Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Casual Friends ❯ Casual Friends ( Chapter 1 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach or any Bleach affiliates.

 

 

(A/N: Okay, only eleven hours and thirty minutes until I leave for camp and I'm still writing! *Pulls hair out in frustration* I'm sorry to throw this one out but I wanted to get some of it finished before camp.

 

This writing is mostly stream of consciousness in the point of views of Rukia and Ichigo—hope you can figure that one out on your own . It might be a bit confusing to read but I think all the bitty thoughts in between give it character.

 

Let me know what you think!

 

READ, ENJOY, AND REVIEW!!!

 

 

Yours, Tituba.)

 

 

 

Casual Friends

Chapter 1

 

 

 

Rukia

 

He said it was “nothing.”

 

I remember when he said it too. It was just after school had let out and we were walking on the sun brightened streets of Karakura Town. The sidewalk underneath my feet was cracked and broken but I skipped over it nonetheless. It had been a beautiful day, that day, soft, peaceful—full of promises and vows… yeah, right.

 

He had been beside me the entire time as well, only while I was jittery and content he was his regularly surly and scowling self. I guess that was what I had come to expect from him. Scowl here, snarl there, bared tooth over in that direction… it was the norm for him.

 

We walked Inoue to the grocery store and watched while she chose fresh and leafy leeks for her supper. When I inquired as to what she was making she told me it was leek and bean paste soup. I tried to hide my revulsion as she tittered on and on about how great it tasted but I didn't know if she noticed my slightly green face or not. Ah well, can't be helped now.

 

As Inoue and I walked back to her tiny apartment we talked about sewing, Hollows, and school. She was slightly upset that I kept taking down all of the Hollows on my own and I laughed in response. Hey, if she wanted some of them she could have `em. I promised to save her some as we waved our goodbyes near the russet doors of her apartment.

 

He still hadn't said a word even though he was right beside me. I wasn't worried though, I knew him well enough to know that he was not the best with words (God knows I would have killed him earlier he I found out he was stronger and smarter than me, well… I guess `strong' was a wide enough term… I was definitely stronger than him in some categories, i.e. common sense?) and knew that I shouldn't press him.

 

When we entered the door to his house I greeted his father with a casual bow and a chipper smile—as always, the man is so dim—and told him I was looking forward to seeing the rest of his syringe collection later that evening. He energetically jumped from one foot to the other and began to scream at his son for not making me his wife.

 

At that statement all I could really do was blush. I mean, come on, was he deaf when he slept?

 

I went to his room slowly and meticulously, calculating how many steps it took for me to reach the top. Seventeen… hmm, that was an odd number. Ah well, now if I was blinded by a Hollow and had to find my way down the steps I would know how many to take so I wouldn't fall.

 

Hey, Soul Reaper Academy had actually taught me something useful… go figure.

 

When I got into the room I immediately shirked off my backpack and let it fall onto the floor. I looked over his bed and wondered when he had the time to make it—the sheets had been everywhere this morning. My toes also explored the toffee panels of the floor and found a stray button resting upon the cracked edge. I gentled flicked it away and watched as it skittered across the room and stopped at his feet.

 

I looked up and noticed his trademark scowl was still in place and smiled softly at it. His face had so many scowling forms it was almost hard to keep track. There was the angry scowl, the happy scowl, the flustered scowl, the proud scowl, the frustrated scowl, the super-pissed scowl, and the teeth-gritted-I'm-going-to-kill-you scowl. Of all of them the flustered scowl was my favorite. I liked it when he set his jaw, he clenched his teeth, and he ran his hands repeatedly through his mangy waves of spiked orange hair. It was fun to count how many times he had to weave his fingers through before the orange devils stood on end.

 

He stopped the button with his big toe and instantly began to fiddle with it. I watched as he managed to flip the small, round, dot onto his foot and balance it. Without meaning to I gave him a little clap and smiled.

 

“Hey,” was what he said then, “You know it was nothing right?”

 

At first I thought he was talking about the button, that stupid button he was still balancing on his foot.

