Orihime wasn't where Renji thought she would be. He'd loitered outside the high school long after the last student left the building for the day, even after all the school clubs broke for the early evening. He was sure he had the right school. He'd certainly had to hunt down Ichigo enough during school hours to know which school to be at.
He headed for the apartment building he knew Orihime lived in, across town, near the less-fashionable but still moderately nice neighborhoods. His gigai wasn't as warm as his less-physical shinigami form, but he was hoping to stretch out the visit to the Living World, even if it meant fabricating excuses, even if it meant tempting his captain's temper.
He'd been there before.
He was still looking at the door to the apartment he thought Orihime lived in as twilight set in, straining to sense some drift of her, catch some lingering presence of her particular reiatsu. All he could feel was the irritation of Tsubaki in his pocket.
"Renji?" came Orihime's soft tone from behind him.
He spun to see the lane behind him.
Orihime stood there, looking a bit cold in the falling evening under the meager, half-power streetlights. He thought he saw her visibly shiver in her lightweight jacket.
"Hi, Orihime," he said, stuffing his hands deeper in his pockets. He shucked off his gloves, feeling guilty for having them when she was without any. "Are you just getting home from school?"
"Oh, no. I came home right after class." She approached slowly, not quite her usual bouncy walk, but something less than actual fear. "I've been running some errands."
"You shouldn't be out alone so late." He stepped back from the door as she met him. He nearly asked about her jacket before remembering her coat had served as Ichigo's final pillow before dying. "You need some gloves and a scarf."
"Oh, my gloves were in my other...coat." She turned quickly to the door, gaze dropping from him as her shivering hands fit the key into the door lock. She pushed it open. "Come in."
Renji paused in the doorway as she went ahead of him into the apartment. He didn't step in, mostly from the impropriety of the situation. Rukia was usually with him whenever he'd been near Orihime, except for the last time, and something about it seemed suddenly too intimate, and not in the manner he'd have welcomed. A cold blast of February air rushed in from the lane, and he stepped in, closing the door behind him.
She kept on her jacket, looking to him. "I meant to thank you last time, for everything." She frowned at the words, turning her back, not quite looking at anything.
"Ah, yeah, well, I should've been there sooner." He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry about that, Orihime. Really I am." He watched her move to the small kitchen area where she flicked on an overhead light. "No one knows. It's not in any report. I mean, your name, and, and everything else."
"Thank you, Renji."
As the light spread into the rooms, he got a better look at the place. Everything was bare except for a stack of cardboard boxes beside one wall. His attention snapped back to her. "Hey, what the hell's going on? Are you moving?"
"Yes." She wrapped her arms around a box overstuffed with items on the kitchen counter. A large towel was draped over the top. "I thought it would be best."
Renji put his hands on his hips, scowling around at the boxes in the empty room. "You moved everything already?"
She held the box close to her chest, mostly for warmth. She nodded, attempting a better smile for him. "Chad helped a lot. He moved the couch all by himself."
He nodded. "Yeah, I suppose he could do that." He shook his head. "Why are you moving? Ah, did you get evicted?" He said it before thinking, but she answered anyway.
"I've been here for so long. A very long time. I thought maybe it would be better to live somewhere else."
She started toward him with the box, but he didn't move.
"Are you moving somewhere better?"
"No, not really." She perked on a smile. "It's cheaper."
"Do you have to move? Is your landlord making you?"
She shook her head.
He nodded. "Well, can you leave the rest for daylight?"
She sighed, shifting the box slightly. "I want to move. I want some distance from everything. Everything here."
For once, Renji's tact meter was in full force, and he nodded. He grabbed one of the two larger boxes from the floor. "How far?"
It wasn't so much the distance as the unseemly neighborhoods they passed through that bothered Renji. A few bocks over and another street into the poorer districts added a layer of nervousness to the walk in the growing night. A slight snowfall began, quiet and breezy, blanketing the sidewalk, helping to hide the uneven cracks in the cement.
Renji didn't like the crowded lanes, the unkempt appearance of the buildings, the shadows that moved as they passed the alleys. Orihime didn't seem to either, but she kept marching on despite the rising wind, never slowing, eyes riveted on the lane before them.
By the time they got to the drab brown building with the cracked windows, Renji was ready to forcibly turn her around and demand that she return to her old apartment. Instead she stopped before a door near a smelly dumpster and unlocked it and went in.
"This isn't a good neighborhood, Orihime," he said as she went in and he followed. There was a lamp already on, showing off the small room where boxes were stacked by the couch. He set the box down and shut and locked the door behind them. "Let me take you back to your other place. This is..." He shrugged, looking around at the cracked walls and uneven wooden flooring, the noise of neighbors on both sides of the unit rising in arguments, followed by a bottle breaking.
Orihime flinched, hugging her cardboard box close.
"This isn't for you," Renji said. "You don't belong here, Orihime."
She slowly crouched, setting the box on the floor. "I wanted something different." She brushed a few shaking fingers over the top of the covered box.
