In general, Rukia Kuchiki considered herself to be a very pragmatic woman. The primary exception to this (aside from the occasional impractical opera cloak) was her car.

Her apartment allowed two parking spaces in the garage, and she certainly could have afforded a second car for her daily driver-something more luxurious, like the BMW 845i that Byakuya drove "when he needed to hear himself think" or something more fun and quirky like a Mini, except that every minute she drove that car would be time that she wasn't driving her Exige.

She loved its intense styling, its deep curves and bug-eye headlights. She loved its feather-weight and perfect balance, the way it responded like a dream, even without power steering. Mostly, she just loved driving it, riding low to the ground, its power humming around her, all the speed she could ask for at the tips of her toes.

Not everyone liked to ride in the Exige.

Rukia got it. She understood. The cockpit was not made for anything resembling comfort. The engine screamed like a howler monkey. The suspension was meant for making you feel one with the car, which meant you also felt at one with the potholes.

Rukia also got the impression that a certain kind of gentleman found it offensive to be ricocheted around town by a 4'9" woman flooring the gas pedal in stiletto heels. This could be kind of fun when the gentleman in question was a snooty investment banker whose portfolio she was being paid to criticize into dust. It was less fun when it was someone she actually liked. This had only happened twice, and as Uryuu had pointed out, better to weed out someone who didn't appreciate such an essential part of her character. (Uryuu was, contrary to what one might expect, a great fan of the Exige.)

Rukia kept stealing glances over at Renji as she drove. He'd had to dislocate at least half of his joints in order to get himself into the car (a lot of people seemed to have that problem, to say nothing of getting out), but he seemed happy enough now. The only radio the Exige needed was the dulcet tones of its own upper gears. Talking was right out, which worked for Rukia, because she didn't like to talk when she drove, she liked to drive when she drove. Renji was a little tucked in on himself, probably because it was pretty cozy quarters, and he didn't want to get whacked by her flying gearshift arm. He was smiling to himself, mostly looking out the window at the bright lights of downtown.

Once, when she looked over at him, he was glancing furtively back at her. It was a great faux pas to feel embarrassed while behind the wheel of a supercar, so Rukia gunned the engine, just for him, and they grinned at each other.

"That wasn't too terrible, I hope?" Rukia asked later, as they idled in the valet line, ears still ringing.

"Shut up, lady," Renji replied fondly. "That was cool as fuck."

"Some people find the noise bothersome." Rukia checked her lipstick in the flipdown mirror one last time.

"Used to it," Renji shrugged. "Well. You know. She sings in a different key than my 'Busa, but the song's just as pretty."

Rukia glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. It was not unusual for Rukia to feel utterly overcome with her affection for her friends, to feel like her lungs were filling, like she was drowning with it. But sheesh, she barely knew him. "Abarai," she said, desperately trying to hold onto her cool girl persona. "Will you indulge me in something?"

"Yeah, sure," Renji agreed.

Rukia eased the car forward to the front of the queue, and passed the key fob out the window to the attendant, who was practically drooling. Rukia tipped her head towards Renji, and in a voice like tinted glass, said, "Stay in the car. I'm getting the door for you."

Renji stared out the front windshield for a long moment, not so much like he was at war with his own masculinity, but more like…he couldn't believe his luck. Finally, he blinked twice and gave his head a little shake, like he was coming back to himself. "Okay!" he agreed.

Rukia slipped from the driver's seat in a graceful floor of fur and sparkles. She could feel the magnetic pull of heads turning toward her as she strode confidently around her ridiculous sportscar in her ridiculous coat. The night was cold, but not unpleasantly so, and there were plenty of people milling around outside the front doors of the opera house, taking in the snow-bright sky and people arriving in their glittering outfits. But right now, they were taking in her.

Rukia grabbed the passenger door of the Exige, and hauled it open as elegantly as she could manage (the thing really was not unlike a barn door.) She positioned herself next to the car, and held out her hand expectantly.

Her intention in all of this was primarily an excuse to help Renji get out of her very silly car with a modicum of his dignity intact.

Renji had other plans.

