In one of the brief interludes of peace after the dramatic show-down of death, Rukia was having a semi-decent conversation with Ichigo in the real world. Sort of.

"—and so," the doctor pressed on relentlessly, "that idiot went and tattooed his eyebrows!"

It seemed that Ichigo, true to the saying that laughter was the best medicine, was now attempting to make her laugh. Unfortunately, the six muscles needed to frown* had permanently frozen, and even slightly twitching the ten needed to smile would have caused what looked like a seizure. As needles went, the IV administered to epilepsy patients was particularly disgusting.

Ichigo paused, sensing that the midget had been far too quiet. Usually, she'd have told him how stupid his stories were or something, and here he was, offering an olive branch to the bridge of mutualism.

And then he heard it.

Alarmed, he almost reached for his pager to alert the whole hospital that there was a grizzly bear in the room. Pausing, he waited. There was nothing in the pristine room to indicate anything out of whack, but the noise had been so loud that there was no way he'd imagined it.

There it was again! Ichigo looked around the room as the growls came more and more frequently only for his eyes to land on the loudly snoring Rukia.

"Damn, midget," he cursed, trying not to laugh, "you snore like a flippin' pig!"

A/N: We have decided that this story will best be told through drabbles. Not our best work, frowney-face, but we're pressed for time here! Finals are coming up, and the culinary failure, TallerThanThou A.K.A. Pie, has been consistently failing cooking. Yeah.

*: Due to research, it has come to our attention that the least amount of muscles needed for the slightest, most half-hearted frown was six, and the least amount of muscles needed for smiling was ten. Which, of course, was not mentioned in Honors Biology 2, but perhaps could be wrangled into an extra credit project? Whatcha think? We need the points! (actually, only Demon-Pixie, who has been sleeping through it the whole year due to her squeamishness about dissecting frogs—which we never did get to—but don't tell her that.)