Disclaimer: Kubo is god, Kubo is king, Tite Kubo owns everything. I'm just playing with them for awhile. I also do not own any of the quotes I use at the start of each chapter. They were all found on the internet, and if they have an author I say who it is.

Author's Notes: Thanks so much to those who reviewed and enjoyed the first chapter. Oh, and for anyone who liked ShuNan and is waiting for their story, there's a cute little bit in here with her. And anyone who remembers which of my stories previously mentioned Netsui tea gets a shiny gold star.

The One I Waited For

By Lady Callista

Chapter 2: In Your Arms

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"But I'll take your feelings into consideration. She can stay in your arms, but the rest of you goes."

-Aizen Sosuke

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Try as she might, Rukia just couldn't get the dream out of her head. She thought about Renji's arms around her as she sat at her desk in the morning sunlight, trying to get some paperwork done. An anti-hangover pill Kyoraku had gotten Unohana-taicho to create decades ago had cured her rolling stomach and splitting head, but she still felt foggy and was having trouble concentrating on the papers.

Trying to tell herself that it wasn't because she was thinking of Renji, Rukia signed one paper and reached for the next one, putting him firmly out of her mind.

She still thought about him later though, while she was eating lunch. She remembered running through Rukongai with him, their hands clasped so that they wouldn't get separated, each of them with food they had swiped from somewhere tucked under their arms. She had always gotten a thrill out of holding his hand, even for something where it was necessary, that she had never gotten when anyone else touched her.

And she remembered the day they had left Rukongai to become Shinigami, and how for the briefest instant she had seen a look in his eyes she thought meant he was going to kiss her. To this day, she knew he hadn't seen the answering spark in her own dark eyes.

Later yet, he popped into her thoughts as she practiced with her division, and she took several hits before she could force him from her mind. Even then, memories of training with him decades ago continued to enter her thoughts, especially as she could feel his reiatsu pulsing from a training field not far away. She found herself irrationally jealous of Rangiku, whom she knew was training with him. She remembered the heat in his eyes he always had when he fought, and how his skin would glisten with sweat.

And as she took another particularly hard hit that she should have been able to block easily, she tried once again to put him out of her mind.

Nearly 14 hours after she had awoken, his whispered words of love from her dream still echoing in her mind, she sat at a table with Yoruichi and Rangiku They were drinking sake, and speaking of nothing important. At least Rukia didn't think it was anything important, although that could have been because she was only half listening, her mind still on a certain red-head.

"Rukia-chan, are you listening?"

Rukia suddenly looked up, tearing herself away from her thoughts to find both of her friends staring at her. "Sorry, I was, uh… just thinking."

"You had the look on your face that a woman gets when she's thinking of a man." Yoruichi said with a chuckle. It was her last night in Seireitei before she was returning to Earth, partly because she missed Kisuke and everyone else, and partly because she was tired of dodging Yamamoto-soutaicho and his attempts to get her to be a taicho again. Although she would miss hanging out with the girls who had become her friends after all they'd been through together.

Rukia blushed, and Rangiku started to laugh as well. "Do we need to guess who it is?"

"You could come back down to Earth with me." Yoruichi suggested as she lifted her glass in a toast. "I bet Ichigo would love to see you too."

Rukia turned even redder for a second, although she started to sputter even as she blushed, "No, that's not… I mean… He's not…"

Rangiku's face turned thoughtful even as she stopped laughing, yet Yoruichi continued to grin. "Oh, come on. You were practically living in his bedroom when you first met him, and then he risked his life to save you, and…"

"He's one of my best friends, but it's not…" Rukia finally managed to stop blushing, although she wondered for the first time just how many of the other Shinigami assumed the same thing. Then she gave Rangiku a sharp look. "Besides, Inoue is my friend too, and…"

Rangiku held up both her hands in surrender, although her smirk grew larger. "Well if it's not him, then…"

Rukia was saved from whatever she was about to say by Nanao's sudden appearance. The normally serious fukutaicho looked slightly frazzled, and Rukia felt her eyes widen in shock when Nanao reached in front of Rangiku and unceremoniously picked up the woman's glass and downed it in one gulp.

"What did Shunsui do now?" Rangiku's attention immediately flicked to her friend.

Nanao sighed and tossed a bag of brownish tea leaves unto the table. "He got them from 'some guy in First District who said they made the best tea ever.'"

Rukia chuckled at Nanao's imitation of Kyoraku Shunsui's lazy, drunken drawl, and had to ask, "You didn't like the taste?"

"I didn't let him taste it." Nanao huffed as she twitched her hand back and forth in front of herself. The fact that she didn't have her fan in her hand to swish along with the habitual motion made it look slightly odd.

Rangiku reached over to still her friend's twitching hand, even as she reached out to a sake bottle on the table with her other hand, and without even looking perfectly filled a glass and pressed it into her best friend's hands. "It's probably fine."

"But what if it ended up being like…" Nanao trailed off with a delicate shutter even as she took a sip of the drink now in her hand, and dropped her eyes when both Yoruichi and Rukia looked at her curiously.

"Shunsui got a bottle of sake from 'a man in Rukongai' a decade or so ago, and it had some kind of spell on it or something." Rangiku told the story with a smirk. "He ended up following Nanao-chan around like he was a love-sick puppy for almost a day. The story was told that it had been one of those 'fall in love with the first person you see' things, but him and I actually drank it together. Nothing changed in how we felt about each other. But he followed Nanao around for a day, and I went to… well…"

All three women heard what she didn't say.

