Angels Are Annoying
Disclaimer: If I owned it, then there'd be an American name on it!
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Kurosaki Ichigo glared at the ceiling, his frown only sinking further into his face at the mildly annoying sound that came from within his closet. This small sound, however quiet it may have been, had been happening since morning, and was causing the orange haired teen's eye to twitch slightly. 'The one time I really need them is when the Hollows decide to give me a break...' the auburn eyed, substitute shinigami fiercely thought, his scowl burrowing deeper into his features as another one of those damned noises came from his closet.
Ichigo intertwined his long fingers behind his head as he tried to drown out the annoying sound, but the only thing that would come to mind was Zangetsu slashing through his closet door. As appealing as the thought may have been, he would've had to create another lie to explain to his father why his closet was practically obliterated, and, also, he would've had one very pissed off short woman out to skin him alive.
The wretched noise continued to cause him discomfort in the optical region, as his eye now twitched nearly constantly. But the teen just shut his eyes, scowling at the back of their lids. For a few moments, the annoyances had ceased, but they soon started after he heard some shuffling coming from inside the cursed closet.
Ichigo, beginning to wonder if Isshin would believe his tale about how the small space had been demolished, and how fast he might be able to run if Kuchiki Rukia chases after him, propped himself up onto his elbows. He was now glaring icily at the door which the source of the annoyance was hiding behind from the rest of his family.
The sounds had stopped again, and he heard a slight scraping noise. The silence that came after was sheer bliss to Ichigo. He sighed and removed his elbows from beneath him, falling back onto his pillow. His hands were, once again, placed behind his head and he closed his eyes, trying to get some sleep in between Hollow attacks.
Just as he was drifting off, the blasted distraction echoed from inside the closet space, again. Ichigo's eyes snapped open, and their light mahogany depths shifted toward the source of his annoyance. He swiftly lifted his body off of his bed and nearly stomped over to the closet. Of course, he didn't stomp because his father would've come upstairs to see what all the noise was about, and then Rukia's presence may be discovered.
The orange haired teen flung open the sliding door and gazed down to see Rukia reading a manga. The dark haired woman glanced up at him briefly, but it wasn't brief enough for their eyes not to connect. In that moment Ichigo forgot that he had opened what used to be his closet door but was now Rukia's to scold her for giggling so much, and especially at something as trivial as a manga.
Her ice-like blue eyes met his nearly orange ones, and he gazed at her look of indifference, only to find that his expression of annoyance was slipping away as he remembered the times that she had given that look to him. Usually he had been on the receiving end of it when he expressed how tired he was from their constant Hollow hunting. She had shot him that look and said, "Quit complaining and pick up Zangetsu, there's another one nearby."
And during his next fight, if he was struck, her expression would change to one of worry, and her eyes would fill with what could only be described as concern. Sometimes she even said his name quietly, thinking that he couldn't hear it. After the Hollow was slain and disposed of properly, the indifference had returned, and they would walk home, side by side, in silence.
Another expression he saw a lot was the fake, cheery one that she wore while they were in class together. She wore it while eating lunch with the teenage girls, she always had it on as they sat next to each other in class, and it always appeared whenever she was talking to his friends. It also annoyed the shit out of him.
Ichigo wasn't a very big fan of smiling, especially if a person did it too much, too little, or falsely. Rukia was a prime example of a person who smiled both too little and falsely. It ground against his nerves every time he saw her fake smiles or was witness to her disgustingly sweet and gushing voice during school. It drove him up the wall, and made him grind his teeth if it went on for too long.
There were times, however rare they may be that her smile wasn't annoying to the point of banging his head against the wall until he bled and was driven to his family's clinic and home. They were the moments when Ichigo had rescued her from a Hollow, Abarai Renji, Soul Society, or Kuchiki Byakuya. They were also, though seldom, the moments when he had barely gotten out of reach of a Hollow's attack.
And when he saw that small, but genuine smile, all of it suddenly became worth it. He was tired, hungry, and had a slight wound on his body, but none of that mattered anymore because he had finally managed to make her smile again.
If Ichigo thought about it, those were the times when his own eyes had become ensnared within hers, and caused him to either stare or forget what he was saying. This led to make Rukia disgruntled, which then carried on into them fighting over something trivial that Ichigo really didn't want to explain himself for. In the back of his mind, though, he would be thinking about how much of an angel she looked like when she was angry.
"What do you want, Ichigo?" said the now indifferent Rukia as she turned to the next page of her manga. The said teen was startled, and suddenly forgot what he had come to scold her for. So he merely glared at her.
Rukia looked up at him again, and this time her eyes held annoyance as she said, "I'll say it once more, Ichigo. What do you want?" He still couldn't remember, and was starting to panic in the back of his mind as he groped for something to say. He hadn't found anything yet, so he settled for scowling a little more darkly.
"Whatever, since you're up and can't find anything to do, will you go get me a juice box?" she asked, which was really more of a demand, her annoyance fading back to indifference as she turned back to her manga. Ichigo nodded numbly, knowing that she would only threaten to go down and act like they were lovers if any of his family members saw her. He trudged down the stairs and opened the fridge once he had reached the kitchen.
He grabbed one of the juice boxes from the back, which was were Rukia liked them to be so that they kept cold. Then Ichigo started up the stairs to his bedroom, glaring at the juice box in the place of the blue eyed woman. In a rush, he remembered why he had flung open the closet door, and began to make his way up the stairs with an even darker glare than before. He wasn't really mad at Rukia anymore, he was truly angry with himself for forgetting his original purpose.
He shut the door to his room behind him, marched up to the closet, and then flung the door open with just as much gusto as before. "Stop making so much noise, I'm trying to sleep." he stated, and smirked as he tossed the closed juice box onto her lap before closing the door on a surprised Kuchiki Rukia.
He then lay down on his bed, chuckling slightly as a pillow, thrown by Rukia from a slight crack in the closet door, missed him entirely. He could tell she was frustrated, which was all the more reason for him to get a good nap before their next fight, because she'd be worked up and angry by then.
Later, Ichigo would look back at that moment when their eyes connected briefly and grab a clump of his orange hair as he growled in frustration. He would think about the thoughts that had run through his head after Rukia had glanced at him, and he would grimace at all of the snippets of annoying "lovey dovey bullshit" that he considered to be lame.
And then Kurosaki Ichigo would stare at his ceiling, still unable to sleep and plagued by a vision of Rukia's eyes and how beautiful she looked when she was angry, and say, "Angels are annoying..."
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And that is my first Bleach story! Please review, I need to know if I should continue to explore writing within the Bleach fanfiction community!