my heart was wrapped up in clover

[unburden]

It's been a couple of days since a sizable group of people slipped off the map. Slipped out of sight, out of mind, out of reach. In the amount of time that Rukia's been in Darrow, she's noticed that there are some non-natives who manage to escape. Can't be much more than what she can count on a single hand, but she hasn't yet been able to figure out how it happens, or catch a trail to chase after. This time, it's much of the same. No amount of sifting through the corners seems to unearth any answers — all she knows is that there are a great many people who disappeared at once.

And losing sleep over it probably won't do much good.

The guilt remains, of course. Nestled in her chest as she sits in front of the television in the apartment, fingers tightly gripping a controller as she stares at the pixelated screen. Training digital bunnies shouldn't really be high on her list of priorities, but in some ways, it helps her unwind. It's not a big deal if they disappear or she loses track of them. It's okay to lose herself in the routine of it, to smile when their ears turn or their noses twitch. Hair still damp from a shower, Rukia shivers a little from her lack of foresight, glancing about for a throw, but the level's almost over and it's unlikely that she'll catch a cold, anyway.

So she wraps her arms more tightly around her knees and continues besting the odd blue monster with her Buneary, hardly looking up when she hears footsteps trailing into the room.

"If you block my view, I might kick you."

Comments

[unbridle]

When she says it, somehow, it perks up his mood - which had not been particularly terrible in the same way that it hadn't been particularly good.

Ichigo comes to a stop directly in front of the television screen, tossing a look over his shoulder at what the screen is showing. No doubt, the same thing it has been for the last few days, whenever Rukia gets hands on it.

"Were you watching something?" he asks, droll, before actually becoming involved in the game entirely per chance. It's hard to completely ignore Pokemon for someone Ichigo's age and demographic - it's like the entertainment version of comfort food. "Oh, Buneary! Use Jump Kick!"

[unburden]

"Oi!" Rukia complains, raising the controller with a hand, as though it might be possible to tug Ichigo aside with the aid of invisible puppet strings. When he doesn't move right away, the controller quickly becomes a threat, although she decides in the last moment not to throw it his way, instead closing some of the space by crawling over and knocking harshly on his calf with its heel. "I thought I told you not to block my view! I can't even see where the Jump Kick option is with your butt blocking the way."

Nose wrinkling, Rukia glowers up at him. "Besides, what do you know about battling with Buneary? I assumed you'd be more of a Jolteon guy."

[unbridle]

"Am I blocking your view?" he asks, ignoring the swat to his calf in favor of lifting his arms in a shrug - in a very pointed way, which blots out even more of Rukia's view of the screen from her new angle.

He sneaks a look at her from the corner of his eye, before making a snatch for the controller she's holding onto.

"And for your information, you're wrong. I like Vaporeon more."

[unburden]

"You're as unnecessarily tall as anyone I've ever known," Rukia gripes, halfway tempted to sweep her foot to trip Ichigo, but refraining at the last moment to roll away when he makes a pass for her controller. "And uh-uh. If you think you're getting your hands on my controller, you're sadly mistaken."

Sticking her tongue out at Ichigo as Rukia rests her back against the foot of the sofa, Rukia purses her lips in thought at Ichigo's answer. "Isn't Vaporeon the one who fights by dissolving into the water? You could learn a thing or two about masking your presence like that."

[unbridle]

Heaving a grunt of displeasure when he doesn't manage to snatch away the controller - it's his game system, dammit, so why is Rukia in here monopolizing it - he bends closer, hands on his hips. Ichigo's thin brows slowly work their way up his forehead.

Keep sticking your tongue out, he thinks, and I'll grab it one of these times. Though truthfully, he's doubtful he could. Not just because she'd probably have an edge on him.

"What about my presence needs masked? You make it sound like I forget to put deodorant on every morning or something. I just like that one because it's blue and it has fins and water Pokemon are cooler."

[unburden]

Eyes carefully fixed on Ichigo as he looms over her, Rukia quickly stuffs the controller away between her thighs and stomach, one hand still tightly gripped around the plastic. Come and get it, her expression reads, but only just, before a little flicker of her gaze over the lines of his face — the sharp wrinkle of his brow, the smooth bridge of his nose, the press of his lips.

