Fanfiction - Reverie
Title: Reverie
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Orihime, Ichigo
Pairing: blatant Ichihime XP
Word Count: 2368
Author's Notes: Dedicated to
anemoneoflight as a VERY VERY late birthday present -.-" Or you know, if you don't want it, it can just be a dedication... *cough* You can disown me now. Really.
Sometimes she dreams of nothing at all, and those are the dreams that she likes the best. It feels as if she has gotten a good nights rest, more so than any other night. It’s like even her mind was too tired to generate dreams. Yet she is also fond of those nonsensical dreams that come to her every once in a while (not as often as when she was child); they give her something to think about in the early morning, to ponder if there was a meaning to it or if it was just nonsense produced by brainwaves with no significance.
Today she woke from something different. It was a dream but it didn’t have the feel of fleeting fantasy to it. It left an impression of being an apocalyptic vision more than anything else. And that overbearing sense of wrong was unbearable. It filled her mind with doubts that had never been there before: maybe she shouldn’t have been waking up in her bed, maybe she wasn’t doing this right, and maybe this was not who she was meant to be. But most of all it felt so incredibly wrong to wake up in her room alone. Not in the sense that it wasn’t her home, but more as if it was her home but there was somewhere else that would give her a better refuge than the cozy apartment. As if she shouldn’t really be walking into the bathroom to wash herself; not for the sake of washing but more like it wasn’t what she should be doing. She wouldn’t quite dub it a calling, no.
It was more like an awakening.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“Like a revelation?” Chihiru asked.
No, she answered, an awakening.
“Same thing.” Chihiru shrugged. “An awakening, a revelation: they’re both sudden realizations.”
Not really, she answered. An awakening is the beginning; a revelation is something astonishing. They don’t necessarily have to be sudden either. They can be gradual, like a creeping sense of truth.
“Yeah sure. I’ll only listen to you since you’re a writer and you’re supposed to know this stuff. A poor office worker is not one to criticize.”
She smiles fondly at her friend before taking another sip of frappucino. She opens her mouth to comfort her but is interrupted when Chihiru chooses to speak again.
“Don’t think about the dreams. You are doing what is absolutely right for you. I mean look at how successful you are! It has to be right.” Chihiru slurps down the last of her mocha.
“It’s probably the stress. You said the brainstorming wasn’t going as smooth right?”
Right, she says. Thanks Chihiru. It’s probably because Uryuu’s been a little overbearing with the deadline… not that he was very insistent about it! Just little reminders. Makes me a bit guilty since I don’t really have anything solid to show him.
“He should respect an artist’s privacy. Inspirations don’t really come overnight.”
She beams at her friend’s support and agrees. It’s just that the progress is slower than I thought it’d be.
“Don’t worry. I have absolute faith in you. Your writing is amazing and all your books have done so well. This one will be a bestseller too.”
Thanks, she laughs. I hope so, but let’s not jinx it either. And she turns a little when she senses a presence behind her. A woman, looking a little apologetic, steps closer to where she is sitting.
“I’m sorry… but you’re the author of Six Flowers right? It’s an amazing book really. So…”
The woman offers up a notebook and pen like a sacrifice. In return, she smiles effortlessly and says of course.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
He blinks, taking a moment to recognize his surroundings.
Of course. He’s in bed. Where else would he be? Shit.
He doesn’t want to move: he never wants to after that dream. But he stretches his arm towards his alarm clock anyways to check the time.
The alarm hasn’t even rung yet. Shit. Now he was up early and wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. He hates mornings.
He sits up, moving the warm covers off his body. The strong scent of caffeine hits his nose; his father’s ritual coffee overdose has already started. He also hears the soft padding outside his door. His sister must be up already too. Why did she always wake up so early? The kid needed sleep more than anyone in the house. Still, in the back of his mind he knows that she only gets up early to make everyone breakfasts as the rest of them are hopeless in the kitchen. Not that he really needed breakfast. A piece of hastily made toast was enough for him.
He throws the covers off quickly and starts his slow way to the bathroom. His sister is already in the kitchen by the time he comes out, probably still dressed in her pajamas. He feels a twinge of guilt every time he thinks about it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“So what’re you doing in school today?”
He chews on his toast methodically. I don’t know. Stuff.
“Hey where’s your enthusiasm? You should be more like Yuki.” His father answers, again using his sister as an example.
“You should be a little more excited. What about your friends?” Yuki is too young to know that their father is a bad influence, he tells himself. Besides, she’s just acting the part of the mother for the old man.