His massive, knuckley hands, the hands he depended on to make his living, appeared suddenly, grabbing the roof of the car in a rearward grip. The car creaked backward ominously, and then Renji hurled himself out, feet first. He had to sort of fling his hips upward like a pole vaulter in order to clear the irritating chassis bar that took up the lower quarter of the doorway. He stuck the landing perfectly, his very practical motorcycle boots hitting the curb with a solid thump. There was a microsecond of delay, and then the other 6'2'' of him sprang vertical. He reached back to casually shut the car door, tossed his hair over his shoulder in a move that would have earned him a spot in a shampoo commercial, and then very primly took Rukia's hand.

Everyone was looking at them, now.

Rukia carefully rearranged their arms so that Renji's hand was tucked into her elbow, and they started for the main doors. Rukia used the slightly over-aggressive gait that helped her keep up with Byakuya, and Renji shortened his stride, and falling into step together turned out to be not nearly as hard as Rukia had expected.

"I was there to help you out of the car," she murmured under her breath.

"I know," Renji apologized. "I'm sorry. But I spent half the ride working that manuouver out in my head. I couldn't not try it."

Rukia laughed. "Buddy, this is your night. I'm just your emergency opera date."

"Well, you're doing me a huge solid here, the least I can do is not act like a goon," Renji admitted.

"Don't apologize, it was very cool," Rukia reassured him out of her back teeth, as she flashed a smile and a hand wave to the city comptroller and her husband.

They stepped into the lobby of the opera house, a grand atrium with gleaming marble floors. It was warm after the cold night air, and crowded with people chatting and sipping pre-performance cocktails. Byakuya turned heads wherever he went, and Rukia was quite used to slipping along in his wake. Over the years, she had learned how to establish her own presence, but she could also tell the difference between being the companion and the main event, and knew she was an amateur compared to her brother.

Renji was a funny guy, because he was often sort of sheepish and self-effacing, but when he wasn't thinking about it-when he was singing in his kitchen or riding his motorcycle-he had a charisma so thick it nearly colored the air around him. It was a shame he'd never been a theater kid, Rukia thought, because he naturally commanded attention. To be fair, he was no Byakuya, either, but they were a good match, him and her. A pair. She was subtle and elegant, he was vibrant and luminous. She was the night sky and he was a comet.

"Whoops, there they are!" Renji said, steering them through the crowd. She was glad he could see where he was going, because she certainly couldn't.

The last time Rukia had seen Renji's co-workers, Shuuhei had been wearing a Rocky Horror tank top, despite the fact that it was the dead of winter, and Izuru had been dressed like he had just escaped from a dark academia Pinterest board. To her mild surprise, both of them cleaned up extremely well. Izuru wore a classically cut suit in charcoal wool, over a lighter gray silk vest. Shuuhei was monochrome black, a three-piece suit over a black shirt and tie. Izuru had combed his hair over for a polished, clean-cut look, Shuuhei's was roguishly spiked. They made a very handsome couple, Rukia thought.

"Good evening, Ms. Kuchiki" Izuru said pleasantly. "It's lovely to see you again. We're lucky you were available on such short notice."

"Oh, the luck is all mine!" Rukia replied. "I'm a great fan of opera, and your uncle's work in particular. Thank you so much for having me. I'm only sorry about the circumstances. I hope Ms. Hinamori feels better soon. I've had mono, and it's just awful."

"She's pretty sorry to miss the show," Izuru agreed, "but I think she was even more sorry to miss the opportunity to get to know you better. We, ah, have heard a lot about you."

Rukia squinted up at Renji, who replied with the most noncommittal shrug she had ever seen.

Fortunately, Shuuhei came to his rescue. "I tell you, she's gonna be sorry she missed you two coming through those doors." He jerked his chin at Renji. "I always thought you and Momo made a pretty good entrance, but that was something else entirely."

"You didn't even see the full entrance," Renji exclaimed, his face practically glowing. "She drove me here in her bitchin' sports car and opened the door for me and everything. I felt like Anne Hathaway."

Izuru let out a sigh of long-suffering. "We're so sorry about…" he gestured vaguely at Renji, "all of him."

