This is my first fanfic, so please be easy on me! Sorry for any grammar or spelling mistakes! The reason I wrote this was because I don't see a lot of ByakuRuki, so I decided to write my own. I hope everyone likes this one-shot!

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or any of its characters.

Pitter patter pitter patter Pitter patter

Byakuya cursed silently to himself for not having thicker walls. Through the thin surroundings he could hear the quiet pitter-patter of Rukia's tears though the night. She tried desperately to muffle her evident sobs with her blanket, but Byakuya could hear occasional sniffles with his sensitive ears. He sighed. Why Rukia was crying was a mystery to him, but was it really his place to ask?

Of course he was her brother and their relationship had gotten better and the anxious feelings had noticeably subsided after the Aizen incident, but they were not as close as to confide eachother's secrets and troubles to one another.

Rukia's soft sobbing continued to the extent that Byakuya just couldn't stand around and not do anything about it. He felt a need to help her. To understand her. After all, he was her brother. It was his duty as her brother to help her when she needed help.

Or so he thought.

Byakuya stood up from his sitting position and silently walked towards Rukia's room. His fingers gently pushed aside the shoji door of her room and stepped inside the tatami flooring.

"Rukia."

She immediately turned her head around, she had not heard her brother while he was walking at all. It was expected from someone as graceful and swift as him. Her soft black hair skimmed the air around her and her small form clad in a white kimono was luminescent in the moonlight.

"N-Nii-sama! I-I'm most sorry to have disturbed you while you were sle—"

He hugged her tightly around her petite shoulders and closed his eyes. Her pained expression, her faraway words; he did not want to hear them. He wanted her to know he was here and alive, that he was a human being that she could tell her troubles to. For the first time he noticed that she smelled faintly of flowers.

Rukia returned the embrace and wrapped her thin arms around Byakuya's broad shoulders. Her head lowered to rest her forehead upon his shoulder. Her final tears slid down her porcelain cheek and she slowly closed her eyes and drunk in the placid scent of sakura pedals clinging onto her brother's seaweed-green kimono.

No words needed to be uttered. They both accepted the mutual comfort with growing but unaware feelings. The only light was the moon pouring through the translucent washi paper of shoji screens and reassuring warmth came from one another'.

"Nii-sama… thank you"