AN: This is a sequel of sorts to my other story: The Substitute. There are more chapters planned, probably 3 in total.
Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach
The Principle
They could forget, for a time. Forget the too-warm air of mid-summer days, and how it stubbornly clung to the streets and buildings far into the nights. How it would roll into their tiny apartment and sap the energy from them as they laid on the couch together.
They could forget the stress of the increasingly high pile of colored notices that were collecting on the bookshelf by the door. They could forget their frustration at his publisher rejections, cathartically torn and crumpled on the floor. They could forget how they loathed the meager checks her digital sales generated, always more insult than income, and the infuriating care each required to deposit them safely into their account.
They could forget the cost of books, of recording equipment, of ramen and diet coke and coffee. They could forget the socks on the floor, the chipped dishes drying by the sink, the thinness of their walls and the roar of the traffic outside. What they had was private, intimate, and their own. It did not matter what they did out there, it only mattered who they were in here. The things they owned, or didn't, the responsibilities they kept, or ignored, all of it was for other people.
Here, in the private sanctuary of their room, was where they could let everything else be forgotten.
The faux-flicker of LED tea lights danced with shadows on the walls, cotton sheets bought on sale slipped from the surface of the bed, the scent of desire and the pressure of spring-coiled tension filled the air. Hands across sweat-slick skin slipping, gripping, holding and kneading as gasping cries and choked breaths molded their lips into the familiar shapes. Complicated, complex things were not allowed here, only the simple. Only the good.
His fingers stretching up into her hair. The way her back arched as she rose and fell. The breathy moans that caught in her throat as he moved up to meet her. The shaking of her legs around his waist, his hand cupping her. The rhythm of their bodies, the delicious agony of raw pleasure, the denial of release and the desperate need to continue. The beauty of knowing denial was futile, that continuation was impossible, that release was impending. Rukia, eyes shut, head thrown back, tears leaking down tracks on her face, shuddered as the heat within her swirled and eddied. Whimpering with her lip caught between her teeth, she bit down harder to find some anchor in the firestorm. Muscles strung taut and quivering, nerves frayed by continuous, unyielding sensation, the long burn of prolonging her ever-more-difficult-to-deny release. He was fire in her hands, scorching her as she breathed him in, drew him inside.
Her hands clutching clumsily at his shoulders and winding through his damp hair left it spiked and mussed, and she tilted her chin down to catch his eyes. A hunger simmered in his eyes, eyes that only she was allowed to see. She tightened on him, her legs wrapped around him cinching just to watch the emotions play across his face. Disbelief and incredulity mingled with delight and anticipation. She smiled and pressed her forehead to his own, their hips moving of their own accord, and she dragged her body against his. Surface thoughts were swept away from his face, leaving it blissfully blank she let the only two cool points in the room track down the heated skin of his chest, the ice that quenched his fire.
Her own breath caught as the sensation of her breasts, nipples adorned with their silver rings, slipped across his body. She could feel all of him; like electricity humming from the anchor of their hips to the tips of her hair, his low, rumbling moan reverberating up her spine. His eyes cleared as disbelief and incredulity returned, deeper and more precious than before. That she would want him, of all people. That he could be hers. A fire swirled in his eyes, a surge of possessive vigor that she could feel through his hands, see in his eyes. She met him there, unafraid to feel the heat of his gaze, knowing how much he gave of himself to her and showing him that she welcomed it, cherished it. He was hers, and she, his.
Kisses, tender and rough, fiery and feathery, made their way along the column of her neck and across the line of his jaw, each laced with the relief of their completion but still aching with desire for more. She quaked in his arms, their room was the only place they allowed themselves to be so unguarded. Lips met lips not as duelists, but as dancers. Warm breaths mingled, the motion of their bodies quickened, senses heightened. Sun and moon in eternal interplay, and their alignment was coming.
There was a shift in his lips, a widening of his eyes, an urgency to feel of his fingers on her body and the tenuous hold she had managed to maintain despite the urging of her body, despite the clamoring cries of her soul, was slipping. A breathless smile of intimate understanding, a fervent nod of exultant expectation, and awareness of anything that was not the other began to fray, cast aside as irrelevant. The tightened coil within them, denied and refused and clenched upon with all the power they could muster, now swept back at them with all the rage and fury of the sea, inescapable and undeniable.
There are moments in time, a singular points where the scale tips between states of being. The transitions between wake and sleep, between unknown and known, between life and death, instants where the mind experiences the jolt and the frisson and the tinge of emptiness. Life is filled with memories shared with family, friends, lovers and strangers, but these moments flicker by and we are alone in them. Too many of life's moments are lonely, too many cannot be shared.
