Title: … makes fruit punch
Rating: T (for implied shoujo-ai)
Characters: All the redheads from Bleach.
Pairings: Rukia x Ichigo, Renji, Orihime, Matsumoto, Ashido, Kon, Yachiru (yeah, you read that right o.O)
Setting: AU
Description: The anthology of Rukia's loves. Fruit, Flavor, Redhead.
A/N: For ColourPearl, who specified "unusual couples." I wanted to make a piece with just the weirdest one I could think of, but I flaked out and decided to "work my way up" to it… *grins* Enjoy!
--0--
Strawberry
Her "first true love" came in the form of the strawberry. In kindergarten, Ichigo kicked her heel when she was walking. So, she turned around, secured him in a headlock, and made him eat sand.
Needless to say, things didn't work out.
No one could say they didn't try. Their juvenile "on-again-off-again" love story lasted until about fifth grade, when they both sat on the cusp of developing real hormones and began to realize that they were far better suited as squabbling siblings than something… grosser.
Byakuya seemed relieved by the breakup, but he scoffed at the comparison of Ichigo to a brother. "I should think not," he intoned, his aristocratic nose wrinkling a bit in distaste as he crisply shuffled a stack of papers into perfect order on his desk. "But this was a strategic decision just the same," he finished with approval, then patted her awkwardly on the head while she puzzled over the meaning of the word 'strategic.'
--0--
Pineapple
Rukia wasn't a slow learner per say. She was just… persistent. And so when things didn't work with one "brotherly figured", she moved on to greener (redder?) pastures, and her "second true love" came more in the form of a pineapple. Prickly and tough on the outside, but there was a sweet and down-to-earth center if you could get beyond it (if you could look past that wild frock of a ponytail that adorned his head to make him look the part, that is).
She would love him forever, but at their first junior high school dance, when he placed his hand on her hip for the first time, there was no denying that "squicky" feeling.
It was the first time Rukia cried for the loss of a wonderful idea. Byakuya could only stand awkwardly by, patting her on the shoulder and gingerly offering half-hearted embraces. In all honesty, he had rather liked this one.
--0--
Peach
She had gone with tart, she had gone with tough, and so it came as a pleasant suggestion to try something sweeter. The next was more like a peach – all saccharine sweet smiles, peach-skin soft caresses, and squeals of joy as jarring as that unexpected pit. Orihime was all unbridled enthusiasm. She was like the sun, and she warmed Rukia from the inside out.
The boys at school lamented the loss of their sherbet haired princess, and for a long time, Rukia celebrated her gain. Time passed slowly, lazily, marked by idle thumbs rubbing on wrists, heads on shoulders, stolen whispers, and taking turns sitting cross legged in each others laps beneath the school bleachers.
But… after a while, Rukia began to realize that there was something missing in the warm-fuzzy-sweet that was Orihime – and, when she began to feel the heated, jealous, resentful glares of Tatsuki boring into her back, and she began to muse that she wasn't quite as complimentary to the girl as she had thought. There was too much mush, and not enough… something.
Orihime cried when she broke up with her, but Rukia held her and whispered that there were better things in store for her. There were, of course, and when weeks later she spotted the other dark haired girl holding Orihime's hand and hovering over her protectively, Rukia smiled wryly and thought, 'They fit.'
She wondered what 'fit' her.
Byakuya did as well, as he wasn't seeing any rhyme or reason whatsoever by this point.
--0--
Orange
He was Ichigo's cousin, and couldn't have been more different from him. Maybe she was a little on the rebound – feeling prickles of envy when she saw the devotion of Tatsuki to her ex-girlfriend. In any case, when Kon transferred in junior year of high school and honed in on her like a missile, she couldn't help but to be charmed by his tart, crisp, refreshing, overzealous affection.
He was like a caricature. He spoke in stark certainties that one read in books and lacked in real life. He shouted his devotion to the heavens above, and (much to her hidden delight) was undeterred by her no-nonsense dismissals and scoffs.
They had fun for awhile, and Rukia enjoyed being awash in the certainty of his devotion. But time passed, and she began to realize that her scoffs were not just for show, and his over-the-top ways really were too much, and she began to feel suffocated and annoyed.
She broke his heart so she could breathe again.
Byakuya breathed again too – a great, heaving sigh of relief. The boy had been much, much too loud.
--0--
Nectarine
There was something exotic about Matsumoto. Yes, she was sweet – but there was also a tart kind of edginess to her. She was plump and beautiful, wise and ditsy, biting but sweet and entirely unlike all those around her. She was a nectarine.
