Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It was going to be really hard to defeat Kuchiki Byakuya in combat, Renji realized. Not because the man was absolute perfection in battle-- insanely fast, ridiculously strong, utterly unflappable. No, what was going to make it really, really difficult was the fact that the man’s wife was incredibly nice and very, very beautiful, and also Renji was terrified of her.

“Good morning, Lieutenant Abarai!” Hisana trilled cheerfully as she barged into the Squad 6 captains’ offices. “Oh, Byakuya isn’t here?”

“He’s at a captains’ meeting, ma’am,” Renji explained. “My Lady.” He couldn’t remember which was correct.

“No matter, I’ll find it myself! Here, hold this!”

Byakuya hated people touching his things, especially his desk, and Renji should probably have stopped her, but he had two armfuls of the 18-month old heir to the Kuchiki Clan and if his reflexes hadn’t been so good, he would also have had a small wooden top up his nose.

“Settle down, Future Lieutenant Kuchiki,” Renji murmured, extracting the top from Touma’s slightly sticky hand, and settling the boy on his lap. He pushed the half-done paperwork on his desk to one side and set the top a-spin. Out of all the skills he had spent 40 years honing, he did not expect throwing tops with Momo’s bratty brother on school vacations to be one that he would find useful as a vice-captain. He had found there to be very little about being a vice-captain that had aligned with his expectations.

Young Touma squealed with delight, and his mother briefly looked up from the mess she was making of Byakuya’s desk (she had moved one pile of mission reports 3 cm to the right, and Renji expected to hear about it all afternoon.) “He likes you,” she observed simply.

“He likes anyone who’ll spin his top for him,” Renji corrected.

“That is categorically untrue,” Hisana informed him, and started in on the drawers.

Regardless of Touma’s feelings for Renji, the kid was yet another reason Renji felt like he might hesitate before punching Captain Kuchiki’s ticket. Touma was a sweet kid, if perpetually sticky, and more importantly, he was Rukia’s nephew, her own blood. The little guy mostly took after his pop, but Renji kept finding things-- the way his hair curled at the back of his neck, the bossy look he got on his face when he wanted something-- that reminded him of Rukia in her youth. Not that he was all that familiar with Rukia-of-late. She was practically a stranger, to be honest.

“Aha!” Hisana announced, waving a folded piece of correspondence. “Invitation to Aunt Etsu’s 475th birthday party. I knew she sent him one!” She tucked it in her sleeve smugly. “Sometimes, I think people send letters to him at the office just so that he’ll forget to bring them home.” She narrowed her eyes at Renji. “You don’t happen to open his mail for him, do you?”

“I don’t touch his mail, ma’am.”

Hisana’s face fell.

Renji had watched his captain read his mail, though. “If I put another letter tray on his desk,” he offered hesitantly, “and label it ‘Home’, I bet he’d stick stuff like that in it as he’s opening it, and I’m sure he’d bring it home at the end of the day. He loves empty trays.”

Hisana jabbed a finger at him. “I like you.” She marched over and retrieved her son, who was not very happy to be retrieved.

Ignoring the devastated child getting snot and tears all over a kimono that was worth more than everything Renji owned, Hisana took a moment to regard the Lieutenant of the Sixth. Her gaze was penetrating, stripping him down to his bones. “You’ve met my sister before, yes? Rukia? You helped Byakuya stay her execution?”

That was one way to put it, Renji supposed. “Yes, ma’am,” he replied.

Hisana nodded definitively. "You should come to dinner,” she declared.

“Dinner?” Renji echoed, his voice hollow.

“At the Manor,” she clarified. “It will be at six.”

“Ma’am, I can’t,” Renji excused reflexively. Of course, he wanted to see Rukia again, that was part of the whole plan, but Kuchiki Manor was not a place where Renji belonged, not yet, anyway. Byakuya didn’t want Renji in his house. Rukia probably didn’t want him in her house, either. Renji had this under control. He was working up to it. He was currently in the process of writing Rukia a letter. He had been working on it for a week. It currently consisted of a single sentence, which he was considering re-writing.

“We’re having grilled unagi,” Hisana added, before disappearing in a swish of silk.

“I must regretfully decline?” Renji called after her.

Byakuya stared at his desk. “My wife has been here.”

