in which strawberries contemplate the absence of cherries

[loobywibble]

“So. That was…”

“Uh huh.”

“With you.”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.”

“Isn’t it just?”

“How did we get here again?”

The blankets rustled as the smaller of the two bodies in the bed rolled onto her side and offered her flushed and slightly befuddled bedmate a slightly condescending smirk.

“I think that it had something to do with you sticking your tongue down my throat and it escalating from there, Ichigo.”

Even though he was completely naked, recently relieved of his virginity and had, in fact, used his tongue on places other than Rukia’s mouth, Kurosaki Ichigo went completely scarlet.

“O-oi! Don’t say stuff like that!”

Rukia shook her head and lay back against the pillows, chuckling to herself.

“You’re so predictable, idiot. I should start taking bets on how long it takes to get you to blush.”

Taking his weight on his elbows, Ichigo propped himself up to give her a withering look.

“How can you laugh about this? We just-”

“We just had sex, yes.”

“Rukia!”

“Ichigo,” she said evenly, taking his hand and lacing her fingers through it, “You need to calm down before you burst a blood vessel.”

Before he had the chance to go further than gnashing his teeth and spitting out a vitriolic comeback, Rukia brought her other hand up to the back of his neck and gently eased his head towards her own to claim his lips in a playful kiss. As they parted, she noticed that Ichigo’s eyes were wide and dumbfounded. He looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights.

A befuddled, ginger bunny. Rukia couldn’t help but find that imagery endearing.

“See?” she told him softly. “Nothing’s changed. You’re still you, I’m still me, and nothing’s going to change because of this.”

Ichigo opened his mouth to protest, but upon realising that he would only serve to prove her point further by saying anything, he snapped it shut.

“So…” he said eventually.

“So.”

“Where do we go from here?”

Rukia stretched languidly beneath him, and Ichigo felt a certain part of his anatomy twitch in response to the feeling of her body shifting under his. Still not entirely comfortable with the shift in dynamic, he switched positions so that he was once again safely beside her and not likely to be betrayed by his treacherous body. Rukia noted his behaviour quietly and shrugged.

“A shower, probably.”

“Seriously Rukia,” Ichigo sighed in exasperation. “This is a big deal. We’ve kinda stepped over a line doing this.”

“Well, what would you like me to say, Ichigo?” She asked, propping herself up on her elbow to look at him again. “You kissed me. I reciprocated, and I didn’t stop you when clothing mysteriously started falling off. I think that should tell you a little something about how I feel.”

He still stared at her, baffled and lost for words. Sighing in dismay, Rukia shook her head.

“Look. You’re a teenager. You have urges, I understand. I’m above all else your friend Ichigo, the fact that we just gave in to hormones and had a by no means unpleasant romp in your bed does not mean that I am suddenly going to fall desperately in love with you or hate you on sight for besmirching my excellent reputation.”

Ichigo shot her a dirty look.

“So you do this kind of thing with Renji then?”

For some reason, the moment he started saying the words, Ichigo’s heart started thumping against his chest and he felt wracked with nervous anxiety. He hadn’t meant anything incendiary by the words, wanting to use them purely as a comparison, but suddenly the thought of Rukia doing… well, doing what they had just finished doing with Renji made something clench in his gut. It was unidentifiable, and he felt irrationally… irrationally what? He didn’t have the right to feel irrationally anything. She could do whatever she wanted with whoever she wanted, it wasn’t any of his business. But then, when Rukia made a peculiar sound that sounded a little like a cross between a sneeze and a cough, he felt a sudden wave of relief that disarmed him.

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Rukia spluttered, her cheeks an even deeper pink than they had been before he asked. “I- shut up Ichigo. Don’t ask stupid things like that.”

Once upon a time, she had wanted to. Someday, if it ever came up, Rukia might even tell Renji that she had thought of that, but now… She was lying naked in Ichigo’s sheets, her body still flushed and proudly displaying a large purple mark on her collarbone from where he had been a little over-exuberant with his kisses in the heat of the moment, the very idea of thinking of that degree of intimacy with anyone else sat wrongly with her.

“I think,” Ichigo said huskily as he looked at her with a degree of intensity that sent butterflies to her stomach, “that answers my question.”

Rukia put her hand on his cheek, cupping it softly.

“Ichigo… I can’t just put a label on what I feel about you. You blur all the boundaries. What just happened seems to enforce that. But I don’t expect you to feel the same way or to feel obligated to pursue whatever this is if you’re not sure you want to. You’re sixteen, you don’t even know what you wa-”

“I want you.”

“You don’t mean that.”

“Damn it, stop telling me I don’t know want!” His face screwed up into a frown. “I just lost it with you, Rukia, you honestly think I’d just go and do it for the first time with some random girl who doesn’t mean anything?”

“Ichigo-”

“No listen. Life is too damn short to regret stuff,” he grumbled. “I’m taking my chances, and I’m not gonna regret anything anymore. So damn it, I don’t care if I’m sixteen or sixty. I know what I want and I know what I’m doing. So shut up.”

Perhaps he had finally lost his mind after months of battles and struggling under the heavy burden of having Soul Society’s hopes heaped upon his shoulders, perhaps after seeing life extinguished in an instant before his eyes in Hueco Mundo he had finally realised that it was precious. Was it impetuous of him? Probably. He would never be able to answer the question of what had happened to suddenly tilt the scales on their relationship in the way; maybe it was because he couldn’t think of any reasons why kissing Rukia would be a bad thing when he had brushed her lips with his. Maybe he hadn’t stopped because it had just felt so right to have her tucked up against his chest, kissing him back with reckless abandon. (If he had been thinking clearly at all at the time, he probably could have concluded that the fervour of her kisses might have been some kind of indication that maybe she had been wanting the same thing herself.) Either way, he knew that he couldn’t go back to how it had been before between them, not after this.

Damn it, even his inner monologue had been affected by all this; he was starting to sound like one of the heroines in Rukia’s stupid shoujo manga.

“…Hey, are you even listening to me?” He was brought back to earth rudely by an elbow jabbing at his ribs. “Don’t just say things like that and ignore me, Ichigo.”

Rukia was pouting at him, her dark brows drawn together in a frown.

“I was saying,” she added haughtily, “that you might not know the first thing about being suave in this kind of situation, but you can be very sweet with your sentiments at times.”

“Oh shut up,” he retorted. “You’re blushing.”

“Liar, I am not,” she sniffed. “Your eyes must be going funn-”

She was cut off by Ichigo suddenly kissing her again, this time scooping her into his arms and holding her captive against him when he felt her body abandon its resistance to his affections. He was about to award himself a mental brownie point when suddenly he felt sharp little teeth nip at his bottom lip in a way that was by no means designed to be pleasant.

“Rukia, what the fuck?!”

“Don’t think you can get away with distracting me like that!” she snapped back with wide eyes and cheeks that were flushed a deep fuchsia. “Just because you’re good at that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you get the last word in!”

Ichigo blinked for a moment in stunned silence before grinning lazily.

“Thanks for the compliment.”

“It wasn’t a- you are infuriating.” Her tone was angry, but her fingers were playing with the hair at the nape of his neck. “Absolutely, one hundred percent infuriating with no hope of redemption whatsoever.”

“Uh, thanks?” he offered, grinning lopsidedly. “You’re pretty damn irritating yourself you know.”

“Deal with it.”

“I plan too.”

Rukia was right, Ichigo thought much, much later as the woman in question hogged all his blankets and jostled him with her elbows as she slept in his arms. Nothing had changed. Not really. It had just… got better.