UPDATE [19-01-2022]: Certain edits have been made to this chapter, particularly some scenes I had an issue with, but the general tone of the chapter remains the same. Warnings for explicit content, but the good kind.

"You should call Abarai," Ichigo said, as he closed the infirmary door behind him. "Let him know you're safe."

Orihime nodded mutely, shrugging off her coat. Once she had draped it across her chair, she began closing all the shutters to her office, checking and re-checking the manual locks that had to be put in place.

Ichigo watched as her hands trembled against the latch's metal. When she struggled against the clasp for the third time, he stepped forward from where he was leaning against her desk. "Relax, I'll take care of it. Go call Abarai."

"Thank you," she murmured, rubbing her eyes as she left him to go find the phone. He watched from his peripheral as she stared at the multiple green lines on her telephone. A lot of people must have tried to get in touch with her while she was gone. She seemed to bite her lip in guilt as she picked up the receiver.

While Orihime dialed the guard's office, Ichigo began dimming down the lights wherever he could find a switch. The possibility of someone breaking into the infirmary was a legitimate fear, considering just how close it was to the Maggot's Nest. If Orihime had encountered Nnoitra tonight, there was no telling what other kind of creeps would come crawling out of the woodwork, looking for trouble.

"I'm alright, Abarai-san," he heard her say softly into the receiver, from somewhere behind him. "N-no, no one tried to hurt me. I found Zaraki-san, though! He was coughing up quite the racket down here like you said, so I did my very best to help him and then returned straight to my office!"

There was something unnatural and forced in her tone, but judging from the way the conversation was going, Ichigo didn't think Abarai had noticed. He wondered why she left out the bit about Nnoitra. Probably not to worry him.

"Yes, Abarai-san, I'm sure," she insisted, twirling the cord around her finger. She hummed and ah-ed while she listened to him, before pausing. "Ah. I see." Suddenly, she turned to Ichigo, blushed, and quickly stared at her feet again. "No, that won't be a problem! I'm quite safe here, not to worry! Okay. Alright. Uh-huh. You too, bye-bye."

Ichigo wondered what that was about. He pretended to fiddle with the locks as she set down the receiver. He heard her soft footsteps come up behind him, before she cleared her throat.

"Um, Kurosaki-san," she said softly, staring up at him with a little uncertainty. "Abarai-san just told me they put gen-pop under lockdown, all the four wings."

Ichigo raised his eyebrows, wondering why she was telling him this. "Ah. I see," he said, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly, not seeing where she was going with this.

"The lockdown is supposed to help the guards keep a headcount of the people inside the wings so they can herd and look for everyone that managed to get out," she explained in a speedy ramble, her hands going haywire with movement as she talked. "It's a very efficient process, actually! The guards will have a much easier time searching for stragglers outside while handling the safety of the inmates still inside! Whoever came up with this must be quite the genius, huh?"

"Inoue," he interrupted. "What's going on?"

"Well, as you know, I just got off the phone with Abarai-san…"

"Uh-huh."

She blushed, braving to meet his eyes. "He said all prison staff offices are going to be locked for the next six hours so everyone can stay put and be accounted for easily." She took a deep breath. "The, um, reinforcements for the doors just kicked in, and they won't really be lifted until the lockdown is lifted so…"

Ichigo blinked. Then, he processed her words. "So we're stuck here for six hours?"

Together? Alone? Alone together?

She nodded. Suddenly, her blushing made a whole lot of sense.

Fuck! He groaned mentally. Being around her during P.I was hard enough, an hour a day with a lot of eyes watching them. He surely wasn't expected to be strong enough to last six hours with no supervision? Hell, the last time they'd been in here, Hanataro had stepped out for two minutes and he'd kissed her.

She must have seen something in his expression, because her face fell. "I'm sorry," she said, bowing her head apologetically.

Great. Now he'd made her feel like shit.

"What are you sorry for?" he said gruffly. "You didn't ask for the power to go out and fuse up the damn generators."

"No," she agreed. Then, her eyes widened at a spot by his forehead. "You're still bleeding! I should take care of that, come on." She dragged him by his wrist, taking him straight to the infirmary before he could protest.

x.x

"So," she said, eyes fixed on the daub of blood seeping out of his forehead. When she leaned closer to clean the wound, he could smell her fruity lip balm. "What do you think we should do until they lift the lockdown?"

Ichigo licked his lips dryly. "You're, uh, healing me," he muttered.

