Author's Notes: I read "Push Comes to Shove" when Aoife-hime first posted it on live journal, and was driven to action by my imagination which was set on fire by her horribly teasing cliffhanger ending. The following tack-on fic is the result of that imagination, written in one breath in ten minutes. Created without Aoife-hime's permission but given her blessings after she read it. Oh, and neither of us own Bleach. She wrote the story, I'm just hijacking it.

From the end of the Epilogue:

[Karin's musings are interrupted by a rather loud thump as something crashes to the floor in the room above them. [She and Yuzu both look up, confused and a tiny bit apprehensive: the room above the kitchen is Ichigo's room. They glance at each other before looking at the ceiling once again. There's a little shuffling and then nothing.

"It's… just Tatsuki-chan up there," Karin mutters, desperately reigning in her imagination. "Just Tatsuki-chan."

"Uh huh," agrees Yuzu. From the distant yet curious look in her eyes, however, Karin can tell her sister isn't making nearly the same effort as herself. "Just Tatsuki-chan…"

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In deep recess of her mind, Tatsuki felt surprisingly unsurprised by the way things turned out. She didn't think of such things often--didn't think of such things ever--but now that she did, she always imagined that if she was ever going to kiss someone it would be him, and it wouldn't be a on a romantic date or sweet-in-the-rain nonsense they filled mangas and television with. It would grow out of a tussle, a fight, some sort of argument or disagreement or by accident, or all of those things.

Yes, she knows he's powerful, yes she knows he's way of her league, that the mere flick of his pinky would strike her and every normal human being dead. But the more she thought of it the angrier she grew, irrationally, over something which she had no control. She remembers the days when she was the one who flattened him on the floor, when they fought alongside each other against hoodlums who knew not what they were up against, and the fresh memory of the effortless display he put on against her that afternoon ground her pride to no end in spite of their making up.

So what began as a tease grew into goading, and goading turned into baiting, and baiting turned into insults and questions about his manhood and all the embarrassing details she could recall of his infancy, when he was some what less of an all powerful protagonist and savior of the world. She reveled in her knowledge of his buttons that no one else knew and pressed them all at once like keys on a piano, thoroughly enjoying this one small power she still had over him.

What she didn't expect was for him to vent all his pent up frustrations and scores from their childhood now, resulting in her pinned on the ground next to his bed, all his weight on top her and his mouth covering hers in heated exchange. When they parted for breath, he had an almost vicious grin on his face; the competitive animal exposed. "What was that you said, something about a wussy fruit, my name, and my masculinity?"

She was held fast and there was nothing she could do; entirely out of her league. But she was smiling, grinning like she had not grinned in ages and reflecting the hungry happy look in her childhood friend's face, because she knew, and she knew that he knew, who the true victor was here.

The End