Rukia's ambling ahead of him, hands loosely clasped behind her back as she throws her head back to gaze at the stars and all he can think about is how pretty she looks right now.
Beautiful, the slightly buzzed side of his consciousness corrects him — and yeah, okay, she's fucking gorgeous. For all the times that he's tried to keep professional boundaries, tried to remind himself that she's just a teammate, just someone he works with, sometimes even friends with — he can't get over how much he really, really wants to —
"Come along, loser. We're killing moonlight with how slow you're walking." She's looking at him now, a single eyebrow raised in that judgy way that makes his chest do weird jumpy shit.
He coughs into his hand, hiding the redness coming to his cheeks. "'Killing moonlight?' Rukia, my dad can make better jokes than that."
"It wasn't a joke! The night is young and you're killing it. Slowly."
"... I'd hardly call two a.m. 'young'-"
"Stomping on its throat as it coughs up blood, choking off its oxygen suppl—"
"All right, all right! Nice job, Poet."
"Actually I'm a lyricist, if you haven't figured it out."
"Oh weird, I would've never guessed."
This. This is what he lov—likes about being around her. Their bickering is so dumb, but it just feels so. Easy. Being with her like this.
"Har-har." She turns her nose up at him. "You know, I still don't — I still can't believe you don't like Taylor Swift. She writes a lot of cheesy stuff, too — kind of like you."
"I do not write cheesy stuff. And besides, it's not that unheard of for a guy not to listen to her."
"Oh, so we're sexist now? We don't believe a woman can write good music? Interesting, Kurosaki, reeeeeally interesting."
"Oh shut up! Even I can admit you're a better songwriter than me." He almost makes a dumb follow up remark when she stares at him with an unreadable expression, but he decides to be brave.
He clears his throat. "Besides, Joni Mitchell made one of my favorite albums. Blue is the stuff of lyrical dreams. 'Means a lot to me, actually."
"Hmm. Can't say I know it." She's about to turn away from him again, and he has half a thought to sputter what kind of person doesn't know who Joni Mitchell is but instead he—
"We should listen to it."
She turns back to him, bemused. "Now?"
"Why not? Like you said: the night is young. What else were we gonna do but go straight to bed?"
Ichigo hopes that she doesn't catch the way his voice unintentionally cracks on the word "bed." He didn't mean to make it insinuative, but man. What a dumb Freudian slip.
To his relief, she shrugs. "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Yeah. One song, why not? Then I can decide whether the rest is worth listening to."
He rolls his eyes, mutters out a "brat" as he pulls his phone out of his pocket to find the song he's thinking about. Another thought comes to him, and he starts to dig deeper into the same pocket again.
"You know uh—we're in a residential area so… we should probably listen on like. Earphones, or something? So we don't get screamed at from windows."
"Oh wow. Ichigo afraid-of-a-noise-complaint Kurosaki." She takes the right corded earphone from him nonetheless. "What, no AirPods? Are you still living in 2010 or something?"
"Oh my god, will you shut up?Just listen to the fucking song."
He hits play just as she snickers, and the nostalgic opening of Joni's Appalachian dulcimer fills the earbuds.
They stand together like that for what seems like ages, just listening to a song that is no longer than four and a half minutes long. Ichigo tries his best not to look over at Rukia's expression, weirdly nervous for the first time in his life of what he'll find in her expression. Will she like it as much as he does? Find it annoying or strange? Impossible. Who doesn't love Joni as soon as they listen to her? Like, he's been all for the classics of rock n' roll all of his life but even he's a fan—
Rukia steps closer to him, her head barely touching his lower shoulder.
Holy shit.
She must be cold or something. That's it, right? Has to be. But it's late March? And like? Sixty degrees? And she has a freakishly high cold tolerance? But she's wearing one of her strappy dresses so maybe—
The song stops. Fuck.
The Last Time I Saw Richard starts to play, but Ichigo doesn't move. He's barely breathing, just hyper aware of Rukia's head tilting up, up, up toward him.
"Ichigo."
He looks down at her, finally meeting her eyes. She's looking at him like she knows him, all of him, and he's gotta say something or else he'll break this moment—
"That was my mom's song."