Orihime giggled. "That won't take six hours, silly," she said, shaking her head as she turned to pick up a ball of cotton between her tweezers. When she saw his stoic expression, she schooled her excitement into a small, understanding smile. "Unless you don't want to do anything together. That's okay, too."

"I want to!" he insisted, a little too quickly. When she raised her eyes curiously to meet his, he flushed. "It's just...I don't know. I usually just take a nap when we're in a lockdown."

"Of course," she said, slapping her forehead. "You must be tired. I can set the bed up for you, if you want?"

"No! That wasn't what I meant either," he said quickly, feeling very frustrated with himself for not having an armory of words. He could wax poetic and shit-talk guys during a fight for hours, but he couldn't find a single sentence to summarize this very specific feeling of excitement and guilt-for-feeling-excitement in one breath. He glanced at her and quirked his eyebrow. "Maybe we could just...talk? For a while?"

She beamed agreeably, pulling off her gloves. "I'd love to talk to you!" she said earnestly, and his heart gave out. This was not what he'd bargained for when he crawled down the vent to check-in on her. "Can we take turns and ask each other questions?"

Ichigo raised his eyebrows but shrugged. "Sure." They stared at each other for a moment, each waiting on the other. Suddenly, Ichigo's eyes fell to her lips and he just about decided he was done. "You go first," he said weakly, averting his gaze.

"Oh, yay!" She threw her hands up in the air, then leaned forward on his armrest in piqued interest, resting her head between her hands. "What's your favorite bird?"

He snorted. "That's your first question?"

"It's an ice-breaker," she said, frowning at his amused grin. "You're supposed to go in with the easy questions first so the other person doesn't think you're a weirdo."

"I don't care what other people think," he pointed out.

She laughed. "No, you really don't, Kurosaki-san. But do you have a favorite bird?"

He thought for a moment, a small frown on his face. "Eagle, I'd say," he answered, with nonchalance. "What's yours?"

Orihime scrunched her nose and brought her arms to her side, like she was a teapot. "Emperor penguin," she replied proudly, nearly hitting him when she brandished her arms. "They're the tallest and heaviest among all the penguin species in the Arctic."

Ichigo shifted in his bed to face her better. "Why do you know that, Inoue?"

"Well, I didn't have a lot of friends in college and my brother worked really late so I watched a lot of nature documentaries in my apartment when I couldn't sleep," she answered honestly, crossing her arms. She gave him a sheepish grin. "That's kind of lame, isn't it?"

Ichigo shook his head. "I didn't have a lot of friends in college, either."

She seemed surprised by this. "How come?"

He gave out a short laugh. "I'm not exactly the kind of guy people would like to go out with on a Friday night, Inoue."

"I'd love to go out with Kurosaki-san on a Friday night," she defended, even though her cheeks felt infused with heat at the admission. She stared at her lap. "We'd go to the donut shop and get one of each and then go see the latest Godzilla movie!"

"That's...a lot of donuts," he relented, feeling his stomach squirm tightly at her words. He stared at his hands, not liking the floodlight of visions that entered his brain. How easy it was to picture it, him and her together somewhere, having a nice time. He'd pay for everything, of course. Listen to her ramble about her top ten favorite monsters, ranked. He'd tease her about it, just to see her get defensive and flustered in that way he liked, where her ears would turn pink but her gaze would hold his determinedly, hard-pressed on giving her opinion but willing to keep an open mind when listening to his.

"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "I'm not making things any easier, am I?"

He looked up at her, feeling fresh pain in his chest at the way the shine in her eyes dimmed. It would have been easier if she didn't have it bad for him like he did for her. If she just treated him like she would any patient. But the point here was that she had kissed him back and that was a line drawn in the sand that neither of them knew how to crawl out of very gracefully.

Ichigo shook his head, fiddled with a stray thread in the sheets. "Doesn't matter," he murmured, not liking how glum his voice sounded. "I doubt you'd be interested in a guy like me outside these walls anyway, Inoue. Plenty of fish in the sea and all that."

That was the only way this thing between them made sense, anyway; she was a doctor in prison, spent a lot of hours here. He reckoned any ordinary rock might seem shiny enough if you spent enough time with it.

The sudden feel of her palm against his cheek made him recoil in surprise. She tugged lightly, making him face her. Underneath the latticework of moonlight, the tears in her eyes seemed shiny.

"Don't say that, please," she whispered. "Not when I'm sitting in front of you like a teenager with hamsters running circles in my belly because I like you so much it hurts."

