Dinner was a quiet and somewhat nerve wracking affair for Chad.

Mostly because he didn't know what exactly to say to Ichigo to engage her in conversation. He'd tried several things already but she only seemed to say no more than two words per question.

And it was just downright pathetic when a guy had to resort to, "How's your zanbaktou? Still a sword?" Only to have the orange haired beauty beside him look at him funny before slowly replying.

"Uh...yeah." Before returning to her semi full attention to her food again. Leaving Chad to berate himself quietly for spouting off such a stupid question as, How's your zanpaktou? Geez. He thought as he began to wonder what he could do to try and talk to her as if they were on a date. Especially since he wanted the time she spent with him to be as rommantic for her as humanly possible.

But he had never really had any serious relationships of any kind unless it had either been friends or the friends with benefits kind.

And he had known Ichigo for so long as a guy that it was making it difficult to see her as anything else. Then again, maybe his only way of talking to her had to do more with her personality than her gender. After all she had pretended to be a boy for little over ten years.

What if she simply didn't have a very feminine personality?

Deciding to try something else in an attempt to engage her in conversation, Chad tried the whole god awful, "Have you read the latest Glamor magazine?"

At which time Ichigo promptly made a choking sound that had him quickly reaching out to thump her on the back until she finally stopped him by holding her hand up and patting him lightly on the arm with her small hand as she tried taking a drink of juice and swallowed whatever it was that she had been choking on before asking in a somewhat amused/disbelieving tone.

"Are you insane? Is that what all of this twenty questions bullshit is?"

Chad sighed. God she must really have him pegged. He was crazy for trying to talk to her like a normal girl. Especially since the Ichigo he had grown to know and care for was sort of oblivious to things like other people's feelings. Which he now knew was his main problem.

It wasn't that she lacked knowledge about what others thought or felt- it was her lack of insight from always pretending to be a male.

Dear god kill me now- Chad thought as he pushed his empty plate away and waited for Ichigo to finish her own before he next bothered to try and make an attempt at conversing with her. After all, he didn't wish her to choke again.

She finally finished off her food and took a moment to neatly stack her dishes and set them aside before turning to him with a slight frown on her pretty face as she asked, "Are you okay Chad?"

She didn't ask because she was concerned about him per say, after all she could see that he was physically fine. But she knew that he was mentally grappling with something and felt that her question was the best way to figure out what exactly it was since he wasn't usually so awkward around her.

But then again he had always talked to her and treated her as one of the boys.

Which she, in actuality, wasn't.

And that fact was perhaps part of the issue presently at hand. Now that he knew she was a girl, and had taken her viginity, he was probably grappling with how to talk to her now. The situation was painfully awkward for both of them, but she had thought that since he had navigated these water's before that maybe he would be able to handle the sudden and abrupt change in their relationship dynamic.

Now she wasn't so sure.

Which brought to mind the question, Where did they go from here?

Chad blinked at her question and mulled it over for a second before simply saying, "Everything is fine. It's just difficult to speak to you as a girl. I don't know any of your interests, your favorite color, what you like to do when your alone..."

"Ah, I wondered if you were going to bring any of that up." Ichigo said as she laced her long slender fingers together and rested them on the table in front of her before saying, "And you already know me better than most. As for my favorite color- contrary to popular belief- I like different shades of different blues, and lilacs. Silver, gold are nice too, they go with red, green, black and white."

"All of those hn?" Chad muttered to himself as Ichigo grinned at him and nodded her head, yes.

"Yeah. It varies from day to day." She said causing Chad to get an 'Oh' look on his face as if she had just clued him in on something big or something like that. She found it kind of cute that Chad had more or less forgotten that her favorite color varied from day to day.

"Right, I must have forgotten about that." Chad admitting and inwardly cringed, hoping that she wouldn't flip out on him like a normal girl would for missing or forgetting that little detail about her.

Luckily, Ichigo didn't seem to mind his lack of foresight about remembering her favorite colors. So she didn't flip out on him. Though now that he knew what her most liked colors were, he was already planning to do some redecorating and some painting when he moved her into his apartment so that he could keep her and their baby safe under his watchful eye.

He could do his bedroom in white, and several shades of blue with some silver trim.

Yeah that would be nice.

And once he was sure of the gender of their baby, he'd fix up the spare room and turn it into a nursery and paint it either blue or lilac. For a boy he'd paint little musical notes on the wall next to the crib. And the kid's first real toy as a toddler would be a little toy piano or drum set.

For a girl, he'd paint little multi colored butterflies and put up flower shaped lights with tinted light bulbs. Her first toy as a big kid could be a set of boxing gloves... I mean lets face it, as much as he might wish he could protect his woman and kid twenty four, seven- he at least had the sense to know that there would be occasions- few and far between where something would happen and he wouldn't be able to protect them.

Either because of distance or something else.

The point was- his daughter was going to grow up strong enough to stomp some brutish thug's face into the damn ground.

He had no plans to raise any victims.

His son would know how to fight too, but he would probably focus more on his daughter just to be safe and leave his son's combat training to Ichigo. After all, the girl was no damn slouch in a fight. She was more like a one woman wrecking crew.

"So, now that dinner is out of the way...um, what do we do now?" Ichigo's voice finally cut through his thoughts, calling his attention back to her.

"I thought that I would give you a massage and then if you aren't too sore..."

"Go again?" Ichigo asked with a little amused chuckle causing Chad's lips to quirk slightly as he suppressed his own amused chuckle.

"Yeah."

Shrugging her shoulders she looked at him as a faint blush colored her pale cheeks and said, "I could go again."

"Okay. Let me clear this stuff real quick and then I'll get to work on massaging you. In the meantime, go ahead and climb in the bed and wait for me."

"Okay."