"Oh, I thought that was a lovely thing to say!" Rukia replied. "I always like to make my dates feel spoiled."

Renji wagged his eyebrows impudently.

"Is this a date?" Shuuhei asked, his voice rising with excitement.

"No," said Renji.

"It's a….platonic date," Rukia clarified. "You asked for an opera companion, and I do try to bring my A-game, bearing in mind, of course, the professional nature of our relationship."

"What she said," Renji nodded.

Shuuhei and Izuru were each making exactly the same skeptical, raised-left-eyebrow facial expression. It was extremely adorable. In addition to his wardrobe, Rukia vowed to also steal all of Renji's friends.

Izuru cleared his throat and pulled a couple of slips of paper from his pocket. "Speaking of being a good date," he said, "here's your free beverage tickets."

"Yay!" Renji replied. "Thanks, Uncle Rose!"

"Please do not call him 'Uncle Rose,'" Izuru groaned.

"You're just jealous because he loves my smoking jacket," Renji replied, accepting the tickets. "Rukia, if you tell me what you want, I can take your coat to the coat check and get you a drink."

"How's the white wine?" Rukia asked Izuru, who was holding a glass. Shuuhei had a beer.

"Nice, actually," Izuru admitted. "It's a Chardonnay, on the crisp side. Good flavor."

"That sounds fine," Rukia agreed.

"Can do," Renji nodded, helping her slip her coat off her shoulders.

Shuuhei let out a low whistle. "That dress is fantastic."

Izuru nodded. "I had something to say about the coat, but the dress has knocked it out of my head entirely."

"Thank you," Rukia replied warmly.

Renji pinned his friends with a fierce warning glare. "I'll be right back. You can keep complimenting her if you want, but don't be nerds and don't tell her anything about me, unless it's how handsome I am or how good I am at doing push ups."

"That's really all we ever talk about anyway," Izuru sniffed.

"Good, keep it up," Renji replied, and set off.

Shuuhei and Izuru watched him go, taking casual sips of their drinks.

"You want to see a picture of him when he was nineteen?" Shuuhei asked, the very second Renji was out of earshot. He whipped out his phone. "His hair was a lot shorter when he was playing D-I soccer, and he used to wear it in a little spiky ponytail, like a cute li'l pineapple."

Rukia felt her cheeks go warm. "Oh, no, I don't want to embarrass him," she waved her hands.

Izuru choked back a laugh and Shuuhei turned his phone around. "Nothing about this is embarrassing."

"Oh," said Rukia.

Renji had mentioned being an athlete in his youth, but he was still very fit, and in Rukia's mind, he probably hadn't changed much. The Renji in the picture was an entirely different creature, though. It was an action shot, Renji diving into a dramatic slide tackle. He was all lean, long limbs and corded muscle, not a tattoo in sight. As Shuuhei had said, his hair was shorter and wrenched back into a tight ponytail that stuck out stiffly in every direction. He had a wide, white bandana tied over his forehead, which was a very different look from his current, shaggy bangs. There was an intensity in his facial expression that Rukia wouldn't have guessed he was capable of- iron determination, but tempered with a sort of feral joy. Somewhere, at her family house, there was a picture of Rukia in a high school kendo tournament, making exactly the same face. Rukia was struck with the sudden, irrational desire to be nineteen again, to go try and meet this mysterious and fiery jock, to know if they would connect as easily as she had with his adult self.

"He actually was embarrassed about that picture," Izuru explained, "because the school sports program used it for marketing and printed it on brochures and such. I think he's over it, now."

"There was a giant poster of it in the student center for a while," Shuuhei added. "We couldn't study there because people kept coming up and trying to flirt with him."

"He had very cute knees," Rukia commented diplomatically.

"He did!" Shuuhei agreed. "As far as I know, he still has them."

Izuru's eyes scanned the room carefully for returning redheads. "So, what else do you want to know about him?" He took a sip of his wine. "We have no shame. We'll tell you anything."

Rukia couldn't figure out a way to ask any of the things she really wanted to know- Is he for real? No one is actually that nice and handsome and thoughtful, right? Also, what are his turn-ons, you know, just for conversation's sake? Pro-tips for winning his heart?

