A.N.: So.
Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.
But for the mumble of his name, words failed her entirely. Her heart had gone and stuck itself in her throat, a tingling flutter left behind to agitate her chest. Her face burned hotter than she could recall it ever achieving before and her bones felt light and useless. A trembling took up her hands but she did not hesitate to reach out, if slowly, to take his in one of hers. The calloused surface served to distract her and she clung to that alone, ran her thumb over the shell of his knuckle and pressed her fingers into the side of his palm, its flesh hard and unyielding. She could feel him staring at her, but no harsher than usual.
Her eyes flickered up to his briefly and found a patience there that only made her throat close further, her throbbing heart strain to fly. His own fingers, long and careful and capable, twitched to touch the side of her hand.
He did not attempt to pry away from her feeble hold.
She figured that was a good sign, that his relaxed shoulders and the curious look on his face meant he was not adverse to her touching him. And when she took a step forward and he did not take a step back, she decided he must have been in a particularly good mood—to humor her, to allow her to close the short space between them to an even shorter space; as if he did or maybe did not know what she was trying to do.
The words were choked out of her before he could open his mouth to ask, as he always did, "What's wrong, Inoue?"
They came in tremors, in a crumbling breath, filled with perhaps both fear and relief, both crashing inside of her like some derailed train or some airborne missile—I love you—and a weight slid right off her shoulders, her heart escaped to fall down to his feet in a sad, wounded little offering. A shuddering, stuttering breath scraped in and then out of her lungs at the throbbing left behind.
The moment hung, suspended over them, and she was only half convinced it felt like a guillotine shining promisingly above their heads. The other half could not help but notice his fingers, warm, still curved about her own.
She could not bring herself to lift her gaze from their feet, the rippling ends of his hakama, black as ink, the fine-crafted handle of his sword, their intertwined fingers—she quietly wondered when he managed to turn his hand in her delicate grasp, when he had found the time to, in this frozen moment, capture her in that gentle cage his fingers formed—
It enticed a dam to burst within her, and suddenly everything she could not say was pouring out of her quicker than either one of them could catch.
"I'm sorry—I couldn't think of a good way to tell you—I had to tell you—I—" Her voice shook, violently, and she tore her eyes up to his faster than her mind could follow. Air shredded through her teeth, his gaze could melt her on the spot; she didn't know if it was pity or kindness, but it cut at her all the same. "You don't have to feel the same, you don't have to make me feel better, you don't have to make up for anything—please. I just needed to tell you, it's never felt like the right time, I've been waiting for the right time to come, it never came before, I just—"
She swallowed, hard, and then brought her other hand up to grasp at his sleeve, feet shuffling forward more confidently than she felt.
He did not move away from her.
She figured that was a good sign.
Either that, or a very, very bad sign.
"I will never force you to do anything you don't want to," she said, chest tightening more and more in anticipation of the rejection—his hand pulling free from hers, his shoulder shrugging away, his body turning, his voice kindly telling her he did not feel the same and that he never would.
He didn't.
"I just—I just want do it once. Just once," she breathed, the twisting in her gut growing taut with something like dread or fear or elation, the fact that he did not move away or stiffen when she rose up on the tips of her toes, that he did not make any sort of attempt to stop her when she leaned herself into him.
Minute, in every possible way she could manage, waiting for the moment he decided he did not want to go any further, the moment what shock he might have felt wore off.
But he didn't.
Her lips met his, pliable and yielding under her touch.
And her heart clenched, caught in the gentle cage his fingers formed—around the curve of her waist, his skin searing into her.
His mouth moved with hers so easily, so smoothly, his breath hot and sweet on her tongue; it was like whispering, secrets passed between them, old dreams cradled on their lips. Her hand pulled too hard on his sleeve and his arm coiled, solid and firm, around her back, fingers spread between her shoulder blades.
It was like surfacing from underwater, sucking air into her aching, burning lungs for the first time in so long. The fingers tangling in her hair, the press of his body against hers, the most surprising softness of his lips—when everything else about him was so rough and calloused, bent toward battle.
When the kiss was broken, it was because she fell back down to level ground, a nervous, unsteady laugh leaving her. "My legs got tired," she explained, quivering from head to toe with all the strain and anxious trepidation that had not stopped pulsing through her. "Thank you, Kurosaki-kun. I just…wanted to know how that felt like."
She felt like an idiot. Already, she longed to taste his lips again, yearned so deeply for his touch it sliced at her like no other.
Foolish, she reprimanded herself. Foolish, foolish girl.
"You don't… You don't have to do anything like that again."
"Who said I didn't want to?"
The scowl on his face, she noticed as she looked him directly in the face for the first time, was tempered only by the red staining his cheeks. Her mind cleared, abruptly, and it nearly floored her.
He hadn't let go of her hand yet.
"W—What?" she said intelligently.
"I'm not—I'm not good with expressing emotions, Inoue," he muttered, reaching for her other hand and tugging her toward him gently. "But I…feel the same way, too."
And her heart soared—higher and higher than it ever had before, an uncontrollable force that had her swaying, disoriented, for a few long seconds. When he pulled her into his chest, she all but drifted along, world spinning.
His lips pressed softly to the top of her head, so faintly she nearly missed it, and she knew that even that much was far more than he could have possibly offered to anyone else.
He was, after all, not one for affection. And she was bursting at the seams with it.
.x.
A.N.: So.
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