She had gone to Ichimaru Gin. To the only man she had ever loved. The man who had betrayed both her and everything she believed in.

All three of the women had held her while she cried over him.

Rukia broke the uneasy silence. "Why wouldn't you want him in love with you? I know how you feel about him…"

Nanao shook her head. "Not because of a spell. Not because of…" Nanao polished off another shot of sake as all three women nodded in understanding. "If he can't say the words to me on his own without any… help… I won't trust that it's real. I… I can't. I've been waiting for so long…"

Rangiku gave her friend a one-armed hug before she reached out and grabbed the bag of tea leaves from the table. "I can understand that. But I still think you should just tell him how you feel."

"He's an idiot if he doesn't know." Yoruichi huffed. "Although most men are idiots. Can't see what's right in front of their…"

Rangiku suddenly let out a laugh, and the other three looked over at her to find her sniffing the bag of tea leaves. "I don't think Shunsui is an idiot. And he definitely knows what this is, because he's the one who made sure I knew what it was."

She passed the bag to Rukia, who sniffed it but only shrugged that she didn't know. It smelled similar to green tea, but there was something uniquely tangy about the scent that she had never smelled before and wouldn't soon forget. She passed it on to Yoruichi, who suddenly smirked and let out a purr that sounded rather odd in her current form.

"It's called Netsui tea." Rangiku smirked.

"Netsui?" Nanao choked out. "Desire?"

"It's not a love spell, not really." Yoruichi clarified. "It's really just an aphrodisiac. It won't make you do anything… or anyone… that you don't want to. But if you're already attracted to someone, well, it can be interesting."

"It's kinda like a liquid shot of courage." Rangiku piped in.

"I thought that was sake." Nanao said dryly enough that the other three chuckled.

"Hey… Rangiku-chan, what are you doing with that?" Rukia exclaimed even as the strawberry-blond tucked the bag of tea leaves into the top of her shihakusho.

"I know someone who might… benefit from it." Rangiku started chuckling again, and this time there was a slightly evil tint to her laugh. "Or should I say, two people?"

Rukia experienced a moment of panic, but relaxed and had another drink of sake as she saw Rangiku's eyes flick to Nanao. Of course she was thinking of her best friend and one of her oldest drinking buddies. There was no way she could have guessed who it was that Rukia liked. And she knew Rangiku well enough to know she was a good friend, and would never try to set anyone up unless she knew there were feelings on both sides.

And everyone knew Renji didn't have feelings for her. Up until he had helped Ichigo save her, they hadn't really been friends for nearly a decade. And although she once again counted him as her best friend, and knew he felt the same, she also knew that was all that he felt for her. And it was time she learned to be content with that.

OoOoO The Next Night OoOoO

It was just after sunset when Renji wearily let himself into his apartment. He stripped down as he walked towards the bathroom, letting the pieces of his shihakuso fall randomly on the ground as he moved through the dark rooms.

After a brutal training session, Rangiku seemed to have improved a great deal just in the few days they had been working together, Renji wanted nothing more than a hot shower, a warm cup of tea, and eight hours of uninterrupted sleep.

He had woken up twice during the previous night, both times so aroused from dreams that it had taken him a long time to get back to sleep. He hadn't dreamed about Rukia like this in almost a decade. With the exception of the night right after he and Ichigo had rescued her from execution.

His thoughts continued to circle around her as he showered away the aches of the day, and he abruptly flipped the temperature of the water over to cold as he imagined her small hands massaging away the knots in his shoulders and the way her lips might feel under his own.

The cold water, combined with an image of Ichigo holding her in his arms that suddenly popped into his head, succeeded in cooling his ardor, and with a sigh Renji turned off the shower and dried off, letting his hair trail in wet clumps down his back as he wandered into the kitchen.

Renji pulled out a small pan and filled it with water, setting it on the stove to heat even as he picked up a bag of tea from the floor near the stove. It must have fallen out of his gi when he dropped it on his way to the shower.

Rangiku had given it to him as he left their sparring practice, saying it was a thank-you present for his working with her. He found it slightly odd that she had given him anything, let alone a strangely scented green tea that she said was among the best tea she had ever had. But it just so happened that he had run out of tea that very morning, so her gift stopped him from having to stop at a store somewhere on the way home.

He had picked up the habit of a morning and evening cup of tea from Hisagi at some point during their academy days, and after the lack of sleep the night before he thought he might even go for two cups of tea just to make sure he slept like a baby.

Halfway through the first cup, Renji decided that he and Rangiku definitely had different tastes in tea, yet as he didn't have any other tea available he finished the cup, resigned himself to having to have it in the morning as well, and then resolved to bring it into the office with him the next day. Maybe his taicho would like it more than he did.

Still, the habitual cup of tea relaxed him as it always did, and Renji moved into his bedroom to put his futon out. Taking a quick minute to braid his still wet hair so it didn't get all tangled up overnight, but not bothering with a yukata, Renji collapsed on the bed and was asleep less than a minute after his head hit the pillow.

TBC…

AN2: I know it's a bit short, but it would have been way too long if I put in the next scene I'm planning on writing. And I don't really have the time to write that scene now anyway. These first two chapters have pretty much just been setting the scene anyway. Hope you all still enjoyed it. Next chapter is going to get citrusy.