Rock Band AU
Drummer Boy
Ichigo thinks their music sucks, quite frankly.
The others somehow managed to drag him into it, even though he hardly thinks the Kurosaki Yearly Kitchen Music Festival (his father's brilliant idea, of course), in which his eight year old self had been in charge of banging on upside down bamboo steamers while his sisters tapped on crystal glasses, counted as instrument playing experience.
So Keigo and Mizuiro blackmailed him into taking some drum lessons, recruited an unsuspecting music student, and all of a sudden they'd gotten themselves the world's lamest band, "Soul Society".
That was about three years ago, when they were still freshmen. And Ichigo thought it would all be over in six months, tops.
Hah.
Either because the universe has some sort of sick sense of humor, or because people have incredibly bad taste, they turned out to be a bit of an indie hit. Ichigo now spends every Saturday playing on a variety of clubs and bars and trying not to let his ears bleed. And every now and then he has the mortifying experience of being recognized on the street by some kid with bad hair and asked to sign autographs.
It's not like he's never tried to leave. He did, many times. Every other month he made up his mind to tell the others, only to lose his nerve at the last second, or be stopped by some unpredictable event, like Mizuiro's grandmother dying and making it impossible for him to broach the subject, or a blackout just as he was about to send an email. And whatever part of this he can't blame on the universal conspiracy against him he blames on their guitarist, Rukia Kuchiki.
Highly-educated, all disciplined and proper, she is the kind of insufferable person you'll sometimes find humming to one of Beethoven's symphonies. In tune. In fact, you'd think she'd be overqualified for an amateur rock band. Rock doesn't even seem to be her kind of music, what with the stiff and unenthusiastic way she plays most of their songs. Ichigo's often wondered how Keigo and Mizuiro managed to convince her to join, but they tend to deflect his questions with cryptic smiles and non-committal shrugs.
And as for their new-found fame, Ichigo doesn't even think she's noticed. Night after night, teenagers and creepy old men crowd around them as they leave whatever crappy establishment they happened to be playing at, showering her with compliments, and she nods and bows politely and seems completely unaffected.
Tonight, a boy comes right up to her and gives her a bouquet of flowers. "You're like, my muse!" he tells her, face full of pimples and ears pierced so many times the light catches off his multiple earrings and makes anybody who looks at him want to shield their eyes.
She smiles and bows, as always, then hurries to catch up to Ichigo, who didn't bother to stop and wait.
"Look, Ichigo, I got flowers," she tells him, face partially hidden by sunflowers, because, of course, the bouquet is larger than her small-sized head.
"Congratulations," he says, unimpressed, and they walk out the door.
She follows him home, like always. Being a little off in the head, she obviously gets along marvelously with his family. He's seen her house from the outside, once—ridiculously big, like a fucking castle-and he thinks it's a wonder she doesn't mind hanging out in the tiny little apartment attached to the Kurosaki clinic day after day. Their entire living space is probably the size of her guest bathroom, he would guess.
As soon as they step through the threshold she shoves her flowers at him with unnecessary strength. "Here, for you, Ichigo," she tells him, like he's supposed to be grateful.
He manages to grab hold of them before they drop to the floor, then blinks dumbly. "What? They're your flowers."
"The smell of them makes my nose itch," she explains as she crouches by the door to take her shoes off.
"And just what am I supposed to do with these?"
"Don't know. I believe tradition dictates you give them to someone you admire." She pauses to tidy up the shoe corner, like she always does, aligning the pairs in neat horizontal lines. "See, Ichigo, you should feel honored I thought of you."
He stares at her indignantly. "You're not supposed to pass them around like a hot potato, you idiot. You have to put them in a vase, or something."
She scoffs. "Well, then, if you know what to do…"
And she just gets up and charges on ahead to greet his sisters, leaving him there with an oversized bouquet and a throbbing vein on his forehead.
He stands there blinking stupidly at the bouquet in his hands for a moment, then regains his focus and stomps into the living room after her. "ButI don't want your stupid flowers!" he argues, as loudly as he can.
Yuzu gasps, distracted from her task of setting the table for dinner, and points down at his sneakers indignantly. "Ichi-nii, shoes!"
"But—" he tries to argue, but stops dead when Karin walks in from the kitchen holding a pile of plates and glaring daggers at him. "Are you wearing shoes in the living room?" she demands in her scariest tone.
Rukia eats one of the dumplings off of the bowl on the dinner table, totally oblivious.
He groans, defeated, and turns back around to take his shoes off.
In a list that includes his crazy lunatic of a father, it is very possible that Rukia fucking Kuchiki is the single most infuriating person that has ever existed. Half the time he wants to strangle her, or just shake her until she starts making a little bit of sense.