 

I remember I looked up at him quizzically and raised one of my eyebrows—as I tended to do when I didn't understand something… that or hit someone—in all truth I didn't know what he was referring to. What was nothing? Mentally, I scanned the things he had done for me that were so important we needed to verbally declare it a ubiquitous act.

 

Saving me from execution… we had already covered that one.

 

Taking down Nii-Sama… he had wanted to do that (crazy bastard).

 

Letting me stay at Soul Society because I felt I could… he probably just wanted to get rid of me.

 

Did he do anything to help me during the Bounto attack?

 

Letting me take down De Roy… I could have done that in my sleep.

 

Trusting me while I kicked Arrancar ass… that was all me.

 

Sleeping with me?

 

It was in that instant that I knew what he was talking about.

 

“O-oh,” I muttered, “That.”

 

Yeah… that.

 

“Yeah,” he said croakily after clearing his throat numerous times. “That. It was nothing. I didn't really mean to in the first place. I just… sorry.”

 

At first I just stared at him, my mouth must have been open in some form of speechlessness. I must have resembled something close to a dead fish being boiled into broth. At least, that was how I felt.

 

I remember that my cheeks were red and my mouth was dry and my eyes were wide and my lips were parted. I also remember that he didn't even bother to look at my reaction. Selfish jerk. You get some and you ignore the gal the very next day.

 

Prick.

 

At least, that was what I was telling myself on the inside, on the outside I was still verbally stunted and gaping like a puffer fish.

 

I don't really remember what I said, or even if I said anything at all. I just remember nodding my head slowly—up down up down up down until I felt dizzy. I also remember jumping out the window.

 

He told me once that jumping out the window was a habit I had taken up whilst living with him. I hadn't actually noticed until we were having a fight—what had it been about… oh yes, who was going to take out the next Hollow orders the Soul Society sent us—I had been winning the argument (of course) and was about to leave when he scowled and screamed: “That's it! Just fly out the window like you always do!”

 

Of course I—with my left leg already over the windowsill—turned back to him and commenced screaming, excuse me, asking him what he meant.

 

Stubbornly he squared his shoulders and set his jaw into a hard and unforgiving line. His eyebrows were knitted together in the semblance of his “frustrated scowl.” I tried hard to focus on the words coming out of his mouth but it was just so hard when all I could think about was how much like a two year old he looked when he stood and stared like that. I even had an impulse to draw on his face again.

 

“Whenever we get into a fight and you can't think of anything else to say you always run out the window!” He had yelled.

 

That one annoyed me to no end. “I do not!” I shouted. I know, perfect comeback but what else was I supposed to do?

 

“Yes,” he spat, “You do!” He came closer to me and grabbed both of my shoulders. Effortlessly he hauled me up from the window and threw me down onto his bed; bottom first so I wouldn't hit my head on the bedposts. “You are one hundred and thirty five years my senior and still you act like you're ten years my junior.”

 

“You wish!” I shouted back. I was losing this argument faster than a Kentucky race horse could run a race and I knew it, so I settled in for a long and drawn out glaring contest—another one of my favorite hobbies.

 

He won, of course. He always won when it came to glaring at people.

 

When the glaring contest failed I—in a last ditch attempt to look like an experienced Soul Reaper with many titles under my belt—drew in a huge gasp and pointed my index finger to the empty air over his left shoulder, hoping he'd be distracted enough to turn.

 

Of course it worked like a charm and I was out the window in seconds.

 

I had proved my point.

 

Or maybe he had proved his, ah, who's keeping score?

 

However, my argument with him did open my eyes to a rather annoying habit of mine: sneaking out the window whenever I was annoyed or angry with him. But can you really blame me? The guy has a head thicker than lead (one of the objects on the planet that has the greatest density, a fact I discovered from one of my school textbooks) and if I'm around him for long periods of time I have impulses inside of me that scream at me to throttle him.

 

Impulses, I tell you, impulses.

 

Anyway, back to the nothingness.

 

Once I jumped out the window in his bedroom and landed on the roof I really had no idea where I was going to go. Inoue was probably cooking with Ishida, Chad was probably sulking with Karin, Yuzu was probably cooking two floors below me, Renji was probably battling with Urahara, and… and…

 

Well, I didn't want to think about him.