"He talks about the three of you so much," she said instead, "but he's never told me how you met. It sounds like you met in college? You must have been in the same art program? How close am I?"

Shuuhei let out a deep laugh. "I suppose those things are true. That's about 1% of the story, though" He gave his boyfriend a fond look. "You wanna tell it, or should I?"

"I met him first," Izuru pointed out.

"Sure, but I'm the one responsible for his fall from respectability."

"Mmmmm, I'm not sure you can take full credit for that one. But go ahead. you're better at telling stories, anyway."

"I wouldn't say that! But, sure, I'll start, at least. Jump in if I forget anything." He cleared his throat. "First of all, Ms. Kuchiki, I compliment you on your outstanding selection. This is an excellent story."

"Truly," Izuru nodded.

"So! Picture, if you will: me, age 21. Few tattoos, longer hair, just as good looking."

"He used to wear glasses," Izuru put in. "Big, thick-framed nerd glasses."

"I looked so good in them."

"He really did."

"It was my first semester of senior year. Majoring in pre-med. I'd been busting tail for years, and was actually ahead of schedule for graduation. I knew I wanted to devote a lot of time to med school applications, so I decided to take it a little easy and save all the hard classes I had left for the spring. Instead, I took a bunch of elective credits that just sounded fun. Guitar for idiots. French film. Graphic design. Playwriting."

Izuru was shaking his head. "It was the playwriting that did him in."

"It was all of it, really, but the playwriting was the nail in the coffin, so to speak. You see, there was a semester-long project where we had to write and perform a one-act play. There were a lot of very intense people in the class, and they were all writing these really heavy, personal things. I'm really not that interesting, so I decided to write about my feelings about becoming a doctor. Since that still wasn't very interesting, I made it really weird. That was the fault of the French film class. It was a musical. It took place inside a body."

"A dead body?" Rukia asked, who was already wondering if perhaps the play had been videotaped and how hard it would be to get ahold of a copy.

"It was my body, actually, but I think it honestly would have been better if it had taken place inside of a cadaver. It was at that point that I realized I needed sets."

"The sets weren't a course requirement?" Izuru frowned.

"No, it was a writing course. No one else had sets."

"'No one else had sets'? Shuuhei, how are you only telling me this now? We thought the sets were mandatory! We thought you were going to fail!"

"You're getting ahead of me, babe, slow down. So! The other thing I was doing that semester was TAing this medical illustration course. What better place could there possibly be to acquire some bright-eyed, overachieving anatomy-knowers to help me construct an enormous, glow-in-the-dark spleen!"

"I'm going to interject here," Izuru said. "Obviously, the poor, exploited anatomy-knowers were Renji and Momo and I. We had met the year before as freshmen, and stuck together because we had a lot of the same classes and made a good study group. I was also pre-med, because my parents were doctors and expected me to become a doctor, too. Momo was biochemistry. She was going to cure cancer. She would have, too. It's Shuuhei's fault we, as a society, still have cancer."

"It's true," Shuuhei admitted.

"Renji..." Izuru took a deep breath through his nose. "I am going to tell you a secret about Abarai, which is that under all the soccer muscles and skull doodles, he is actually surprisingly smart. He had been a bit of a punk as a high schooler, so when he got to college and got put in the Honors program, he didn't' know anyone and was really lost until he attached himself to Momo and I, which was honestly to our benefit. He was studying personal training or sports medicine or one of those things that athletes major in, which we didn't even find out until we'd known him for, like, seven months. He'd been taking all the same accelerated chemistry and biology courses as us."

Maybe this should have been a surprise to Rukia, but it wasn't. She had known about all the parts that actually fit together: the sports medicine thing, and the tough guy youth, and the soccer. The secret brilliance thing probably ought to have thrown her entire concept of him into disarray, but it honestly just explained a lot. Rukia's heart felt very big and very squishy. She loved listening to his friends talking about him. She loved how much his friends loved him.