“I am sorry, sir. I couldn’t stop her.”

“No, she is not your responsibility,” Byakuya sighed. He settled himself behind his desk, then looked up. “Did she have Touma with her?”

“Yes, he was very cheerful, right up until he had to leave.”

Captain Kuchiki considered this, and nodded. “He loves the Sixth already. A fortuitous sign.”

Sure, why not? Renji saw no reason to argue. “Er, sir?”

“Yes, Lieutenant?”

Renji winced. There was no easy way to put this. “Your wife invited me over to dinner. I tried to turn her down, sir, politely, of course, but she… ignored me.”

“You cannot decline,” Byakuya stated simply. “When my wife invites you to dinner, you remain invited until she decides otherwise.”

“Oh.”

There was a long silence. Byakuya contemplated his new mail tray, which he did not recognize, but approved of, in principle.

Renji swallowed. “Sir, I am sorry to have to ask but… does Lady Hisana know about me and Rukia?”

Byakuya had been trying to get his pile of mission reports back to its exact previous position. He looked up, horrified. “What is there to know about you and Rukia?”

Renji waved his hands frantically. “Nothing! Nothing, sir! Just us growing up in Rukongai together, remember I told you about that? When you asked me to commit treason with you by destroying the Soukyoku and keeping her from getting executed?”

“Ah, yes, I do remember.” Captain Kuchiki paused for a moment to consider whether or not this information had reached his wife's ear. “I have no idea.”

Renji changed his mind. He could probably find it in himself to kill this man after all.

Chapter Text

“I don’t like that green,” Hisana declared. “What about your blue kimono, the one with the white bellflowers? It makes your eyes look so pretty.”

Rukia narrowed her insufficiently pretty blue eyes. “Who is coming to dinner, Sister?” she growled.

“Someone handsome,” Hisana singsonged.

Rukia’s shoulders slumped. “Sister, please don’t.”

“Don’t do what?” Hisana sniffed. “Out of the peonies, Touma!” She turned back to her sister, who was only marginally less troublesome than her son. “Don’t invite handsome young men to dinner? You ask too much, Rukia.”

“Why are you doing this?” Rukia complained. “First, it was tea with Lady Nishiwaki and her son just happened to be there--”

“I didn’t care for him, he was too cheeky,” Hisana pronounced.

“--and then you told me you needed me to be your tennis partner at the Miura’s party, but then you pretended to get overheated when it turned out that there were an excess of young men who needed partners.”

“I have a delicate constitution,” Hisana sniffed.

“I’ve never been overheated in my life and neither have you,” Rukia muttered grimly.

Hisana fanned herself innocently. “I just think you should meet more people, that’s all.”

“You’re angry that I got stuck in the Living World for two months and now you’re trying to marry me off to keep me out of trouble,” Rukia guessed.

Hisana’s eyes widened. “No! No.” She folded her fan, and tucked it in her lap. “Rukia, do you know how hard I’ve had to work for the last forty years to keep you from getting married off?”

Rukia wrinkled her nose. “Who would want to marry me?” she grunted.

Hisana’s face went hard. “Everyone who didn’t believe I’d ever be able to produce an heir and saw you as the back-up plan.”

Rukia’s mouth opened and then closed again. For so long, Hisana’s infertility had been an elephant in the room. Hisana hadn’t even been expected to live more than a few years at the time she married Byakuya, and if there was one thing Byakuya and Rukia had in common, it was that they were too happy to have Hisana in their lives to bother giving a single shit about stuff like that. Hisana gave a shit, though, and so did the rest of Byakuya’s stupid, asshole family. The fact that Hisana had been staving off stupid family schemes for her at the same time…

“It never occurred to me,” Hisana said slowly, “that we had been keeping you away from everything. Sheltering you. I think you made more friends in the World of the Living than in all your years as a Kuchiki.”

“Sister, it’s fine,” Rukia assured her. “I have my job, and I have you, and it sounds like the family isn’t interested in marrying me off anymore, so everything’s fine.”

“I just want you to be happy, Rukia,” Hisana persisted. “I’m not even the one who brought up marriage, you were.” She paused to bask for an entire second from her tenuous perch on the moral high ground. Rukia abruptly stopped feeling guilty in anticipation of what was coming next. “But since you mention it, now would be the perfect time for you to marry for love. You never know when the aunts will get some new idea in their head, and the best way to avoid getting married off is to marry yourself off first.”