After the cloying, overzealous affection of Kon, there was something refreshing about the cool, smoky glances Matsumoto sent her way. Subtlety. It was an exotic, heady thing, after Kon who was anything but. She met Matsumoto at a book club, and her calm, quiet self-assurance – the total lack of neediness – was heady to Rukia. She wanted that.
She was almost positive that she had interpreted Matsumoto's speculative glances correctly, and so she decided to take a page from Kon's book (… you know, the straight-forward, utter lack of finesse book) and just marched right up and asked for her number.
Matsumoto arched a brow and chortled. "Aren't you a little young?" she teased – but she didn't outright say no, and so Rukia fought down her blush.
"I'm young and act old. You're o-old and act young," she demurred, blushing harder when she stuttered over her own faux paus.
Matsumoto's brow quirked a little more, but her lips were twitching into a smile. "Then what a fine pair we'd make," she contended, and ripped a page out of her planner and scrawled 7 quick digits on it. When Rukia moved to accept them, the older woman caught her fingers and held them for a moment, caressing. The moment was sexually charged, and Rukia shivered – she had never, ever, ever felt something so decided not-innocent before.
"I'm not old, by the way," she purred. "But I'll let it slide – this time. Next time, though, you pay." She winked then, and it was all Rukia could do to keep her face from going up in flames.
They were not the collective "two-halves-of-a-whole" stereotype, and Rukia never harbored such an illusion. Matsumoto was more like a cat, giving bursts of affection at random, and maintaining a collected, caring kind of arms length the rest of the time. But she was experienced, strong, independent, and she was confident. She had so much about her that Rukia wanted to emulate, that sometimes, it was almost like Rukia was studying her rather than dating her.
It was ironic when she began to emulate Matsumoto's warm-cool cycle, and it became apparent very quickly that they had outgrown each other. Two weeks after graduation, as they sat beneath a tree and watched the birds chirp and spiral playfully in the midday sun, Matsumoto smiled and patted her on the head. "Well, kid, I think I'm done. You don't need me anymore."
Rukia stared at her blankly, and ignored the shoot of pain in her chest. "I thought that was the point. Not needing someone – but wanting them."
"Wanting is the more important element, certainly – but sometimes, there's something more fitting out there, just waiting. And I'm not it."
"Yes you are…" Rukia whispered, even though something inside her was able to calmly acknowledge the truth of her words.
"I was. I played the part you needed, when you needed it. But there's something more suited in store for you." She recognized the irony of having her own words to Orihime from once-upon-a-time fed back to her, and in the end, Rukia didn't know whether to be grateful or upset, and so she settled on some blubbering mix between the two.
"I think perhaps the temperament of redheads is innately unsuited to you, Rukia," Byakuya drawled the next day, peering in at her where she lay face down in bed, unable, unwilling, and ultimately uninterested in facing the world today.
She hadn't even recognized the trend until he did.
"She was more of a strawberry blonde," Rukia mumbled into her pillow halfheartedly.
"She was too old for you anyway," Byakuya snapped, and the subject was closed to discussion.
--0--
Grapefruit
If he thought Matsumoto was too old even with her random bursts of giddy, juvenile immaturity, then Byakuya most certainly was never going to approve of Ashido, with his blatant "mature bad boy" ease.
Rukia met him on the first day of college, when the dark haired, edgy-looking man blew a plume of smoke at her from where he was puffing a cigarette outside of the dorm. He eyed her speculatively, then drawled a lazy, "Well don't you just look good enough to eat."
Rukia froze, not sure whether to be baffled, horrified, or hysterically amused by the straight-forwardness of the upperclassman. Cocking her head, she used her newly-learned cheeky confidence to place a hand on her quirked hip and drawled a husky, "What, you want a piece of me?"
He shrugged, took another drag on the cigarette, and blew it a little more deliberately in her direction this time. "Or something," he smirked.
She smiled and breathed in the smoke, reveling in the fact that it had been in his mouth only moments before. He leered back, the same thought probably going through his head.
He was tart, acidic, and not entirely pleasant, but she sank her teeth in just the same. He was everything naughty and exotic and confident about Matsumoto and more. He was grapefruit. And maybe she loved him just because it was so clear all along that he was only going to be a side story.
"He has brown hair…" Rukia denied, but the argument was weak.
"There's a touch of mahogany," Byakuya intoned. And he was right, in the end, because things crashed and burned as they always did with the redheads.
--0--
… Makes Fruit Punch
She liked younger, she decided. She liked unbridled enthusiasm to balance the calm calculation, she liked edginess paired with familiarity, she liked independence with an odd shot of neediness. She liked sweet but cheeky. Bitey but affectionate. A perfect blend of all the others.
