-22-
They don't answer the door right away.
First, they consult their cell phones to confirm it isn't anyone they actually know. Ichigo's relieved, "Not my sisters" makes Rukia snicker, and her answering, "Not anyone at mine" result in a shared shrug before he sets his phone aside to roll her over in a hug, spooning her against him and hiding his face in her neck as she laughs.
"C'mon, what if its important?" she prods.
"How?" he mumbles, lashes fluttering against her skin as he nuzzles in; his puff of breath sweet and warm in his dozing.
"What if someone needs help?"
"They can try next door."
"What if there's a fire?"
"There's an alarm for that."
"What if -"
"Sleep," he says, reaching around to cover her eyes to more of her giggles. "Whoever they are can go away."
She makes a face beneath his hand, and tugs his arm around her again, pausing to hear for another knock that doesn't come. Rukia falls asleep waiting for it. Ichigo, feeling her body grow pliant with drowsiness; soothes his hand beneath her borrowed shirt, humming a kiss into the crown of her hair, and follows suit.
They're both roused sometime later by more knocking, and Rukia makes a sleepy noise of protest when Ichigo wakes, jostling her.
He pets her absently, murmuring softly in apology, his breath tickling at her skin; his hips tilting against hers reflexively – his cock stiff.
Her heat ended a few hours ago, but.
Ichigo always feels good against her, and at the tingle of awareness that zings down her spine, and tightens at her core; she rocks back in question, and his intake of breath is sharp. His move to leave the bed sufficiently halted.
It's all the answer either of them needs.
Over the knocking of the door, she turns over to kiss him sweet and sluggish; sucking on his tongue and nipping at his lips, he chases after every retreat and whispers every plea.
Hitching her leg over his hip, he grinds in, slow and lazy like molasses. Not really aiming to be inside her, just the friction seems enough.
Though, when he does manage to slide his dick between her lips; their breaths shudder, and with another slight adjustment, he sheathes himself with a drawn-out groan. Pulling her leg up tighter around him as he palms her ass, he thrusts; shifting his hips and rolling them back. Rukia meets each with a snap of her own; like tides being tossed, thoughtless and restless against one another.
Unhurried, they move; their entreating murmurs a poetry pressed against each other's lips, and with their nails on each other's skin, they write sonnets.
There's nothing but the sensual rustle of the sheets, the sinuous roll of their bodies, their quiet breaths and the knock-knock-knock of whoever is at the door.
They ignore it, and come as languid as they'd begun.
Even in the bare light they have when their lips part his mouth looks kiss bruised and his eyes hazy with indolent, sated desire.
He rubs his thumb against the curve of her cheek where her smile pulls a little hopelessly, and like he's drawn helplessly to it, he dips to taste again, and again.
The knocking doesn't stop.
"I should get that," Ichigo says, a little resentful when he's pulled away. Then, "Stay."
And though Rukia mumbles her agreement, the bed isn't as warm without him in it, and she eventually sits up to watch the shadow of him move around the room. He's more graceful in his own space, though his hair is a disaster that makes her want to bury her fingers in it and mess it up even more.
He forgoes a shirt but slips on a pair of joggers. He settles back on the edge of the bed for a moment, pausing to yawn.
In the scant light that peeks through the gap in the curtain; the marks she's left on him over the past few days – love bites and bruises and scratches along his shoulders, beside his spine – are blurred across his skin, softened like an oil painting. Even his lips tipping into a smile is a soft, sweet rose smudge, and though she tests its hold against his lips with the thumb she grazes against it, and even her own mouth; his smile only grows more dear. Ichigo's achingly beautiful.
"I'll be right back, someone's probably just lost."
She nods, more in response to his voice than the words he says.
He chuckles, kisses her forehead and rises.
Ichigo makes it to the door of his bedroom before he glances over his shoulder at her. Gaze lingering on the sheets, on her disarrayed nest empty without him, and her: sleep-rumpled and syrupy slow as she blinks up at him.
Aloud, he wonders, "Do you think they'll go away on their own?"
The knock, in contradiction comes again.
