Kind of a follow on from the last chapter, but kind of stand alone too. I think it might be incredibly ooc, but have fun reading anyway!

Rukia is… different.

Or maybe it's me. Who knows?

I haven't seen her in an age, and who knows what she's done in that time. I have done nothing. I've gone to school, played sports, gotten jobs. She could've saved the world in that time.

I thought we'd come to an understanding a few weeks earlier. That we'd go from a little awkward to whatever normal was for us.

But she's meaner. But a different type of mean. Maybe 'mean' is the wrong word. Teasing. She seems to think it's hilarious to make me blush, to make my face clash with the hair on top of my head. At first I'd tell her to stop, but that would just encourage her more. Now I try to ignore her, but when she goes too far an errant growl will come out, and I'll want to fucking stab myself with my own sword rather than see the look of triumph on her face.

She'll point out my stubble in the morning, point out when I've shaved it off. Laugh when a stray bit of hair sticks out wrong from the rest. Take the piss out of my fashion sense.

Maybe a month after she made her magnificent return, I had a bad day. I slept through my alarm, it was raining on the walk to school, I forgot to pick up my homework for history, Orihime hadn't even tried to be subtle about staring at me from across the classroom, Keigo seemed to be doing everything he could to annoy me, I forgot my football boots, and it was still raining when I walked home from school.

She was at home when I got in. She didn't bother going to school anymore, and I wasn't really sure what she was still doing staying here, picking off stray hollows attracted to my once again high spiritual pressure, practising in the basement under the shop, and doing stuff like walking around my house in sweatshirts and pyjama shorts, being completely adorable and completely untouchable. Like she's forgotten that I am, in fact, a teenage guy. When she teased me, I was mute. I was defenceless and I would have to escape.

Not today. Today, I was in a spectacularly bad mood, and I snapped.

"Nice hair." She smirked at me, her face ever so slightly blurred from me by the steam from the mug of tea she held in front of her face, one bare leg crossed in front of the other as she leant against the kitchen counter.

My hair was probably a mess, slicked back wet from the rain. I just wasn't in the mood. I was sick of seeing that smirk on her face.

I walked to the kitchen table and grasped the back of one of the chairs. I took a couple of deep breaths, my jaw and knuckles tightening.

"What the fuck do you want from me?"

She flinched slightly, probably from the anger I was showing rather than the blush she was expecting, her head tilting a little. A frown came between her big violet eyes. "What?"

I spoke slower, more patronisingly. "What do you want from me?"

The mug in her hands dropped a couple of inches while her frown deepened, and then she put her tea down altogether.

"I don't know what you mean."

"The fuck you don't." My glare got harsher, but she didn't shrink from it. That girl wouldn't shrink back if there was a gun pointed between her massive eyes. "You seem to be determined to make my life a fucking misery and I am really fucking sick of it."

Now, her frown turned into one of confusion and, more frustratingly, of concern. That just pissed me off even more. "What are you talking about?"

"You are always here, finding some way to make me angry and embarrassed." I let go of the back of the chair and paced the kitchen, throwing my hands in my hair and fisting it in frustration. "Every time I fucking turn around you're there ready to piss me off, trying to call me out on every single fucking thing I do." I stopped pacing, took a step towards her and pointed my finger right in her face. "You know if you were looking for a way to torture me then you should have just left me here without my powers. It would have saved you a lot of effort."

She leaned ever so slightly forward, and I thought she was about to fight me back, confusion still breaching her features, until, suddenly, it cleared. She leaned back again, then looked at me like I was very, very stupid. I had a feeling she was about to make me look very, very stupid.

"Ichigo," she said, talking as though explaining to a child, just a tiny sign of a smirk on her face. She looked… shocked as her head tilted downwards slightly. "I've been trying to flirt with you."

I think my eyes might have widened a little, but other than that I was frozen, looking like a fucking idiot with my finger right in her face. After about ten seconds of her staring at me I felt the blush start on my face again, and I flash stepped to my room. I stood in the centre of my floor, my face in my hands, blushing the hardest I have ever blushed, feeling every bit a strawberry, until I grabbed a sweatshirt, pulled it over my head, put my hood up, and sat on my bed with my back against the wall.