She liked the idea of something (someone) so totally conflicting, she knew they didn't exist. Or at least, she didn't think they did – but she knew she was wrong when she met Yachiru.
Rukia was at a fundraising ball – the kind of event the elders liked her to show face at, because her face was Kuichiki's face, and her appearance made them all look good. She was cradling that precious Kuichiki face in one hand, contemplating drowning herself in a soup bowl out of boredom, when she heard the stirrings of a commotion.
"Look, miss, it's just that the truffles were ordered with only a certain number per person in mind –"
"No, you look here Frog-chan. I'm sure there are enough people here who don't like chocolates that the spoils of this raiding expedition will not be missed."
Rukia peered between her fingers, and almost burst into laughter when she saw the waiter's face turning red. His throat billowed and fluttered hugely with each agitated breath, looking exactly like… a frog.
The pink-haired girl was short and stout, but somehow, when she frowned disapprovingly at the waiter, she seemed to tower over him. There was something cool and collected and independent about her –
When he reached to retrieve some of her 'pilfered truffles' from her, she bit him. The wild show of unhinged tartness pulled an unexpected guffaw from Rukia's chest.
"Touch my chocolate again, Frog-chan, and I can't be held accountable for what I do." And then, just to belie the statement, she grinned unrepentantly and popped another truffle into her mouth.
Rukia liked Yachiru, she decided, and made a point of getting up right then to go introduce herself.
The first time they kissed it was so achingly sweet and poignant that Rukia thought she might weep. She was terrified of the sudden serious weight pulling at their usual lighthearted banter, when –
"Ken-chan doesn't like it when I bring boys around," Yachiru announced suddenly, her thought process veering off in such typical Yachiru-fashion that Rukia felt whiplash just trying to keep up. For a moment, the Kuichiki's stomach dropped – she had misinterpreted. Of course Yachiru liked boys; of course the kiss had meant nothing –
Abruptly, Yachiru twined her fingers into the ebony silk at the base of Rukia's skull and yanked her in for an impromptu lick-lock that made a loud, embarrassing "pop!" when they parted. Rukia blushed; Yachiru arched a pink brow mischievously. "So I guess he won't see this one coming, ne, Ruki-chan? I can't wait to see the look on his face!"
Rukia could. She imagined Yachiru's over-protective adoptive father, and twitched. "Yachiru – maybe we shouldn't tell him – you know, wait, see where this goes –"
Yachiru smiled gently, and rubbed her fingers gently at the base of Rukia's skull, where they still were twined. "I already know where it's going."
Rukia twitched – tried to avoid the tender look in the other girl's eye by looking away. "Ne, I don't want him to kill me –"
Yachiru burst into a loud laugh, and yanked Rukia into a brief, bone-crunching embrace. "Ruki-chan is silly. Kenny would have to get through me to touch you, and even he isn't that stupid." And just as abruptly, the jovial air faded, and she tugged in Rukia's hair to force her to look back into her eyes. "I hope no one is stupid enough to try to get through me. I don't want to have to bite any fingers… but I can't be held accountable when someone tries to take my sweets."
She gave a lopsided smile, Rukia gave a watery laugh, and bam starburst sweet supernova, she knew, and she fit.
When she brought Yachiru home to meet Byakuya, if Rukia had been looking closely, she might have noticed the way his face paled. She wasn't looking closely, though – she was too busy beaming happily, one arm wrapped around her complement as she waited expectantly for her brother's approval. "This is Yachiru. Isn't she wonderful, nii-san?"
"You're the one who stole the coy from the foundation's pond," he murmured disbelievingly, clearly not listening. He had always thought whatever family she came from must have been most unfortunate, for her to be the most suitable representative to send to business-meetings and the like.
Now, he was feeling like the unfortunate one.
"Coy are delicious!" Yachiru cheered, fist pumping into the air as if Byakuya had just commended her on scoring a touchdown. Rukia positively glowed.
"Oh! You've met! That's so wonderful!" She smiled, gestured between her brother and her girlfriend, flushed brighter, and spoke very formally. "Byakuya nee-san. This is Yachiru. She's… she's…." She hesitated – fumbled – but when she looked at the shorter, pink haired girl, she suddenly calmed, and for the first time in recollection, Byakuya thought, found herself.
"This is Yachiru, Byakuya nee-san," she repeated, without a hint of uncertainty. "I love her."
He knew that already – knew it from the moment he saw them together… though he couldn't help but wonder if pink counted as a shade of red.
--0--
A/N: Is this the only Yachiru x Rukia fic in existence? I think that deserves a reward of some sort…