Her smile is amused. "I don't think so."
With a huff and frown, he opens the door.
Chuckling, Rukia untangles herself from the loving cradle of the bed, wrapping the sheets around her like a toga, and pads on after him.
She gets to the hallway just as Ichigo opens the front door, the room's curtains are open, the sun is out. Rukia wonders what time it is.
"Kurosaki-kun!"
Surprised, Ichigo returns, "Inoue?"
"Ah, you remember me," she says, her voice shy, and when Rukia peeks around the corner, Inoue's got a blush and she's poking her index fingers together nervously, her gaze flicking up and down Ichigo's less than clothed self before she stutters, "I uh, thought I had the wrong apartment!"
Ichigo's shoulders straighten, body tensing. "How did you find out where I live?"
"Oh," she gasps, "I…uhm, Yuzu-chan, she -"
Now both Ichigo and Rukia are alarmed, "What happened to Yuzu?"
But Inoue waves her palms in apology, "Ah, ah n-no! Nothing's wrong with her, I just – uh, I was…oh, this wasn't supposed to happen at all!" She starts muttering to herself, talking about her silliness, her absent-mindedness. And oh, I'm not doing this right!
"Inoue," he interrupts to demand, "what the hell is going on?"
"Ah," she says, rubbing the back of her neck, and when Ichigo doesn't relent to give her an out – as anyone else would've – to save herself – Inoue takes a breath, straightens (which has the advantage of pushing out her chest) and says, "I wanted to see you."
Now though, Ichigo's voice flattens. "Why."
Her cheeks flare. "I…" she clears her throat, and says, "I really like you, Kurosaki-kun. I always have."
His silence is bewildered, though Rukia only really hears the silence of it, as does Inoue as she continues resolutely, "You weren't interested in having an omega then, you know, when you presented. So, I waited. But I could never find the right time to approach you."
"Why now?" is Ichigo's careful reply, and at a sign of his interest, she blushes to her hair and replies, "Yuzu-chan."
Rukia's stomach feels like it's dropped out onto her feet.
Is it possible that after spending time with Inoue outside of her heat that Ichigo's sister prefers Inoue as his omega instead of Rukia herself?
That's not fair, a part of her argues, she hadn't even really gotten a chance to know Yuzu. While another part of her argues that even if it were true, that doesn't have anything to do with Ichigo anyway, right?
Ichigo's arms cross. From behind, he looks formidable. Rukia can't imagine what he looks like from the front.
Oh, wait.
She can.
"Oh, she – she suggested I stay at the omega dorms," Inoue explains, its such a left-field explanation that the silence stretches awkwardly long before she hastens to explain, "She said she used to stay there too so, uhm, I asked if I could have her room at the building." Then, scratching her cheek with her index finger Inoue admits, "Her previous information was on file and you were her emergency contact so I just thought…"
"That's creepy," he deadpans.
And Rukia is weirdly satisfied by the horrified look on Inoue's face as she waves her hands. "Ah, ah no – no, I didn't mean for it to be! I just, I've been trying to run into you for so long and I couldn't -"
Almost blandly, Ichigo interrupts, "Have you ever thought about why?"
"Ah?"
"I knew you liked me."
Her smile is luminous, but then the realization sets in that if Ichigo knew about her, that he'd actively avoided her then… "Oh."
"I don't have any experience with omegas if any before Rukia." Inoue stiffens. "You're right, I wasn't looking for one when I presented, and frankly, I wasn't looking for one at all. Least of all one who just wants me because I'm an alpha."
At that, Inoue protests, "But Kurosak-kun, that's not why! I-I know you're kind, that you love your sisters, that you adored your mother – loved her with all your heart, and that you were devasted when she passed away. I know – I know that you're so smart, and funny. And that you can be rude but it's only because you're so honest." When Ichigo's expression doesn't do what Inoue hopes it does, she grows more desperate, a little hysteric, "I know that you've got a scar on your right knee from when you were learning how to ride a bike, that you hate camping ever since you fell into a poison ivy bush, that you smoke with your dad but only at your mother's grave and -"
"Stop," he demands. "Just. Stop. Did you hear yourself just now? We've never spoken before today, and you know all these things about me? Why?"