“I don’t want to get married,” Rukia pointed out. “I want to be a shinigami.”

“These things are not mutually exclusive. Byakuya manages quite well.”

“Byakuya has a million servants and a lieutenant to do stuff for him,” Rukia grumbled.

Hisana’s eyes glinted in a way Rukia didn’t like. “He does have a lieutenant! Have you met Abarai? Oh, right, he saved your life once, I was given to understand.”

Rukia’s stomach dropped. She had honestly been thinking of Lieutenant Shirogane when she said that. Intellectually, she knew that he had retired, but that piece of information lived in the morass of Things That Had Happened While She Was Gone, and she still wasn’t used to the idea that of all the idiots in the world Brother could have hired-- wait. No. Hisana wouldn’t.

“Hisana,” Rukia intoned as her sister hauled Touma out of the peonies for the third time. “Did you invite Brother’s new adjutant over for dinner?”

“Touma is very fond of Lieutenant Abarai, aren’t you, sweetness?”

Touma blew a raspberry. Hisana put him down, and he scampered off, in the direction of the butterfly bushes this time.

“Hisana, why?" Rukia wailed. "Why him, of all people?”

Hisana looked up quizzically. “What does that mean? ‘Him of all people’?”

Rukia dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands and bit down on her tongue. She loved her sister. She loved her sister more than anyone, but there were certain things they didn’t talk about, and one of those things was Inuzuri. In her early days as a Kuchiki, Hisana had attempted to explain-- to apologize-- for the circumstances that had driven her to leave Rukia behind. Rukia knew well about circumstances. She bore no grudge toward her sister for having been placed in an impossible situation and doing what she had to do to survive. It was clear that Hisana had tortured herself over the decision for years, and Rukia didn’t see any sense in adding to her pain by reminiscing. Her own days in South 78 were only relevant to her and some guy whom, the last she heard, had been off adding to his black eye collection at the Eleventh, of all places.

That was, until that guy showed up to arrest her, in the middle of a mission gone utterly pear-shaped. Byakuya had decided to name that guy his second, apparently knowing nothing of their history, he just liked the cut of Renji’s jib, or some Byakuya-horseshit like that.

It’s not that Rukia hadn’t considered coming clean to Hisana earlier. She had. She actually kinda-sorta wanted to see Renji again. She’d been pretty awful to him when she was in jail, and she’d never properly thanked him for rescuing her, and also she wanted to know how he was and maybe knock him about the head and shoulders a little, the Eleventh, really?

But over the last few weeks, she hadn’t managed to come up with a smooth way of saying, “Hey, uh, that guy Brother just hired? I lived with him for ten years. He taught me to read and I taught him to pick pockets and we were each other’s first kiss. I've got at least three scars that are completely his fault, although in one case, if it weren't for him, I wouldn't have a scar, I'd just be dead. He was a part of me, like an arm or a kidney, and I walked away from him without even saying goodbye like a huge dick to come join this family, and no, I’ve never mentioned him, why do you ask?”

Apparently, being confronted about it a scant hour before the man himself showed up on her doorstep was not particularly helpful in jumpstarting her brain. “Touma is eating a worm,” she informed her sister, by way of a distraction.

“Oh. Oh, dear.” She wrinkled her nose. “I’m sure it won’t hurt him, but don’t tell Byakuya this happened. Stop that, baby! Give it to Mama!”

“MINE!” Touma retorted. It was one of about six words he knew.

“Anyway, there’s no way the family-- Brother included-- would find him suitable,” Rukia pointed out, having finally latched onto a good argument. “Have you seen his tattoos?”

Hisana flung the worm back into the garden and arched an eyebrow at Rukia. “I have. I happened to be visiting the Sixth one afternoon while Lieutenant Abarai was sparring with his officers, and it was quite warm that day--”

“Sister, stop,” Rukia begged, squeezing her eyes shut again. “Forget I said anything!”

“He does have a lot of them, doesn’t he?” Hisana mused, a wistful expression on her face. “You probably didn’t have much of a chance to talk to him, while he was carrying you around the Seireitei in his well-toned arms--”

“How did you hear about that?” Rukia howled.

