Archive 'fic: What a Kiss Means (Strawberry Mix) (IchiRuki theme 34, tempest)
The title is slightly different in ichi_ruki memories, but I like this version better.
Follow-up to "first kiss"
1. A violent windstorm, frequently accompanied by rain, snow, or hail.
2. Furious agitation, commotion, or tumult; an uproar: “The tempest in my mind/Doth from my senses take all feeling” (Shakespeare).
After their "discussion," Ichigo spent several days not really talking to Rukia. Truth be told, it wasn't because he didn't have anything to say; he had plenty. But it's rather hard to talk to someone when you can't focus on their words because you're too busy staring at their mouth!
STUPID. WOMAN.
God, she'd ruined years, YEARS, of holding himself distant from women. He'd been aware of girls his own age, of course. He lived in a medical clinic and had, well, his Pop for a dad. He knew clinically, coldly, what puberty meant for boys his age.
He hadn't realized what it meant for him until...well, Tatsuki. They'd had lunch at school one day, and he looked at her, and she'd curved before his eyes. The line of her neck, her shoulders, the swell of her hips--it all stood out to him as if outlined in neon. It'd made his mouth go dry, and the next time he'd tried to talk, he'd stuttered like a moron. And hadn't she enjoyed pointing that out to him?
He really got the picture later that night, when he lay there in bed, panting, trembling, a mess. As he rose to clean himself off, he'd thought: I'm not ready for this. I've got to look after my family, keep my grades up. I still get shit for my hair--violent shit. I still have to deal with fucking ghosts. I still miss my mom. Do I really want to add a girl to all of this?
No. If Yuzu and Karin and Pop are anything to go by, it'd be a giant headache anyways. Besides, it doesn't fit my image.
All right then, he thought, finding a towel. No girls.
Mind made up, he did what he did best: suppressed. It had been hard at first, as the first waves of hormones did their best to dominate his mind. But he'd stuck with it, and had gotten so good at not reacting that he no longer saw anything to react to. Tatsuki in cargo pants, with that line of pale skin between waist and hip? No problem. Inoue had fabulous breasts? Eh, so what.
It got to the point that Keigo accused him of being blind, because he never saw any of the girls as girls. Females, sure--they all wore skirts, didn't they?--but as girls? Pass.
Occasionally something would slip past his guard and flash before him, in Technicolor. But there were ways of dealing with that, too, that didn't involve being an absolute nerd in public. Nor, after a few near misses, his family figuring it out.
There were some people who it didn't entirely work on--Yoruichi-san, for one. She had been his mentor and trainer in Soul Society, and that meant she registered; unfortunately, it also registered that she'd been naked and WORSE (so much worse). Kuukaku-san had, too, but that'd actually made things better--he filed them under "Soul Society weirdos" and left it at that.
There was a word for this sort of existence: eunuch. Or was it monk? Whatever; he was content to be one. Let Keigo and Mizuiro make fools of themselves in his place
Then Rukia...Rukia'd had to go, be herself, and FUCK IT UP.
She was another exception to the "girl" thing. When one of the first things that happens after you meet a person is you getting stabbed in the chest--voluntarily, no less--you tend to put that person in a special category. And Rukia, with her weird speech and strange demands and complete obliviousness, was a good fit for such a category. She'd made his life that much more chaotic, true, but she'd also given him the means to live up to his name--to protect his family, his friends, and later, anyone who looked like they might be in trouble. He couldn't shunt her off to the category "girl" after that.
Besides, he was comfortable with Rukia. Maybe it was the stabbing thing. Maybe it was because she was SO weird. Maybe because she got him, like Chad got him, in a way that didn't involve a lot of talking. She just sorta...knew.
Then she'd gone and KISSED him and now he was going CRAZY.
Take her scent, for instance. It was a ever-so-faint but pleasant thing that always seemed to be there, no matter what clothes she wore or soap she used. He'd only caught it because he'd been in close enough proximity to her, and because it was uniquely her: something like faint flowers over something like grave incense. A light note over a dark one; what she appeared to be over what she was. Fitting.