"Well, with the way your reiatsu likes to leak all over the place, I don't see much of a difference," Rukia taunts, tilting her head back and forth before sliding up onto the main seat of the couch, kicking her feet out slightly to settle among the cushions. "And you sound like a little kid right now. Who chooses Pokemon just for a color and design? What about the personality, ah? Or the strategy? You can be smart about this game."

[unbridle]

That first look from Rukia springs a faint dust of pink over Ichigo's nose and cheeks. "My reiatsu isn't smelly," he says, but it sounds childish to his ears as well, especially after Rukia's admonishment about the way that Ichigo plays video games. Why shouldn't he choose just for color and design? He plays games when he doesn't want to think.

"You could be smart and give me the controller." He leans even further forward before he can think not to, one hand gripping the couch arm to keep him stable in front of Rukia, close enough that he can smell her shampoo. "I want to get out of the apartment. You should come with me."

[unburden]

"It's an assault on the senses," Rukia says with teasing aplomb, raising her chin and leveling Ichigo with a look before she sighs, relaxing her shoulders and letting the controller fall lightly to the side, an action pointed, her decision and not his. "You just don't know because you've had all your life to get used to your reiatsu."

Crossing her arms lightly and still keeping her gaze locked on Ichigo, Rukia shakes her head minutely. "I just showered, Ichigo," she sighs, even though a part of her's already gearing up to leave if need be. "Do you have anything that you specifically want to do outside?"

[unbridle]

The lecturing tone of her first words causes a sigh, but it catches when she shakes her head, arguing with her own sigh. Maybe she's exasperated with him. He really can't blame her. He'd been restless since he'd gotten sick the month before - with something truly nasty in every way. The regret and anxiousness and the need to be looked after had eaten up his patience quickly.

Already feeling thin from that, the disturbing disappearances aggravate a condition that hasn't yet had time to fully heal itself. "No," he answers, honestly, his eyes now darting up and down the length of Rukia in her pajamas, hair not dried. It's plain she's planned on going to bed soon after finishing her game.

"Nothing specific. I'm just ... feeling like I need to go out again. Look around, or something. I haven't left the building since I got back from class." And somehow, that feels like a waste. Even though, rationally, he knows there's not much more he could be doing.

[unburden]

It's pretty clear what Ichigo would do, were he given the chance. Scour the city, for one. Walk through all of the streets, walk up and down the sidewalks, walk far into the wilderness that stretches out around Darrow — every effort made to dig under the surface of a wall they haven't yet been able to penetrate. It feels like a bit of a betrayal to cut losses, sometimes. Rukia's instinct to drive and drive isn't necessarily any less than Ichigo's, although it's better tempered, and enough to have her reaching out and tugging him by the pocket, trying to trip him into taking a seat.

"You were studying, and you were learning a very important lesson in patience," Rukia suggests, the excuse sounding thin even to her own ears. "And leaving now would be taking three steps backward for the latter. So sit. I'll bet that I can calm you down enough to fall asleep tonight."

Rukia pauses, tilting her head. "Or knock you out trying."

[unbridle]

Ichigo does fall into the cushions beside her, still wearing the tee and blue jeans he'd left the place with early that morning, unshowered and unshaven but, at the very least, he's eaten - there's still oil from the tangerine's he'd been tearing into in the small kitchen a few minutes ago on his breath and fingers.

He feels, not for the first time, a mess next to Rukia. But there is nothing that he wants to do to fix it.

Tentatively, he rests a hand on her sharp knee. "I just don't know what to do. I keep worrying about being ready for whatever comes next, when it comes. But how can I. Just being here is bad enough without everything else. It's bad enough when I feel like I lost everyone else just as soon as I got you back."

As if realizing quite how many words he's said all at once, he takes his hand back to himself, threading it with the other and folding them between his splayed knees.

[unburden]

While still keeping an ear out for all that Ichigo has to say, Rukia quickly shifts on the couch, positioning herself by one of the armrests, the small of her back pressed up against the cushion before she leans forward to wrap thin fingers around broad shoulders, trying to coax Ichigo to lay his head on her lap.

Once there, she threads her fingers through Ichigo's hair, focusing along the stretch of hairline just past his temples and massaging in slow, lazy circles.

"Worrying isn't going to make you more ready. When someone worries as much as you do, it ends up doing the opposite, Ichigo. You should know that," she says quietly, tracing fingertips over his forehead to keep any wrinkles from surfacing. "And believe me, I'm as ready as you are to leave this place the first chance we get, but until that's possible, we have to learn this place. We have to pay attention. I'd even say that we have to learn how to live here."

