Let's get these two hearts beating faster

Chapter five

Mizuki cried as she hugged Ichigo. "It is so good to see you out of the hospital, my baby boy."

"Hardly a baby, mama."

"Always…until the day I die."

Rukia couldn't help but smile at the exchange…she'd seen it so many times before. "I'm sure Ichigo is happy to be out of the hospital as well. We all know he despises confinement of any kind."

Ichigo looked at her with a strange expression on his face. Misa grinned and hugged her big husband. "It's a Kurosaki male trait."

"There is one notable exception, anata." Kaien leaned over her and brushed a kiss across her brow. "Don't you think?"

"What's that,?" Rukia asked with a smile for the other couple, despite the prick of envy she felt in her chest.

Kaien looked at her while tucking his wife close to his side. "Why, marriage, of course."

Rukia lost her smile and noticed that Ichigo had too.

"Are you alright Rukia?"

She forced a smile for her mother-in-law. "Yes, of course."

"It is good to have him out of the hospital right?"

"Yes."

Then Mizuki grimaced as if she had only now realized that for Rukia having Ichigo "home" was not quite the same as it was for the others.

The sound of her son talking to himself in the other room told Rukia that Kyuuka had woken up from his nap. She used the excuse of fetching him to get out of the suddenly tense atmosphere.

Kyuuka was sitting up in his crib. His favorite bunny in his chubby little hands. He jabbered at the stuffed animal a mile a minute in baby talk.

Taking after his father's large stature, her sturdy son was already quite a handful and Rukia groaned playfully as she lifted him. "You're such a big boy."

He grabbed her shirt and tried to stand in her arms.

"Mama…Mama…Mama…"

Her son's repertoire of words as by no means extensive, but what he knew he used.

Taking a firmer grip on his squirming form, she cuddled him into her body and kissed his baby-soft cheek.

"How is Mommy's little man? Hm? You are such a good boy."

She kissed him again and he hugged her around her neck.

"Mama." He said again in obvious baby delight.

She grinned at her name on her son's lips. This was one male she never had to wonder if he loved her. Her dad's love and Ichigo's might be under suspect, but not this precious bundle of joy.

"Is your diaper wet honey?" She asked as she laid him on the makeshift changing table.

He grinned and kicked his feet.

She managed to get his pj bottoms off without incident, but then he squealed and twisted with such glee he almost fell off the changing pad. "Da…da…da…"

Ichigo's deep laugh alerted her to his presence close behind her and a second later his large body was so near, he surrounded her with his heat.

He reached past her to brush his fingers down their son's cheek. "Hello, Kyuuka."

Kyuuka squealed again and twisted toward his daddy. Ichigo put his hand on the baby's strong little body and held him in place, talking to Kyuuka in Japanese while Rukia finished changing him. It was like so many times before that, it felt so right.

Then he stepped back and allowed her to lift up the baby, and the sense of closeness was gone.

"Let me take him." She nodded and handed the baby over, sucking in a pain-filled breath when her husband carefully avoided touching her.

Ichigo walked into the bedroom, drying his hair with a towel and stopped dead in his tracks. "You're sleeping in here?"

Rukia adjusted the blankets over her new nightgown clad body. It was a new purchase the one she had worn in the hospital. She hadn't worn a nightgown since she became Ichigo's lover but she didn't feel right being naked with someone who didn't remember her- she felt too vulnerable.

"Where else would I sleep?" In genuine confusion.

"Shouldn't you sleep in Kyuuka's room?" He said gruffly. "Like you said, our son has been through a lot this week."

"I've slept in that room with him for four days and he's been fine." Not that Kyuuka had noticed. Their son slept like a log. "Besides your mom and Sojouro are sleeping in there now that you are here."

"Wouldn't he be more comfortable when he wakes up to see you there?"

"Kyuuka stopped waking up in the middle of the night since he was four months old."

"But these are unusual circumstances."

"Not now they aren't."

"Because I am out of the hospital?"

"Because I am and have been for the past few days. Besides Kyuuka is used to his daddy being gone."

Ichigo frowned. "I have a job."

"That comes before everything else I know."

"And you don't like it?"

"What women would?" She sighed, not willing to get into something that could have no resolution in the current situation. "Look, none of that matter right now."

"It's our marriage, I don't consider that of no importance."

"You don't even remember getting married."

"Which does not equate to me dismissing my responsibilities as a husband."

"Look…it's a waste of time to discuss a past you don't remember. It's not as if you're going to take my word for the way things were."

He'd made that clear enough.

He shrugged, confirming her suspicions.

Then something occurred to her that probably should have earlier, but she had not even considered it. "Do you feel awkward about sleeping with a woman, who is for all intent and purposes a stranger to you? Of course you do. I'm such a baka for not thinking about it before. I'll move into one of the spare rooms."

"Don't be ridiculous. You are my wife."

"But still a stranger".

He didn't need to answer the question; his silence was all the answer she needed.

She couldn't believe how she had been dumb enough to climb into their bed as if nothing had changed between them. She'd been so wrapped up in shock o him seeing her as a villain that she hadn't realized his question could be a masking his vulnerability. Ichigo would rather be boiled in oil than to admit weakness.

She climbed out of bed with heavy silence, trying hard not to let the additional hurt from the rejection appear on her face. After all, this situation was not his fault and she had to stop acting like he did it on purpose. He may have forgotten her unconsciously but the damage was already done.

He grabbed her arm before she could leave the room. "Stranger or not, you are my wife. You sleep with me".

"It's alright Ichigo, really".

"Like you said, we don't want to upset our family. My mother will be mad if she finds you in another room."

He had a point. "I could always wake up before she does."

"Good luck with that. Even I can't even do that."

Ichigo was right; his mother seemed to have superhuman abilities. She hardly needed sleep. Rukia glanced behind her shoulder. It was a king sized bed.

They could sleep the whole night without touching each other. "Only if it isn't uncomfortable for you".

"You make me sound like a virgin". And that was the last thing he saw himself as.

She actually laughed. "I can't imagine anything further from the truth."

She turned around audible with a gasp when he dropped the towel around his waist and climbed into bed.

The thought of sharing a bed with his naked body and not having the right to reach out and touch his body sounded more like torture than a restful sleep.

She went to the opposite side of the bed from him and slid beneath the covers. She stayed as close to the edge as possible, feeling lonelier than when she ever had when Ichigo was gone from a prolonged business trip.

Eventually, she fell into a fitful sleep.

Sometime in the night she migrated toward his side of the bed, waking up in pre-dawn hours with his body wrapped around hers.

She knew she should move, would be mortified if he woke and found her on his side of the bed, but it felt so good, so safe, that she stayed. She lay there almost not breathing, not wanting to end the small bit heaven in a series of days that could only have been dreamed up in hell itself.

She leaned forward the tiniest bit so she could inhale his scent and found herself on her back being kissed to within an inch of her life without the slightest warning.

It wasn't the first time this had happened.