“--but he’s very friendly and funny and he doesn’t take any shit from those sniveling brown-nosers at Squad Six.” Not taking shit was one of Hisana’s favorite personality characteristics.

“He’s from the Eleventh. At best, he probably has a few bits of gravel where his brain used to be,” Rukia waved a hand, dismissively.

“Intelligence in men is overrated. Oh, it’s just dinner, Rukia, and maybe a little walk around the gardens, after. I think you’ll really like him.”

“Well, I very much doubt that I will,” Rukia grumped. “And even if I did, who’s to say he would take a liking to me?”

“That,” Hisana pointed out, “is why you should go put on that blue kimono.”

Chapter Text

Rukia looked the way Renji had spent 40 years imagining she would. People used “refined” to describe rich people sometimes, but it was really true in this case. Even from the earliest days of their acquaintance, Renji had been able to tell that despite her scabbed knees and coarse language, Rukia was an amazing person-- smart, strong, beautiful. The best person, possibly. Life as a Kuchiki had only smoothed her rough edges, washed away the imperfections, shined her to a polish.

Her face still had the same delicate bone structure, but her skin was smooth and glowing instead of dry and chapped, accented with a delicate touch of makeup instead of smears of dirt and less savory substances. She spoke precisely and formally, every trace of her Rukon accent a distant memory. Her hair was glossy and smooth, even if she still favored a tidier version of the short, layered style he used to hack it into with the same knife he used to gut rabbits. Her eyes-- he’d always loved her eyes, and the dark blue kimono she wore looked like it had been specially dyed just to match them.

The scowl was exactly the same, though, and somehow, it was the one thing he hadn’t expected. In his imagination, she was always happy here, because he wouldn’t be able to stand it if she weren’t. But scowls were Rukia’s public face, he reminded himself, smiles are reserved for close friends, and he didn’t qualify anymore.

“--have you ever attended the Seireitei Orchid Exposition, Lieutenant Abarai?”

Oh, no. Renji had been too busy being in love with Rukia to notice that Lady Hisana was talking to him. This was a problem. He was a little overwhelmed, to be honest, between the amazing food and the elegance of the house and Byakuya over there, staring off into the middle distance, but paying attention to everything Renji screwed up, which he would surely want to go over in nauseating detail tomorr-- orchids? Lady Kuchiki asked you a question, moron, he lambasted himself. Say something about orchids.

“Ah, can’t say that I have,” he managed. He wasn’t sure if he could identify an orchid if his life depended on it.

“It’s coming up next week, and it’s quite a busy time for us. Byakuya and I are competing this year.”

“You may call it that,” Byakuya commented, a hint of steel in his voice.

“Against each other, I mean,” Hisana clarified. “Usually we work together, but one of my long-running experimental strains has finally flowered this year and it is going to sweep the competition.”

Byakuya let out a single, tiny snort.

Renji’s eyes darted between his hosts.

“My husband is well known for producing absolutely perfect specimens that look as though they popped out of an orchid textbook.”

“You say that is if it were a bad thing,” Byakuya replied.

“My orchids are exciting,” Hisana countered. “People have written poetry about my orchids.”

“I do not know what you are complaining about. I have written poetry about your orchids. As I have told you since you began the project, red orchids bear notoriously irregular blooms, which the judges carry a heavy bias against. In a competition that lacked a solid, classically beautiful specimen-- my Neofinetia falcata, for example-- you would, indeed do well. I am sure you will take a prize or two for originality.” He paused, and then said, in the manner of a man who has fallen into this trap before, “You know I am a great admirer of your orchids, dear.”

Were they trash-talking? Were they flirting? Renji’s eyes darted over to Rukia, who looked like she wanted to die.

“Does Lady Rukia also grow orchids?” he asked, unable to keep a grin from breaking out on his face as he tried to get the words out.

Hisana’s face lit up, and she looked at her sister expectantly.

Rukia was staring deeply into her soup. “I have a pepper plant. It made a pepper once.”

There was a long silence.

“It was a very good pepper,” Byakuya pointed out mildly, and then took a sip of his own soup.