"I love you," she says like that's an explanation for all the lines she's crossed, the idea that it might be only makes Ichigo grow more stoic.
"None of that is love."
"But Kurosaki-kun –"
"You broke Tatsuki's heart and you violated my sister's privacy," he reminds her; his voice going sharp. "Was I suppose to thank you for that? Was I supposed to find it flattering that you'd hurt people for my attention?"
At a loss, she flounders, "I…I didn't -"
"Why did you do this?"
"I love -"
"That's not a reason," he interjects again. "You wouldn't have hurt the people I cared about if you did. If you actually knew me at all."
"Your favorite color is – Your favorite food is –" Inoue tries, and Rukia winces.
His sigh interrupts her this time, and tears gather in Inoue's eyes, but Ichigo is unyielding, "I don't know you and you don't know me. You don't love me. You can't."
"But I do – I do!"
"You don't -"
"Then I can," she argues, reaching for him. "please, Kurosak-kun. I can – I can learn! I'll…I'll be everything you want – I -"
"No."
She startles at that, recoils almost completely.
"You shouldn't try to be everything I want; you are who you are and someone should love you just as you are. Hell, someone already has." At that, he sounds sad, disappointed. Rukia forgets that she and Rangiku weren't the only ones intimately familiar with Tatsuki's heartbreak. Then, as if to clarify who he means, Ichigo says, "And even if Tatsuki didn't love you. I think I already love someone else."
Rukia's heart jumps to her throat.
Inoue's voice cracks, "Kuchiki-san?
He nods.
Then, with an almost rueful smile through her tears, Inoue says, "She's not a good omega, Kurosaki-kun." In the same tones one would say you'll regret it, you know. Then Inoue says, almost pityingly, "It's just her heat making you feel like this."
Rukia tenses.
As if to offer him comfort, Inoue reaches out to touch his elbow and says softly, soothingly, "You'll get over it."
Ichigo shrugs her off easily, and from the slight angle Rukia has of him, his expression is thunderous. But Inoue is endlessly patient, her smile kind. "It happened with Tatsuki-chan, Kurosaki-kun. It's okay." Sweetly she adds, "It was so nice of you to have taken Kuchiki-san in during her heat, but you don't have to settle for her."
He exhales noisily, reaches for the door and flatly tells her, "Get out of my apartment building."
Inoue looks surprised to have the door shut on her, but Ichigo just seems annoyed. An expression that shutters when he notices Rukia standing there, and then closes entirely as she backs away.
"Rukia -"
"Did you mean it?" she interrupts.
And though his cheeks flush, and he reaches up to rub at his neck, he doesn't deny it. "You heard that, huh?"
"You love me," Rukia says softly.
"I might," he says, "Or I'm going to. Or I already do."
There's a happiness that bubbles in her chest, but it sours as she exhales. She hesitates, then, "What if…Inoue's right?" What if it's just hormones? What if it's just her heat? What if all of this is temporary?
There's something that breaks behind Ichigo's eyes. He looks away.
Her heart twists.
Rukia thinks of her parents. They may not experience heat cycles, being betas, and arranged marriage or not, they must've liked each other enough to have two kids instead of just stopping at Byakuya-niisama. Before her father withdrew entirely. Before her mother turned to buying things and interfering in everyone else's lives to give her something to do.
She wonders if her mother had been hopeful that her marriage would be good, and loving, and happy. Rukia wonders how long that hope lasted.
"It's not that I don't…believe you. But there could be other reasons," Rukia explains, and her breath comes out defeated, though she looks up at him imploringly, begging for him to understand where she's coming from, "I have to…I have to be sure, Ichigo."
He blinks once, twice. There's a determined clench in his jaw.
"How do I convince you?"
"How…?"
"I can't make you believe me, but I can give you every reason to." He closes the distance between them, squeezes her hand, and from the sun that's out and reflecting in his eyes, he asks, "What will it take?"
Rukia blinks, wonders at his certainty, hopes it's true, and breathes.