Yeah, whatever. I’m just kind of tired okay? He gulps down his milk, hoping this is the end of it. It never is.
His father sighs dramatically, just as he anticipated him to. “Is this how we raised you to be? Well that’s fine I guess. Your mother would be sad though.”
He doesn’t say anything. They both know that he’s not going to take the bait.
I’m going now, he announces. He’s sure that he hadn’t needed to though.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
She sighs and rolls to her side. Her pen rolls with her on the couch to fall to the carpet with a soft thud. She hugs her notebook to her chest so that it does not follow the same fate as its companion and reaches below to retrieve the pen.
If there was one thing that she dislikes (not hates) it’s inactivity. Yet her mental block isn’t allowing her to do anything else other than to shift back and forth on the couch. What to do what to do what to do? She only had vague character sketches that she was ashamed to call her own and not even a plot. Since when was writing so difficult? She closes her eyes to calm her mind but only manages to catch fragments of her dream from last night.
There was a pair of eyes watching her from the dark. A pair of deadly golden eyes. And there was a mask there too, white with fierce markings like that of some exotic warrior going out to war. And a sword, shining in his hand lethally. It was pitch black, like his tattered robes that fluttered just enough for her to hear the sharp sounds of cloth against wind. Sometimes he reached out his hand to the pearl white mask and it broke down into grains of dust that neither sparkled nor were soft in her hands. And his face…
She never saw it.
Recalling it now she is surprised that she felt no fear towards the apparition. The wave of emotion that beat against her heart at night… it was relief. She had been glad to see the fearsome swordsman, as if it would take her away. All she had needed to do was call him.
She pauses now. It makes her squirm a little in embarrassment but the truth is that she, at the age of 30, does not know a single male with enough intimacy or attraction between them to dream about.
So who was she to reach out to?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
He doesn’t really like lunch time that much. It’s a break from all the teachers but it’s also when you’re supposed to mingle with the other students. He doesn’t enjoy ‘mingling’ to the extent that he waits for lunch every waking second. He waits for the clock to hit three like his life depends on it; but lunch, he just wishes passes by quickly like a chore he has to do.
He isn’t even hungry.
“Man, what’s with the rice today? It’s all… not sticky.” Kyosuke shakes a his bowl while the grains inside dance accordingly to his movement. Momoiro shrugs and responds, “What do you expect? It’s cafeteria food.”
He secures the position of his earphones as Kyosuke starts his never-ending rant; he isn’t in the mood to hear one at the moment. He closes his eyes so that he doesn’t see Kyosuke’s wild hand movements completely overwhelm Momoiro.
In the darkness, the dream hits him hard. And even if it makes him want to punch something, he doesn’t ever let it go. It’s downright fearful to lose it, that one piece of sanity that he thinks he has left.
She’s waiting for him. Her hands are clasped tight to her chest, and she always looks so hopeful. He can’t let her down, he knows it. Letting her down… no, he’s not even going to think about it. He just wants to save her, from whatever it is that she’s being held for. She looks like some princess in a fairytale; he can never piece together her features but he just knows that she’s beautiful. Not because his mind is stuck in some stereotype but because… he can just tell. He can’t explain it; it’s just there. Warm brown eyes, a small button nose, and lips that are always whispering something. She has blue stars in her hair too, holding back her auburn hair but letting it loose so that he can see it flying in the air whenever that tower crumbles a little. And that tower is where he needs to be.
He just doesn’t know where or how.
He takes his earphones off and stuffs the mp3 in his pocket. He needs to get out of here.
“Where are you going?”
Momoiro stares at him with curious eyes, chopstick held between his teeth. Kyousuke mumbles something about a secret girlfriend.
Need to get some air. Tell the teacher that I went home.
Momoiro dutifully says okay; he can trust him to come up with some believable excuse. Kyousuke… well… the guy tries. And just as the door to the roof closes, he hears Kyousuke burst into a yell about abandonment.
He has bigger things to worry about.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
She’s late! So late! How could she just fall asleep like that?!
She gives her cheeks another light slap to chase away any lingering drowsiness. She needs to be awake! A meeting with the publisher was always so important and it was crucial that they continue to support her: with the onset of new, up and coming writers, it was hard to sustain her footing with them.
