Chapter 3: Sunrise

~Rukia~

There were reasons why she enjoyed their chick-flick marathons:

A) There would always be fresh banana muffins, home-made mind you- sitting on the kitchen counter the next morning.

B) He would stay for the night and made himself 'useful' in the morning.

C) She's the first thing he saw in the morning. And the morning light always brought out his eyes. In the light, they just shine. Cliché, but it's true.

Was it illegal to find your best friend cute in the morning?

Her hand trailed up and down on her bare arms. She grimaced, hating the cold. Where was the heater? She had the sudden urge to grab hold of something- something warm, soft and cuddly.

Her left hand reached out, fumbling clumsily with both her eyes shut. After what seemed to be a whole century of grappling aimlessly in the dark, she finally found something. She tested the texture of the item caught between her fingers.

It was soft, smooth to the touch; like a worn-in piece of cotton. And the best thing was the mysterious item or rather something near to it was generating heat.

She smiled. That would do just fine.

With both her hands bunching in a fistful of the mysterious object, she managed to pull her half-awake self over to the heat source. Scooting closer in and snuggling deeper to make herself comfortable, she didn't stop until she had her head resting against it- making a very comfy pillow for herself.

She lied perfectly still against her 'pillow'- had her nose pressed against it and greedily inhaled the faint whiff of cinnamon permeating. Smiling, she instinctively curled herself up against it and tightened her grip.

"Hey, squirt! Go easy on the bear hug before I suffocate to death."

She frowned. Pillows don't talk. She released the tight hold she had around her 'pillow', settling instead to run her hands up and down the front of it. Her frown deepened.

That was strange. Her 'pillow' was actually hard and broad. She ran them down lower.

Stranger still- since when did 'pillows' have edges?

She poked at it with her index finger. Were those actually human muscles?

"Rukia, stop that! It tickles."

And pillows were certainly NOT ticklish!

XXX

Rukia shot up ramrod straight. Her bleary eyes blinking rapidly as she tried to get the bearings of her surroundings. She saw couches in a deep burgundy arranged neatly around her, a coffee table with an empty bowl and two stained mugs set and the 43-inch LCD screen on the opposite wall.

It took a second for everything to sink in.

She almost wanted to kick herself. She was lying on one of the couches in her living room. And her so-called 'pillow' was none other than her best friend.

Said friend was currently staring at his flimsy T-shirt in disgust. "You drool in your sleep."

The heiress scoffed, taking her time to make a casual sweep of her best friend under the guise of some morning stretching to smooth out the kinks and cricks. A sliver of the bright sun peeked through the Venetian blinds, illuminating the tiny details she wouldn't normally notice about her friend.

Under the bright glow of the morning sun, everything about her best friend just shined. She mentally gave herself a slap on the head, but that was the truth. She may be his platonic best friend but as a member of the fairer sex well- she's got eyes, thank you very much!

Tall, muscular and objectively good-looking with his unblemished, not to mention well-sculpted face- her best friend was beautiful. She's seen him shirtless before- his six packs and abs were nothing to scoff at!

As to why she didn't fangirl over him- well the answer's a bit more complicated. It's not like she didn't think of Ichigo as good-looking but rather because Nii-sama was better. Her brother was the kind of classical beauty that poets spouted poetries to and bards wrote songs for. Growing up with Nii-sama practically immunized her to men with good looks and raised her bar high.

Compared to him Ichigo was well passable.

Fine, she bit her tongue- she lied; Ichigo was more than passable, he's cute in a nerdy tsundere-y 'I'll-murder-you-if-you-tell-people-I-read-Shakespeare' kind of way.

And he got brownie points for his eyes.

They were a deep set of 'melt-me-down' butterscotch. Their golden-hued tones were always changing to suit his moods and the lighting of his surroundings- sometimes darker and at times light enough to remind her of syrupy honey. They scintillated, glowed, glimmered, gleamed, shone- well she had already run out of adjectives to describe them over the years she knew him.

They were just… gorgeous.