 

Prick.

 

So I sat there, on the roof, thinking about what he had said to me and what I was going to do—Hello? My brain screamed, nothing you can do!—about it.

 

I don't think I meant to do it, actually I'm pretty sure I didn't mean to do it, but as I sat on the roof of my foster family's house and watched the blazing sun permeate every fiber of the life being lived below me I felt a small prickling behind my eyes.

 

Desperate not to cry, my brain deviated.

 

Resolution. I had always had resolution, I reminded myself coolly. I had the resolution not to let him die, I had the resolution to die myself, I had the resolution to defeat the Bounto, I had the resolution not to squeal too loudly at bunny-shaped figures, I had the resolution to become stronger, I has the resolution to help Inoue not feel so useless, I had the resolution to deal with my own inner demons, and I had the resolution not to fall for the one man/boy/thing I knew would destroy me.

 

All of my resolutions had been met, save one.

 

One.

 

I remember cursing a lot as I sat on the gloomy and gritty roof, the rough texture was scraping the undersides of my thighs as I spread my legs onto the warmed surface.

 

One fucking resolution had to make my life (was it a life? I died a while back so what would you call it?) a fucking shitty experience. One fucking asshole had to go and screw everything up. Like my life (Death? Rebirth? Fake life?) wasn't fucking hard enough!

 

And who the hell had come up with the idea to put actual human emotions into the gigai? Huh, who? I wanted to rip out his spleen. Because of course the maker of such a gigai had to have been male. Only males enjoyed women growing all emotional over sex.

 

Stupid sex. Why did it have to make me feel so good?

 

It wasn't like it was anything special… sort of…

 

The prickling feeling was an even greater presence as I remembered the night before. God, when had I become such a crybaby? Crying at him getting wounded by my brother? Hell, I should have been cheering. Next time I'll remember the pompoms. Crying at my own imminent death even, how pathetic am I?

 

Besides, who comes into a room, bleeding and moaning in pain from a surprise Hollow attack? Who asks the woman in the closet to tend to their wounds and run her fingers through his hair? Who asks the woman to stay with him? Who tells her that he needs her, that he's always needed her? Who tells her that he's felt for her since the moment she came through the same window she loved to jump out of? Who lies straight to the girls face just so he can get into her pants?

 

I could tell you who.

 

“Bastard…” I whispered as the fresh wind whipped through my hair. I could smell the crisp scents of the sushi house a few blocks from here. It made my mouth water slightly even though my stomach found the slightest thought of food repugnant.

 

Who tells you, while he bites his lip to trap the scream threatening to explode from his throat as he comes, that he loves you?

 

I could tell you who.

 

Swallowing hard, I got up from my perch on the roof top—I was starting to get some unwanted stares from those down below—and began to teeter around the edges of the rectangular house.

 

Yeah, I could tell you who the perpetrator of all of those crimes was. As I prepared to leap off the side of the house and fall gracefully onto the emerald grass below I tried to say his name, but found a hard lump of whatever the hell it was stuck in my throat.

 

I tried to look back and see his face, even the face reflected in my minds eye would have been enough, but I found tears streaming out of two violet-grey orbs.

 

Or three if you count my minds eye.

 

Turning away from the house I ran to a bush and emptied the contents of my stomach onto a shriveled shrub.

 

Ichigo

 

I could hear her outside until about a minute ago. Now the sound is gone and I have no idea where she is.

 

Fuck.

 

I knew it would be like this when I told her. I didn't want to tell her, mind you, but I had to… I just had to.

 

The day had panned out regularly enough, I mean, at least I think it did. The morning was definitely strange. A naked girl in my bed wasn't exactly something I was used to waking up to—not to say that I minded, but still, it was strange.

 

My mentor, my friend, my boss, my roommate (temporarily) and now… my lover? I couldn't let that happen. There were too many strings attached to that title.

 

Lover…besides, it had the word `love' in it, I knew something had to be done the moment I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and saw her tousled black hair falling like a cascade of water across my chest. While her delicate fingers were skimming my chest in satisfied sleep I was mentally kicking my ass and trying to find a way to get out of bed without waking her.