She steps into the street, post snowfall slush wetting her shoes. Taxi, she calls but none of them stop for her. Giving another desperate wave of her arms with no results, she twists through the crowded streets in search of a bus stop. The blue sign lights up suddenly in the corner of her eyes and she rushes to the nearest intersection. Just across the street! If she got there before the signal ended…!
Chasing after the last of the stragglers, she slips. On what she’s not quite sure, maybe black ice or maybe some leftover coffee (something humorous for the journalists to work with, she’s sure, if she ended up in a coma). But all she knows is that she feels her world fall back into all the right places.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
It’s cold out. Better than rain but still, it was freezing.
He wishes that they would make these uniforms a bit warmer. Didn’t they know that this was the student’s survival gear? He snuggles deeper into his coat, his bag slapping uncomfortably against his leg. He should get a new bag, a backpack preferably. His old man and the ‘good old days’… honestly…
He trudges on, the snow starting to dampen his socks. Great. When he looks back up again from his miserable footwear, he sees her. Or rather, senses her.
She’s running towards the crossing, face scrunched into worry. He knows her. He knows her. The girl with the stars in her hair.
Then, she slips.
He ditches the damn bag, glad to get rid of it, and runs like he’s never done before. Goddamnit why was she so far away? He uses all the speed he never really used in gym, because at least this time it was worth it. Better use it to save his… his… his what? Dream? Well it was better than running laps in the gym.
He misses her by a mile the first time and he curses. Shit this wasn’t it! But his feet refuse to stand still and he realizes that he’s slipping on ice. Damn it! This was the worst shit that-
And she’s in his arms, auburn hair spilling over his coat and wide eyes looking right at his own. He opens his mouth and she does the same; mirror images of each other.
“You…”
He stops. What... was he supposed to do now? He had things he wanted to ask her, but the only way he could think of to start was ‘you are from my dream’. He’s saved though, from his inadequate social skills when her lips move again and this time he can hear what she’s saying clearly.
“Orihime.”
She blinks, each time revealing wide brown orbs that remind him of the look she gives him in his dreams. It's the same girl. He's positive.
"You are..."
It’s not a question but he answers it anyway.
Ichigo. His name is Ichigo.
“Ichigo,” she says softly, trying it out with her tongue. And when she breaks out into a smile, he can only stare at her bright face and let his lips do the same.
“I'm glad you're here.”
Fandom: Bleach
Characters: Orihime, Ichigo
Pairing: blatant Ichihime XP
Word Count: 2368
Author's Notes: Dedicated to
anemoneoflight as a VERY VERY late birthday present -.-" Or you know, if you don't want it, it can just be a dedication... *cough* You can disown me now. Really.
Sometimes she dreams of nothing at all, and those are the dreams that she likes the best. It feels as if she has gotten a good nights rest, more so than any other night. It’s like even her mind was too tired to generate dreams. Yet she is also fond of those nonsensical dreams that come to her every once in a while (not as often as when she was child); they give her something to think about in the early morning, to ponder if there was a meaning to it or if it was just nonsense produced by brainwaves with no significance.
Today she woke from something different. It was a dream but it didn’t have the feel of fleeting fantasy to it. It left an impression of being an apocalyptic vision more than anything else. And that overbearing sense of wrong was unbearable. It filled her mind with doubts that had never been there before: maybe she shouldn’t have been waking up in her bed, maybe she wasn’t doing this right, and maybe this was not who she was meant to be. But most of all it felt so incredibly wrong to wake up in her room alone. Not in the sense that it wasn’t her home, but more as if it was her home but there was somewhere else that would give her a better refuge than the cozy apartment. As if she shouldn’t really be walking into the bathroom to wash herself; not for the sake of washing but more like it wasn’t what she should be doing. She wouldn’t quite dub it a calling, no.
It was more like an awakening.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“Like a revelation?” Chihiru asked.
No, she answered, an awakening.
“Same thing.” Chihiru shrugged. “An awakening, a revelation: they’re both sudden realizations.”
Not really, she answered. An awakening is the beginning; a revelation is something astonishing. They don’t necessarily have to be sudden either. They can be gradual, like a creeping sense of truth.
“Yeah sure. I’ll only listen to you since you’re a writer and you’re supposed to know this stuff. A poor office worker is not one to criticize.”
She smiles fondly at her friend before taking another sip of frappucino. She opens her mouth to comfort her but is interrupted when Chihiru chooses to speak again.
“Don’t think about the dreams. You are doing what is absolutely right for you. I mean look at how successful you are! It has to be right.” Chihiru slurps down the last of her mocha.