He's a little bit smitten, really.
He just can't exactly remember what he used to do before she infiltrated every aspect of his life. She's in his house and she's in band rehearsals and concerts and family trips and fucking everywhere, and even during the rare occasions when she is not physically present, she's in his head. He will be walking down the street and some short brunette will walk by and his head will snap in her direction, all of his thoughts turning into what does she want now and how did she follow me all the way here, before he realizes that no, that's not her at all.
Perhaps most bizarre of all is that, if he had any artistic talent at all, he's sure he could draw her face with little difficulty, because he's memorized it, all of it. The exact shape of her eyes, the line of her mouth, the tip of her nose, the strand of hair that's always getting in her eyes.
It's all very embarrassing and makes him feel like drowning in the toilet, because he has never in his life been that guy. That guy who pines and pines and plans serenades under the moonlight. He hates that guy. He often warns Keigo, who's always been on the verge of becoming that guy, that if he ever crosses the line, they can no longer be friends.
And it's not like he could explain what it is about her that provokes such a reaction. He doesn't gether, and for all that he knows her, observes her every movement almost obsessively, all that he really knows is that she's filthy rich and still expects him to pay for lunch.
After a particularly dreadful performance in which he completely loses track of the tempo and botches the entire song, she comes up to him in the dressing room, clearly torn between feeling sorry for him and wanting to step on his toes for his utter incompetence. She is standing there trying to decide how nice she's going to be when Keigo saves her the trouble, materializing beside him and punching him lightly on the side of the head.
"Drummers are supposed to have a sense of rhythm, Ichigo, you git! You're an embarrassment to percussionists everywhere!"
"You're one to talk," Rukia retorts, before Ichigo can even open his mouth. "Remember Nagano?"
Keigo stares at her in horror. In a trip to Nagano Keigo had managed to both break Rukia's guitar and leave his own in the bus, so that they'd ended up improvising a bad excuse for an acapella performance and getting booed off stage. "That was almost a year ago! And I said I was sorry, Rukia-chan!"
Mizuiro steps inside the room right then, Inoue in tow. "What are you two arguing about?" he asks.
"Nothing!" Keigo is quick to say.
Inoue steps forward and smiles at them, unbothered by the raised voices. "You were all great tonight! Like the Beatles!"
Inoue is a friend of Rukia's who makes Ichigo almost as uncomfortable as Rukia herself. She is so much sunshine it is almost blinding, as if the optimism she radiates were actually visible. She and Rukia can be a little similar in their cluelessness and eccentricity, but the contrast between them is much more noticeable. Rukia is tiny, black-haired, unsmiling and assertive. Inoue is tall-and-busty, light-haired, soft-spoken and eternally happy. Ichigo often thinks it's surprising that they get along so well.
Inoue also happens to be beautiful, in a very obvious and stunning sort of way. Keigo can barely stand to be around her without drooling. Ichigo finds it a little intimidating, at times, but otherwise fares much better at not making a fool of himself. He hopes.
"Ah, thanks, Ino—"
She suddenly gasps. "Rukia-chan, you're dressed like a boy!" she squeals.
Rukia blinks and looks down at her own outfit, confused. "Oh. Yes. We decided we would all wear suits for the performance. A terrible idea, if you ask me. This place is too hot for clever costumes," she says dryly.
Inoue giggles and takes a tentative step forward. "The tie looks so cool."
Rukia smiles up at her. "My brother would say crossdressing is for freaks."
"Your brother says a lot of things, Rukia-chan."
Ichigo begins to feel awkward. There are three other people in the room also being completely ignored, yet he feels like he is the one being intrusive.
Keigo loudly and not-too-subtly clears his throat. "So! Let's go out for drinks!" he suggests. "I'm sure Ichigo could use a couple after sucking so hard."
Ichigo rolls his eyes. "I'm fine, thank you."
They end up going anyway, sitting down on some bar with bad lighting and filled with drunken, loud salary men. They get to enjoy themselves for a few quiet minutes before a fight breaks out between two of the men sitting just behind them and Ichigo, decent guy that he is, stands up with a heavy sigh to help the bartender break it off. None of the others offers to help, of course.
The men seem to be in their mid-thirties, and one is noticeably larger than the other. So Ichigo holds that one back, and leaves the smaller one to the middle-aged bartender, who doesn't look like he can handle much. The short guy breaks out of his hold quickly enough and goes for a punch that ends up missing its intended target and getting Ichigo in the cheek instead.
