Golden Girl, a bleach fanfic

Title: Golden Girl
Author: croisee
Fandom: Bleach
Characters/Pairing: Ichigo/Rukia, Ishida, Orihime, Chad, Renji, Shirosaki in two lines
Prompt: 5 – Envy
Word Count: 1,524
Rating: PG
Summary: The envy delved in his heart and dug in deeper. He didn't know when it morphed into something else.
Warning/s: Ichigo's potty mouth, Shirosaki's morbid thoughts
Disclaimer: Don't own. Kubo Tite does.
Author's Notes: Posted for 7deadlysins prompt challenge. I noticed that I like doing this Shirosaki in one or two lines. Just this weirdness of mine. Anyway, no spoilers. Nope. None. Secretly, I'm not happy with this fic. Not my usual genre so I had a hard time. Sigh Guess where Shirosaki appears! (1 done 6 to go)

Her name was Kuchiki Rukia and she was the golden girl of the campus.

They admired her – the girl who caught everyone's attention – because she was rich and pretty though not necessarily kind and smart (she ranked 302 of 322 after all).

Ichigo thought it was irrational. She was mean and she didn't study and she smiled sparkles for everyone. The world shouldn't bow down to someone like that. Rich girls like her should prance around on their ponies far, far away where they would never meet him and his friends.

And make him envy her. Because that too can't be helped.

"Good morning everyone!" She greeted as she entered the door, curtsying as she was normally wont to do.

Inoue bounded over to her and curtseyed back. "Good morning Kuchiki-san!"

Ichigo gritted his teeth and strained to keep his eyes on Romeo and Juliet.

Rukia sat beside Chad and nodded politely to every stupidity Keigo spouted out. Chad, normally unreadable and very hard to decipher was obviously pleased to sit beside her and was even saying something more than three words.

Yuzu's cooking seemed awful today, Ichigo mused.

Ishida pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and it caught a ray of sunlight, momentarily blinding Ichigo. He swore and rubbed his eyes, brows furrowing deeper and scowl more pronounced. He looked back in Ishida's direction and saw her. She was smiling and it was obvious, even while seeing her in side-view.

The red tint on Ishida's face was obvious too, his delight unmarred by the glasses perched precariously on his nose from looking down on her.

Even fucking Ishida was smitten by her, and just by accepting him to sew a dress for her. Ichigo gripped his pencil to the point of snapping.

"Thank you Ishida-kun!" That sugary voice again that he despised, coupled with her tiptoeing up and planting a kiss on Ishida's cheek.

The idiot's blush darkened.

Ichigo's pencil snapped in half.

Ichigo leaned his head on the railing, overlooking Karakura High School's frontyard. He breathed in the crisp autumn scent and let out a puff of breath and his insecurities seemed to be blown away like the wind that was sweeping over his immobile form.

The stairwell opened and Rukia walked in.

Except she didn't look like Rukia because she wasn't smiling and sparkling and all ready to please. Ichigo noticed how blank and icy her eyes looked and absentmindedly thought how they were always like that whether she was smiling or being pleasant.

She nodded to acknowledge his presence and seemed weary and tired of her role as the princess of everyone.

"I thought I'd be alone," she explained and stood beside him, the shadow of the railings making a crisscross pattern on her face.

Ichigo looked away and focused his attention on the couple fighting in the frontyard. This girl was shouting and brandishing a piece of paper, towering over the boy despite being obviously shorter. He could barely hear her yelling, "It's ART!"

"Why…" he stopped and gulped, finding it absurd to articulate what had been plaguing his mind since she entered with an emotionless gait.

She placed a cold hand on the crook of his elbow and he jumped at the chill of her fingertips on his heated skin. She met his gaze and held it, blue eyes swirling with suppressed emotion and – where those bags under eyes? – the worldliness of one who has seen a lot in so little time.

Rukia – the name of the parading princes on top of the curtained stage – looked away and started to speak. "Why do I insist on being somebody I'm not?" Her voice was hard and patronizing. "I am only showing them what they want to see."

She removed the hand on him and started to move towards the door of the rooftop.

Ichigo never imagined he would utter her name, much more in their current situation. But that paradox that was her finally won against his resistance and moved past his barrier of anger that the word rolled out of his tongue as easily as his dead mother's did. Only in a different manner.

