Thanks to Substituted-shinigami for the beta-read and the suggestion about the lost-and-found. 😘

"Oi! Oi, Rukia! Rukia, it's me! Lemme in! C'mon, it's cold out here!"

Rukia regarded Renji through her eyelashes as she slid open her window to let him in. "Maybe that's what you get for climbing around the outside of the girls' dormitory after the sun goes down."

"I was waiting for your roommate to leave," Renji excused as he clambered over the sill. His cheeks and the tip of his nose were bright red.

"You know she leaves for her dumb study group at quarter to seven," Rukia chided. "And where's the coat I got you?"

The Shin'ou dress code allowed for a special haori to be added to the uniform during the winter months-provided one could afford to purchase one of the damn things from the only shop in town authorized to embroider the school seal on the back. Rukia, a freethinker, had simply liberated a pair of them from the lost-and-found located at the rear of the mess hall.

She knew very well that Renji wouldn't wear his because he considered it "stolen" (as if the rich kid who had lost it hadn't just bought another right away), but he appeared to be biting his tongue on that point, for once. "I think that thing must have belonged to the largest student in Shin'ou history," he complained instead. "No good for climbing."

"I could get you another one," Rukia shrugged. "I just figured with the way you've been growing lately, you would need it. Speaking of which, where have you been? You weren't at dinner."

"I had something to do." Renji straightened up a little and cleared his throat. "Happy Birthday. Rukia." He held his hands out in front of him to reveal a slightly crumbled, white pasteboard box.

Rukia's eyes darted down at the box as she very slowly shut the window. "What is that?" she asked suspiciously.

"It's your present!" Renji retorted. "Take it, already!"

"You better not have spent any money on me, Abarai Renji!" Rukia wound up. "It's bad enough that you tested into that stupid advanced class so we had to buy two whole sets of school books, but-"

"Oh, shut your trap!" Renji cut her off. "One of the rich assholes down the hall from me came back from New Year's break with some incredibly heavy furniture his parents wanted him to have, and he gave me some kan to help him haul it up to his room. What he's gonna do with a whole-ass tea cabinet, I dunno, but that's his problem. It's my hard-earned money, and if I want to spend a small part of it doin' something nice for you on your birthday for once…" he trailed off, his face suddenly going uncertain. "Just take it, wouldja? It's hardly anything."

Rukia took the box. It was slightly damp and sticky on the bottom. Carefully, she pulled open the lid. Inside was a skewer of five dango, swimming in a thick glaze of dark brown, mitarashi syrup. "Oh," she said softly.

"We got that kind once, I think, coming up the South Road," Renji, who never shut up, was saying. "District 3 or 4, was it? Anyway, I thought I remembered you liking 'em." They'd eaten a lot of things for the first time during the long journey up from Inuzuri, armed with a travel stipend from the District 70 Consolidated Shinigami Recruitment Station. Rukia honestly couldn't recall eating anything she hadn't liked.

"Mm," she agreed noncommittally, trying to extract the skewer from its box. The congealed sauce clung stubbornly to the pasteboard. "Are we gonna split it?"

Renji scoffed and flung himself down in her roommate's desk chair. "It's your birthday present. All for you."

"It's really good," Rukia insisted, after delicately biting off the top dango. "C'mon, open up! Just one!" She poked it at him.

"It's yours!" Renji waved his hands defensively.

"It's my birthday, and that means you should do whatever I tell you to!"

Renji narrowed his eyes. "I do not like where this is going. If I eat one, can we drop this topic?"

"Yes," Rukia agreed, holding the skewer out to him. "It also means that you have to share all the birthday treats I buy for you on your birthday with me."

Renji snorted softly. "Okay, fine. Deal."

Rukia watched him latch one fangy canine onto a dango, and coolly draw it off the skewer before handing it back. Soul King forbid he touch something with his lips that she had. Rukia didn't care. She'd gotten mostly used to the idea of regular meals, and the necessity thereof, given how hard the Academy worked them. Still, the idea of an after-dinner treat, eaten entirely as a celebration, seemed absolutely unreal.

"You did eat dinner, correct?" she asked sharply as Renji handed her treat back.

