please don't take it to mean that I'm not grateful for what you do, but everybody tries to protect me when I don't need it, and all I can see is that maybe they're the ones who should have somebody looking out for them." she hugged herself a little closer, hoping he would just accept what she said without dragging them both back through things that couldn't be changed, but lately she felt like the only one capable of considering the past over and done with.

"It was never your job to look after me, you did more than you had to even then. I have never blamed you for anything, so please don't blame yourself - it will only make me feel guilty."

And there it was again. A discussion over that event that he'd held himself responsible for. Three months. What kind of a brother never even saw his own sister when they lived in the same city? Three months before he found out that she had left, run away, and their father had done nothing other than a minimal search. She didn't blame him for it, he knew that. They had had that discussion after he'd found her in a dump of an apartment in a building not unlike the one they lived in now. The irony was not lost on him. Four months of guilt and recriminations and worry were not so easily dismissed. Not even after years of trying to make up for his negligence.

Look after your sister, their mother had told him before she died, and he had failed in the worst possible way. It might be easier for Rukia to dismiss it out of hand, but not for him. He had done his level best to look after Rukia even as a young adolescent, and it was difficult not to still see her as the tiny girl who hadn't quite fit in. Guilt. Was it possible to feel guilty that you were feeling guilty? Apparently it was, and it was a little too complex an emotion for him to handle. Thus, the following, "I will attempt to stop blaming myself." That he would actually stop doing so would be a minor miracle. Man might start colonies in Jupiter first before such a feat could be accomplished.

Nodding slightly, although it was (she could tell) little more than an excuse, a placation designed to get her out of the way and let him go - Rukia stepped away from the door. Attempting to stop blaming himself meant nothing, very few people truly enjoyed guilt it was just that those who got into the habit of it could no longer remember how to do anything else. It was not a promise, although maybe the best he could do. "Don't go."

Leaving his way clear for him to do the opposite if he wished, she went to sit on the couch, large white space beside her left deliberately open. Blank. She might as well have patted the seat and whistled to him like a dog, instead she said, "Sometimes I do need you to be there for me, but I can ask when that is what I want. Like now." This pattern of pulling away only lead to them understanding less about each other. There were things she wanted to ask him, things she imagined he wanted to ask - and far better for him to do so here than air them in a public forum.

Curious that when he had established his journal he mentioned his dislike of making privacy into a communal issue. Maybe it was only her personal life that he was happy to lay bare, and yet he rarely spoke to her of it when there was nobody else to hear. Safety in numbers? Perhaps only the worry that she might truly tell him something he didn't want to know, here, without the necessity of a public facade. He couldn't be as scared of honesty as she.

Rukia had always been good at that, manipulating people. It was a skill she used benignly most of the time. Yet, even when one knew that one was being manipulated, it was difficult to say no. The hints she left were so obvious, she might as well have just dragged him over to the couch and made him sit and listen. So there was to be no escape then. He could always just continue walking out the door, but to what purpose? This was a different trap, but one he would always walk into anyway no matter the end result. Rukia had always rated higher on his list of priorities than most things in his life. Look after your sister. The words echoed in his mind.

He moved towards the couch then, hands in the deep pockets of his coat, sat next to her, and said quietly, "What did you want?"

It was rare that the two siblings would sit and discuss things this formally. More often than not, she was pressing him to do lines with her (which he did quite deplorably at) and he would be chiding her to eat more of her greens. They were matters of a more domestic bent than this, which he felt, would be quite unlike their usual conversations.

Leaning forward, Rukia smoothed her skirt with palms sliding down thigh to knee and settling there. Had she leant a little further, forearm turned up at the elbow and head resting on fist, she might have been the thinker, but if there was anything to be learned it was that individual thought went nowhere unless shared, set into motion somehow. "I thought it was about time we had a talk. A lot has happened, all at once. I feel as though I'm still catching up on it, myself."

Twisting to face him, she drew her knees sideways up onto the couch and hugged them against herself, unconsciously childlike. The smallest, least threatening image she could present. He must be hot in that coat and yet he sat there still and proper as though he might still up and leave at any moment. Maybe he would.

