AN: Hi, guys, my very first time trying to join IchiRuki week prompt (and very late too haha). Well, better late than never. I hope you guys enjoy it :D
Renji saw Ichigo coming out of his bedroom with a stupid, smug grin on his face. He tried so hard to contain it, but the way his eyes lit and the corner of his lips kept quirking up gave it away. Clad only in a white t-shirt and his dark blue pajama pants, with his unmistakably messy bed-hair, the orange-haired successful lawyer prodigy made his way to the kitchen the two grown men shared together.
That smug, I-obviously-just-got-some, goofy smile was still on his handsome face, and Renji wanted to laugh at the irony of it all. And maybe he wanted to punch the man a little.
A pancake was on the table and Renji noticed his roommate's goofy grin was only getting wider. He always knew Ichigo was a whipped dork, but, couldn't he at least act cooler about it? It was so obvious that he was happy. What a douche.
Taking a sip of his morning coffee, Renji smirked evilly behind the cup. "You had sex with her, didn't you?"
"No," Ichigo replied, his strawberry pancake still in his mouth. For such a grumpy fella, Renji found it funny the way Ichigo tried too hard to fight a proud grin forming up on his lips.
"Come on, Ichigo, I am not stupid. You slept with her, didn't you?" Renji was this close to cracking a smile at the irony of it all.
Ichigo scratched the back of his neck with another stupid, goofy, happy little smirk on his face, and "yes," Renji roared in laughter, and his orange-haired best friend went like, "I wasn't supposed to tell, though." he mumbled with a careless shrug.
Renji gave him a high-five and an encouraging pat on the back, "Ichigo, you piece of shit."
It was 30 minutes ago, on a fine Monday morning in autumn, when Renji found out his best friend, Rukia, who had just arrived after years being overseas, slept with his other best friend and roommate, Ichigo (who she had just met last night).
Renji witnessed Rukia gracefully and somehow innocently slip out of Ichigo's room. Renji actually wondered how the Kuchiki heiress could pull off the walk of shame so elegantly as if it were a freaking high-end catwalk, and just ignored Renji's confused and bewildered face (and also the "Rukia, what the fuck?" he sent her multiple times) as she made a freaking strawberry pancake for Ichigo (and Renji, too, if he was interested), and just left without a decent explanation but a wink at the red-haired, young lawyer, "Thanks, Renji. I had a great time," but the emphasis on the word "great" was something else, and Renji noticed the amused voice and the laughter she tried to contain.
His another, "Rukia, what the fuck?!" was answered with her closing his door without another word. Inviting Rukia to his party last night was a mistake, or was it?
Back to the current predicament with agent # Guilty number two, Renji crossed his arms in front of his broad torso and raised his tattoo-decorated eyebrows with a smug grin on his face.
Ichigo looked so damn happy, and he was just eating a pancake.
"You have no shame." The red-headed lawyer added, shaking his head.
Ichigo only hummed, and, damn it, the man did look stupidly happy, and Renji wanted to laugh but also knock some sense into him. And Renji knew Ichigo. He probably acted like he was tough, like he did not care, but Renji could bet all his fortune that his stupid orange-haired best friend must have fallen in love at first sight or some crap like that to pull off something like this. Because, no, Ichigo did not do one-night stands, and because no, Ichigo did not pick up some girls at a party and bring them to their apartment, no matter how much Renji and the dudes tried to corrupt him, Ichigo was a pure handsome-for-nothing kind-of-fella who was just not into this kind of thing. Almost never in a million years did he witness Ichigo bringing a girl home, and the one time he did, it had to be Rukia Kuchiki.
Rukia fucking Kuchiki.
"I don't know how to say it nicely," Renji started, and Ichigo raised an eyebrow at his best friend, urging him to continue, "but you're screwed." That was the best thing Renji could come up with.
His mouth was full of his stupid pancake, his baseline annoyed mode was back, and his left hand was busy typing some texts on his dark phone.
Renji snickered. "Ichigo, you're texting her, aren't you?"
Ichigo innocently nodded, eyes still on his phone, and Renji roared in laughter. "What did you say?"
Ichigo gave him an annoyed look before going back to his phone, but he answered carelessly nonetheless, as if it was not a big deal. "Hi," he said. Just H and I. Hi.
Renji's amused grin couldn't get any wider. "And?" he urged Ichigo to continue.
Ichigo cleared his throat and Renji knew he knew his best friend like the back of his hand.
"you look pretty this morning." He mumbled.
Renji roared in laughter, and Ichigo tried so hard to look like he didn't care, like it was not a big deal, like he did not just make a fool of himself to a girl he had just met last night.
"You're fucking screwed."
Ichigo only rolled his eyes. "You're an ass."
Today was going to be so interesting, and Renji couldn't wait to see everything unfold. He loved his best friend. He did. But some things were just too amusing to be true.