He nodded obediently. "Grabbed a bento from the mess." He stuck out his jaw. "I was worried about getting to the sweet shop before they closed. I hadn't actually been there before, but one of the upperclassmen gave me directions. You shoulda seen that place. Next time I get a windfall, I'm gonna take you. They had these things called 'parfaits'. It's a big glass full of fruit and custard and syrup. You could get them in all sorts of combinations. I wanted to get you one, but I knew there's no way I could get one back here without making a giant mess of it."

"You're so ridiculous," Rukia sighed, settling into her own desk chair across from him. She put her feet up on his knees, the pasteboard box balanced on her lap to catch any drips. "What do I need all that for? Save your money for something practical, like the new uniforms you'll need when you outgrow yet another set."

Renji was quiet for a long moment. "Was the dango okay?" he finally asked, his voice uncharacteristically soft.

Rukia squinted at him for a moment. At the rate she was stuffing it into her face, it seemed pretty obvious that it was just fine. Then she rewound the last bit of their conversation and realized what he was getting at. Oh, this insecure fool! "It was exactly the proper amount of ridiculous," she announced. "It is also very delicious." She paused. They had never been in the habit of using social niceties. If she and Renji had to thank each other for the things they did for one another, there wouldn't be time for anything else in the day. On the other hand, Renji's friends thanked each other for everything, and she'd heard him awkwardly trying to return the gesture. It probably wouldn't kill her to give it a try. "Thank you," she said, trying to force as much sincerity into her voice as possible and still not confident that he would buy it.

The corner of Renji's mouth tipped up. "You're welcome," he replied softly. He folded his hands in his lap, but then reached out one index finger to poke her big toe. "You know what Momo said I should get you?" he said with a wry half smile.

"What?" Rukia asked, immediately suspicious.

"You remember all those pretty hair pins she had when we went to her house for New Year's? Flowers and stuff? She loaned you one?"

"It was two weeks ago, of course I remember," Rukia replied dryly.

"'You should get her one, Renji,' Momo told me. 'Rukia should have something pretty of her own.'"

It was a good thing Rukia's mouth was full of dango, because it covered the fact that her heart had abruptly stopped beating.

Maybe Momo had said that. It was perfectly possible. But whether or not she had, Renji wasn't telling her this to make fun of Momo. He would never make fun of sweet, kindhearted Momo. He was telling her this because he thought she should have something pretty of her own. If he had just said so, Rukia would have been obligated to yell at him and no further information could be gained from that. No, he wanted her to know, and he also wanted to know how she would feel if he did something like that. Rukia felt her cheeks growing warm. How dare he be so direct with her, on her own birthday, no less!

"What would I do with such a thing?" she finally muttered. "That Momo, always getting ahead of herself. I don't even own a decent kimono to wear it with."

"Mm," Renji nodded in agreement. "True." He stretched his arms behind his head. "You will someday, though. When we're both in the Court Guards and have plenty of money."

Rukia sucked a bit of the sweet, salty syrup off of her pinky. In ordinary circumstances, she would drop it. Change the subject. She liked to think of herself as a practical girl, a girl who lived in the moment. A girl who didn't bother over things she couldn't have. But it was her birthday, and Renji had done something delightfully impractical just for her, so perhaps she could indulge in a tiny bit of wanting. After all, he had basically asked.

"What I could really use," she explained, pushing her hair back toward her temples, "is a pair of those clippy things that Hinamori's roommate wears. To keep my hair out of my face."

Renji frowned, trying to remember. "They're shaped like little birds or something?"

"I think she has a bunch of them," Rukia sputtered, not wanting to imply that she spent too much time staring at Momo's roommate, who was very cute. "I'm sure they make plain ones, too."

"Noted," Renji said, with a curt jerk of his chin.

"You know. If there is some gift-giving occasion at some future date," Rukia quickly amended. She picked up her dango skewer again and waved it at him. "This was a very nice birthday gift and I am very happy with it!"

"I'm very glad," he replied.

Rukia started to bite off another dango, but paused. "The visit has been nice, too. Haven't seen too much of you lately. Sometimes I think you're going to forget about me, between your nerd classes and side hustles and vibrant social life."