He shook his head. "But this?"
She sighed, and then stood up. "After the lease is up on the other place, my aunt said we could get a better place. This can do until then." She smiled. "It's only a few months."
He glanced to the wall as a shout came from the other side. "Too long. I'll take you back."
She didn't answer, instead ducking into the next room behind the main room with the box. Renji frowned as she stepped out of view. There was the sound of shifting from the room, and then a very low, windy whistle. He crossed the room and peeked in the open doorway to where Orihime stood at a wall, trying to pull down a cracked open window.
The room was lit by the kitchen light, faintly, and showed a mattress and bedclothes against one wall and several other boxes heaped with Orihime's stuff nearby. It smelled slightly dank, and the wall to the next apartment let in sounds of a TV playing.
Orihime leaned her weight on the top of the window, grunting to close the glass pane the last half inch. Through that opening came a sharp, wintry whistle of cold air.
"You shouldn't be here," Renji said. He moved her to the side and shoved the window down. There was still a slit of crack at the sill from where the window itself was crooked. It let in a higher-pitched whistle through the narrower gap. He looked at the frayed curtain to one side of the glass. "You're not staying here, Orihime."
She stepped back, looking up at him.
"You don't belong here." He pulled the curtain across the window. It was too short and didn't cover the entire glass. He shoved his hands into his pockets and found his gloves and handed them to her. "Why do you want to be here instead of that nice apartment you have?"
She shook her head, looking to the gloves tapping her hands. "I thought I should change things."
"Take them. Your hands are cold."
She didn't argue with him and took the gloves. She slipped them on, smiling at their warmth.
"Listen, I know it's awful," he said, wishing he could think of a less-damaging word, "but coming here isn't a good way to put distance from...things. You don't belong in a place like this."
She crossed her arms, hugging them close to her chest, glancing to the kitchen area. "Yes, I do. Uh, do you want something to drink? I have tea and hot cocoa."
Before he could answer, she left the room for the kitchen.
When he got there she was running the water in the sink, busily sorting through a box on the small counter. "No, you don't," he said. "I know it's wrong, any way you look at it, but being here is worse."
She begrudgingly took off the gloves and found two cups and a small metal water kettle in a box. "The water here is okay. It's not so bad."
He shook his head. "How about if Rukia came and stayed with you for a while?"
Now she looked to him, fear paling her face as she shook her head. "No..."
"She doesn't have to know why." He was going to add that after losing her friend, Ichigo, it would be natural to want the solace of company; but, bringing up Ichigo probably wasn't the best idea at the moment. "Or Rangiku. She's always looking for a reason to come to the Living World. You could...uh, shop. Or, you know, do other stuff together."
The prospect of Rangiku's company brought a flicker of a smile to Orihime's face, but she shook her head. She'd shared secrets with Vice Captain Matsumoto, but she didn't want to let anyone else in on her most recent pain. She looked to the sink and ran water into the kettle.
Renji wasn't about to push the subject as obstinately as he wanted to; tactics of that sort would likely make Orihime shy away, but there was little else in his diplomatic arsenal besides brute coercion. Within moments he found himself with a hot cup of cocoa and sitting on the couch, Orihime at the other end, both of them ignoring the sounds of an argument from the next apartment.
Renji searched through his limited cache of convincing small talk, and came up with nothing. He and Orihime both drank their cocoa, he taking intermittent gulps of the liquid, her sipping thoughtfully from her mug. He watched her out of the corner of his eye in the poor light from the lamp. Flashes of Hichigo raced through his thoughts until he wanted to break something, mostly Ichigo.
He couldn't really blame Ichigo for what had happened after his death; he'd done all he could, and Renji understood that, but on another level, it didn't matter. He watched Orihime sip her cocoa, her lips trembling slightly as she blew on the hot beverage. He didn't know if it was from the cold or because she was nervous, or frightened. She was still wrapped in her coat, boots off, with her feet in thick socks, pulled to her side, tucked under each other.
"Is Ichigo in Soul Society already?" she asked, glancing to him slowly.
"Yup." He nodded, glad for the break in his thoughts. "Uh, he's fine. Got a little attention from Captain Soi Fon, but he's okay."
"Oh? Is he going to be okay there?" Now she looked fully at him, fingers clutched around the warm cup at her lap.
"Yeah, it's just some bullshit about a, well, mixed lot of spiritual powers. You know how he is, got so many kinds of entities in him now," he said offhandedly. He watched her nod slowly, and decided against his better judgment and pressed the issue. "Yeah, he'll settle in. Captain Soi Fon just has to bust his...chops for a while."
She nodded, smiling a little.
"But you know," he added, resting the cup on the couch's arm at his side, "he wouldn't like to think of you in a place like this, Orihime."
Now her interest made her turn to face him. She pulled her feet closer, shaking her head. "Oh, don't tell him I'm here, Renji. Please."
"Why not?" He shrugged. "Moving is a big thing. He'd want to know where you live, in case he ever dropped by."