 

I succeeded in the latter but in a few moments found myself standing over my bed in a pair of green-spotted boxer shorts and staring at the beautiful girl/woman/thing beneath me.

 

She was—excuse me, is—quite beautiful. I adore her face and her body and the way they both change in my arms. I adore her arms and her legs and her precious breasts and how each of them move and shiver under my fingers. I adore her voice, her sobs, her breathy pants and how I could elicit every one of them.

 

My hands almost reached for her once again before I snatched them back and swallowed hard.

 

I just knew, I knew at that moment, that I had to let her go.

 

Okay… maybe not at that exact moment, but I did have a moment. In truth, I don't have very many `moments' so that one I had to treasure.

 

Except this was not a moment I would exactly want to treasure.

 

I woke her up gently and watched as her soft mouth curled into a warm smile and her limbs began to stretch out of her tight curl. Slowly, her eyes opened to mine and my mouth went dry. She blinked slowly at me—it reminded me of the way a sleepy cat blinks at an intruder trying to cuddle with it—and smiled even more. Her lips parted softly and she rose, I saw the blanket slip even further down her chest and expose her pale pink breasts and rosy nipples.

 

I could feel myself growing hard at the very sight of her. She licked her lips lightly and smiled and I knew she could see how utterly shaken I was. I mean, come on, it wasn't every day you woke up with a four foot seven inch goddess in your bed.

 

And I'll tell you, it is four feet and seven inches of pure, unadulterated, sex appeal.

 

Before she could say another word I croaked something about getting dressed for school. I told her breakfast would be ready in a minute because Yuzu was already downstairs.

 

I also told her we were late.

 

At the word `late' her eyes widened and she jumped out of bed. I leaped back and made sure there was at least six feet between the two of us. I didn't want to jump her by accident.

 

Yeah… accident.

 

I was out of the room while she dressed—I was trying to be a gentleman after all—but I could still hear every movement that she made. Once she was finished I hurried her out of my room—note to self: use her mind resetting magic stuff to fix Karin and Yuzu's memories—before she could say anything, I went in and dressed quickly, hoping that when I got out she would be gone.

 

But she wasn't. I should have known better. She was outside waiting for me. Needless to say it was probably the most awkward situation I had ever been in within the span of my excessively short life. We walked together towards the breakfast table and I know that she was trying to figure out what to say. Hell, I was trying to figure out what to say.

 

In my head I kept rehearsing what I should—could—would?—tell her when I had the chance.

 

“Yeah, what happened last night… really special doll, however, I gotta catch the next plane to the big city. There just ain't any room for a broad like you in a dangerous place like that. I'm sorry sugar, but I gotta do what I gotta do, I guess I'm just a heart breaker.”

 

Yeah… right.

 

The problem I was having was that each explanation played out in my head like a 1940's, black and white, detective drama. There I was, standing at the end of a smoky road, the flog licking at my feet while the lone streetlamp above my head flickered precariously. I was dressed in a beige trench coat with a broad and striking hat perched upon my fiery hair. Of course, no one would know the color of my hair or my coat because the movie was in black and white, but at the moment, none of it mattered.

 

In my vision she was standing on the opposite side of the road with her stiletto encased feet trembling from the force of her shaking knees. Her hair was swept in an elegant bun but covered by a small hat that had a tiny veil drape across her violet-grey eyes. Her delicately enlarged orbs were shining in the dim light and glistening with the tears she was trying to hold back. The lone streetlight (wait, didn't that make it two lone streetlights?) above her head was positioned to swathe her tiny form in beams of light and shadows. She was holding a handkerchief in her delicately gloved hands and was occasionally wiping away falling tears. She was dressed in a beige trench coat as well, only hers closed tight around her waist and accentuated her perfect hips while mine fell parallel to my lengthy legs.

 

Of course I was smoking—as every dashing detective was back then—and the cigarette I dangled from my lips only increased the tension. The light grey smoke that swirled into the misty air wafted up to heaven and tickled the toes of whatever omniscient presence was resting up there.

 

Oh how I hated that presence.

