[drabble] Cosplay
Title: Cosplay
Author: Luna (dreamweavernyx )
Pairing: Ichiruki
Genre: Friendship
Summary: Rukia discovers the Human tradition of Halloween.
Notes: Request for Shiki (hikicha ).
~
“Is this for the Hello-win festival thing?”
Ichigo groans as Rukia points out something random and asks the dreaded question for the fifteenth time that day.
“Yes,” he hisses through gritted teeth, “if it wasn’t obvious enough already.”
Rukia scowls, and whacks his arm.
“Then you should actually explain what this Hello-win thing is, so it’ll be obvious to me too! All I know is that it’s related to pumpkins and candy.”
Ichigo stops in the middle of the mall, and throws up his hands in defeat.
“Firstly, it’s not Hello-win, it’s Halloween. It’s a holiday where everybody dresses up and the little kiddies run around and collect candy from the adults in the neighborhood.”
Rukia’s eyes light up.
“Cosplay?”
“…Something like that, I guess.”
They begin to walk again, through the crowds of shoppers, and Rukia’s violet eyes land on a costume shop.
“Say, we don’t have to be kids to enjoy the cosplay fun, right?”
There’s a maniacal glint in her eyes, and Ichigo knows better than to argue. Sighing, he lets her drag him into the shop, with the excuse of Yuzu-asked-me-to-help-her-get-a-costume-anyway.
Picking out Yuzu’s costume - a blue dress from Alice in Wonderland - takes all of thirty seconds, and Ichigo soon finds himself tapping his foot irritably as he watches Rukia flit from rack to rack, searching through the costumes with an experienced eye.
Her eyes sparkle as they hold up a rabbit costume, but Ichigo refuses bluntly.
“I’m the one with the wallet,” he says dryly, “so I have to at least be able to tolerate it before I pay for it.”
“What about this?” Rukia asks five seconds later, brandishing a pair of white bunny ears.
“That hardly qualifies as a costume.”
Rukia socks him in the arm again, eyes alight with annoyance.
“Of course it isn’t! But if you reject the ears there’s no point looking around for the rest of the costume.”
He doesn’t reply, and she rolls her eyes, turning away to begin rummaging again.
A while later, she returns, arms laden with cloth.
“There,” she says, “a full costume.”
Ichigo reaches into the pile and picks up a pocketwatch.
“What exactly are you trying to be?”
“The White Rabbit,” she replies simply, “since Yuzu’s Alice, I figured I might as well go with the theme.”
“The White Rabbit’s a guy, Rukia.”
“What’s wrong with a female White Rabbit, huh? You sexist.”
Ichigo attempts to argue from - in his perspective - the logical point of view, but Rukia stomps on his foot. Hard.
He yelps in pain, and at that very moment, her hand flashes out and snatches the wallet he’s been clutching in his left hand. Before he can protest, she’s disappeared to the miraculously queue-free cashier, his wallet in a deathgrip.
If not for the fact that she’s in a public place, he would have sworn that she had used shunpo to disappear that quickly.
~
Two nights later, he wonders to himself for the thousandth time that night exactly why he’s following Rukia, Yuzu, and Karin around in their candy conquest.
Then his toe throbs and his fingers twinge painfully, in memory of Rukia’s foot-stomping and Karin’s death-grip accompanied with an ominous smile, and he remembers why.
He fidgets with the bow-tie around his neck with his less-painful hand. He was supposed to be the Mad Hatter (now hatless), so as to “fit in with the theme”.
Though how one could be a Hatter without a hat was beyond him.
Karin, dressed as a slimmer Queen of Hearts - and carrying a heavy staff which Rukia had borrowed to bash his foot with - stops outside the first house and knocks politely. The door opens, Karin makes her request, and Yuzu and Rukia stand behind her with their best puppy-dog looks.
The woman at the door laughs, and disappears into the house, returning a minute later to shower them with candy.
The process repeats, over and over again, and Ichigo finds himself dying of absolute boredom and mortification.
Rukia falls behind to walk alongside him after twenty houses or so.
“Here,” she says, and dumps five bags on him, “help me carry them.”
He groans under the weight, and voices his complaint, though he shuts up immediately when Rukia’s hand twitches towards Karin’s staff, which she is now carrying.
Rukia smiles in sadistic satisfaction, and relaxes her hand.
“Remind me,” he mutters after a while, “why I even let you know about Halloween in the first place?”
“Oh, you know you love me,” she says flippantly.
She laughs raucously at the impossibility and sheer absurdity of that statement, and quickens her pace to catch up with Karin and Yuzu.
She never notices the faint and brief dusting of red that sweeps across Ichigo’s cheeks.