"Rukia."

She stopped and turned around, meeting his gaze for the second time, though she didn't seem as cold and unforgiving with eyes that inwardly softened his own. His unspoken question was conveyed through a single glance.

What about me?

The corner of her lips upturned slightly and she raised the hand that was on his arm moments ago.

Ichigo watched her back disappear with the closing of the door and envied her for keeping a façade so flawless and when it clicked shut, he decided that envy would always come in his life.

The couple in the front yard were making out.

Her name was Kuchiki Rukia and she was the golden girl of the office.

She disappeared after that school year with no more than a glance of goodbye and he often found himself wondering where she went. All the others were talking about her disappearance, after all, it was only natural to wonder about her whereabouts as well. It didn't help the nagging envy in his heart to hear them talk so casually about her because how could they still be raving on and on about she who retired backstage.

Eventually, the talk subsided like last year's winter fashion and her name was scarcely mentioned, if not at all. But Ichigo kept her memory and used it to strive for the better. He utilized that envy to try and become the best he could be.

And it landed him a position in a real estate company, as luck would have it, named Kuchiki Empire.

As luck would have it too, Ishida was hired in the same company with the same position. Ichigo rolled up his sleeves and picked up his briefcase, desperate to leave Ishida in the dust.

"They're amazed, Ichigo."

Ichigo didn't bother to look up at Ishida who was leaning casually on a wall of his cubicle. He printed his report and picked up the other papers that needed to be faxed to the head office. "Who?"

Ishida arranged Ichigo's cluttered desk in his mind. "The Big Bosses."

Ichigo refrained from rolling his eyes by imagining Ishida's death by asphyxiation. "You were promoted, weren't you?" Damn lucky bastard.

Ishida pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose with a middle finger. "Yes, to the head of the Design Department. But that's hardly the point. You," he pointed a rude finger at Ichigo who brushed past him with no more than a deeper scowl, "are now directly under the VP."

Ichigo stopped in his tracks and turned to face Ishida, speechless.

Ishida pushed his glasses up again with a middle finger and grinned smugly. "Congratulations. You meet your boss later."

Ichigo was not supposed to be surprised. It was written everyday on his computer when he logged in and made reports. But he was surprised. And it annoyed the shit out of him.

The swivel chair slid noiselessly in the carpeted floor and faced him. He felt the shadows of the past enclose his soul again.

"Good afternoon, Kurosaki." She greeted, formal and uptight like the last time they talked.

"You're here." He stated in a monotone that hardly counted as a greeting.

She seemed faintly amused as she sat down. "This is Kuchiki Empire." Rukia indicated a seat. "Do sit down."

Ichigo swears three times in the bathroom daily. Because he has to put up with her crazy genius in business and the absurd painting of a rabbit in her office.

And everyone in the room standing when she enters.

Ichigo swears before sleeping.

Because he couldn't get her face off his mind.

Ichigo turned a corner and saw her talking animatedly, no fragment of a mask, with a red-haired guy who looked much like a baboon with stupid tattoos and pineapple hair. She looked happy and he was watching.

He could hear in his mind the snap of the guy's neck.

He didn't know when his envy morphed into something akin to love. Something that made him swear more before sleeping or something that made constrictions in his throat as he knocked on her door. All he knew was that it was bad and it was good and he wanted more of it.

Rukia glanced up as Ichigo walked in.

Ichigo has had enough. Enough of the wordless questions he barely understood. Enough of the 'looking no talking' she seemed to spontaneously do. Enough of the way her warm hands would brush against his skin.

He slapped her hands away and glared at her, "Goddammit! I envy you. I fucking envy you so stop torturing me already!"

To his surprise, she smiled and the mask crumbled to a heap of dust on the floor.

She pressed a kiss on the corner of his mouth and his face flushed scarlet.

"I've always envied you too."

Her name was Kuchiki Rukia and she was the golden girl of his heart.

Post-fic notes: This is one of the very few times I'm writing fluffy ficage. It's just so totally not my style. I guess the ending is self-explanatory? It's so nice to think how something so close to hatred can change into something similar to love given the circumstances.