They stared at each other for a moment, the intensity of the air heavy between them. Her touch was light, a ghost of a brush packed with tenderness he hadn't felt in such a long time.

"Orihime," he whispered, surging forward with the guidance of her hand until their foreheads were pressed against each other. He cupped her shoulders up high, thumbs brushing the soft sides of her neck. They watched each other's eyes in the dark, curious and expectant—full of unspoken things. Ichigo's head dipped to kiss her slowly, but when she hugged him around his neck, he had no choice but to drown into her arms with everything he had to give. She was soft, so soft, and Ichigo couldn't lift his mouth off of hers for long enough without sinking back down, the sweetness from her lip balm smeared across his own mouth.

Outside, the air howled, thin lines of rain drumming against the glass. Orihime sighed into his mouth.

"We should—" He sucked her bottom lip into a kiss again. "We should stop."

Orihime's eyes searched his. "Do you want to?"

There were a lot of things Ichigo wanted. He wanted to be fifteen again, coming downstairs in the morning to see his sisters arguing about something trivial before school. He wanted that surge of annoyance when his parents were being extra-cuddly in the kitchen. He wanted Orihime, in all the ways that people wanted each other when they were free and happy.

But he didn't want to stop.

Ichigo sank back down to her waiting mouth, his kiss no longer soft or gentle. It was hungry and full of want, his hand drifting down to clutch her waist like a lifeline. At the first brush of her tongue, he groaned, knowing where this night was going, and knowing he had no desire to stop it.

"Wait," Orihime breathed, pushing him back with one hand on his chest. Ichigo's heart stopped, wondering if she'd perhaps changed her mind, but it quickly sped again when he realized she had dipped her fingers under her shirt and began sliding it off her body. Her skin glowed in the moonlight, revealing inch by inch until her breasts, full and round under a pretty, maroon bra—beauty incarnate. She dropped her shirt behind her, and he, unknowingly, had shifted closer, his breath leaving his lungs entirely.

When her fingers reached out to touch his face, she was hesitant.

"Orihime…" he mumbled, taken aback by the implicit meaning behind her gesture. She wanted him, wanted him to see her—all of her.

"Is it too much?" Her voice was soft, vulnerable.

"You're beautiful," he breathed, pushing her back down to the bed with a kiss. With each growing ache in his groin, he pressed harder kisses down her neck, groaning when she tugged his hair with blunt fingernails. When he reached a spot on her neck where here skin was softest, he opened his mouth to suck.

"No marks," she gasped, even though her hands on his shoulders pulled him closer.

He shifted his mouth off her neck and nosed his way down instead, pausing for a second to study her, eyes dark and contemplative, before dipping down to suck on the soft skin above her breast.

"Ichigo," her voice strangled, half in complaint and half in pleasure.

"No one will see this one," he assured as he brushed his thumb over the little red splotch he'd left on the skin of her breast. Then, in a gesture that warmed her heart, he dipped down and pressed a small kiss right on top of it.

"Oh." Her body arched, aching with anticipation when his hand slipped to tug her bra cup lower and reveal her bare breast. "Oh."

He opened his mouth around the pink bead of her nipple, sucking on it so wetly it sounded obscene. Orihime moaned softly, wanting to be closer, wanting to feel every inch of him against her. She rubbed her knee along his inner thigh and he broke apart with a gasp, his cheeks pink with unmistakable arousal.

"There's a condom in my purse," she admitted shyly.

"If we do this," he whispered, eyes squeezed close with pleasure, "there's no taking it back. Do you want that, Orihime? Do you really want that for yourself?"

Am I worth it?

"I want you," she replied simply, and on that particularly stormy night in Seireitei, while the entire facility looked the other way, Ichigo made love to the doctor with all the passion he didn't think he still had left in his broken and bruised body. Really, he could close his eyes and pretend they were somewhere decent, somewhere romantic like a fancy hotel or a cruise or even a half-decent bed, but he didn't want to. Here with Orihime, skin-pressing-skin everywhere, he wanted this reality to burn him. The smell of brine, the scratchy linen below their sweaty bodies, this, her - all of it. He wanted the memory preserved and etched right into his bones, not a single detail obscured.

As he felt his muscles ache and burn with every last thrust, a lone tear trailed down his watery eyes. "Orihime," he pleaded, almost unrecognizable to himself, unsure of what he was asking for.

Orihime clutched the back of his neck, pulled his ear closer to her trembling mouth.

"I love you," she cried out in a broken sob.

His heart stopped.

He felt himself coming instantly.