Welp. Way to ruin said moment, Ichigo. Bring up your dead mother to the girl you really want to ki—
She raises her heels to catch his lips with hers.
He's shocked for a millisecond before he realizes holy shit this is happening and he responds in fervor, winding his right hand up to frame her face while the left slides down her lower back.
In all honesty: he hasn't done this too much. He's gotten a few hastily written phone numbers on napkins by giggling fans before they flittered away before, but never really had an interest in being with anyone just for the sake of it. He's really new… Like really new to all this but Rukia—
Rukia makes him feel like all that doesn't matter. Again: it's easy, being with her.
Especially when she makes those little sounds of approval and is appreciatively tugging at his hair like that.
They part, forehead to forehead, and Ichigo once more doesn't really know what to say. Rukia seems to read his thoughts (or lack thereof) and smirks.
"Your room or mine?"
He barks out a short laugh, and he takes her hand while they're both grinning like idiots.
Ichigo's never wanted to get back to their hotel so fast.
He wakes up first.
A pounding in his temples stirs him, and he winces as he rubs at his light is streaming through a window somewhere in the room, and he curses himself for not closing the curtains before bed.
It occurs to him that he should probably, in fact, take note of his surroundings and make sure he's not in some dump. He's not that kind of guy to black out and do that kind of thing, but hey. Any night involving a Tatsuki hang out in a bar is possible.
Okay. What first? He looks to his nightstand and finds — oh thank God, he was smart enough to pour himself a glass of water before falling asleep. His wallet is there too, which… Is a relief, considering that one birthday his friends took him out and he left it at a rowdy izakaya.
The room itself (now that his blurry, sleep-addled vision is getting a little clearer) is definitely not in his apartment, but… Ah! Hotel room. Yeah. This is his. He recognizes that weird ass lamp in the corner from when he checked in yesterday. Couldn't miss it. It was so weird looking, in fact, that as soon as they were walking out to the venue together Ichigo started describing it and made Rukia laugh —
A mass of black hair on the pillow next to his sighs.
… That's when Ichigo realizes he's completely nude.
And oh. He remembers how the rest of the previous night went, too.
The head of inky hair turns toward him, revealing none other than Rukia in all of her dead-to-the-world morning glory.
He's seen her asleep before — in the mornings after she spends the night on his couch, when he putters out from his room to make them a pot of coffee — but never this close, never so much more than the short glance he'll allow himself, like she'll disappear if it's any longer.
Now that he's this close, he can see that Rukia Kuchiki asleep is actually kind of a disaster.
She's drooled at some point in the night, from what he can see in the wet evidence on her pillow. Her hair is splayed all over her face in a way that he'll be shocked if she can get into any semblance of neatness later, and her lips are slightly pouted by the way she sleeps on her tucked arm. The other hand rests softly on the sheet that dips just below her breast — her bare breast, he might add, but he's not gonna spend too much time on that otherwise his brain will short circuit and he wants to —
He wants to focus on how stupidly charming this all is, and how much he's wanted this.
As if she can hear how loud he's yelling in his brain, she stirs.
When she wakes up, he learns, is where she regains some of her elegance. Her body softly twisting into a graceful stretch, both arms thrown over her head as she rolls onto her back. She sighs again, more moan-y this time, and it may be one of the most erotic things he's ever heard (other than uhhh othernoisesshemadelastnight). Her eyes start to blink open slowly, and when she turns her head toward him he fully expects himself to turn into a puddle of goo and ask her if she wants to go get breakfast and —
But something in her eyes once she comprehends his existence next to her makes his blood run cold.
("Looking back, honestly… Yeah it could've been the same as me when I woke up." He tells Tatsuki. "She could've just been still processing everything that happened. How she got there, how we got there, blah blah. But I just… I didn't give it enough time before I—")
He panics.
"Sorry." He says without much thought—without even thinking what he was sorry for—and that does it.
The spell is broken.
"Oh." Rukia's eyes blink several times, and she purses her lips. Her eyes shift to somewhere above his head, and he realizes the connotation of what he just said. "No I — Oh, Ichigo. No, I should be —"
"Wait, hang on, that's not what I —"
"This was a mistake." She suddenly sits up, tightly clutching the sheet to her chest as she swings her legs over the side of the mattress.