Now, though, it followed him EVERYWHERE. It didn't matter if she was next to him or halfway across the schoolyard, it was there. It was still faint, like a curl of smoke out of the corner of his eye, but that didn't matter, because it never went away. Hell, it even showed up where she had been--he'd opened her old closet the other night, a closet he'd opened previous to that, and that scent had come rolling out over him like a hidden wave. He had stood in it for a moment, blinking, and unbidden came the thought: isn't it just like Rukia, to smell like this?
At which point, he'd slammed the closet door shut.
Oh, and then there was the fact that she'd stripped him of his ability to ignore girl-ness. Tatsuki's pale skin was suddenly back, and Inoue...yeah, he'd known that she had great breasts, because no one ever seemed to shut up about it. But now--Inoue had breasts, AMAZING breasts, and holy CRAP he couldn't look at her either!
My mind, he thought as he hid his face in a textbook, has betrayed me. And it's ALL THAT BITCH'S FAULT. Worse, I have no clue why she did that!
Which wasn't the only thing he didn't get.
She knew, she KNEW, what he was going through. She'd made that clear the day she'd come back. But more than that, she'd already been through it before. Sure, he might be dense--he prided himself on it, sometimes--but he could make connections. He could ADD, even if she couldn't. Especially since Byakuya-moron had kept bringing it up. Anybody who had made that sort of impression on him had to have meant something to Rukia--it was just how things fit together.
If A, then B. If B, then C. If C, then D...
She was naive and oblivious, but not stupid. Not THAT stupid, anyways.
Yet, when he had acknowledged the connection and the possibility that it could happen to him (not an easy thing--damn good of him, really) AND had asked her to not involve herself in that (even better of him!), she had refused. She had refused, then highlighted it by kissing him. Like just saying "No" wasn't enough to piss him off.
...it had been such a brief contact, just her mouth over his, just a moment's contact. He had been surprised by the warmth of her soul's mouth.
He'd been surprised by the feeling that he'd just been stabbed.
Mind you, he'd been stabbed enough at this point to make a comparison. First, he wasn't bleeding. Second, aside from that initial contact, there was no pain. Third, it was warm--no, hot. Hot like an overheated bath, both pleasing and painful, that radiated out like spokes of lightning, that bubbled under his skin. Even Zanpaktou, which had names and awareness, still felt like cold steel where they kissed flesh.
All in a brief moment's touch.
He had been so shocked, so out of it, that he'd barely heard what she'd said next. Something about...his strength. He'd only slid a little more fully into himself when she'd turned around and made her promise to kill him, and even then, he could only muster a minimal response.
Aa - yes, I agree, I understand.
BUT HE DIDN'T AGREE.
And he didn't understand.
So now, on top of the fact that he was suddenly surrounded by girls and followed by Rukia's scent and he couldn't stop watching her mouth and oh yeah HOLLOW HIM, he had to figure out this "No, I'll kill you first" shit?
She would've been better off setting him on fire. Better than leaving him in the center of a storm he couldn't see his way out of.
He would've loved to get her back, too, except that every time his thoughts came close to revenge, they always came close to kissing, too. Repay a kiss with a kiss, said a snickering inner voice. Perfect revenge!
NOT PERFECT. VERY NOT PERFECT! he would yell back at himself, but the other part would just snicker, and he'd begin to contemplate, seriously, self-lobotomy. Or high bridges. Or setting his own self on fire.
Not that those were really an option, though.
The one bit of sanity left to him said the best option, and the one made hardest by her stupid actions, was to get her alone and shout at her until she owned up to what was going through her impenetrable mind. Maybe then, he could get some peace.
/Or then you could kiss her!/ that cheerfully insane part of him said. It sounded an awful lot like Kon.
Ichigo groaned, and buried his head in his hands.
As it turned out, the problem solved itself.
As it turned out, both parts of him were right.
Hollows. It always came back to Hollows.
They'd met because of them. He was shinigami because of them. Despite everything else that had happened, they were the constant background to their relationship.
