"Are you scared?"
Orihime looked up to find Renji standing huge beside her, arms crossed, peering into the mock battle with less-than-mock concern. She exhaled lightly. "It's just a bit of practice."
"That's not what I mean."
Again she looked at him. His eyes never left the pair of fighters before them but there was something in her that he was reading very clearly. She frowned, her brows pinching together. "It scares me when he's like this."
Renji nodded. "So you're always scared, huh?"
She was somewhat bewildered by how perceptive he was. Orihime had never known him to be a man of thought, but here he was putting a descriptor on feelings she hardly acknowledged. He just laughed quietly, ironically, his hand reaching up to lightly slap the back of his head a few times, as if to thwart an itch.
"Are you scared too, Renji?"
"Of course not," he groused, a little too quickly, before settling back into his carefree arms-crossed position. But he was also a little too tense, eyes too wide.
Orihime turned her attention back to the practice bout. Ichigo might be pummeling Rukia if she weren't so light on her feet. Her fighting style was beautiful, a violent ballet contrasted against the groaning, heaving mess that was Ichigo.
"Do you want to see Rukia lose?" Renji asked.
"I don't want to see anyone get hurt."
He looked on with a nod. "I want to see Ichigo lose." Orihime glanced at him, surprised at his candor. "Maybe just this once, you know." His eyes went distant. "He almost got her killed, once upon a time. If that had happened . . . I don't know where I'd be." A breeze disturbed his hair, but he didn't blink.
Rukia's zanpaku-tou clattered to the ground as Ichigo's pressed nonthreateningly against her shoulder. He grinned a stupid ecstatic grin, for a moment, before her silent kidou pushed him backwards. And just as she was poised to attack—
"Alright, that's enough," Renji said loudly, conjuring a bored tone, "it's back to the Seireitei with you." Gingerly he grasped Rukia's arm and picked up her sword, holding it up to her hilt-first as she struggled against him. "Alright, fine," he intoned, holding her weapon up above his head and thus several feet out of her reach. She pouted at him, and he stuck out his tongue. Orihime smiled behind the cover of her hands.
"That's not fair," Ichigo shouted, "we were just getting started!" Deftly he nabbed Rukia's sword and gave it back to her.
"I said that's enough," Renji bellowed as Ichigo shrank in defeat. "Go home and enjoy your afternoon free of conflict, alright? Shit."
Ichigo instead turned his attention to bickering with Rukia, and below the cover of their noise, Renji said, "I don't know what you see in him, Inoue. But I understand. If you ever need to talk. . . ." Her eyes were large as he struggled to finish his thought in a way that wouldn't embarrass him.
But Renji just clicked his tongue. "Shit, forget it."
She caught his arm as he turned away. "Thank you, Renji." The heavy black lines on his forehead twitched. "And the same goes for you. If you ever need to talk to someone. About anything."
His face flushed. "Yeah, well. Thanks." Abruptly he turned and easily lifted Rukia by the waist, holding her away from him as she kicked wildly, and placed her back on her feet several paces away from Ichigo. Patting her on the back insistently, all he said was, "Let's go, you."
In a way it comforted Orihime to know that someone else struggled to hold back their feelings. And knowing now that she wasn't alone, she stepped up beside Ichigo, spewing nonsense at their retreating forms, and in a gentle recreation of Renij's gruff affection, she squeezed Ichigo's shoulder.
"Let's go, you."