Pissed off, Ichigo lets go of his prisoner and charges at him, whopping him hard in the head so that he falls face down on the ground, unconscious.
There is a rather disconcerting moment when he feels everyone's gaze turn from the lifeless body lying on the ground to him, the tall, orange-headed teenager standing over it.
"That was rather unnecessary!" the bartender comments.
"Yeah, well," he replies dismissively, caring very little. He is not that decent of a guy.
Rukia gets to him before the others, and he can tell she's already in crisis mode. "Your face is bruising," she notes. "Orihime, get some ice, please."
"Yes!" Inoue answers promptly.
Mizuiro goes to help the bartender turn Short Guy over so he can breathe right. Keigo stands aside, wide-eyed and lost. Rukia manages to get her hands around Ichigo's neck and pull him down to her level, which makes his rather pathetic heart start freaking out about the proximity of their faces. She looks him over, touches his cheek carefully, making him wince anyway. He catches her eye and they regard each other for a moment, and then she surprises him by smiling.
"You're a little hot-headed, you know?" she says.
It takes him a while to absorb the meaning of that, since his brain has gone for a walk. "I just don't like it when people punch me in the face."
She grins – and this is a rare sight. "He barely grazed you. You knocked him out. That was disproportionate retribution."
"Yeah-can you let go of my head now?"
She does, but she brushes his hair off his face first in a casual, fond gesture that gives him goosebumps.
Inoue arrives with the ice just then, carefully wrapped in soft fabric. "Don't press down too hard, Kurosaki-kun," she instructs earnestly.
About twenty minutes later, when the police are taking down statements and Short Guy is being taken to the hospital, he sits on a booth with ice pressed to his face, scowling off into the distance. He thinks about Rukia. He thinks about her hands on his cheek, her hands on his neck, her hands, the way they are small and lithe. He thinks about being inches apart from her face. From her mouth, especially.
He groans, because this is clearly getting out of hand and maybe she should know. Maybe he should just blurt all this out, how she's been driving him crazy, about how he has these—he cringes-feelings and he doesn't know what to do with them. And, if that's a power she has any control over, could she please stop.
He could tell her all of this, why the fuck not? It's not like he embarrasses easily.
Later he won't know if it was the alcohol or the adrenaline that made him get up off his seat with an actual sense of purpose.
"Where is Rukia?" he asks Keigo, interrupting his melodramatic account of the night's adventures to some middle-aged officer.
"I think she went outside for a second."
He nods and charges past the cop, determination brimming.
"Wait, boy, we still need to take your statem—"
He lets the door slam shut after him, looks to either side for any sign for Rukia, finding none. The right leads to some crowded avenue, the left rounds a corner into a dark alley. He turns left, sparing some room in his mind to wonder what Rukia could be doing out here.
He turns the corner, looks up from his shoes and stops dead on his tracks.
Rukia is some ten feet away, close to a streetlight, her back against the wall. Inoue is there, as in right there, leaning over her, neck bent so their noses brush together in a way that seems almost innocent-but not quite. Rukia laughs at something Inoue says, then reaches up and brushes a strand of hair behind Inoue's ear—this reminds him of something, some similar scene he's seen recently, but in his state of shock he can't remember what.
He stands there frozen, wide-eyed, overloaded with information he can't quite process. Vaguely, he notices one of Inoue's hands travelling from Rukia's waist up to her shoulder and down again to fiddle with her tie.
They stand there, two figures pressed together in a spotlight created by the single lamppost, surrounded by darkness.
Inoue says something else, half-laughing, fingers curled around Rukia's tie.
A dog is barking somewhere.
Rukia leans forward, crosses the space between their faces-
This startles him enough that he musters up the energy to turn around and start walking, dazed. He walks straight past the bar, picking up speed until he is half-walking, half-running toward nowhere in particular.
This kind of thing doesn't happen to other people, he is sure. The one girl he's ever been interested in. Having an affair with the one other significant girl in his life he isn't related to. It just doesn't sound like a credible story. If he told someone – anyone – about this, they'd think he's making it all up and he wouldn't fucking blame them, now, would he.
And Keigo used to tease him about Inoue, "She's got a crush on you, Kurosaki-kun~", and he would roll his eyes and wave him off but then he would actually wonder, which now makes him feel like even more of an idiot. He is an idiot. Of course they'd both be gay for each other. It was obvious, really. That's how his world works. He's always been a laughing stock for the Higher Powers.
He is taken over by the image of a bearded figure sitting on a throne over the clouds somewhere, laughing hysterically.
And he doesn't know if he's more broken-hearted or frustrated or intrigued, but he knows he wants to go home and sleep.