Rukia had come back with the Soul Society team to, ostensibly, help with the Arrankar mess. Even so, this had originally been her territory, and she wasn't going to ignore Hollow incursions just because of the bigger threat hanging over their heads. Or because someone else had taken her place--she'd taken care of that with a look. And since Ichigo had a badge and shared said territory, it was only natural for him to come along. They'd made a good pair when she didn't have her powers and he'd just randomly swung his sword around; now, with both of them on a different level, they made a crack team.
If it weren't for the fact that Hollows were random fuckers, still not completely understood, still not completely documented, this wouldn't have been different from any other day.
Rukia is sprawled on Ichigo's back, body pressed against the curve of Zangetsu's doubly wrapped blade. She has one arm loosely around his neck, and her head lies slanted along the other side. His hands are under her legs, and he leans forward just a bit, so that she doesn't slide off his back. Her zanpaktou is stuck haphazardly through the back of her obi; it'd just get in the way in its normal spot.
There is blood on both of them. It's mostly hers.
Hollows that explode really piss me off, he thinks. You think you got 'em covered, but no, they fling shit at you and it blows up and hello, pain. 'Least it wasn't the shoulder or chest again.
He shifts Rukia on his back a little, and she makes a soft, muzzy sound. She'd taken a more direct hit than he had. No matter what she'd said about this Hollow or that one having a preference for women, they all seemed to like to make 'em bleed. Plus, he supposed, she smelled even "tastier" now.
She'd finished the fight, though, before collapsing. He'd managed to get her on his back before she'd passed out, and was heading for Urahara's. He could heal her, easily. Heal him, too, though he didn't need it as much.
This is the closest he's been to her in a week, but that's how it goes with Rukia: Shinigami business supercedes any sort of personal weirdness. Perhaps that's why the kiss, soul form to soul form, had been so affecting...
He growls to himself to shutup; this isn't the time to be thinking of that. But he can't help the hyperawareness of her when she's this close: the solid weight of her on his back; the fact that he can still smell her under the blood; the way her hair tickles the back of his neck and her breath makes a soft, warm spot on his shoulder. It brings out a pleasant, tickling sensation in his stomach, one of unease and excitement.
She stirs, interrupting his thoughts; he slows automatically. "Ichigo," she murmurs. "Put me down."
"Like hell," he says, instantly annoyance undercut by relief. He can't tell how badly she's injured, though it can't be that bad since her spirit force feels "okay" and she's being stupid about things.
But he's never really seen her pass out before, either.
"Ichigo," she says, voice sharper. "Put me down so I can heal these injuries."
Oh. That makes sense.
He looks around for someplace suitable, and settles on a nearby bench. He eases her down gently, then thunks down beside her. The narrow slices across hip and ribs flare up briefly, but it passes quickly enough. He turns to look at Rukia, and finds her turned towards him, hands outlined in the faint green of healing energy. He's never seen her heal herself before.
She slides towards him, winces, and reaches out to lay a hand on him.
His eyes flare, and he grabs her wrist. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She pulls her hand away from him. "Healing your wounds," she says, annoyed.
"Like hell you are!" he snarls back. "Aren't yours worse?"
She pauses and looks down, as if realizing for the first time that she's hurt. Like him, her wounds run in narrow slices, but across calf, knee, thigh, hip in ragged diagonals. There's blood specks on her arms, too, that he hadn't noticed before. Neither had she, apparently, as she pulls back her sleeve to show three narrow cuts from unseen claws.
Stupid exploding Hollows, he thinks again.
Then, she shakes her head and looks back at him. Her eyes don't quite meet his. "Yours first," she says, voice cold.
His eyes narrow. "No," he says.
"Don't be an idiot, Ichigo," she replies, exasperated.
"I'm the idiot? ME?" He points at her. "You're the moron here, woman! You're sitting there, barely awake and bleeding, and you won't even start on yourself? What kind of stupidity is that?"
"Ichigo..."