His body fills with dread. "Rukia, c'mon, don't — come back to bed, I didn't mean it like —"
"No, really Ichigo, I was — this was so, so stupid of us. I never thought we'd be so dumb to—"
"Well… Hang on. It's not the dumbest thing to have happened. I mean, look at all the people who were teasing us." He desperately means to sound jovial, to hopefully use some sort of reason to brighten the mood.
Evidently: it does the opposite. She spins back on him, her eyes flashing. "So you're saying you were expecting this to happen?"
"No — I mean I was hoping it would, but —"
"Oh my God." She gets up, does a sort of dance of trying to put on her discarded clothes while covering herself with the sheet. It would make him laugh given any other occasion. "You're such a child."
That. Hmm. Makes his blood flare a little. He frowns. "Okay, hold on —"
" — Can't believe how unprofessional you are, I mean have you ever worked with other people? Do you KNOW that sleeping with colleagues is not something you should be doing or —"
"Hang on, do I need to remind you that you kissed me first?"
She stops with her back to him, facing the door. After a brief moment of silence, she takes the time to re-secure the straps to her dress, to smooth down her hair into something (somewhat) manageable. Waiting for her like this might even frustrate him more, especially when she refuses to look at him—
And then she turns.
Her eyes are filling with tears (fuck) while still giving him a legendary Rukia Kuchiki glare that he knows damn well will haunt his nightmares for the next week at least. "You're right Ichigo. I'm really, truly sorry I ruined our night. That was so unprofessional of me — and I promise. It won't happen again."
"Rukia, damn it, would you just listen —"
He's cut off by the sound of her slamming the hotel door shut.
It's a few days later and he still feels wholly, entirely, unconditionally like a piece of shit.
He's not proud of… Well. Any of how that morning went, to be honest. Because… See, the thing with Rukia is: being with her is so easy and vibrant and makes him feel like he's someone to give a shit about, yes.
But she also sometimes renders him entirely incapable of getting his words right. This was — quite unfortunately and disastrously — one of those times.
What he wanted to say was: I'm not sorry. What he wanted to tell her was: I think I've been dreaming of waking up with you ever since you first crossed your arms at me. What he wanted to let her know was: you've got me so messed up even ourfriendscan see how head over heels I am for you. He wanted to add: when you kissed me I think that might've singlehandedly been the best moment of my life.
What he wanted to say was: stay.
It takes him about a day to figure all that out, to practice what he's feeling through some dumb lyrics he writes on a paper napkin — but he thinks that he should also give her a few days to blow off some steam. Rukia has a silent but deadly anger, allowing it to simmer for longer for its quiet intensity. Very opposite of Ichigo's, but — he likes that about her, too. He finds they compliment each other in that way, strangely enough.
In any case: he doesn't want to mess this next conversation up like last time.
That's a bit easier said than done, considering he has waaay too little experience in all this; so he does what he thinks he should. He carries his notebook full of dumb songs he wrote about her to show her later; rehearses what he'll say to his bathroom mirror while brushing his teeth; picks up some flowers from her favorite bodega stand on his way over to her apartment.
He tries to psyche himself up as he approaches a corner a couple blocks away from her place. Honestly, it's not like he thinks it'll go badly. It might be a little brutal at first, considering Rukia's aforementioned temper. She might call him a complete idiot, and — okay, maybe this is the one time he'll allow it and agree with her, but if that's the price to pay then so be it. And then they can go upstairs and enjoy the rest of this stupid break wrapped up in each other, writing songs about the other, which he realizes is all he ever really wanted and —
He stops when he sees her with someone in front of her apartment building.
Some guy with wild red hair is clearly telling her a joke and making her laugh. Ichigo doesn't recognize him — is this a guy that Rukia ever mentioned? He can't recall, but anyway maybe it's just a delivery guy or something —
And then she hugs him.
It's an intimate embrace: one of familiarity and genuine warmth. The kind where she has to reach up on her tiptoes to wrap her arms securely on his upper back. She murmurs something and the guy chuckles, and then they're releasing each other but —
But Ichigo's seen enough. He turns the opposite direction and starts walking, throwing the flowers in the next trash can he passes by.