Semi-hiatus. Personal hodgepodge. Edits and fics make sporadic appearances. Most posts queued. Typically answer asks privately. Anon asks tagged answered.
While drawing I thought that both had a flirt when dancing.
Something like:
I: “Hello, Mrs. Kurosaki, would you allow me this dance?”
O: “Oh! Of course, gentleman“
I: “Excuse me for say it, but, you look radiant tonight”
O: “Do not say that, sir, it will make me fall in love with you”
↳ Ichihime Week → ❤ august 19th; the color blue :-
Kurosaki-kun, I froze and couldn’t follow after you.. even though all I could do was grab onto a bit of your cloth, you still stopped for me. That expression on your face when you looked back at me, it was something that will Forever be ingrained into my memory. I was certain there had to be some reason for it….
pretty much. I needed to buy time to unleash this Quincy Reiatsu .. because there is someone I needed to jolt awake….
IH Week 2018. Day 1. Anniversary Prompt (blink-and-you-miss-it Gentle Hands prompt).
Ichigo’s secret, which he would share with absolutely no one else ever, was that after the pressure of saving the world and the hereafter was lifted, he rather enjoyed his double life as a hollow-defeating, soul-defending death god. He was keeping his city safe from the things that had taken his mother and hurt his friends, and he honestly felt rather like a comic book superhero.
Consider the facts: most people didn’t know about his identity except those closest and then only out of absolute necessity, he had to do quick and private “costume” changes before dashing off to save the world, and once in a while a big baddie came by to mix up the daily grind of little baddies.
Total. Superhero.
But sometimes, just sometimes, it was a menos-sized pain in the neck. Take right now, for instance. He was in this posh restaurant sitting in his designer clothes across from his dazzling girlfriend of one year. Exactly one year to the day, hence the fancy food and clothes he had worked his ass off for.
For just the tiniest fraction of a second he considered granting a Hollow Holiday where they’re free to wreak havoc as they please so he was free to do as he pleased. This day was important because of what he’d been through, what they’d been through, to get to this point. As many times as their lives had been risked and saved combined with as many times as he’d started and stalled before finally asking her out, he felt more than a little grateful to be celebrating this milestone with Inoue Orihime.
Inoue Orihime who was carefully putting her fork down and wiping her mouth, eyes darting all around the restaurant while trying, and completely failing, to not act suspicious. She caught his eye and made jerky head and eye motions towards the back of the restaurant. Ichigo dropped his knife and fork with a clatter and a heavy sigh. She shushed him with flapping hands before quickly composing herself and stiffly getting out of her chair and then frowning and tugging on her skirt when it caught on the wooden arm.
One major difference between the comic book superheroes and Kurosaki Ichigo, was that his love interest was also a superhero. And that woman didn’t let anything get in the way of protecting her neighborhood.
With another heavy sigh, Ichigo got up and followed her dramatic, not-at-all-blasé movements past the bathroom doors, the kitchen door, and to the door marked exit. She pushed on the metal crash bar, and the cold, garbage-tinged air hit Ichigo in the face. With one last longing glance back at the delicious food and plush seats, he followed Orihime out into a particularly dark part of the alley next to the dumpster where she pointed.
He gave her a look that clearly stated his displeasure at being dumped next to a dumpster, but complied after she insistently pointed, looking down the alley when they felt another, stronger pulse. That familiar pulse finally spurned him into action and as soon as his bottom hit the ground, Ichigo the Shinigami was dashing down the alley, his girlfriend following closely behind.
They stopped to make sure no one was around, and then he lifted her into his arms and took off into the air, bounding from one rooftop to another. She didn’t even seem to notice him as she stared intently into the night sky towards the direction where they had felt the hollow. This was a common practice for them, and they had grown into quite the team over the years. His frustration at being interrupted while with Orihime (and he swore that most of the time these hollows cropped up it was while he was with Orihime) was tempered by the fact that not only was it pretty cool fighting by his girlfriend, his time spent fighting a hollow was a fraction what it was when he was by himself. Especially when there were multiple hollows together. A phenomenon which had been happening more and more often lately… almost like they were teaming up.
Something else in the works with another big baddie, most likely.
Orihime saw it first and pointed. Ichigo blinked and squinted. It was huge, which wasn’t unusual, but it looked exactly like a Pac-Man ghost, which was very unusual. He sneered at the hollow as it bobbed and weaved, letting out roars from somewhere within its black from. Perfect. His romantic plans were interrupted by an ancient video game character. Figures that–
A flash of yellow whizzed in front of him, and before he could blink, his girlfriend was out of his arms and gliding on her yellow shield towards the hollow.
“I got it!” she yelled, waving a hand without looking, her calf-length skirt billowing in the wind.
Ichigo huffed and crossed his arms, watching her head straight for the hollow. She yelled something else that he didn’t catch because she was too far off—she’d really gotten the hang of that thing’s speed—but it sounded like she said something about “cute.” He rolled his eyes. Only Orihime would think a giant monster she was about to attack was cute.
He lazily bounded after her in the sky, just in case, but she was right—its spiritual pressure was pretty low, and two people would just be overkill. By the time he reached her side, Tsubaki was flashing back into the hairpin that she’d pinned to the strap on her dress and the night was quiet again.
“You know,” he said. “I could have just let you go after the thing by yourself and stayed at the restaurant eating the food before it got cold.”
Orihime twirled her skirt and grinned. “Oh, but it’s so much faster with you taking me,” she said, and held out her arms to be lifted again.
Ichigo felt his lips twitch before setting them back in a frim line. He grumbled about being nothing but a transport service as he picked her up, secretly thrilling at the feel of her body pressed up against his and her arms wrapped tight around his neck.
