Hiruma berated himself like he'd been doing for the past few days over and over again. Stupid. How could he have been so stupid? He could admit to himself that he'd maybe panicked a little when he saw Kurosaki disappear from his view in the café. All he could think about was going back home to Tokyo with Kurosaki swirling around in his thoughts still. He wouldn't get any work done that night at home and he'd still be distracted at school the next day. Enough that Kurita and Musashi would send him worried glances throughout the day. And the rest of the fucking team was catching on, too. So, he'd panicked and for the first time since he was a child, Hiruma Yoichi went in without a plan.

He'd run after Kurosaki like some besotted idiot and followed him like any other target. And then Kurosaki had disappeared in an alley and Hiruma panicked, again. He wasn't used to not being in complete control of himself and it, well, not scared him, but it secretly worried him. When Kurosaki had jumped out from behind a dumpster (a stupidly obvious hiding place Hiruma berated himself again) he really thought he was going to get pummeled. Kurosaki had a reputation for being harsh on anyone who messed with him.

Hiruma didn't know what the shit was that came out of his mouth. He was so caught off guard that he kept saying the first things that came to mind. Get something to eat? He was lucky Kurosaki didn't lay him into the concrete right then and there. To his amazement, something halfway decent actually came out of his mouth and it got Kurosaki to agree.

He thought he was going to swallow his tongue a few times throughout his pathetic talk in the cafe. He acted as nonchalant and noncaring as he could, but he was sure Kurosaki saw right through him. He saw it in his eyes and it was unnerving to be read so easily.

Then came more half thought shit out of his mouth and Hiruma was amazed the guy had said yes in the end. After making a fool of himself he didn't even know what to do for a date. So, he'd said the first thing that'd come to mind. A movie. At a theater in Tokyo that he'd seen the showings for in the newspaper that morning. A horror movie that started at five and now here he was waiting for a guy that might've changed his mind and not even show. That was looking more and more likely by the minute. Hiruma kept his anxious shifting to himself and tried not to feel like a fool that he was stood up after the giant blundering he'd made of himself.

Then he saw bright orange hair like beacon running across the crosswalk and there Kurosaki was. He slowed to walk when he got to the doors and he wasn't even panting in exertion.

"Sorry I'm late," he said, walking up to Hiruma, "I had trouble finding the theater. I've never been to this part of Tokyo before."

Hiruma didn't show the relief he felt. But he did hide a smile (a genuine smile! What was with him?) that he was sure Kurosaki saw anyway.

Walking back to the train station after the movie was going about as well as their talk in the café had. That is, they were barely getting by. They were silent on their walk. The awkwardness of every first date surrounded them in a haze and neither knew what to say to the other. The movie had gone off without a hitch. Both watched it silently, neither looking at the other and hands snatched away when they accidently touched in the popcorn bucket.

"So…" Ichigo said, trying to think of something to say.

"That was fucking stupid." Hiruma said.

Ichigo was silent. Was he talking about the movie or the date? Ichigo really hoped he was talking about the movie. He didn't want the date to be a bust. Hiruma had gone through a lot of trouble to ask him out.

"There were probably a whole bunch of knives in the kitchen they could've used to defend themselves." Hiruma continued.

Ichigo relaxed. He was talking about the movie.

"Worst case scenario, they could've broken a mirror and used the shards as weapons." Ichigo said.

"Or a window. And what the fuck was the blonde girl thinking when she ran out into the woods?"

"Yeah. There was no one around for miles. Where was she going to go?"

"Heh. And when that guy tripped. If you're running from a killer, you should fucking pick your legs up when you run. I hate horror movies. The people in them are so fucking stupid."

Ichigo looked at him curiously, "Then why did you choose a horror movie for us to watch?"

"I watch them for the special effects." Hiruma replied

They walked the rest of the way to the station talking about movie effects and how Hiruma applied them to real life. When they got to the station, both were unusually uneager to part.

Ichigo rubbed the back of his head, standing in front of Hiruma. There was a lot more to him that he didn't know and from their conversation, he was an interesting person.

"Want to ty again?" he asked.

Hiruma was looking off to the side, towards where the train would come in. He was still playing relaxed, slouching with his hands in his pockets, but it was more truthful than in the café.

"Sure." He said, "Coffee?"

Ichigo smiled, "Sure."

A week later saw Ichigo sitting in class, staring out the window on a bright autumn day. He wasn't paying attention to a word the teacher was saying. Instead, he was thinking about one Hiruma Yoichi.