Everything happened so fast. Ichigo did not want to go into the details, but Renji threw a party at some high-class bar near their apartment, and she was there. Renji introduced her like this: "Yo, Ichigo, this is my best friend Rukia, and yo, Rukia, this is my stupid best friend, Ichigo."
And their eyes met, and Ichigo just knew she had the most beautiful eyes he had ever laid eyes on. They got to talking. She graduated from law school at Harvard, and she had just moved back to Japan, this morning actually, and tomorrow she would start at her brother's firm.
It should all ring a freaking bell if only Ichigo was not too distracted by her pale, flawless skin clad in her black dress. And her beautiful eyes, and her deep voice, and her... well, all of her in general, actually. And if only he was not too distracted by her lips on his lips, or her arms circled around his neck, her fingers running through his hair at the nape of his neck. Maybe things would not have happened the way they did.
A lawyer, just coming back to Japan to work for her brother's firm. It should have been a warning sign, a fucking red flag, because Ichigo remembered Renji saying something like "be careful, she's off limits."
But of course, those words just went to hell when Rukia was kissing his neck and taking off his shirt button by button, and Ichigo just knew he couldn't think straight.
But in the end, after all, Ichigo knew he was never good at paying attention, was not good at following instructions, and was so not good at remembering names, because if he was, he should have known the name Rukia, two days prior before all this went to hell.
Because right now, at 12.00 PM, roughly five hours after he sent her that risky text saying you look beautiful today, he saw her, Rukia, his Rukia from last night, clad in a formal dark green dress straight out of a fancy designer's wardrobe, holding her expensive, fancy purse, mumbling something like "Nii-sama, I am sorry, traffic was-" (the rest of her words were tuned out because Ichigo's brain had stopped working), and taking a seat next to Kuchiki fucking Byakuya, or, to be well known as Ichigo's and Renji's boss from hell.
Kuchiki Byakuya was the senior partner at Kuchiki Shihouin Lawfirm, the law firm where the young prodigy associate, Ichigo, was currently working. Renji and Ichigo worked under Byakuya's direct supervision, and just right now, Renji and Ichigo were chosen to join Byakuya's legal team for the high-profile corruption case of Sosuke Aizen.
Renji's snickers behind the menu confirmed it all for Ichigo. He was screwed. He was fucking screwed.
"It's fine, Rukia." was Byakuya's stoic reply that Ichigo and Renji were all too familiar with.
Rukia's violet eyes finally met his, and Ichigo couldn't take his eyes off of her. She was good at faking a facade because, other than her eyes widened slightly at the sight of him, no one could ever take a wild guess at what happened between the two last night. Ichigo shouldn't be surprised. Rukia was a Kuchiki (a brand new information he should have obtained before he invited her to his apartment) and Byakuya Kuchiki, the coldest, most heartless, evilest man Ichigo had ever known, was her brother. Of course, Byakuya would give her some of his wisdom, one or two.
"As I said two days prior, we would welcome a new face in our legal team for the Sousuke Aizen case." Byakuya started, clearly oblivious of the tension between his associate prodigy and his sister.
"Renji, you remember Rukia?" Byakuya began again, and the red-headed associate was still snickering behind his menu.
"Of course, Taichou," Renji replied, never getting tired of trying to be a suck-ass who called his boss taichou for no reason.
"Good to see you, Rukia." Renji grinned widely. "Welcome aboard."
Rukia nodded at Renji and gave him a sweet, somehow scary smile.
"Kurosaki Ichigo," Byakuya turned to Ichigo and said, his words always held venom every time he addressed him and Ichigo wondered why, although now that Byakuya had legit reason to hate him, Ichigo shouldn't be complaining. "This is my sister, Rukia Kuchiki."
She held out her hand first. Like nothing ever happened. And Ichigo was amazed, really, at how unbothered she could be.
He shook her hand and their skin burned. And Ichigo must admit he did hold her hand longer than necessary. She noticed. She raised her eyebrow at him, like a warning.
"Rukia." she introduced herself as if it was not him who called her name over and over again like a prayer to a goddess last night.
"Ichigo." he replied, as professional, business-like as he could. His eyes were never off her and she now raised both her eyebrows at him, coldly, playfully, and the mental image of her black, raven hair spread beautifully on his white pillow sheet made the hair at the back of his neck shiver a little bit.
"I am looking forward to work with you." she said, in a sing-song, playful voice that holds a thousand other meanings behind the simple words, breaking their eye-contact as she put her hair behind her ear and looked through the menu in her hand, and Ichigo could only scoff.
Looking back and forth between the two, and then to the man Byakuya Kuchiki himself, Renji couldn't contain his amusement. So much for a legal team going up against the biggest corruption scandal in Japan. But again, in the end, how are we going to tell Byakuya?
AN: So, to sum up... Ichigo, Byakuya, and Renji all in suits looking like badass high-class lawyers, and let's put classy, gorgeous Rukia in the mix, shall we? Hahaha. Anyway someone really should tell Byakuya his subordinate associate attorney was sleeping with his sister XD Lmao... thanks for reading and please tell me what you think haha.