It reminded him of the other plan he’d had for tonight. An important question he needed to ask her. His chest clenched and twisted, and his arms unknowingly tightened around her as they made their way back to the restaurant. She looked at him quizzically, and he distracted her by giving her a quick kiss on the nose. Orihime smiled, tightened her hold around his neck to bring her face closer, and planted a firm kiss on his cheek.
The exchange was so innocent it was almost comical, but it didn’t stop Ichigo’s neck from turning red or his heart from racing. She pressed her head to his shoulder, close to his neck, and he could feel her puffs of breath against his hot skin. At this point, it was a concentrated effort to keep from dropping to the ground. By the time they reached the alley to retrieve his body, he was tempted to skip the restaurant altogether and go straight to—
“I-Ichigo! Wait!” Orihime fervently whispered, slapping his chest. “Look!”
He stopped above the alley, looked down, and groaned. His body was still there, but it had gotten gawkers. Three of what looked like the kitchen staff surrounded his body with unlit cigarettes hanging from their mouths and fingers. One was gesturing at the body, another pushed a guy towards it, and the word “pulse” floated up to them.
“Oh dear,” Orihime said.
“You got any of those memory-erasing duck things from Rukia?”
“…in my purse in the restaurant.”
They watched the staff arguing for a few seconds. It wasn’t like he hadn’t had this happen before, it was just the situations were usually a little easier to explain than why he was slumped next to dumpster behind a restaurant where he’d been having a nice dinner with his girlfriend.
Orihime slapped his chest again. “I got it!” she said for the second time that night. “Drop me off just around the corner from the alley, and you come into your body a bit later. You’ll know when to wake up.”
“Orihime—”
“Hurry! Before they call the police or something!”
She had a point. Well, whatever she had planned, the worst they could do was not let them back in the restaurant. Ichigo thought sadly of his cold, stiffening pasta as he sat her on the ground, carefully making sure no one saw a woman floating to the ground. As soon as her feet touched the ground, she took off down the alley. Ichigo had to scramble to keep up with her.
“Hellooo!” she called, startling the trio hovering around his body. “Sorry to bother you, but you haven’t by any chance seen my boyfriend come back here? He has orange, spiky hair?”
They looked at each other, and then pointed at a spot on the other side of the dumpster. Orihime changed her face into one of horrified concern and ran over to the spot.
“Oh no, my poor, poor Ichigo!” she cried, falling to a squat next to him.
Ichigo raised an eyebrow. Overplaying it just a tad, in his opinion.
One of the staff cleared his throat. “Ma’am, we just found him. We’re not sure if he’s…if he’s dead or—”
“Oh!” She interrupted, turning back to them and shaking her head. “Oh no, he’s not dead. He’s narcoleptic.”
Ichigo and the kitchen staff blinked.
“Narco…” one of them started.
“Leptic,” she finished with a longsuffering sigh. “He’ll just fall asleep anywhere, anytime, at the drop of a hat.” Orihime turned back to her slumped boyfriend. Ichigo didn’t like how close his head and come to resting on the side of the filthy dumpster. “He came out for a smoke while I went to the bathroom, and he must have dropped to sleep before he even got a chance to take a puff, poor baby.”
She turned back to him and gently shook his shoulder. “Ichigo, time to wake up now.”
Taking his cue, Ichigo stepped back into his body, and “woke” with a jerk. His nose wrinkled at the smell and shivered at how cold his body had gotten in their absence.
“O-Orihime? Did…Did it happen again?” he said, blinking at her in fake confusion.
She fussed over him and helped him to his feet, thanking the dazed staff for being such a great help, and led him back through the door into the warm restaurant.
Ichigo let out a breath of relief, and another shiver went through his body. Orihime turned to him with concern.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, yeah, just a little cold.”
Orihime frowned at him, and he barely had time to register how cute she was when she frowned, when she started vigorously rubbing his arms with her hands.
“Uh…”
“We’ll get you warm in no time!”
“Really, I’m fi—oof!”
He was interrupted when she suddenly pounced him with a big bear hug, pressing every inch of her front against his. Her scent filled his nose as he turned his face into her hair, and her body warmed every place it touched, including an area that was having a rapid and embarrassing response. He definitely wasn’t cold any more, but his arms tightened around her anyway
Suddenly, with an unwanted, unwarranted jolt, he wanted to ask that question. Right now. The urge was so strong it almost popped out of his mouth in the same jolted second.
But no, there was no way he could ask it now. Look at where they were! He was not asking her in the hallway of a restaurant between the bathrooms and the kitchen with the sound of banging plates and clattering silverware as background music. Absolutely not. If a toilet flushed while he was asking her, he would die.
His heart didn’t seem to be listening to logic. It didn’t want to wait for his plan to ask during dessert on her balcony under the moon. It wanted to ask her now, this amazing woman, his friend and partner in crime. It didn’t want to wait any longer to ensure he had her in his life forever, fighting off hollows and concocting stories for curious bystanders with her heart-busting combination of goofiness and heroism.
This wasn’t happening. He wasn’t pulling back slightly to look her in the eyes. He couldn’t be doing this now.
Ichigo opened his mouth, rubbed his thumbs where they rested on her waist, and asked the question that would seal their fates for the rest of their lives.
He would later be eternally grateful that no toilets were flushed during the duration of this all-important question, answer, and extended kiss scene.
I like how I pop onto Tumblr for the first time in 500 years and the first thing i reblog is wisdom with poignant imagery from a sweet shirtless redneck.