"You always do this!" he continues. "You always worry more about me than yourself! Shouldn't you worry about your own life? Shouldn't you value your own life? I've survived worse than this, and yet...and yet..."
Something shifts in him then, and before he can stop himself, the words come out of his mouth.
"What sort of shitty answer is 'no', Rukia?"
The last comes out in a voice that's cracked around the edges, and all of a sudden he can't look at her. Can't look at her wide, trembling eyes, or the softness that edges her face. Can't look at her, because every time he sees that expression, it reminds him of how she walked through those doors to Soul Society, and how she protected him once again.
He wants to ask why she won't let him protect her, especially from what-could-be, but he can't seem to get the words out.
It's quiet for a moment, a lull in the storm. He hears her take a breath--one, two, three--and let it out, smoothly. His air still comes ragged.
Then, "Idiot. Selfish idiot."
His head jerks up, and he has to look at her now. Her expression is not hard, but not entirely soft either, and her eyes are so clear that it takes a moment for him to realize that they're still wavering, just a bit.
"How can you say that?" she asks, and her voice is firm and soft. " 'Worry about yourself. Value your own life.' How can you say that, Ichigo, when you don't do those things yourself?"
His eyes flare wide in shock.
"You never watch your own back, your own body." She reaches out and touches his shoulder, and the scar underneath the kimono throbs for a moment. "You want to protect so many people, but you never stop to protect yourself." Her voice has softened now, thickened, as if the words are hard to push out.
"You sacrifice yourself so readily, for so many...why can't someone do the same for you?"
She pulls her hand back and shakes her head a little, then meets his eyes again. Her gaze has lost some of its misty look, midnight blue eyes firm against his own.
"It's selfish, Ichigo," she says. "And you can't ask me to be selfish if you won't be. You can't ask me to stop watching your back if you won't stop watching me. You can't say 'I'll protect you' if you won't let me say the same!"
He stares at her as the words wash over him, through him, and all he can think is: there's your answer, Ichigo. She trusts you to do all you can. She wants you to trust that she'll do the same, no matter the cost.
And you do.
So how do you show her that?
He moves forward a little, leans in, and before she can say anything else, kisses her.
Her lips are firm, for a moment. Then they soften, and part slightly, and she's kissing him back.
And this time, it feels nothing like being stabbed.
This time, it feels like a promise.
2997 words
A HA HA, this 'fic and I fought for days.
My first Ichigo POV. The various writing and rewriting on this 'fic takes up over twenty notebook pages. (The notebook in question is smaller than 8x11, but I also write fairly small.) I had the theme right off, and the dictionary.com definition of "tempest" was pretty much there from the beginning (especially since it had the Shakespeare quote), and started writing it in the large file. Then I switched to the notebook. Then I wrote in the computer file. Then back to the notebook. It eventually finished on the computer (which is why the last lines are so cheesy--endings and I often don't get along). If I were ever to photograph/scan what my draft writing looks like, it would have something to do with this 'fic. :)
A few things have been there since the first draft: what "aa" means; Ichigo's equation (If A then B, etc.) that I actively spent some time trying to figure out, and do everytime I reread the 'fic (so it A equals Kaien, and B equals Hollow, and C equals pain...wait wait wait I know that D equals death...); the idea that Ichigo was eventually going to resolve things by yelling at Rukia, and Rukia was going to yell back. The rest of it went through quite a few different permutations, including a much longer beginning sequence at school, the end kiss being much longer and much more WTF AM I DOING?, Ichigo doing a bit more analysis on Rukia's speech, etc. The tense shift from past to present comes out of me realizing that Ichigo's "voice" worked much better in past, but that putting Rukia in a scene seemed hard to write without the present tense. Honestly, I still have this problem; I've been working on something for Ray where Rukia keeps nudging my verbs into the present tense.
This 'fic in my mind is also the laundry room 'fic, since a ton of it was written in lounge next to the laundry room really early in the morning, face down in a comfy couch with my Jelly Roll metallic hunter green pen and my MuVo playing. That session is memorialized by the last lines on one of the pages: "And he kisses her and the author has to do another rewrite. Damnit."
