Rukia liked to think she knew her brother pretty well - better, at least, than most people - but she'd never seen him quite like this before.
"Will you get off me?" he snapped, irritably shaking off the two hulking men who had been taking it upon themselves to inspect his healing progress and help him dry off. There he stood, wrapped up in a ludicrously oversized towel with his hair still dripping in his eyes, glaring daggers at the man responsible for his undignified plight.
"Don't look at me like that." Kirinji, supremely unconcerned, gave a casual jerk of his head towards Rukia. "She's the one that asked me to wake you up."
"I- I thought you'd wait until you were finished dunking him in the blood pond," squeaked Rukia, feeling thoroughly miserable. Her own return to consciousness, several hours ago now, had been quite pleasant on the whole; she'd opened her eyes to find herself already dry and clothed, stretched out on the rocks by the water's edge with Kirinji's brothers hovering at a respectful distance. The only alarming thing about the whole experience had been learning that her brother was still floating about in a coma somewhere underwater – but that, she'd been assured, was merely a temporary affair. If only she'd been more patient, they might have enjoyed a tender, heartfelt reunion, in which she sat by his side until he stirred and then, disregarding propriety in her ecstasy of relief, threw herself into his arms and exclaimed her joy that he'd survived.
But she hadn't been patient, and now Byakuya was positively shaking with anger to compensate for the embarrassing moment of unadulterated panic when he'd come to his senses completely submerged in blood and had to be pulled out, struggling and terrified, by three complete strangers all peering and prodding and hauling him about like a ragdoll.
"Che. There's no pleasing some people, is there?" Shaking his head, Kirinji turned to snatch up a clean yukata and shrug himself into it. This action seemed finally to snap Byakuya out of his wretched daze, and Rukia could see the slow change in his expression as his brain finally caught up with his eyes.
"You're...you're not dressed," he spluttered, sounding appalled and bewildered and all kinds of things the honourable head of a noble clan out never to sound.
Kirinji gave him a very patronising look over his shoulder. "You drenched my clothes with all that flapping around," he said. "Reckon I'd like a change, if it's all the same to you."
"You're not dressed...in front of my sister." Byakuya wrapped his towel closer around him as he spoke, apparently conscious now too of his own less-than-clothed state.
"I'm not looking, Nii-sama," Rukia muttered, staring fixedly off to the side and wondering, more miserably than ever, if her brother would consider getting back into the hot spring so that they could fish him out from scratch and pretend this entire debacle had never taken place. It didn't seem promising, somehow.
Kirinji, mercifully dressed now, glanced briefly at Rukia and then back to Byakuya, and behind the impatience was a gleam of something like amusement in his eyes. "Cheer up," he said gruffly. "You're alive at least, aren't ya?"
For a moment, Rukia thought her brother might actually try to hit Kirinji; instead, he tilted his head to the side and frowned, and a long silence ensued as he considered this statement. When at last he lifted his eyes to meet Rukia's anxious gaze, he didn't look thrilled, exactly - he was still towel-clad and waterlogged and horribly shaken, after all - but he looked perhaps a tiny bit less unhappy.
"Ah. Apparently so."