"For a start, Ichigo has happened, not that he hasn't been there all along, but the difference is that you two are going to have to learn to be companionable now. I can't sit here and be the cause of your hurting each other." a tilt of her head and stray strands of black fell away from her face, giving them a clear view of each other. "I don't understand why you won't trust him."

Of course, she would bring this up. Of course she would. He had seen it coming a mile away. The question, touching a topic he would prefer not to discuss, though perhaps not a topic she might consider. They had to talk about Ichigo, of course. It was the issue of trust that he had problems with. For a start, was there a single person that he trusted implicitly? No. He didn't even fully trust himself, so how could he trust other people?

He supposed her concern was valid, if she really were serious about Kurosaki. It meant that he would have to learn to live with having the boy around more often, that he would have to live with Rukia talking about him (not that she didn't already do that as it was). He'd rather Rukia not date the boy, though he couldn't quite put his finger on why. Still, he would not force her to date somebody she didn't like. It had been done to him before, and he'd vowed then never to do it to another.

"I shall learn to get along with him." The reply was oblique, and didn't quite answer the statement, but it was a statement, not a question. He would learn to get along with Kurosaki. The boy provoked him, but he had also been out of line. It would not happen again.

"I do hope so, Bee. It would be nice if you could like him, too." she hadn't phrased the matter of trust as a direct question because she'd hardly expected an answer, not from her brother. To fill in the blanks that were such a noteable part of his conversation, she would say that it is hard to trust what one does not know. There was a reason she pushed them into whiffling and made attempts at other more usual forms of socialisation.

It was like that diagram she had drawn with bunnies and bears. If she was to be in the middle then their spheres had to overlap somehow, especially in such close quarters, Rukia was not prepared to lead two separate lives for their benefit, particularly when it seemed to her that they were not so dissimilar as they thought. Nurture getting in the way of nature maybe. The fact remained that there were years when she had seen more of Ichigo and Renji than she had of her own family, these people were important to her, just as he was.

"He really tries, you just don't seem to see it. And I trust him, so all I ask from you is faith in my judgement. I have had almost half my life to make certain of it."

So it would come down to that, then. "I will trust your judgement, then." For now. The last two were left unsaid. He could hardly distrust her judgement. Not after she'd brought up... well. The failure of their family in looking after her as a child. It was fact. She had looked after herself most of the time, and done quite an admirable job of it too, considering the circumstances.

They sat there quietly for a bit, then Byakuya tentatively brought up something that he'd been worrying about for a while. "You seem to be spending a lot of time with Kurosaki." It was statement of fact. The current question, was how to bring up the fact that she had been actually spending nights with the boy, and nights implied them. Together. In a bed. Possibly doing other things that he just didn't want to think of his sister doing with Kurosaki. Or any other person of the male species.

In particular was the troublesome chore of having to bring up sexual intercourse and the other necessities that cropped up with that particular issue. There were such things as birth control. And oh dear god, condoms. And the story of tadpoles swimming up a stream and finding an egg. Byakuya shuddered away from that particular possibility. Rukia, he was sure, knew where babies came from. Thus, the following question, "Ah... have you and Kurosaki been intimate?"

She had certainly been spending more time with Ichigo than before, although she sometimes thought they had it backwards. While still seeing plenty of each other in the context of friendship, spending time had often required an excuse, Rukia not being the type to do anything without good reason. Generally this involved the kind of activity that one could not perform alone without looking socially inept - attending the cinema or the local ice rink, going to see musical acts that he liked and ones that he didn't but suffered through on her account. This was often in the company of Renji or Tatsuki, any of their other friends - nontheless, the standard date - type standards had all been covered long before the actual topic of dating raised it's head.

Now that was official, however, Rukia felt more comfortable engaging in friend-type behaviour such as simply 'hanging out'. Something they had also regularly done before, but under the title of him helping her with homework or her having to give Byakuya some peace and quiet for a while. Valid excuses, and still easy to fall back on in uncertainty, but now the reason could simply be that it was what girlfriends did. She was coming to like the term, as an umbrella it covered a lot of things she had not had reasons for previously.

