Chicken Noodle Soup
By Oleander Tea
Note: A collection of vignettes of Bleach characters caught in a moment of time, of significance, of dawning realization. There may be spoilers and various pairings. Rated for language.
Red Pineapple
When he was younger, Renji not only thought that long, faux spiky hair was awesome, but also that it fit his personality well. It had a look of great outer toughness, and when let down, was a sea of silky smooth submission of scarlet. Once Rukia noticed that his hair was longer than hers, she had made some snide remark and yanked on his ponytail.
"Bitch!" Renji had spat out with a scowl.
Rukia just giggled and reached out a small, skinny hand to mess up his do.
Nowadays, Renji wears his hair long, in a faux spiky ponytail not because he had a wacked out sense of fashion, not because there wasn't much else he could have done with his hair with a receding hairline like that, not because he thought it was "awesome."
No, Abarai Renji wears his hair long, in a faux spiky ponytail because his hair remembers Rukia's small, skinny hand, Rukia's soft, sweet breath, Rukia's real, happy laughter.
Princess
Tatsuki had first came to Orihime's rescue because she thought, as the other girl's name had hinted, that she was a fragile, sheltered princess, locked up in a tower waiting until her hero came galloping on a white horse in the sunset. Tatsuki didn't know much about fairy tells (as a kid, she had found them ridiculously unrealistic and flat out stupid), but when that weird creature thing attacked outside of her dojo, she knew damned well in the deepest, darkest corners of her heart that Orihime was no princess; she was her knight in shiny armor.
Love Triangle
Matsumoto Rangiku may be a flaming drunk, but she wasn't a stupid drunk. She saw the tender, caring ways her Captain looked after Hinamori Fukutaichou, as if she were the center of his universe. Without missing a beat, Matsumoto Rangiku also saw the way that Hinamori Fukutaichou pined after her own Aizen Taichou, as if he were god almighty in the flesh. Truth be told, she didn't care much about that, as long as Hitsugaya Taichou didn't mind when his vice captain stumbles into the office slightly hung over. Truth be told, as long as Hitsugaya Taichou was patient, Hinamori-san would probably notice his loyalty to her...at some point in time (and when she does, Rangiku will throw a Seireitei-wide party; booze, of course, is on the house).
A sip of sake later amongst the men of men of 11th Division and, truth be told, Matsumoto Rangiku didn't think that Hinamori Fukutaichou deserved Hitsugaya Taichou.
Deaf
When Rukia smacked Ichigo's head with a shoujo manga and told him that he was going to go deaf in a week if he kept listening to that horrible raucous that he liked to call "music" at a volume high enough to reach Soul Society, Ichigo's irritation with her took over his body. However, instead of calling her names or throwing her out his window, Ichigo yanked out the headphones to his iPod, hooked up speakers to damned thing, and played the deathmetal song from Tatsuki that made him wish he actually were deaf. He turned the volume as high as his poor speakers could handle, and turned around to glare at Rukia.
Staring at wide, azure eyes in a body frozen in appalled horror, Ichigo silently congratulated himself on a job well done, content to resume his trigonometry and let the shell shocked Shinigami appreciate what he was not listening to. Before he could completely turn away, movement from said Shinigami caught his eye, and Ichigo's jaw dropped.
"Hey, I didn't know music could be a good thing!" Rukia exclaimed.
She also happened to be banging her head up and down with the ferocity of a Hollow-on-crack and jumping hard enough to break through his floorboard.
A vein ticked in Ichigo's forehead, and he yanked the power from his speakers much to Rukia's chagrin. Never again would he try to outsmart the crazy bitch. Never again.
Fruit Cake
Zaraki Kenpachi thought that Yumichika Ayasegawa was a pretty son-of-a-bitch with too much gay for 11th, no, with too much gay for all of Seireitei at first, and was shocked to discover his surprise at how well the fruit cake battled and bathed in blood. He has never underestimated a self-obsessed explosion of rainbow sparkles after that, and made damn sure his entire division never did either.
"Ken-chan," Yachiru had pulled her captain aside later on.
"What?"
"What's a fruit cake got to do with Feather-Eyebrows?"
Property
After the initial shock and mortification had worn away, Renji had fleetingly thought that it was a damn shame that Zangetsu was a human, not an animal, who wouldn't understand Zabimaru's actions, since the hissing blade, in a fit of possessiveness, had tried to claim for Renji a horribly confused and grossed out Rukia by, of all things, pissing on her.
End. Please review and let me know what worked and what didn't. Thanks for reading.