“It’s probably the stress. You said the brainstorming wasn’t going as smooth right?”
Right, she says. Thanks Chihiru. It’s probably because Uryuu’s been a little overbearing with the deadline… not that he was very insistent about it! Just little reminders. Makes me a bit guilty since I don’t really have anything solid to show him.
“He should respect an artist’s privacy. Inspirations don’t really come overnight.”
She beams at her friend’s support and agrees. It’s just that the progress is slower than I thought it’d be.
“Don’t worry. I have absolute faith in you. Your writing is amazing and all your books have done so well. This one will be a bestseller too.”
Thanks, she laughs. I hope so, but let’s not jinx it either. And she turns a little when she senses a presence behind her. A woman, looking a little apologetic, steps closer to where she is sitting.
“I’m sorry… but you’re the author of Six Flowers right? It’s an amazing book really. So…”
The woman offers up a notebook and pen like a sacrifice. In return, she smiles effortlessly and says of course.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
He blinks, taking a moment to recognize his surroundings.
Of course. He’s in bed. Where else would he be? Shit.
He doesn’t want to move: he never wants to after that dream. But he stretches his arm towards his alarm clock anyways to check the time.
The alarm hasn’t even rung yet. Shit. Now he was up early and wouldn’t be able to fall asleep again. He hates mornings.
He sits up, moving the warm covers off his body. The strong scent of caffeine hits his nose; his father’s ritual coffee overdose has already started. He also hears the soft padding outside his door. His sister must be up already too. Why did she always wake up so early? The kid needed sleep more than anyone in the house. Still, in the back of his mind he knows that she only gets up early to make everyone breakfasts as the rest of them are hopeless in the kitchen. Not that he really needed breakfast. A piece of hastily made toast was enough for him.
He throws the covers off quickly and starts his slow way to the bathroom. His sister is already in the kitchen by the time he comes out, probably still dressed in her pajamas. He feels a twinge of guilt every time he thinks about it.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
“So what’re you doing in school today?”
He chews on his toast methodically. I don’t know. Stuff.
“Hey where’s your enthusiasm? You should be more like Yuki.” His father answers, again using his sister as an example.
“You should be a little more excited. What about your friends?” Yuki is too young to know that their father is a bad influence, he tells himself. Besides, she’s just acting the part of the mother for the old man.
Yeah, whatever. I’m just kind of tired okay? He gulps down his milk, hoping this is the end of it. It never is.
His father sighs dramatically, just as he anticipated him to. “Is this how we raised you to be? Well that’s fine I guess. Your mother would be sad though.”
He doesn’t say anything. They both know that he’s not going to take the bait.
I’m going now, he announces. He’s sure that he hadn’t needed to though.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
She sighs and rolls to her side. Her pen rolls with her on the couch to fall to the carpet with a soft thud. She hugs her notebook to her chest so that it does not follow the same fate as its companion and reaches below to retrieve the pen.
If there was one thing that she dislikes (not hates) it’s inactivity. Yet her mental block isn’t allowing her to do anything else other than to shift back and forth on the couch. What to do what to do what to do? She only had vague character sketches that she was ashamed to call her own and not even a plot. Since when was writing so difficult? She closes her eyes to calm her mind but only manages to catch fragments of her dream from last night.
There was a pair of eyes watching her from the dark. A pair of deadly golden eyes. And there was a mask there too, white with fierce markings like that of some exotic warrior going out to war. And a sword, shining in his hand lethally. It was pitch black, like his tattered robes that fluttered just enough for her to hear the sharp sounds of cloth against wind. Sometimes he reached out his hand to the pearl white mask and it broke down into grains of dust that neither sparkled nor were soft in her hands. And his face…
She never saw it.
Recalling it now she is surprised that she felt no fear towards the apparition. The wave of emotion that beat against her heart at night… it was relief. She had been glad to see the fearsome swordsman, as if it would take her away. All she had needed to do was call him.
She pauses now. It makes her squirm a little in embarrassment but the truth is that she, at the age of 30, does not know a single male with enough intimacy or attraction between them to dream about.
So who was she to reach out to?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
He doesn’t really like lunch time that much. It’s a break from all the teachers but it’s also when you’re supposed to mingle with the other students. He doesn’t enjoy ‘mingling’ to the extent that he waits for lunch every waking second. He waits for the clock to hit three like his life depends on it; but lunch, he just wishes passes by quickly like a chore he has to do.
He isn’t even hungry.