Follow-up to "first kiss"
1. A violent windstorm, frequently accompanied by rain, snow, or hail.
2. Furious agitation, commotion, or tumult; an uproar: “The tempest in my mind/Doth from my senses take all feeling” (Shakespeare).
After their "discussion," Ichigo spent several days not really talking to Rukia. Truth be told, it wasn't because he didn't have anything to say; he had plenty. But it's rather hard to talk to someone when you can't focus on their words because you're too busy staring at their mouth!
STUPID. WOMAN.
God, she'd ruined years, YEARS, of holding himself distant from women. He'd been aware of girls his own age, of course. He lived in a medical clinic and had, well, his Pop for a dad. He knew clinically, coldly, what puberty meant for boys his age.
He hadn't realized what it meant for him until...well, Tatsuki. They'd had lunch at school one day, and he looked at her, and she'd curved before his eyes. The line of her neck, her shoulders, the swell of her hips--it all stood out to him as if outlined in neon. It'd made his mouth go dry, and the next time he'd tried to talk, he'd stuttered like a moron. And hadn't she enjoyed pointing that out to him?
He really got the picture later that night, when he lay there in bed, panting, trembling, a mess. As he rose to clean himself off, he'd thought: I'm not ready for this. I've got to look after my family, keep my grades up. I still get shit for my hair--violent shit. I still have to deal with fucking ghosts. I still miss my mom. Do I really want to add a girl to all of this?
No. If Yuzu and Karin and Pop are anything to go by, it'd be a giant headache anyways. Besides, it doesn't fit my image.
All right then, he thought, finding a towel. No girls.
Mind made up, he did what he did best: suppressed. It had been hard at first, as the first waves of hormones did their best to dominate his mind. But he'd stuck with it, and had gotten so good at not reacting that he no longer saw anything to react to. Tatsuki in cargo pants, with that line of pale skin between waist and hip? No problem. Inoue had fabulous breasts? Eh, so what.
It got to the point that Keigo accused him of being blind, because he never saw any of the girls as girls. Females, sure--they all wore skirts, didn't they?--but as girls? Pass.
Occasionally something would slip past his guard and flash before him, in Technicolor. But there were ways of dealing with that, too, that didn't involve being an absolute nerd in public. Nor, after a few near misses, his family figuring it out.
There were some people who it didn't entirely work on--Yoruichi-san, for one. She had been his mentor and trainer in Soul Society, and that meant she registered; unfortunately, it also registered that she'd been naked and WORSE (so much worse). Kuukaku-san had, too, but that'd actually made things better--he filed them under "Soul Society weirdos" and left it at that.
There was a word for this sort of existence: eunuch. Or was it monk? Whatever; he was content to be one. Let Keigo and Mizuiro make fools of themselves in his place
Then Rukia...Rukia'd had to go, be herself, and FUCK IT UP.
She was another exception to the "girl" thing. When one of the first things that happens after you meet a person is you getting stabbed in the chest--voluntarily, no less--you tend to put that person in a special category. And Rukia, with her weird speech and strange demands and complete obliviousness, was a good fit for such a category. She'd made his life that much more chaotic, true, but she'd also given him the means to live up to his name--to protect his family, his friends, and later, anyone who looked like they might be in trouble. He couldn't shunt her off to the category "girl" after that.
Besides, he was comfortable with Rukia. Maybe it was the stabbing thing. Maybe it was because she was SO weird. Maybe because she got him, like Chad got him, in a way that didn't involve a lot of talking. She just sorta...knew.
Then she'd gone and KISSED him and now he was going CRAZY.
Take her scent, for instance. It was a ever-so-faint but pleasant thing that always seemed to be there, no matter what clothes she wore or soap she used. He'd only caught it because he'd been in close enough proximity to her, and because it was uniquely her: something like faint flowers over something like grave incense. A light note over a dark one; what she appeared to be over what she was. Fitting.