[unbridle]

Only struggling at the first insistent touch on his shoulders - and then, out of surprise more than anything - Ichigo allows himself to be settled back into the cradle of Rukia's lap. He gives a soft groan when she starts to work at the growing lines on his forehead. The touch is nice, beyond pleasant, but he still feels strangely as if he doesn't deserve it for all the whining he's been doing.

"I know," he says. Not dismissive, though it would be easy for someone who didn't know him well to assume he hadn't been listening, and well, to Rukia's words. "I know. It's just. Not as easy to do as it is to say. And I ... "

No longer bothering with stumbling over words, he reaches a hand up to Rukia's face, brushing the pad of his thumb over her lips, small and pink and petal-soft. He remembers kissing them, just once, and wonders if he could do it again, right here, right now.

[unburden]

"Nothing is," she points out, before her words are brought to silence by the gentle weight of a calloused thumb on her lip, barely there and yet enough to draw a dark flush to Rukia's cheeks in a matter of seconds. She stills at once, any movement surely too perceptible, too noticeable under the suddenly unyielding weight of Ichigo's gaze.

Even turning her own gaze down with little more than a fall of lashes causes a brush and a stuttered breath. Maybe it's the blood in her veins running too fast, nerves on rapid fire. Tentatively, she leans forward — the easier mistake to make, if either direction is a mistake at all.

"Are you going to do something, Ichigo, or is this your way of getting me to keep quiet?" Rukia asks, lips brushing against the pad of his thumb, pursing, the press soft.

[unbridle]

It hasn't been easy. Hasn't been easy moving himself past what he's seen himself as, deciding that it's okay to feel the way he does. About Rukia. To let it be different, let it be what it is.

For so long, he'd had so many bigger problems. Somehow, Rukia's managed to solve them.

So maybe she's the reason that he feels this way about her, and maybe that's why he loves her - she made it so that he could stop and have the chance to do it.

Dropping his hand to her chin, pale and pointed and small enough to make his gentle grasp seem awkward, he pulls himself up from her lap to answer her by pressing their lips together, chaste, but determined.

She'll have to just deal with his pace, but she always has before.

[unburden]

It isn't the easiest position to learn. Ichigo's back is curved where he leans over Rukia's lap, and her neck is craned to respond to the angle, the tangle of their limbs at once comfortable and not. She doesn't break the kiss for a few seconds, nudging at Ichigo's lips tentatively, as though mapping out the curve — but once done, lays her palms on either one of his cheeks to anchor him in place while she pulls back a couple of inches, huffing as she maneuvers, legs swinging to the side and feet quickly tucked underneath her. With her weight pushed further onto her knees, Rukia leans back in again, taking given permission and kissing him back more insistently, soft lips mapping out the contours of his chapped ones before she lets slip a bated breath.

The motions are easy. It's the sentiment that takes longer to unwind, an uncomfortable tightness in Rukia's chest that's only relaxed now, like this, with her palms smoothing down the sides of his neck and along the collarbone before sweeping over the broad span of his chest, memorizing every detail. The contrast of his tan skin against her pale complexion, fingertips brushing against places where scars were once. He's warmer than she is, worry slightly damp along his hairline; the shock of it sends a slight shiver down her spine.

[unbridle]

The sentiment is perfect to Ichigo, perfect in the way that entirely new things often are. He's never sought out a relationship before, a romantic one. With a girl, like this. There had been stirrings before - with Tatsuki, for example. But it had never felt right, there had always been this sense ... of standoffishness. As if the Ichigo being presented was not the right Ichigo to make this work. It had been much the same, from Inoue.

But Rukia, she'd been something different, from the very moment they'd met. Maybe literally, as much as she is, in Ichigo's heart.

Her hands on his chest bring a puff of breath, and he rearranges himself to lift one of his own hands and cover hers, pressing it against him and trapping it against a sluggish, stirring heartbeat, as he watches her shake, like she might have caught a chill.

"Rukia ... if we never get out of here ... "

He's not the child anymore, that he was when he'd first started down a path toward the truth about himself. He's not a child anymore by any yardstick. "Whatever happens, I want to stay with you."