Renji laughed. "You know that would never happen."

Rukia stuffed a dango in her mouth and smiled at him as she chewed it. "Yeah," she replied. "I know."

A few years later. About forty or so.

"It's bullshit that you have to leave my birthday party early," Rukia informed Renji, piling three strawberry daifuku onto his plate. "Take some of these, they're really good."

"I'm real sorry, but we've got a big patrol coming in from a rough time, and I told your brother I'd do the check-in so he didn't have to leave your party."

"You're too nice," Rukia grumped, trying to wedge a cream puff onto the already overloaded plate.

Renji snorted. "We're going out tomorrow, anyway. I'm gonna let you drink me under the table and beat me at arm wrestling, right? That's the party that counts."

"I suppose."

"I'm just glad I got to stop in at all," Renji admitted. He glanced around at the room full of two hundred of Byakuya's closest friends. "Not really my crowd, y'know?" Slowly, his eyes slipped down the length of her body. "I am glad I got to see you in that kimono." The corner of his mouth tipped up. "You look real pretty. Rukia."

Rukia's cheeks flushed. "It was a birthday present. From Brother." She flapped the sleeves at him, long enough to trail on the floor. It was a rich blue, embroidered with cranes perched amid snow-covered pines. "This thing is ridiculous. Who could fight in these sleeves?"

"There's no Kuchiki special technique for that?" Renji arched an eyebrow. "Fighting in the most impractical clothes imaginable and making it look easy?"

He had a point. "I'm still working on that one," she grouched.

"New hairpin, too?" Renji asked, glancing at the white-feathered crane holding the twist of hair up on one side of her head. "It matches real nice, in any case."

"Er, yeah," Rukia admitted, not sure why she felt so shy about it. "He's…he's trying, you know? And gifts are something he's good at."

Renji smiled at her, his eyes soft. "He is. And even I gotta admit: the man's got great taste. Look, I gotta bounce." He glanced down at the towering plate of desserts balanced in his hand. "Thanks, uh, for…this. Should last me through the first half of the shift, at least."

"Do not give any to those assholes coming back from patrol, no matter how bedraggled they look," Rukia warned him. "I know what a soft touch you are."

Renji's eyes darted down to his mountain of sugar and back up again. "Okay, Rukia," he lied amiably. "Enjoy the rest of your party. Happy Birthday." With his free hand, he gave her a good natured thump on the arm, but then suddenly trailed his hand down the length of her sleeve. On some ancient, nearly forgotten con artist instinct, Rukia twisted her hand outward just in time for him to press some small object into her palm, which she immediately pulled up into her voluminous sleeve. "See ya tomorrow."

"Yeah, see you tomorrow," she agreed.

Immediately after Renji departed, she got accosted by the young Noragashi Heir, whose compliments for her new outfit were better phrased, but worse received. It wasn't for several more hours, until her maid was helping extract her from layers of silk and cotton that she remembered the little paper packet tucked in the sleeve.

If Renji had been trying to be surreptitious, he probably shouldn't have drawn a screaming Zabimaru head on the wrapping, Rukia decided, after Mikan had finally departed for the evening. It took her a moment to undo the elaborate folding job he'd done on the paper (how he managed, with his giant fingers, she had no idea). Inside, was a little piece of cardstock, with two metal barrettes clipped to it. Each one was decorated with a leaping bunny rabbit- just the right size to add a little visual interest without being obtrusive. They weren't delicate or fancy, and in fact, it took Rukia a moment to place the artisan's mark on the card as a blacksmith in the first district of South Rukongai that Renji liked.

Rukia ran her fingers through her hair, and swept the annoying piece that always hung in her eyes to one side, and secured it with one clip. She shook her head a little, and to her surprise, it stayed. She clipped the second onto the other side, and examined herself in the mirror. She looked mildly silly, but they would certainly keep her hair out of her face while she was leaning over her paperwork.

"Not bad, Abarai," Rukia murmured, turning her head so she could admire every angle. "This is exactly what I wanted."

End note: If you're interested in the story of Rukia and Renji spending their New Year at Momo's, check out my story Blessings and Curses