Now, though, it followed him EVERYWHERE. It didn't matter if she was next to him or halfway across the schoolyard, it was there. It was still faint, like a curl of smoke out of the corner of his eye, but that didn't matter, because it never went away. Hell, it even showed up where she had been--he'd opened her old closet the other night, a closet he'd opened previous to that, and that scent had come rolling out over him like a hidden wave. He had stood in it for a moment, blinking, and unbidden came the thought: isn't it just like Rukia, to smell like this?
At which point, he'd slammed the closet door shut.
Oh, and then there was the fact that she'd stripped him of his ability to ignore girl-ness. Tatsuki's pale skin was suddenly back, and Inoue...yeah, he'd known that she had great breasts, because no one ever seemed to shut up about it. But now--Inoue had breasts, AMAZING breasts, and holy CRAP he couldn't look at her either!
My mind, he thought as he hid his face in a textbook, has betrayed me. And it's ALL THAT BITCH'S FAULT. Worse, I have no clue why she did that!
Which wasn't the only thing he didn't get.
She knew, she KNEW, what he was going through. She'd made that clear the day she'd come back. But more than that, she'd already been through it before. Sure, he might be dense--he prided himself on it, sometimes--but he could make connections. He could ADD, even if she couldn't. Especially since Byakuya-moron had kept bringing it up. Anybody who had made that sort of impression on him had to have meant something to Rukia--it was just how things fit together.
If A, then B. If B, then C. If C, then D...
She was naive and oblivious, but not stupid. Not THAT stupid, anyways.
Yet, when he had acknowledged the connection and the possibility that it could happen to him (not an easy thing--damn good of him, really) AND had asked her to not involve herself in that (even better of him!), she had refused. She had refused, then highlighted it by kissing him. Like just saying "No" wasn't enough to piss him off.
...it had been such a brief contact, just her mouth over his, just a moment's contact. He had been surprised by the warmth of her soul's mouth.
He'd been surprised by the feeling that he'd just been stabbed.
Mind you, he'd been stabbed enough at this point to make a comparison. First, he wasn't bleeding. Second, aside from that initial contact, there was no pain. Third, it was warm--no, hot. Hot like an overheated bath, both pleasing and painful, that radiated out like spokes of lightning, that bubbled under his skin. Even Zanpaktou, which had names and awareness, still felt like cold steel where they kissed flesh.
All in a brief moment's touch.
He had been so shocked, so out of it, that he'd barely heard what she'd said next. Something about...his strength. He'd only slid a little more fully into himself when she'd turned around and made her promise to kill him, and even then, he could only muster a minimal response.
Aa - yes, I agree, I understand.
BUT HE DIDN'T AGREE.
And he didn't understand.
So now, on top of the fact that he was suddenly surrounded by girls and followed by Rukia's scent and he couldn't stop watching her mouth and oh yeah HOLLOW HIM, he had to figure out this "No, I'll kill you first" shit?
She would've been better off setting him on fire. Better than leaving him in the center of a storm he couldn't see his way out of.
He would've loved to get her back, too, except that every time his thoughts came close to revenge, they always came close to kissing, too. Repay a kiss with a kiss, said a snickering inner voice. Perfect revenge!
NOT PERFECT. VERY NOT PERFECT! he would yell back at himself, but the other part would just snicker, and he'd begin to contemplate, seriously, self-lobotomy. Or high bridges. Or setting his own self on fire.
Not that those were really an option, though.
The one bit of sanity left to him said the best option, and the one made hardest by her stupid actions, was to get her alone and shout at her until she owned up to what was going through her impenetrable mind. Maybe then, he could get some peace.
/Or then you could kiss her!/ that cheerfully insane part of him said. It sounded an awful lot like Kon.
Ichigo groaned, and buried his head in his hands.
As it turned out, the problem solved itself.
As it turned out, both parts of him were right.
Hollows. It always came back to Hollows.
They'd met because of them. He was shinigami because of them. Despite everything else that had happened, they were the constant background to their relationship.