But between build and release, between the pressure and the break, between the futile denial of the inevitable and the embrace of climactic failure, this moment is not spent alone... The body can feel the race of the pulses beating together, the equal struggle for breath, the muscles bunching and quivering and the eyes, wide and dark and infinite and intimate and know... know, that I am here with you, you are not alone.
The scale tips.
They tumbled over that barrier, bodies seeking union as release shuddered through them, their minds unravelling in blissful, torturous waves. They were lost, together and clinging with shaking hands, souls and bodies entwined, clutching to each other as ragged breathes tore themselves from their lips. Her hands fisting into his hair, her breathing turned to shaky gasps as she was swept up, his heat filling her. His hands across her back, holding her pressed to him, his touch gentle as their rhythm eased, the spasming muscles of her body beginning to calm. She wore a smile of deep contentment, her eyes closed and hair falling messily across her face.
They lay together later, having made a mess of their sheets and drunkenly laughing about it, considering it a victory over low-thread count, cheap uncomfortable sheets everywhere. Their candles had been turned off and all that remained was the dark of their room and the feel of one another, held close as idle patterns were drawn onto flushed skin.
"Ichigo," she whispered, "I love you. And not just because you're good in the sack."
"I love you too," he said. "And thanks for clarifying that. Also, 'good' is all I get?"
"Yeah well," Rukia said, laying her head on the pillow of his arm and nestling closer until she was comfortable. "We'll just have to keep practicing," she added sleepily.
He kissed the top of her head and chuckled, content to let her get the last word.
"Alright, you have your assignments," Ichigo said, peering out over the top of the book at his assembled class. Clamor and din were rising as they packed up their bags, the ringing of the final bell dying away. "I want those papers on my desk by the end of school, Friday. And don't think that just because the bell rang that you can ignore me, Friday people!"
The students filed out, leaving the classroom empty save for himself. The afternoon sun that filtered through the wall of windows had a grayish cast to it and Ichigo frowned to himself. A storm might be coming. He packed his things and made his way through the emptying halls, rounding the corner to the steps leading to the parking lot before he paused.
"You a parent?" he asked to the figure standing on the steps. He'd initially thought the man lost or bewildered, but it was quickly apparent to Ichigo the man was neither. Only cold and indifferent. At a loss for what to say, Ichigo continued only with a mildly suspicious, "Can I help you?"
The man stared through him before crossing his arms, an expensive but tasteful watch glinting from the cuff of his expensive but tasteful suit. "No, I've seen all I need to see," he replied. He turned on his heel and slipped into the back of a shiny black car.
Ichigo, perplexed, watched him be driven off as he shaded his eyes from the sun. "Prick."
Dinner was over but he hadn't cleaned up the dishes, he'd just moved to the other side of the table to start grading. Annoyed, she pointed and earned several nods and dismissive motions with his hands, his pen gripped between his teeth. She quirked an eyebrow at him, a clear challenge, and watched his brows clench in response.
"I'm going to brush my teeth," she warned. They'd lived together long enough for him to interpret the message.
He made more dismissive gestures but resolutely stood from his pages and gradebooks, dropping the pen and beginning to gather the dishes. Humming to herself, trying to find a melody she could work with, she slipped off to the tiny bathroom and wet her toothbrush. Smearing paste on it, she popped in her mouth and twiddled a dry-erase marker with her other hand. One half of their mirror was covered in her tiny, precise writing, words and phrases she liked, grouped in an organizational strategy only she could decipher. Some of her best songs had come off their impromptu white-board mirror, though from the state of her sales, that wasn't saying much. She sighed, the sound of the brush against her teeth filling her ears and the taste of mint filling her mouth was not conducive to her creativity, she so decided to head to the bedroom and find her pajamas.
Her toothbrush hanging out of her mouth, brushing one handed, she awkwardly managed to get her jeans off and kicked over close to the hamper when she heard Ichigo say something from the other room. Clad only in her panties and tank, her toothbrush still in her mouth and toothpaste foam gathered at the side of her lips, she walked back out to see what he wanted.
Ichigo was off to the side, looking slightly off balance and a storm building on his face. But there was another person in their apartment, impeccably dressed and terrifyingly familiar. He turned a stoney, disapproving look in her direction and she felt her heart clench within her chest.
Ichigo had never seen her move so fast in his life. One moment she was standing in the hall in next to nothing, the next she was gone. She came rushing back out of the bathroom hastily tying a robe around herself and wiping away the remnants of toothpaste, her eyes curiously staying on the floor. She came to a stop across the room from them and said nothing.
"Hello, Rukia." There was no warmth, no emotion at all, in the man's voice.
"You know this guy? Because he just barged in here..." Ichigo said, affronted.
"Yes," Rukia said, eyes down and voice soft. "Hello, brother."