(no subject)
Christmas.
A word he had only just learned from Orihime; a strange tradition from the Living World to celebrate a strange heady mixture of religions and folktales. She had been crying in her room when he had taken her food, distressed she would be missing Christmas; more curious than he liked to admit he had questioned her about it in detail.
And now, sat in the semi-darkness of his room he didn’t know why he was so arrested with the concept of Christmas; perhaps it was the postcard she had shown him of two people kissing, they had looked so happy and content and so very alien to him.
His fingertips traced the rim of the hole in his neck, that void which reminded him both of what he was and who he served; a reminder he was no longer anything that should be feeling or wishing to feel happiness and love.
Closing his eyes he tried to clear his mind as he always did before sleep, but for some reason he couldn’t; that postcard swam in his mind but the faces of the people in it were blurred and the woman’s hair was vibrantly titian.
In the morning as always he woke at dawn, the world outside his window looking the same as it had the night before; nothing to mark that this was Christmas Day. He prepared her food tray in silence and on his short walk to her room his step remained, as ever, perfectly calm and unhurried.
But when the door opened it was the closest Ulquiorra had ever come to losing control of the neutral mask that he had been created with; his eyes widened slightly and his lips parted as he gazed upon the scene before him.
Tentatively he took one step through the doorway, and fixed his emerald eyes on her.
“What is the meaning of this, woman?”
She had decorated her small room with coloured strips of paper she had obviously done herself over hours with the meagre writing supplies they supplied her, in her hands she clutched one of her flowered hair pins modified with a piece of paper in green turning it into a strange and alien plant.
“Merry Christmas, Ulquiorra-sama.”
He took another step towards her, face still unreadable as his mind whirled; something stirring inside of him so unusual, so different to anything he had felt before. Orihime nervously closed the gap between them and held the hairpin above their heads, placing a soft kiss on his lips.
He blinked in utter shock; he hadn’t seen that coming and had no idea what to do now, every rational thought fled his mind and he gaped like a common mortal in his confusion as he looked at her in silent question.
“Mistletoe.” She said, as though that explained anything, and kissed him again.