Rukia had come back with the Soul Society team to, ostensibly, help with the Arrankar mess. Even so, this had originally been her territory, and she wasn't going to ignore Hollow incursions just because of the bigger threat hanging over their heads. Or because someone else had taken her place--she'd taken care of that with a look. And since Ichigo had a badge and shared said territory, it was only natural for him to come along. They'd made a good pair when she didn't have her powers and he'd just randomly swung his sword around; now, with both of them on a different level, they made a crack team.
If it weren't for the fact that Hollows were random fuckers, still not completely understood, still not completely documented, this wouldn't have been different from any other day.
Rukia is sprawled on Ichigo's back, body pressed against the curve of Zangetsu's doubly wrapped blade. She has one arm loosely around his neck, and her head lies slanted along the other side. His hands are under her legs, and he leans forward just a bit, so that she doesn't slide off his back. Her zanpaktou is stuck haphazardly through the back of her obi; it'd just get in the way in its normal spot.
There is blood on both of them. It's mostly hers.
Hollows that explode really piss me off, he thinks. You think you got 'em covered, but no, they fling shit at you and it blows up and hello, pain. 'Least it wasn't the shoulder or chest again.
He shifts Rukia on his back a little, and she makes a soft, muzzy sound. She'd taken a more direct hit than he had. No matter what she'd said about this Hollow or that one having a preference for women, they all seemed to like to make 'em bleed. Plus, he supposed, she smelled even "tastier" now.
She'd finished the fight, though, before collapsing. He'd managed to get her on his back before she'd passed out, and was heading for Urahara's. He could heal her, easily. Heal him, too, though he didn't need it as much.
This is the closest he's been to her in a week, but that's how it goes with Rukia: Shinigami business supercedes any sort of personal weirdness. Perhaps that's why the kiss, soul form to soul form, had been so affecting...
He growls to himself to shutup; this isn't the time to be thinking of that. But he can't help the hyperawareness of her when she's this close: the solid weight of her on his back; the fact that he can still smell her under the blood; the way her hair tickles the back of his neck and her breath makes a soft, warm spot on his shoulder. It brings out a pleasant, tickling sensation in his stomach, one of unease and excitement.
She stirs, interrupting his thoughts; he slows automatically. "Ichigo," she murmurs. "Put me down."
"Like hell," he says, instantly annoyance undercut by relief. He can't tell how badly she's injured, though it can't be that bad since her spirit force feels "okay" and she's being stupid about things.
But he's never really seen her pass out before, either.
"Ichigo," she says, voice sharper. "Put me down so I can heal these injuries."
Oh. That makes sense.
He looks around for someplace suitable, and settles on a nearby bench. He eases her down gently, then thunks down beside her. The narrow slices across hip and ribs flare up briefly, but it passes quickly enough. He turns to look at Rukia, and finds her turned towards him, hands outlined in the faint green of healing energy. He's never seen her heal herself before.
She slides towards him, winces, and reaches out to lay a hand on him.
His eyes flare, and he grabs her wrist. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
She pulls her hand away from him. "Healing your wounds," she says, annoyed.
"Like hell you are!" he snarls back. "Aren't yours worse?"
She pauses and looks down, as if realizing for the first time that she's hurt. Like him, her wounds run in narrow slices, but across calf, knee, thigh, hip in ragged diagonals. There's blood specks on her arms, too, that he hadn't noticed before. Neither had she, apparently, as she pulls back her sleeve to show three narrow cuts from unseen claws.
Stupid exploding Hollows, he thinks again.
Then, she shakes her head and looks back at him. Her eyes don't quite meet his. "Yours first," she says, voice cold.
His eyes narrow. "No," he says.
"Don't be an idiot, Ichigo," she replies, exasperated.
"I'm the idiot? ME?" He points at her. "You're the moron here, woman! You're sitting there, barely awake and bleeding, and you won't even start on yourself? What kind of stupidity is that?"
"Ichigo..."
"You always do this!" he continues. "You always worry more about me than yourself! Shouldn't you worry about your own life? Shouldn't you value your own life? I've survived worse than this, and yet...and yet..."