Rukia jolted herself back into reality upon deciding that she had spent far too much time rambling. With the regained use of her limbs, she slightly inched herself away from Ichigo.

She yawned, muffling it with the back of her palm.

"Which movies?" she asked.

He tapped his index finger against his chin, his eyes on the ceiling as he listed the movies from memory. "Well, we had Pride and Prejudice, um… Titanic, Persuasion and the classic Casablanca. I think you fell asleep half way through Casablanca though."

"I did not," she stood up, turned to make her way into the kitchen, "Do banana muffins sound good to you?"

His right hand had shot out to grip her wrist before she could leave his side and take another step to the kitchen. She stared at him quizzically.

Ichigo however propped himself up. His upper half body set upright on the couch and supported by the arm-rest as he looked her dead in the eyes. His grip on her wrist was firm yet gentle as his soft eyes bore themselves into her soul.

He sighed.

"We can do this the hard way or the easy way."

She gave him a blank stare- the perfect neutral expression on her face. "What are you talking about?"

He groaned before scowling. "Why are you always this stubborn, Rukia? What are you hiding from me?"

"N-Nothing. What makes you think that?"

She gulped. The guilt that she was indeed hiding something from him made her look away. The only reason she wasn't sprinting away into the safety of her kitchen being the fact that her best friend had clasped an iron-clad grip around her slender wrist.

He snorted. "You're not a very good liar, Rukia. You actually forced me to sit through the whole day with you, watching chick flicks when you would normally be watching reruns of Chappy Adventures, Supernatural and NCIS. Last time this happened, you thought Byakuya was involved in some sort of road accident and had actually died!"

He tightened the hold he had on her as he gave her another deep penetrating look. Leaning back against the arm-rest, he asked. "So?" he nudged her. "You're going to tell me what's wrong?"

She bit her lower lips. Seeing her hesitation, he gestured at the unoccupied space beside him on the couch, beckoning her to sit and gave her the look. She just knew he was never going to let her live it down if she didn't comply with his wishes, and begrudgingly followed his demands. His hold on her wrist remained while she plopped down on the couch and hugged a pillow to her chest.

"Boss threatened to fire me," she mumbled.

He stiffened- going perfectly still for a whole second before resuming his casual lean. His fingers were clenched tight and his face entirely blank.

"What happened?"

She sighed, nervously picking at the hem of her shirt.

"Let's just say we had some creative differences."

She bit her tongue hard- actually what really happened was a shouting match in the office. But he didn't need to know the messy details.

Ichigo nodded tersely. His hand tightened just a fraction on her wrist, others would have easily overlooked it, but she knew it as a sign of him trying to rein in his anger. She sighed inwardly. This was why she didn't want to tell him in the first place.

"What did you say to him?"

"I told him to save his breath," she said. Her eyes met his as his warm hand instinctively reached to grab hold of hers. "I told him to save his breath because I quit."

The heiress held her breath, waiting for his reaction. Less than a second later, she found his large, comforting arm draped over her shoulders. The hold on her wrist pulled her towards him. She didn't resist it. Instant relief and gratitude flooded her senses the moment she was able to lay her head against his chest.

He shifted his position on the couch as he ruffled her hair. "What are you going to do, now? Tired of the regular jobs and ready to pick up the mantle as a full-time writer or are you still holding on to your 'part-time-writing-lets-you-have-better-experience-dealing-with-characters' thing?"

Her expression turned thoughtful. "Honestly, I don't know. I guess I'll cross that bridge when I get there."

She kept her head still on his chest, her eye lids growing heavier as he started rubbing lazy circles along her forearm. She could have easily fallen asleep if it wasn't for the strange rumbling coming from his chest. It took a few minutes for her to realize that he was actually chuckling.

It was a rare thing indeed to see the notoriously cranky doctor crack a smile. Naturally, she wanted to know why.

"What's so funny?"

He chuckled. "You- weirdo."

She gave him a playful slap on the shoulders. "I am not."

"Liar!"

Her lips shaped into a pout. "Well prove it!" hands on her waist as she stared him down- "I dare you to prove that I'm actually a 'weirdo'!"