Cautiously, Rukia looked up and scrutinized Renji’s face. It occurred to Renji that while her situation was pretty clear, she probably had no idea what he was like these days. Taking a position at the Sixth, showing up for dinner with his hair combed-- did she think he was some kind of snotty bootlicker, trying to climb the social ladder? Well… well, he sort of was, but only because he wanted to meet her family’s approval. And it wasn’t just show, he did try to be an actual good person, a good friend, a good vice-captain. He offered her a hopeful half-smile, willing her to understand, I’m still me, just a slightly better me. I have a good job and one nice haori and bankai, but the part of me that cares about you hasn’t changed at all.

Rukia made a rueful facial expression, and turned back to her soup.

Renji supposed the old days of reading each other’s minds with a simple glance were long gone, as well.

“Rukia will be playing her shamisen at the Orchid Exposition,” Hisana added, clearly trying to lob the conversational ball back into her sister’s court. It was clear Rukia had no intention of lobbing it back.

“Huh! Music at a flower show,” Renji tried to rescue her. “‘Magine that.”

“Yes,” Rukia said flatly. “Sometimes people get...tired...of looking at the flowers.” Rukia continued to stare at him, and Renji realized maybe the mind-reading days weren't so far past after all, because the message couldn’t have been clearer: Go ahead, Abarai Renji. Keep pretending you give half a shit about this rich people nonsense. I dare you.

“It’s mostly for ambiance, there’s a continuous musical program,” Hisana explained, either oblivious to, or willfully ignoring her younger sister. “Rukia is very skilled, though, it’s always a treat to hear her play.”

Renji knew he couldn’t say it with a straight face, but dammit, he was going to try. “I had no idea that you were so talented, Lady Rukia. Do you--” a tiny snort escaped his nose, “--enjoy playing--” another one followed, “--the shamisen?”

Rukia’s eyes twinkled, and the corners of her mouth turned up the tiniest bit. “It’s great,'' she replied. “I love it.”

Byakuya looked up briefly from his meal, looked confused, and went back to eating.

Renji tried to compose himself, and glanced back at Rukia’s older sister, whom he expected to be scandalized by their conduct.

Instead, Hisana just looked incredibly smug.

Chapter Text

Rukia couldn’t believe her sister thought Abarai Renji was handsome.

The young men in Hisana’s social circle got their hairs cut individually, and carried parasols to maintain their pasty complexions, and would go home if they showed up to a party where someone else’s outfit looked too much like their own.

Abarai Renji’s nose had already been broken at least twice by the time he entered the Academy, and it had taken on an additional swerve to the left in the intervening years. He’d tried his best to tuck his unruly hair into a low ponytail, but the humidity was causing little strands of it to fuzz out and escape his headscarf to stick to his forehead. His skin was the dark tan of someone who spent everyday outside, weather-be-damned. Two of his fingers had that tell-tale look of having been reattached by some Fourth Squadder too close to the end of their shift. He had the build of an ox, if an ox liked to hit the gym in its spare time.

Obviously, Rukia thought he was maddeningly handsome, but she was well aware of how terrible her own taste was. He didn’t seem Sister’s type at all, though.

Right now, he was gazing around the garden as they strolled, hands clasped behind his back.

The most handsome thing about him, she thought to herself, without acknowledging what she was thinking, was the way he carried himself. The first time she had seen him and her brother together, it was clear they hadn’t quite figured out each other yet. But somewhere along the way, possibly on Sokyouku Hill, they had gotten it sorted. Renji was respectful to Byakuya, sure, but he wore his rank comfortably, probably more comfortably than what was obviously his New Year’s haori, which looked like it could stand to be let out a little in the shoulder seams.

Rukia sucked her teeth, desperately trying to think of something to say to him. She should just make fun of him, really, get things back on the old familiar ground. Every joke that sprang to mind just seemed too sharp, though, too mean. For possibly the first time in their acquaintance, Rukia worried about sticking him too deeply.

"So, er…" Renji decided to break the silence on his own. "Which ones are the orchids?"

Rukia abruptly forgot her fears. “You dummy. You moron.”

He just grinned at her, his shoulders twitching with silent laughter.

“Orchids are delicate flowers, and valuable, too. They are in the greenhouses, where no stray breeze or raindrop could ever cause them distress.”

“Ah. I see,” he replied, and she wondered if he did. “I’m a little new to this fancy stuff, you understand.”