It must have been an hour or so later when she came into my room. The sun had set behind the clouds, and the rain had finally stopped in the meantime. I hadn't closed my curtains or turned on a lamp, so the only light coming in was from the moon. My cheeks were still a little warm. I wondered if my face would ever feel cold again.

She was still in a baggy sweatshirt and short shorts, her legs unfairly long considering her shortness. Her newly-short hair had been pinned to the back of her head messily, and the light from the hallway behind her highlighted the even shorter loose waves that had inevitably escaped, and her sleek silhouette. I couldn't see her face properly. She cleared her throat very quietly.

"This explains quite a lot, you know," she said, playfully.

The blush began to grow and I growled audibly, which pissed me off even more again. I stupidly slammed my fist into the wall beside me, hearing a crumbling of plaster and a slight sting across my knuckles. Very stupid, but I got my point across.

Except this girl would goad a lion in a matchstick cage if she thought she'd get what she wanted from it.

"You're lucky I think you're cute when you're red."

I looked up at her, slightly shocked. Where was the reserved Kuchiki ice princess when I needed her?

She seemed to realise what she'd said was un-Rukia-like as well. "It's hard to be self-conscious when you're this embarrassed." She smirked. I blushed. Wasn't this supposed to be the other way around? Wasn't the guy supposed to make the girl blush?

She started to step further into my room as I felt my emasculation fully. I stopped her. "Don't even think about coming any closer." Her eyes became impossibly wide.

I'd known I'd liked Rukia for a while – I stormed the afterlife for her, so it wasn't much of a secret I didn't think. I was pretty sure everyone knew. The constant trying to reach her in the middle of battles, revenge shots when she got hurt, tunnel vision when she was there, being a mess in the 18 months she was gone and how I felt (and probably looked) when she came back again. I didn't even have the opportunity to be subtle my feelings were so fucking on my sleeve.

I was pretty sure my family knew, my friends knew, my fellow Shinigami knew, her brother knew. She must have known. She was this supremely hot chick who showed up half way through me going through puberty, slept in my bedroom, got into fights and then stuck around in my head when she left. How could I not love her? She was like a wet dream come to life.

I growled a little again, an annoying habit I was going to have to train myself out of, and stood up.

Because what was pissing me off now was that she clearly thought she'd won. That I looked like a complete imbecile. I wasn't the kind of guy who was good with words. You ask me why I saved her from her own people, all I could say was that I 'owed' her. I owed her for everything. Not just my life, since that seemed pretty redundant now I knew of Soul Society. I owed her for giving me a life, for turning me into the person I was today. You ask me to make a love declaration and I could easily burst into a Shakespearean sonnet, but I never would. You ask me why I love her, and I'm not sure I could vocalise it in my head, never mind to another human being.

I wasn't good with words. I could have yelled at her, where she stood in my doorway. I could have gone bright red during the yelling, but she would have gone quiet. I could make her never do it again.

Because she's not good with words either, and I know this. She doesn't necessarily like people and being social – we could sit in silence for hours and not be awkward. So for her to make an effort to fill those silences, to be the first to take a step somewhere, meant more to me than words could say.

I walked over to her by the doorway, closed the door, and pinned her to the wall she was leaning against, trapped between my arms.

Her back to the wall, she gazed up at me, frowning ever so slightly. "What are you doing?"

I didn't say anything.

I blushed.

I leaned in.

A/N: this started going one way, then started going another. I thought about adding 'and then he banged her against his door' but I was trying to be romantic so maybs not. But I like to think he probably did. I just wanted something nice and happy because I'm sick of spending around 90 seconds flicking through every week's new Bleach like, 'oh another battle and no character development. I just love ensemble casts'.

Next chap might be in the future again, I struggle to write pre-timeskip because it reminds me of when I was 15, and it stresses me out to think that someone was that age and having to fight hollows, so…