He rolled his eyes. "Normal girls bawl their heart out when something like this happens. They eat Haagen-Dazs or Baskin Robbins by the tub. They have their best girl friends to 'dish'. You, on the other hand, force your best friend who in this case happens to be a guy to sit through a whole torturous day with you, watching chick flicks. You eat popcorn like there's no tomorrow and you sit through the whole damn marathon without even shedding a tear. It's inhuman."

He paused for dramatic effect.

"Rukia Kuchiki, you are NOT normal."

She snorted. "If I happen to be the weirdo girl, then you're the loony guy who stays with her for the show. Or could it be that you secretly enjoy watching the chick flicks that you adamantly claim to hate so much?"

Her smile turned sly as she watched him frowned. Obviously the question had never crossed his mind.

"Well… um… I um… You know …"

There went his manly pride first thing in the morning. His shoulders slumped forward as his scowl deepened.

She patted him condescendingly on the shoulders. "I know, Ichigo. You just happen to be speechless in the presence of wise ole me."

She flashed him a grin as she unhooked herself from his pull and slid off the couch. She heard him muttering angrily as she marched into the spacious kitchen, taking out the ingredients she needed from the various cabinets and drawers. She made little efforts in hiding her smile knowing full well how it irked him to lose a verbal argument.

She took out the sugar and butter first having already preheated the oven. She had barely even started beating the mixture when she heard his Samsung ringing.

Ichigo only decided to pick up the phone after the second ring and by then she had already cracked the first egg open. She shot him a pointed look.

Who is that?

XXX

Ishida, he mouthed, wordlessly reading her mind.

She nodded. Her mind was back to the task at hand. She calmly continued her cooking but her curiosity as to why Ishida-san would call him when it's barely 7 in the morning gnawed at her. In the end, she settled for multitasking.

"No, I'm with Rukia."

Crack!

XXX

Down went another egg into the concoction she was mixing.

"Are you freaking shitting me, Ishida?" snarled Ichigo as he stood up abruptly from the couch.

She carefully cast a glance at his direction. Unsurprisingly, she found him pacing the living room in circles. The phone was held against his ear as his face contorted into an ugly look of annoyance and ire. Another hand was running through his shock of entangled tresses, making them wild with spikes.

"No, I don't care if he's the fucking United States President, Ishida. Damn it, he is FOS and you know it! He's not even in pain. Fine! You want to know what he has! It's called Neuro-faecal Syndrome! Get your people to get a look at him!"

A sudden pause.

Rukia sighed before she carefully added the chopped walnuts and a teaspoon of vanilla extract.

"So what if he's the biggest donor to the hospital? I don't give a fucking damn about it! He's not my problem! Get the board to do something about that! I'm not the fucking welcoming butt-kissing committee."

It was not a good sign. His outburst, that is. Rukia rolled her eyes. Ichigo, her caffeine-addicted of a best friend was not a morning person and became incredibly surly in the morning without his daily fix, as evidenced by his current behavior.

It was barely morning and he had already lived up to his potty-mouth reputation. Taking a short break from her task, she switched on the white-coloured coffee maker.

In the beginning, she could barely stand the sight of the bitter liquid, but now she seemed to have developed an acquired love for the aromatic odour of freshly brewed coffee, and it made her best friend happy. She shook her head and she went back to her task with her tired smile.

Really, what more reasons would she need to keep a Keurig B30 Mini Brewer?

Ichigo's pace slowed down, until it finally came to a halt. His eyebrows were still furrowed and he still had a fierce scowl but at least he wasn't running a hand through his hair any more. Inwardly however, he was raging.

"Fine! But you've said it yourself. I leave the moment Derek steps into that room. I don't care if he's bleeding or if his scalp is split. I'm gone. And that's that!"

Rukia looked up from her task of greasing the muffin pan just as the phone call ended. She whirled around to face her best friend and offered him a sympathetic smile before returning to her task. "I take it that your day started out quite badly."