"You're getting off track," Shuuhei informed Izuru. Rukia hoped desperately that he hadn't noticed her eyes going heart-shaped and filling up with shoujo sparkles.

"I'm getting off track," Izuru agreed. "The medical illustration class was an elective. Momo wanted to take it because she was a hobby artist, and she was trying really hard to keep up with her drawing on top of her course load and was trying to optimize."

"If you know Momo, this behavior would make perfect sense," Shuuhei put in.

"Oh…I…know people like that," Rukia replied, who had privately been thinking that seemed like a very clever thing to do.

"And Renji wanted to take it, because he got very excited over the prospect of getting school credit for drawing bones and also he wanted to get better at drawing bones."

Shuuhei shook his head sadly. "He was already beyond me, I certainly had nothing left to teach him."

"And I wanted to take it because it was between one of our other classes and lunchtime and otherwise, I'd have to go sit somewhere and wait for the two of them to finish drawing bones, so I figured I might as well learn to draw bones and get my one credit. I want to emphasize that I had probably not drawn a single thing since elementary school when I signed up for that class."

"The stage is now set," Shuuhei said, gesturing with his beer. He paused. "No, wait, actually, the stage was not set, that's the whole point of this story. But I tried to scrape up some volunteers, and these are the ones I got. Momo volunteered because her heart is pure and beautiful. Renji volunteered because he wanted to draw enormous bones. This was very convenient for me, because he also had a friend who owned a truck and a circular saw, two things I had not anticipated needing, but proved to be very useful."

"And I volunteered so Momo and Renji didn't get sucked in too deep, as they both had a tendency to do," Izuru added.

"What followed was a time of friendship and late nights and personal revelations and many trips to the Home Depot with Abarai's horrible friend. At the end of it, Momo had painted me the most beautiful depiction of a human brain on a bedsheet you have ever seen. Abarai had constructed an eight foot tall rib cage I stood in to deliver a monologue. Izuru had rewritten 75% of my play, and three of the songs were now about him. And Momo and Izuru convinced me that I had actually burned out years before and kept going anyway and that I was about to embark on a career that was going to grind me into misery."

"We only came to that conclusion after we realized that we were in the same boat," Izuru admitted.

"So, we all became art majors, even though it took me an extra two years to graduate," Shuuhei finished. "We came up with the dream of running a tattoo shop together pretty early on, and somehow managed to actually make it happen. That's a different story. That's about six different stories."

"Wait, you said you and Momo," Rukia interrupted. "What about Renji?"

Izuru shook his head thoughtfully. "Renji is incredibly transparent most of the time, but there is certain stuff that it is just impossible to get a read on with him. I'm pretty sure he never went through the kind of gifted kid burn-out the rest of us were suffering from. To be honest, the biggest hitch in the whole plan was that we didn't want to leave him behind, but it also didn't feel right to try to talk him into switching majors with us because… well…" He shot a slightly desperate look to Shuuhei.

"Yeah, seriously," Shuuhei shook his head. "That guy could probably be the chief trainer for a pro soccer club, now, or like, the world's pre-eminent full-skeleton transplant surgeon."

"That's not a thing," Izuru felt compelled to point out.

Rukia had the vague inkling that there was more to the story. Shuuhei was a better liar than Izuru, but not by much. Noticing cagey behavior was pretty key to her line of work, but she reminded herself that this was just likely none of her business and that they were just being respectful of Renji's privacy, which was admirable in a friend.

"Yo, what are you guys making guilty faces for?" Renji's booming voice suddenly rang out. "I assumed you'd be entertaining Rukia with some humiliating story about me. Your beverage, ma'am."

Rukia turned to smile at him as Renji held out a glass of white wine for her. He had a glass of red in his other hand. "Thank you so much," she said graciously.

He flashed a knee-melting smile back at her. "You are very welcome. It was free."

"Since when do you drink red wine?" Izuru demanded.

"It matches my jacket! And don't change the subject, which of my Greatest Hits does she know about now?"

"They were telling me about how you met," Rukia supplied. "It was a very good story. I want to see pictures of the rib cage you built."