Hiruma Yoichi was interesting to say the least. He looked interesting with his bleach blond hair, pointy ears, and sharp teeth. He talked interesting with his curse words in every other sentence. (Curse words have never bothered Ichigo anyway.) He was just interesting. An enigma. Sure, he scared and shocked people for fun, but the way he did it was genius. It kind of reminded him of Shakespeare in a way. Shakespeare wrote foolish stories and was applauded as a genius. Hiruma does genius things and, well, Ichigo doubted people thought of Hiruma as a fool, but his genius definitely wasn't as recognized as it should've been.

When Hiruma talked about the things he did with special effects, all but the simplest of it went right over Ichigo's head. He talked about the effect of gunpowder in fireworks and how he used it to control his explosions and make them flashier. He talked about FX make-up and setting a 'stage' for a 'performance'. At one point Ichigo thinks he might've talked about something to do with trajectories, but Hiruma was talking so rapidly and enthusiastically that it'd gone right over Ichigo's head and onto the next topic. It was great.

Hiruma wasn't like the girls who'd confessed to Ichigo before. They'd been too shy to even speak to him let alone have a conversation with him. Hiruma wasn't shy in the least. He knew what he liked and disliked and he wasn't afraid to disagree with you and cuss you out in the process. He spoke his mind. He didn't care what others thought. He wasn't afraid of hurting someone's feelings. Ichigo thought that was much better than someone just blushing and stuttering the whole time.

Ichigo caught himself smiling out the window, into the sun's rays and a confused expression replaced it. It'd only been two dates and he already knew he liked Hiruma. He could only wait and see if it was as a friend or more.

Their second date, a coffee date in Tokyo, had gone as well as the end of their first date. At first they'd talked stiltedly, but eventually it started flowing better and better until they were talking easily with each other. Ichigo had enjoyed himself immensely and Hiruma had almost completely relaxed by the end of it. Ichigo was curious about what could make Hiruma so on guard all the time, but he didn't ask. He wasn't even sure if Hiruma was aware that he never relaxed.

They'd talked about school and the idiots in their classes. They'd talked about Ichigo's fighting, how people from even Tokyo came to Karakura just to challenge him, and how quite a few gangs in the surrounding town had made fighting him an initiation rite. (Ichigo hadn't known that. He just beat up whoever came to fight him.) Most of all, they talked about football, which Hiruma very obviously loved. The word 'obsessed' came to mind.

In that one conversation, Ichigo had learned more about football and the high school players than he'd ever learned by playing the few games he had. Hiruma had even shown him some clips on his phone.

"You're really into this aren't you?" Ichigo had asked with a smile.

Hiruma had bluntly replied, "Of course. I wouldn't have been playing it for this long if it didn't like it."

"Oh? How long have you been playing?" Ichigo prompted.

And that had encouraged Hiruma to launch into how he'd first discovered football ("An American military base?") and how he'd gathered each member of his team. Ichigo loved his enthusiasm. He'd never seen anything like it in anyone else. Sure, a lot of shinigami in Soul Society had their love of fighting, but that was different. That was the fighting spirit of warriors. This was something else. Something Ichigo couldn't quite pinpoint. It was something that made Ichigo himself excited about a sport he'd never cared about before.

"That's amazing." Ichigo had laughed in response to Hiruma's tale about how he had gathered his team.

"It worked out," Hiruma shrugged, "Better than anything I could've planned."

"Sometimes life does that." Ichigo agreed, thinking about how he'd had no idea what he wanted to do with his life and now Soul Society was paying him a captain's wage for exterminating hollows and protecting an ingredient for the king's key- Karakura Town.

Hiruma huffed, "Life's a bitch. Always messing up my plans."

Ichigo chuckled.

"You know they're starting to call you The Comet?"

"Huh?" Ichigo made a confused noise at Hiruma.

"The high school football world. The players, the coaches, the magazines. They're calling you The Comet. Because you suddenly appeared in the world of football and disappeared just as quickly."

Ichigo sat back. "Huh," he stated, "That's—"

Weird. It was still weird that a bunch of people he didn't know had given him a name.

Ichigo's hollow alert on his phone went off, bringing him out of his thoughts. He wondered how long he'd been staring out the window like a love struck fool and raised his hand with one of his typical excuses on his lips, ready to run out of class to protect his town.