He made his way towards the kitchen counter. His eyes never straying far from the fresh banana muffin batter on it. "Bad, would be putting it mildly. The day started out horrendously," he grumbled.

She chuckled at his show of dramatic wordplay. "Don't you think you're exaggerating a little too much, Shakespeare? I mean, your patient can't be that bad, right?"

"Rukia, you obviously haven't met that guy! Because let me tell you, he's around 60, has a fucking pot belly the size of a pregnant woman. And urgh, his face is every mother's nightmare. And that doesn't even justify his behavior, he's a Class A perv. You wouldn't believe the number of nurses who go as white as a ghost when they hear rumours of him checking in."

She snorted. "And you're sure you're not exaggerating?"

"Seeing is believing, Rukia."

She rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Just make yourself useful and open the oven door, won't you?"

Shrugging, he gave a casual nod before striding towards the oven and with a swift push, revealed the preheated oven tray within. She carefully slid her muffin pan into the oven before adjusting the timer.

"Thanks," she said as she undid the Chappy apron she had on before turning to address her best friend. "But aren't you supposed to be going somewhere?"

Ichigo shrugged. "I'll rather take my time. The fact that they didn't page me and had actually contacted me via Ishida and cell phone implies that this is not an emergency. No need to panic or hurry. Besides, there's nothing wrong with that old guy anyway, his tendency to touch the nurses inappropriately aside. He's just so damn convinced that he's got Serotonin, which I have, no fucking idea why. This is the 5th time in the month that he's checked in, demanding that I do something about him!"

It was then when he noticed her sly smile and the crafty gleam in her eyes. He narrowed his eyes. "Just what's going on in that head of yours now, Rukia?"

"Tsk, tsk," she tutted, "Ichigo, is that how you treat an admirer?"

She took personal glee and gratification in watching his face turn putrid green, pale and finally settled on fire-engine red.

"What the hell, Rukia! That's just plain sick! I can't believe you just said that. He may be a Class A pervert but I'm 99%, no scratch that 200% sure that he doesn't swing the other way. Don't you think that I would've noticed that if he um… likes men?"

She gave him a skeptical glance, a smirk on her lips. "Uh-huh. And this is coming from the guy who had no clue whatsoever that Orihime Inoue had a crush on him for 2 years? Wow, that's rich!"

She laughed as his face turned ashen and his shoulders tensed. She offered him the wooden spoon, sticky with the muffin batter. "Deal with it, strawberry-head. Because that's the TRUTH!"

He groaned, snatching the spoon rudely from her grasp. He turned the spoon several times around before noticing her patronizing grin. Scowling at her, he took a tentative lick from the spoon.

She laughed.

He looked like a petulant child with that stance and look on his face. He would've made such an adorable-looking kid though, minus the perpetual scowl. She mentally drew a portrait of him as a 5 year-old, precocious and sweet with untied shoelaces on his sneakers and holding onto his rainbow-coloured lollipop like a lifeline.

XXX

"Yo, earth to Rukia," came Ichigo's voice as he waved his hand annoyingly in front of her.

Rukia swatted his hand away, wrinkling her nose as she did. "Ichigo, get your hand out of my face before I wallop you!"

He gave her a lazy smirk. "I'll like to see you try."

She gave him a dirty look and he promptly changed his mind. "But, unlike a certain jobless person, I happen to have surgeries to perform, lives to save and-"

"Fat, gay millionaires to entertain?"

He curled his lips into a frown. "That was low, Rukia. Real low."

Rukia laughed. "Awww… Did I hurt the doctor's feelings?"

He rolled his eyes, making a rude grunt as the line on his lips deepened. "Shut up!" he countered intelligently as he opened the kitchen cabinet to his right and took out an orange mug.

Mug in hand, he proceeded to pour himself a generous amount of the steaming coffee, grimacing slightly at the bitter taste, but silently thankful for Rukia's forethought of brewing his personal 'elixir of life' wordlessly.