That earned her one of Renji's big, cheerful laughs. "I've got some somewhere. I'll send 'em to you. That thing was cool as Hell." He leaned over towards Shuuhei and in a fake whisper, continued, "She loves weird theater. Maybe I can talk her into bankrolling an off-off-off-Broadway revival of 'Goodbye to Yesterday's Me.' Maybe Uncle Rose would want in, too."

"I'm on-board and available to resume my starring role," Shuuhei replied.

"No, please," said Izuru.

Renji regarded his friends for a long moment. "The guilt was over the part where you talked me out of my lucrative career taping up high school athletes' twisted ankles, no?"

"I hear you had a lot of potential," Rukia tried to be helpful.

Renji snorted. "I already told her about my family situation, you dorks." He looked back at her. "They couldn't bring themselves to talk me into a career that people usually tack the word 'starving' in front of, because they all had friends and loved ones to fall back on and I didn't. Joke's on them. As if taking a leap of faith with three of the best people I'd ever met wasn't the safest bet I'd ever made in my life."

"Gross," Shuuhei declared.

"Yeah, we weren't feeling guilty, we just didn't want Ms. Kuchiki to know what a disgusting sap you are," Izuru jerked his chin.

"If you don't love me at 'disgusting sap', you don't deserve me at 'sexy vintage smoking jacket,'" Renji shot back and took a triumphant drink of his wine.

Rukia stared straight ahead, cold panic flooding into her chest. She certainly admired Renji's easy affection for his friends, and his openness at expressing himself. Love was such a strong word though. Well, no. In consultation with her therapist, she had made a New Year's resolution two years ago to start using it more casually with her friends. She told Orihime and Chad that she loved them all the time, which was very easy, because they were very easy people to love and they would smile and tell her they loved her back. She'd even worked her way up to using it on Ichigo and Uryuu occasionally, although that hadn't really cleared the awkward stages yet. Renji was definitely more on the Orihime-Chad end of the personality scale, but he wasn't really her friend, well, he was her friend, but not like an I-love-you friend, more like a friend whom you paid money to provide a service for you, and also, there was a very real chance she was maybe at the beginning end of falling in love with him. Oh, no. There it was. The panic started flooding faster.

"Nothing of what you said even makes sense," Izuru was saying. "'Deserve.' Truly, what have I done to 'deserve' seeing you in that thing at my beloved uncle's day of triumph? Not that any of us could ever truly deserve you, we just have you."

Suddenly, Rukia realized that Shuuhei was looking at her, an absolutely unreadable expression on his face. Rukia quickly rearranged her own countenance into a classic Kuchiki "Why, how interesting!" face, a face of vague pleasantness, a face that betrayed none of its bearer's emotions, a face a Kuchiki could wear through a nuclear winter, if necessary. Shuuhei blinked, and then jabbed Izuru in the ribs with his elbow.

"Aren't you the one who's always yelling at me for being unclassy at the opera? Why don't you tell everyone that thing you told me this afternoon, about the lava costumes."

Izuru immediately stopped making fun of Renji, as though that were a thing he only did when he had nothing better to talk about. "Oh, with the fiber optics?"

"Yeah!"

"Oh, sure. So, as you could probably guess from the title, a significant portion of Envoy of the Volcano takes place inside of a volcano- oh, wait. Er, Ms. Kuchiki, does it bother you to know how technical effects are done ahead of time? It's not really a spoiler, per se, but I know some people prefer to experience the magic as it happens and I don't want to ruin anything for you."

"Oh, no, no!" Rukia waved her hands. "I love knowing how tricks are done ahead of time."

"Ah, good," he grinned, "You're one of us."

Renji had been taking a sip of his drink and abruptly choked on it.

No. Unacceptable. Rukia had just gotten a handle back on her feelings, and if Renji fell into his, she was just going down with him. He was just going to have to deal with it.

Rukia, who assiduously maintained her CPR and First Aid certification, smashed her fist into his lower back. That wasn't actually an American Heart Association-approved maneuver, but it nearly always worked on Ichigo, who choked on things a lot. It worked on Renji, too, who drew in a loud, wheezing breath.

"Please," said Rukia, very calmly, "tell us everything."