Sleeping in his bed was new, and again she thought maybe they were doing it wrong, that every moment in a developing relationship was supposed to be a new level of flushed heat and hopeful fumbling. Whether she wanted that was a different matter. She wanted him (had repeated it over and over to cover up both their nerves at his hands in new places), and with him there were things she wanted to try, but without that pressure of every moment having to be a step.

So far as intimacy went, on this particular level, she would have to admit to the both of them being fairly useless at the entire thing. But there was safety with him, and a solid base, she was certain that they would get there in the end.

Now how to explain that to her brother. Rukia blinked up at him, aware that if the pause stretched on any longer it would imply guilt. "There has been some intimacy, but we have not been intimate. Really I would imagine our current position lies somewhere between second and third base, having scored singles and doubles but not yet achieved a triple play. There have been no home runs inside or outside the park and thus I would say considerations for the hall of fame are a long way off." a nod, satisfied that all details had been adequately encompassed. "So as you can see you have no cause for worry."

"..." No cause for worry, perhaps, but maybe he needed to bone up on baseball-terminology-as-slang. He knew what a homerun was, of course, and first base was quite obvious. The definitions of second base and third base, however, were quite like a moving target, depending on the persons involved in such acts. That they had moved this far along, was something he accepted, though with a thought to actually not having such imagery in his head. She was his sister for god's sake.

Complications did rear their ugly heads with mentions of singles and doubles and triple plays and a possible induction into the hall of fame, as he had little idea as to their correlation with the intimacy chart at hand. Furthermore, was there a hall of fame for such... activities? Did he even require such detailed information about such events that he firmly believed ought to remain a private matter? No. Not at this time.

Left quite speechless by that explanation (was it really an explanation or a form of smokescreen?), it took Byakuya a small moment to actually remember his purpose, which was protection. Sexual intercourse happened at some point in these relationships, and it was important that he explain preventative procedures early before such things as venereal diseases and babies appeared. He had, at least, caught the ball before they had slid home. A home run at the present moment would be averted, but not for long, if such things were to run their natural course.

Thus he was left in the unpleasant and highly uncomfortable position of having to talk about the birds and the bees with Rukia. There might be some stumbling in the explanation, but he did know what he was talking about. He had been married, after all, and well. One did things with a wife that were not mentioned in polite company, but that were expected in order to produce such items as heirs and heiresses to one's fortune. "Ah. Such matters might... progress until..." just how did one phrase a discussion on intimate matters such as these? "...until... copulation." It was perhaps a little too clinical, but it was a usable term. And also understandable in such a context. "I trust you will obtain... ah. Items of... ah... Items that might aid in the prevention of... unwanted... events..."

"Bee. We may both be rookies but...." Rukia paused, eyes slanting sideways for a moment before refocusing on her brother in the decision to drop the sports terminology. Her knowledge of baseball was a little too sketchy to come up with a suitable metaphor for condoms. "I'm not a fool, Byakuya, if -- when intercourse occurs we will be careful to take the appropriate measures. Ichigo is very into protection, in general."

Stretching out her legs before pins and needles set in to make this experience even more uncomfortable than it was already, she decided to lay her cards on the table and let Byakuya make of them what he might. "I am well past both the consensual and average ages for such things to take place, quite old enough to know what I am getting into. Eventually you will, I hope, learn to separate Ichigo's words from his actions, he will not rush me or pressure me and I would not be with anyone who tried." explaining that she had, in fact, never met anyone quite so backwards in coming forwards (except perhaps herself) might have been sharing a little more information than was needed.

Rukia had by now accepted that not everything could run to a schedule, sometimes it was necessary to just let things happen when they happened. She did, however, have standards. "As I have no intention of getting married within the next two years at least, nor of having children until I am a minimum of twenty four and a maximum of twenty eight years of age, please trust that I will be very careful about the possibility of any 'unwanted events.' We're only dating, Bee, I just like being with him, that's all. Most people have been doing this kind of thing for years before they get to my age and I feel almost foolish for not having practised, myself. I might be better at it..."

That was hardly his concern. She was, and that was the only matter he required reassurances of. "I don't intend to make you ashamed of me, for any reason."