What was he playing at, anyway? “Look, you know why my sister invited you over, right?”

To her surprise, he honestly looked a little perplexed. “Seemed like she wanted me to meet you.” He paused for a long moment, as though he were weighing whether or not he wanted to say what he was thinking. Rukia wasn’t sure she liked that, a thoughtful Renji. She preferred a Renji whose brain was connected directly to his mouth. “It’s just that most people in this situation, I think, might be surprised to find out that you never mentioned to your sister that you knew me.” By “surprised” he meant “hurt”, of course, although she wasn’t quite sure if he was trying to tell her that he was hurt or reassuring her that he wasn’t. In the old days, it had always seemed very easy to tell him things without actually having to tell him anything, but now, she was having a lot of trouble getting a read on him. A guilty little voice in her head kept asking whether this had ever been an effective form of communication. He turned to look at her, a sly twinkle in his eye. “Then again, I think I had known you for about... seven years before you told me that Rukia wasn’t your real name, so I don’t really know what I was expecting.”

“It was awkward,” Rukia finally excused, defensively. “If I’d been around when Brother hired you, of course, I would have told her. I was kinda busy, if you may recall, and now, it’s so far past when I should have said something…”

“Well, it puts me in a bit of an awkward spot, too, you know,” Renji pointed out, mildly. He didn’t sound nearly as angry as he had a right to. “We used to coordinate these things. Are you plannin’ to tell her or you want to keep pretending to be strangers? That could be kinda fun, y’know, every time I see you, pretending we’ve never met before.”

“Oh, stop it,” Rukia scolded. “I’ll… figure out a way to tell her.” The problem was, of course, that she needed to get Hisana to lay off this matchmaking nonsense, and if Hisana found out they had been childhood friends, she would become an unstoppable force of nature, a huge, flaming Soukyoku firebird with hearts for eyes.

“So...why did your sister invite me over?” Renji asked curiously.

Rukia pretended to be interested in a patch of bearded iris. “A big part of being noble is socializing,” she explained. “It’s very exciting to invite a new person over, instead of the same old bores you’ve known for the last two hundred years. She’ll then go tell her friends about how delightful you were, and your inbox will be full of invitations to take tea with a bunch of other bored noble ladies. I don’t suppose you’re any good at mahjong? Good mahjong players are in such demand these days.”

“I am terrible at mahjong, as it happens.”

“Even better, probably.”

Renji regarded a plum tree. "Do you think we should slow down, then?"

“Sl--slow down?” Rukia spluttered.

Renji gave a too-obvious nod over his shoulder, where Hisana, Byakuya, and Touma were dawdling on the garden path behind them. “Your sister and brother-in-law are very good at walking slowly,” he observed dryly.

Rukia clenched her teeth at her sister’s horrifically obvious attempt to afford them privacy.

“But if the point is socializing--”

“No,” Rukia cut him off. “Sister would just find a way to walk even more slowly.”

“Wow,” Renji commented. “That would probably require some obscure branch of reverse-shunpou. Touma doesn’t look like he’s enjoying it very much.”

“I think he wants to be with me. Usually, I walk with him, so Brother and Sister can have a few minutes together,” Rukia explained, eager to divert the subject. “And he spends the entire time fussing because he wants to be with Brother.”

Renji gave her that inscrutable look again, and Rukia realized he was trying to figure her out. “If you like,” he finally said, “he could walk with us. I don’t mind.”

Rukia swallowed, then turned her head, and called back, “Sister, if Touma wants to walk with us, just let him!”

A relieved Hisana stopped trying to restrain her offspring, who barreled forward as fast as his chubby legs would propel him. Surprisingly, Rukia didn’t seem to be the person Touma was so desperate to see.

“Hello, there, Future Vice-Captain,” Renji greeted her diminutive nephew genially. “We meet on your territory today.”

Touma’s face screwed up, his nose wrinkling. “UP!” he demanded, in his most Kuchiki-like tone.

“And here I thought I was only good for top-spinning,” Renji grinned, tossing the boy up onto his shoulders. From his high perch, Touma beamed, the king of all he surveyed.

“He likes you,” Rukia murmured. Touma never warmed up to strangers. If they were lucky, he just tried to bury himself in Brother or Sister’s clothing. Otherwise, it was shouting. Rukia cleared her throat. “‘Up’ is new, I think. I haven’t heard him use ‘up’ before.”