She swallowed almost painfully, her gaze going over the cracked walls and scuffed floor. "He won't come here."
"Why not?"
"Well, he's...he's in Soul Society now, and he has Rukia there." She looked almost guiltily to him. "This life is over."
He frowned at her. "But he's a Soul Reaper. He'll get sent back here on missions. He'll want to look you up, see you and all."
She shook her head. "It's not like that anymore."
A loud crash of bodies against the wall broke the arguing from the next apartment and they both looked there. Orihime flinched, nearly spilling her cocoa. There were a few shouts, and then the scuffle moved away from the wall to deeper within the next apartment.
Renji watched Orihime study the wall, saw the worry in her violet eyes despite the ill lighting. "I'll tell you what," he said, drinking most of his cocoa, "I'll walk you back to your place tonight and help you move your stuff back tomorrow."
She turned to him, shaking her head. "But –"
"No argument, Orihime," he said, this time meaning it. "You can't stay here. We'll move the rest tomorrow."
She seemed to consider the idea, glancing at the door as a long gust of wind pushed at it. The sound of the wind rose, rattling the door for a long moment, sending a dusting of snow beneath the poorly fitted bottom edge of the door.
"Look at that," he said. "It's letting snow in. And that window in your room, that's too cold to sleep in." He saw the indecision flit through her face, saw the hesitancy in her eyes. His attention dropped to her lips. "I can see your breath in the air, Orihime."
She blinked a few times, and then looked to him, this time with a warmer tone to her voice. "That's not me. That's steam from the cocoa, Renji."
He shrugged, grinning when she smiled a little, but just a little. "Well, it's damn well cold enough to see your breath in here."
She smiled more, drinking her cocoa as the wind rose to a stiff howling outside. "Maybe you're right."
"Yup."
For a long moment they both watched the wind shake the door, listening to the howl of winter and some of the more off-color arguing from the next apartment.
"I guess so."
He nodded, swallowing down the last of his cocoa. "We'll have you moved back in no time. It'll be better that way." Under the door edge he could see the wind push the skiff of snow that had snuck beneath the crack. It swirled lazily to one side, depositing almost invisibly near their boots. "Besides, this place is farther from your school. It's a bad walk, these neighborhoods. Hey, that friend of yours, that girl with the short, black hair; does she live around here?" He sat back in the couch. "Is she closer now...?"
He glanced over at Orihime. She was sleeping.
She'd leaned to the couch back, her cup tipped in her hands, empty, face half-hidden by thick auburn waves of hair still crowned by the pastel pink knit hat.
Renji watched her sleep for a long moment before leaning over and carefully taking the cup from her unmoving fingers. Orihime didn't wake or even stir, exhausted and content, and sensing safety even in her sleep.
By the early rays of dawn the next morning, the apartment had grown considerably colder. With no core heating, the few rooms Orihime had decided to abandon had no heat except what she and Renji provided. She realized he was still there the next morning when she awoke with a start.
She stifled most of her surprise, blinking a few times at him across the coach, realizing he was sleeping.
Or, she thought, maybe he had left his gigai and was already gone.
She curiously leaned closer across her knees, eyeing him closely without breathing on him, and then slowly got off the couch without disturbing him. Some of the preceding night was a bit fuzzy in her memory, but she remembered the gist of it; she'd agreed to move back.
She hugged her coat close, missing her boots, feeling the chill of the floor through her socks. She stood closer to Renji, observing, thinking once she'd seen his chest move with breathing. He looked like he was sleeping, but then, so did most gigais.
She bit her lip, and then spun around as someone knocked on the door. She'd almost forgotten.
Chad.
She rushed to the door and had unlocked it and was twisting the knob when suddenly Renji was standing at her side, his hand on the door, holding it shut. She looked up to him, deciding it was no gigai.
"You can't just the open the door for anyone out here, Orihime," he said. "You need to know who it is."
She nodded. "Oh, but –"
"Renji?" Chad's voice said from outside the door.
Renji frowned at the door, and then Orihime.
"He was going to help me move my bed frame today," she said, nodding.
"But you're still moving back to your old place, right?" he said more than asked. "That's what we decided last night."
She nodded.
He grinned, and then opened the door.
Chad stood looking back at her – them – taking up most of the doorway. For once, an unchecked look of shock claimed his face as he stared back at Renji.
"Hey, what're you...Renji?"
Orihime blushed pink and emitted a nervous giggle.
Renji nodded and stepped aside to let Chad in. "Uh, yeah, Orihime has decided to move back home, so I'm helping."
Orihime exhaled a whoosh of relief, which Chad thought odd, but said nothing of.
Instead he nodded. "Good."
Orihime smiled, and then left into the bedroom. "Thanks for coming by, Chad," she called. "Can you help us take everything back?"
"Sure."
Orihime scooped up an armload of the nearest still-packed box and turned to see Renji in the doorway. He reached for another box.
"Thanks, Renji," she said. "For everything. Again."
He nodded, grinning as he hoisted the large box. "Let's get you back where you belong."