He wanted so very much to assure her that she couldn't make him ashamed of her. She was his sister. She might make him worry, or exasperated, but neither of those seemed to fit the current situation. It was reassuring (though a little odd, and quite Rukia-ish) that she had already set out a timeline for her life, and that babies and marriage weren't featuring in it for the short term. The additional detail was a little too close for comfort, so he chose to ignore that, though he filled away the information just in case.

"Then I shall trust you in this matter, as you seem to know best." There was little else he could say, or would say. The matter was closed in his book, and he was sweltering in his coat. The door beckoned, but he waited to see if there was anything else, or if he might make a swift escape.

It was hardly the best of reassurances. She wanted to say that she didn't want him to pretend to trust her just because she'd beaten him down but because she was trustworthy. Because this was important to her, and maybe almost as important as he was but that didn't diminish his value in her life. That she'd like him to smile and be happy for her, because she was happy and had never known what it was like to share this feeling before.

He wouldn't have understood, it wasn't fair of her to ask him to. Instead she nodded her thanks and almost let him go, hesitating with one palm in the act of pushing herself up. "Bee, I was just wondering, do you still remember our mother? I mean of course you remember her, it's not as though you're going to forget but, can you still see her, if you close your eyes? Is it... clear?" Do you ever dream about her?

Rukia had little more than a photograph to go on, a picture that could very well have been her, taller and trying on the sort of clothes that made her feel stiff and uncomfortable. When it came to their father, dead less than two years, she found she could still picture him as he was if she closed her eyes and concentrated hard - but it had sometimes taken effort to remember his features during life, that was hardly new. She wondered if it was different when it came to mothers, if they left some kind of firmer imprint on the memory. Byakuya would have been nine when she died, she wanted to know how long it had taken him to begin to forget.

He had forgotten too quickly. Grasped at anything and everything he could to remember, pictures, clothes, her perfume had not aided in recall. He had tried in his own way to remember, only to have the images of her dim as he aged, the edges fading like a grainy photograph slowly overexposed over time. It seemed, sometimes that the harder he held on, the longer, the tighter he gripped, the faster things slipped away like sand. The pressure of his desperate need to cling on to the old memories merely squeezed them through his mental grasp until they were lost amongst a thousand, a million, a billion other thoughts.

He thought too much.

It wasn't a painful memory now, though. Time had dulled that pain. Funny that in his whole life, the women who had come through and made some kind of indelible stamp on it were all dark-haired and small-sized. Similar in appearance, if not in temperament. Their mother hadn't seemed that way to him, but he'd only been a child when she had passed on. Old pictures had told the story when he had dug them out of photo albums thrown out upon her death. Those photographs he had salvaged still lay in a box in the bottom of his closet, under clothes moulding away and other objects that did not fit into their current lives.

He could see her in Rukia. The kindness in the eyes, the joy in the smile, the life that bubbled through all were so similar to their mother. Maybe that was why their father had been unable to look upon her for too long. Maybe that was why Byakuya was so protective of her times two. He had promised his mother once, that he would grow up strong and look after her, but had failed in that. So all his energies went into her replica. Not just her replica, but a person in her own right. It was difficult for him to remember that sometimes, that Rukia was different, older, almost adult.

"I... I don't remember very much of her any more. I have... memories." She was their mother, and Byakuya wanted to share her, in his own way, though he stumbled at the task a little. Rukia had never asked, so he had never divulged. Now that she had, he didn't know where to start. "I remember her smell the most. She smelled..." Words left him then, uncertain how to proceed or how to convey his feelings and the faded images and sensations in his mind. "She smelled safe." It was the best way he knew to put it. "You look a lot like her. Are a lot like her, too." Hesitantly, he added, a tentative offer. "I... have some pictures."

Rukia nodded. "I have one." saved from the one occasion when she had demanded to be shown, asked a little too loudly why there were no photographs kept around the house and if their Father had hated her so much that he couldn't look now (if he hated her, the unspoken question). She never looked at it, it was still settled in the front pocket of the case she had brought from their old house, almost a full year after everything else had been unpacked. Didn't like looking, really, staring at a portrait of someone she had never known, guilty for feeling nothing.