[unburden]

It isn't uncommon to find a great deal of nuance in everything that Ichigo says; this moment is no exception. That they should find themselves like this is only because the world has stopped around them. Slowed, miraculously, allowing for the gentle press and pry of hands, allowing for time to memorize the details, Rukia's gaze constantly brushing over Ichigo's face — his lashes, his nose, the bow of his lips. While it may be years before the overall familiarity stops stirring that deeply buried ache in her heart, the differences are what she focuses on now.

And from them comes another kind of ache entirely.

In that moment, she feels old. Weathered. Perhaps the both of them are, rough edges worn down until the both of them simply fit. There are words that she could share, and every one of them would be true. That she loves him. That she loves him, to the point where it's still better to see him at all, even if he can't see her in return. But there's something about the words that feels... beyond her place. Beyond her station. He's the one who's living; it's up to him to throw that sentiment out there, address it if he needs.

She'll wait.

"I want to stay with you, too," she replies instead. No caveat. No ifs or buts based on their situation. Instead, she shifts on the couch, legs thrown over the side and hand pressing a little more insistently against the heavy beat of his heart, and when her gaze drops down to the line of his collarbone, it's not without a small smile on her lips, taking from the moment whatever she can.

[unbridle]

Something in the way that she looks down at him, cataloging him with a fond care that he's seldom seen directed his way since the memory of being pulled close by his mother, puts him at a soul-deep ease, complete comfort, blocking his consideration for the rest of the world out. It might seem empty and cliche to him in the light of afternoon, the context of a different place, but for now, Rukia's the only one in the world with him.

"You wouldn't have been able to argue with me about it anyway," he says, warm humor entering his voice, though it remains soft in a way that it often isn't. Soft, and without pretense or hurry. Drawing closer even against the press of her hand, he presses a curious kiss to the warm skin just in front of Rukia's ear, pulling away with reconsideration when her damp hair falls, cool, across his nose. Instead, he takes her free hand, squeezing it once in his, before pressing it to his face, holding it there more than kissing it. She smells clean, the sweetness of soap.

[unburden]

What digs at her is the desire to be impulsive. The little thrum of energy that keeps her intensely aware of every detail, even when they all seem to suggest that she should settle, relax into the warmth of Ichigo's hold. Gradually, she unfurls herself, her legs sneaking out to drape over Ichigo's lap, pink tongue dragging her lower lip between her teeth before she leans forward, tracing the line of Ichigo's jaw with the bridge of her nose. It's been hours since he was out, but there's still a scent that lingers about him, smelling of the outdoors. Brisk. Winter's bound to be upon them soon.

"I'm a lot faster than you give me credit for," Rukia points out, lifting her hand from his chest and letting it trace along the side of Ichigo's cheek. It's softer than she expects. Strange now, she thinks — how often they're together, and yet how many of these facts have slipped her entirely until now. Carefully, she nudges herself further under the shadow of Ichigo's jaw, kisses ghosting down his neck. "I could run. But I don't want to."

[unbridle]

Her gentle, soft nuzzle opens something in him, so that when he breathes in, it feels like it will go on forever, an impossibly lengthy sigh of unsettled contentment. He's happy with this, but his entire body seems to be telling him -- it could be more.

But he's not sure it should be yet, despite the liquid warmth in his belly at the sight of her as he looks at her, really takes her in. Not to check if she's okay, not to read the nuance of her expression, just to appreciate her like he's seldom allowed himself to do before. With her, with anyone.

Everything about her is telling him it's okay to stare, though

"I know I said I wanted to go. Can we stay here instead?" Like this, his eyes ask, as his face finally pulls into a smile over where her lips leave tickling warmth down the column of his neck.

[unburden]

When Rukia leans back, her gaze first fixes itself on his smile. It starts at the lips, a slight curve in the direction that Ichigo rarely allows himself, one that Rukia runs lightly over with the pad of her thumb in either direction until she meets with the slight dips at the corners, running over them with ghosted touches, as though she might smooth them out. But the smile goes beyond that curve, softens his entire expression and makes him look younger, somehow, in the face. Older in the eyes. More than anything, it makes Rukia think, and she draws slightly into herself in the process, almost shy. Certainly wanting.

"You're sure that I won't bore you?" she teases, casting a glance out the window. "The city out there is still pretty big and bustling. If you're feeling restless, I don't know." Shy again, with a flush dusting her cheeks, Rukia's gaze drops down the center of his chest as her fingers graze against the fabric of his shirt, pressing soft shadows there.