“Man, what’s with the rice today? It’s all… not sticky.” Kyosuke shakes a his bowl while the grains inside dance accordingly to his movement. Momoiro shrugs and responds, “What do you expect? It’s cafeteria food.”
He secures the position of his earphones as Kyosuke starts his never-ending rant; he isn’t in the mood to hear one at the moment. He closes his eyes so that he doesn’t see Kyosuke’s wild hand movements completely overwhelm Momoiro.
In the darkness, the dream hits him hard. And even if it makes him want to punch something, he doesn’t ever let it go. It’s downright fearful to lose it, that one piece of sanity that he thinks he has left.
She’s waiting for him. Her hands are clasped tight to her chest, and she always looks so hopeful. He can’t let her down, he knows it. Letting her down… no, he’s not even going to think about it. He just wants to save her, from whatever it is that she’s being held for. She looks like some princess in a fairytale; he can never piece together her features but he just knows that she’s beautiful. Not because his mind is stuck in some stereotype but because… he can just tell. He can’t explain it; it’s just there. Warm brown eyes, a small button nose, and lips that are always whispering something. She has blue stars in her hair too, holding back her auburn hair but letting it loose so that he can see it flying in the air whenever that tower crumbles a little. And that tower is where he needs to be.
He just doesn’t know where or how.
He takes his earphones off and stuffs the mp3 in his pocket. He needs to get out of here.
“Where are you going?”
Momoiro stares at him with curious eyes, chopstick held between his teeth. Kyousuke mumbles something about a secret girlfriend.
Need to get some air. Tell the teacher that I went home.
Momoiro dutifully says okay; he can trust him to come up with some believable excuse. Kyousuke… well… the guy tries. And just as the door to the roof closes, he hears Kyousuke burst into a yell about abandonment.
He has bigger things to worry about.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
She’s late! So late! How could she just fall asleep like that?!
She gives her cheeks another light slap to chase away any lingering drowsiness. She needs to be awake! A meeting with the publisher was always so important and it was crucial that they continue to support her: with the onset of new, up and coming writers, it was hard to sustain her footing with them.
She steps into the street, post snowfall slush wetting her shoes. Taxi, she calls but none of them stop for her. Giving another desperate wave of her arms with no results, she twists through the crowded streets in search of a bus stop. The blue sign lights up suddenly in the corner of her eyes and she rushes to the nearest intersection. Just across the street! If she got there before the signal ended…!
Chasing after the last of the stragglers, she slips. On what she’s not quite sure, maybe black ice or maybe some leftover coffee (something humorous for the journalists to work with, she’s sure, if she ended up in a coma). But all she knows is that she feels her world fall back into all the right places.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
It’s cold out. Better than rain but still, it was freezing.
He wishes that they would make these uniforms a bit warmer. Didn’t they know that this was the student’s survival gear? He snuggles deeper into his coat, his bag slapping uncomfortably against his leg. He should get a new bag, a backpack preferably. His old man and the ‘good old days’… honestly…
He trudges on, the snow starting to dampen his socks. Great. When he looks back up again from his miserable footwear, he sees her. Or rather, senses her.
She’s running towards the crossing, face scrunched into worry. He knows her. He knows her. The girl with the stars in her hair.
Then, she slips.
He ditches the damn bag, glad to get rid of it, and runs like he’s never done before. Goddamnit why was she so far away? He uses all the speed he never really used in gym, because at least this time it was worth it. Better use it to save his… his… his what? Dream? Well it was better than running laps in the gym.
He misses her by a mile the first time and he curses. Shit this wasn’t it! But his feet refuse to stand still and he realizes that he’s slipping on ice. Damn it! This was the worst shit that-
And she’s in his arms, auburn hair spilling over his coat and wide eyes looking right at his own. He opens his mouth and she does the same; mirror images of each other.
“You…”
He stops. What... was he supposed to do now? He had things he wanted to ask her, but the only way he could think of to start was ‘you are from my dream’. He’s saved though, from his inadequate social skills when her lips move again and this time he can hear what she’s saying clearly.
“Orihime.”
She blinks, each time revealing wide brown orbs that remind him of the look she gives him in his dreams. It's the same girl. He's positive.
"You are..."
It’s not a question but he answers it anyway.
Ichigo. His name is Ichigo.
“Ichigo,” she says softly, trying it out with her tongue. And when she breaks out into a smile, he can only stare at her bright face and let his lips do the same.
“I'm glad you're here.”