Maybe that was when the distance began. Their mother had (so she was told) lasted a full twenty days after her birth. Held her daughter once. Complications. Dying in childbirth seemed like such a prehistoric thing, condemned along with cholera or consumption to the territory of classical opera and Brontë novels. In this modern age they had enough expertise to keep her alive for 480 painful hours and that was all. Were they expected to be grateful for such technological advances? She wondered if Byakuya was. She wondered if, "Do you blame me? Did you ever?"

At first. He'd wanted to hate her, the squalling little thing in the nursery bassinet (even as a baby she'd been loud) that had been the beginning of the end of an era for him. "Mother told me not to." He turned to look at her, his sister, the once-baby-now-woman. "She knew she was dying. She ... she told me to look after you." A wry smile graced his solemn features then. "For her."

She'd told him a lot of things in those last days. He, a scared, scrawny boy, scared of the smell of hospitals and the forbidding look he'd never before seen on Father's face. Their mother had told him so many things that he had forgotten in those days, secrets she had wanted to keep until he was older and could understand better, but hadn't the time to. She'd held his hands when they had moments together, little slips of time that he could barely sense traces of in his mind.

Byakuya stumbled a little, the confession of a nine year old boy who had lost a mother and gained an unwanted sister. "I blamed you... at first, but I couldn't after a while." His eyes were steady, sincere as he looked at the well-loved face hidden behind knees and dark hair. "I don't blame you. It wasn't your fault." God giveth and taketh away. It was as close as he would get to telling her that he loved her. She was, in some infinitesimal way, a gift from their mother. "I... Rukia." He hesitated, unsure how to tell her, reassure her that she should feel no guilt in the matter. "She... she wanted you. Spoke about you a lot when she was pregnant. Couldn't wait for me to have a sister. I couldn't blame you for ... her death. I was excited to have you, because she was excited."

It wasn't really that she felt guilty. At least, she never blamed herself for the loss of a parent - ridiculous, who would allow themselves to feel guilt at simply being born? If anything she felt sorry for her family, losing someone they loved so much and gaining her instead. It did not seem like a fair trade, but she had not asked to be conceived, indeed had she been given the choice it was possible that she may have requested a transfer. She had been so envious of other people's families, growing up, though allowing herself to think about it now brought the realisation that she would not have fitted in with them, either. Not as she was.

And there was him, Byakuya, who while perhaps not all the family she had got (she managed to collect a ragtag family for herself, somehow, as she went along), was certainly her only brother. And who did far more for her than he should. She wouldn't exchange him so easily.

Even if what he was saying made her awkward and regretful of having brought the subject up in the first place. It was that smile he gave her, the one she couldn't properly return -- just a little too honest. "Good, then." the reply awkward, her eyes turned away. "I was only wondering how long it stayed with you, that's all." she sighed, worked on her own brand of smile (the kind that may as well have been painted on) and looked him over, tone changing with the subject. "Aren't you terribly hot?"

He was and wasn't hot at the same time. His body had become somewhat acclimated to the sweltering heat of his coat during their somewhat lengthy discussion. In any case, it was immaterial at this point. Rukia seemed close to being done with her questions, so he slid forward on his seat in preparation to leave for his walk. "It did not stay for very long." Pensive mood over, he turned to look at Rukia. "Was there anything else?"

If there wasn't, perhaps he might be allowed out now.

"Perhaps, but I really should go down and check that he hasn't drowned in a pool of his own vomit." Rukia's expression was apologetic, hoping that this wasn't seen as a statement of choice (though Byakuya was clearly itching to leave, it would be her who departed first, in favour of Ichigo).

"Thank you, Bee. And I'm sorry I've kept you from your walk. It's cold though and I could well be gone all night, maybe you could take your coat off and just pace around the couch?" she knew his habits well enough to tease, the fact that she too paced while thinking was easily overlooked.

She turned back from the door when she reached it, the few short paces giving her ample time to think of more to say. "Please don't think I am forbidding you to talk to Ichigo. On the contrary I encourage you to do more of it. Neither am I suggesting that you have to agree with everything he says, believe me when I say that I am well aware he is not always right. Besides, it will do him no harm to be a little bit afraid of you, it may even be healthy." The grin she left him with was conspiratorial, all things forgiven on her part and progress hopefully made on his. She might even have to thank Ichigo - in his current state it was doubtful he would remember it, come the morning.