He needed it, the acquired aftereffects of his daily brawl-routine/rough wake-up call by his father when he was younger. Straightening his arms, he took note of the 'pop' sound with mild satisfaction, slowly loosening the kinks on his body as a result of his bad sleeping posture.

He grimaced at the numb, paralyzing feel on his left arm as he did. Oh the joy of being your best friend's pillow! The scowl on his face deepened as he finished the coffee in a gulp.

Time for work.

XXX

"Rukia, did I leave any clean shirts here?" he asked whilst yawning.

Rukia raised an eyebrow. "What's wrong with the one you're wearing right now?"

"You mean besides the fact that you've drooled on it? No reason."

A scowl appeared on her lips. "It's in the guestroom. Second drawer to your right."

Her best friend was already out of her sight before she even finished her sentence. Her sensitive ears vaguely caught the 'click' of the bathroom door and the gurgling of running tap water. She frowned, the idiot better remember to close the toothpaste cap this time!

Beep!

Beep!

Beep!

XXX

The timer on her electronic oven went off. The pint-sized baker managed to grab the muffin pan and laid them out to cool just as Ichigo came out from the bathroom. By then, he was sporting his favourite tee with the printed message of 'Nice Vibes' and a new pair of low-rise jeans.

"How did my favourite shirt get here? I've been ransacking my apartment for this!" he asked in amazement.

She shrugged apathetically. "Well, Sherlock, you must have left it here because contrary to what you may believe, shirts do not walk or possess a mind of their own."

He opened his mouth to retort but clamped it shut before the first syllable of the sentence was even uttered. Instead he calmly crossed over to the kitchen counter in less than 4 strides.

And while Rukia wasn't paying attention to his straying hands, he quickly scooped up two of the beautiful caramel-crusted muffins. He inhaled the mouth-watering fragrance in a dream-like trance before taking a bite from each muffin alternately.

She smiled at his antics. "Pig," she teased.

"Shut up," he said in between bites, "'sides, you have muffin crumbs in your hair. So I think that makes you worse."

Rukia whirled around, her delicate fingers going straight for her mussed hair, movements frantic as she attempted to dust off any crumbs present. Satisfied that no golden crumbs fell from her hair, she turned to face her best friends angrily.

"You liar! There's nothing in my hair!"

He smirked, taking a step closer to her as he leaned forward. Rukia had remained blissfully unaware of their close proximity until she found herself staring into his beautiful brown eyes. She gulped nervously. For some sick reason, her heart was going crazy, hammering non-stop against her rib cage.

And there was that silly fluttering in her stomach as the distance between them decreased. His lips were just inches from hers. But she was just rooted on the spot, unable to speak and much less move. Her breath hitched as she squeezed her eyes shut when his mouth descended on her.

Something slippery and wet connected with her skin. Rukia kept her eyes shut, reluctant to look. But the sensation of skin against skin spread across her senses like a swarm of ants, inspiring sparks of electricity to go haywire in her system, making her frown.

It was cool, slimy and slightly disgusting and on her… forehead?

What the hell!

XXX

Opening her eyes, she was quickly greeted by the sight of a smug-looking Ichigo with muffin crumbs adorning his lips and chin while shooting her an amused look. She fumed, resisting the urge to flip him the bird. Did he have any idea how he came this close to causing a heart attack?

"Looks like you do have crumbs in your hair after all," he said holding up his third muffin of the day against his wide open mouth.

Rukia shot him a bewildered look while her hands went to her forehead and the stray bang that seemed to lie perpetually against it. Sure enough, clean fingers came in contact with the infamous golden crumbs.

"ICHIGO!"

Hese's corner:

Edited.

Doctors' Slang, Courtesy of various TV shows dealing with life as a surgeon:

1) FOS- full of shit (literally and figuratively speaking)

2) Neuro-faecal Syndrome- shit for brains

3) Serotonin- short for Serotonin Syndrome (a potentially life-threatening adverse drug reaction that may occur following therapeutic drug use, also called Serotonin Storm, hyperserotonemia, or serotonergic syndrome)

And yes, needless to say all the mentioned TV-shows and movies are my absolute favourites.