Something shifts in him then, and before he can stop himself, the words come out of his mouth.
"What sort of shitty answer is 'no', Rukia?"
The last comes out in a voice that's cracked around the edges, and all of a sudden he can't look at her. Can't look at her wide, trembling eyes, or the softness that edges her face. Can't look at her, because every time he sees that expression, it reminds him of how she walked through those doors to Soul Society, and how she protected him once again.
He wants to ask why she won't let him protect her, especially from what-could-be, but he can't seem to get the words out.
It's quiet for a moment, a lull in the storm. He hears her take a breath--one, two, three--and let it out, smoothly. His air still comes ragged.
Then, "Idiot. Selfish idiot."
His head jerks up, and he has to look at her now. Her expression is not hard, but not entirely soft either, and her eyes are so clear that it takes a moment for him to realize that they're still wavering, just a bit.
"How can you say that?" she asks, and her voice is firm and soft. " 'Worry about yourself. Value your own life.' How can you say that, Ichigo, when you don't do those things yourself?"
His eyes flare wide in shock.
"You never watch your own back, your own body." She reaches out and touches his shoulder, and the scar underneath the kimono throbs for a moment. "You want to protect so many people, but you never stop to protect yourself." Her voice has softened now, thickened, as if the words are hard to push out.
"You sacrifice yourself so readily, for so many...why can't someone do the same for you?"
She pulls her hand back and shakes her head a little, then meets his eyes again. Her gaze has lost some of its misty look, midnight blue eyes firm against his own.
"It's selfish, Ichigo," she says. "And you can't ask me to be selfish if you won't be. You can't ask me to stop watching your back if you won't stop watching me. You can't say 'I'll protect you' if you won't let me say the same!"
He stares at her as the words wash over him, through him, and all he can think is: there's your answer, Ichigo. She trusts you to do all you can. She wants you to trust that she'll do the same, no matter the cost.
And you do.
So how do you show her that?
He moves forward a little, leans in, and before she can say anything else, kisses her.
Her lips are firm, for a moment. Then they soften, and part slightly, and she's kissing him back.
And this time, it feels nothing like being stabbed.
This time, it feels like a promise.
2997 words
A HA HA, this 'fic and I fought for days.
My first Ichigo POV. The various writing and rewriting on this 'fic takes up over twenty notebook pages. (The notebook in question is smaller than 8x11, but I also write fairly small.) I had the theme right off, and the dictionary.com definition of "tempest" was pretty much there from the beginning (especially since it had the Shakespeare quote), and started writing it in the large file. Then I switched to the notebook. Then I wrote in the computer file. Then back to the notebook. It eventually finished on the computer (which is why the last lines are so cheesy--endings and I often don't get along). If I were ever to photograph/scan what my draft writing looks like, it would have something to do with this 'fic. :)
A few things have been there since the first draft: what "aa" means; Ichigo's equation (If A then B, etc.) that I actively spent some time trying to figure out, and do everytime I reread the 'fic (so it A equals Kaien, and B equals Hollow, and C equals pain...wait wait wait I know that D equals death...); the idea that Ichigo was eventually going to resolve things by yelling at Rukia, and Rukia was going to yell back. The rest of it went through quite a few different permutations, including a much longer beginning sequence at school, the end kiss being much longer and much more WTF AM I DOING?, Ichigo doing a bit more analysis on Rukia's speech, etc. The tense shift from past to present comes out of me realizing that Ichigo's "voice" worked much better in past, but that putting Rukia in a scene seemed hard to write without the present tense. Honestly, I still have this problem; I've been working on something for Ray where Rukia keeps nudging my verbs into the present tense.
This 'fic in my mind is also the laundry room 'fic, since a ton of it was written in lounge next to the laundry room really early in the morning, face down in a comfy couch with my Jelly Roll metallic hunter green pen and my MuVo playing. That session is memorialized by the last lines on one of the pages: "And he kisses her and the author has to do another rewrite. Damnit."