 

My parting was brief but sorrowful. I looked at her once more before I turned and shoved my darkly gloved hands into the pockets of my trench coat. She called after me, of course, but I just kept walking away until the lone beam of fluorescent light highlighting my every move made me invisible to the weeping woman on the other side of the street. Mists swirled in my absence and I was gone.

 

“I gotta do what I gotta do.”

 

That's what I told myself this morning.

 

Fuck.

 

The school day had been a torment. She was sitting beside me the entire time, twiddling her pencil or chewing on her pen or even scratching an itch on her leg. Each movement she made only increased my self-loathing. How in the hell was I going to tell her what I had to tell her?

 

By the time lunch came around I found myself practically begging for that itch on her thigh to be a little bit higher, just a little bit.

 

Of course my face betrayed nothing. When I sat with my classmates and wolfed down the food Yuzu had prepared for me I was the same scowling-faced guy they had left at this exact spot yesterday.

 

Good for me.

 

All except for her. Damn. I knew by now that she could read me like a book. I had even caught her once making a list of my different scowling expressions. Needless to say that threw me slightly off kilter, okay, maybe more than slightly, and I began to watch my face around her. When I was around her I just had to be expressionless.

 

Expressionless…

 

Being expressionless was harder than I thought it would be, mostly because she could piss me off one minute and then make me laugh the next. For those moments I would use my frustrated scowl and my happy scowl—or so I was told, personally, I didn't see a difference. Everyone else told me my face was scary so I just assumed there was just one face to be scared of.

 

She, however, said there was a difference.

 

A big difference.

 

Feh… whatever.

 

Once school was over I followed her and Inoue to the supermarket and then to Inoue's apartment. I didn't say anything the entire way and I knew she was expecting me to, but still I remained silent. I stayed that way through the walk home and even up to my room, hell, I didn't even tell my father to stuff his head into a swarm of killer bees when he made that comment about my upcoming—and possible—nuptials.

 

It was only when we got to my room that I had to open my mouth and ruin the best night of my young life.

 

“Nothing.” I had said. I told her it was nothing.

 

Fuck.

 

Once, Mizuiro had given me a talk on Girl 101—hey, I had been forced, it was not on my own free will. Anyway, around rule number five he told me one of the most important tidbits about sex and the psyche of a female: never, ever, tell a girl that having sex with her meant nothing to you.

 

E. V. E. R.

 

That, in the end, was my fatal mistake. It is also the main reason I'm here, alone, in my room, toying with a button resting on the top of my foot.

 

The look on her face when I told her—it might have been priceless if the subject hadn't been so serious—was almost more than I could bear. Her mouth—the same one I had kissed so passionately only a few hours before—was open wide and gaping. Her eyes—which had drifted into a peaceful sleep after vigorous love making—were shining with hurt. Even her cheeks—which had blushed so red with passion from the previous night—became pale and ghostly.

 

Usually, my nature is so brash and generally negative that I tend to tune out everyone else's emotions (well, maybe not the ones that call for help) but still, the sight of Rukia's hurt face was nearly enough to send me spinning into her arms again. Hell, I already knew I would be spinning into the pits of the Satanic Empire for doing this to her.

 

Fuck.

 

Of course, not all of it can be blamed on me. Some of it is her fault.

 

Maybe…

 

Well, she didn't give me a chance to finish what I wanted to tell her. I wanted to tell her that we could remain as we had been before we had… well, sex. She could be my mentor, my teacher, my roommate, my friend, and my conscience (a really loud and annoyingly correct conscience) just not my lover.

 

We would just have to be casual friends.

 

And even though I wanted her to be… my lover… we just couldn't be a reality.

 

After all, the word `lover' did have the word `love' in it, and that was definitely not something I felt towards her.

 

Brotherly affection maybe, but not love.

 

Unconsciously, my stomach took a turn for the worse and I scuttled towards the edge of my room—just in case I had to go to the bathroom and puke my guts out.

 

Brotherly affection! I screamed mentally. There was nothing `brotherly' about what you did to her last night!

 

I dashed out of my room before my brain started screaming “INCEST!” and got to the toilet just in time.

 

As I emptied the contents of my stomach into a glittering porcelain bowl I tried to regain some of my sanity.

 

Only I just remembered—I lost that a long time ago.