“He’s a nice kid,” Renji replied, purposefully lurching dramatically from side to side while Touma squealed with delight.

“He’s my nephew and I love him, but he’s a terror,” Rukia pointed out. “His nurse is probably lying down in her room with a cold cloth over her eyes right now.”

“Can’t be more trouble than his pop,” Renji singsonged under his breath as he paused to let Touma pull at the leaves of a maple.

Suddenly, for the first time, Rukia let herself indulge in Hisana’s scheming. “The best way to avoid getting married off is to marry yourself off first.” Renji was a hundred times better than those spoiled noble sons that usually came around to tea. Hisana and Touma had obviously fallen to his charms, and even Byakuya seemed to tolerate him. Renji had been her friend once, as close as friends could be, really. Would it kill her to… consider it? He really did have nice arms.

“Rukia?” Renji was regarding her curiously.

“What?” she demanded, testily.

“Your face is bright red. Are you okay?”

Rukia took a deep breath through her nose. “I fibbed before,” she blurted out quickly. “My sister is… matchmaking. That’s why she invited you here.”

Renji froze, until Touma yanked on a piece of his hair with particular vigor. “Ow! Ow, buddy, that’s attached!”

“She’s such a romantic. If I told her we were old childhood friends, there’d be no talking her out of it,” Rukia muttered.

Renji had extracted Touma from his hair and was now carrying him upside down and pretending this was a natural and normal way to carry a child.

“Pardon my ignorance of the details,” he said slowly, “but aren’t you a little out of my league?”

“My stock has gone down lately,” Rukia shrugged. “I was already looked down on for being adopted, and almost getting executed didn’t do me any favors.” She chewed her lip for a moment. “And that’s sort of the point. Sister doesn’t want to see me married off for political gain, so she’s got it in her head to find me someone I like, and get the Elders to sign off on it at a time when they’d just as soon get rid of me.”

“Oh,” Renji replied. Then, very slowly, he said, “And your sister thought you’d like me?”

“Well, she likes you,” Rukia replied, crossing her arms over her chest. “I hardly know you.”

Renji put Touma down on the path, and the boy ran ahead to the bridge over the koi pond. “It took seven weeks the first time.”

Rukia blinked. “What did?”

“For you to like me. When we first met, you saved my life, me and the guys, and we split some water with you. You started hanging out with us almost immediately, but I could tell you didn’t like me. Seven weeks later, I made a humorous remark about a mutual acquaintance, and you laughed so hard you snorted. That’s when I knew. That you liked me, that is.”

“It was Haneda Kousuke, and you said his face looked like a butt that had been sat on too long,” Rukia cackled, unable to keep from cracking up as she said it.

Renji couldn’t help grinning either. “I was trying to be polite, up here in fancy-land.”

His eyes caught Rukia’s, and for a moment, no time had passed. He was her best friend again, her comfort, her confidant, the other half of her soul. “Never,” she exhorted him. “Not when it’s just you and me.”

And then her cheeks were burning and she was looking away, embarrassed. She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye, and he was just looking down at her fondly. “I was hoping maybe it wouldn’t take seven weeks this time,” he said softly. “But I can wait for as long as you need.”

Rukia swallowed against her dry throat, and took a long time of pulling a stale piece of bread out of her sleeve and breaking it into bits for Touma to toss to the koi.

“I did want to see you again,” she finally admitted. “It’s nice to see you, is what I mean. I’m sorry to get you caught up in Sister’s grand schemes.” Touma scampered off and tossed the entire handful of crumbs into the pond, wholesale. Rukia sighed. “I’ll tell her the truth about… you know. How we are. I promise.” She tossed a crumb into the pond, and watched, glumly, as the koi preferred to jostle for Touma’s cluster bomb over her lowly offering.

Suddenly, there was a much larger hand cupping her own. Rukia stared at it stupidly as Renji pinched out a few of her bread crumbs. Did he linger just a moment longer than necessary, before crouching down next to her nephew? “One at a time, pal,” he said gently, tossing out a crumb and holding out his hand for Touma to do the same.

Touma tried to grab the rest of Renji’s handful, but Renji closed his fingers around it. “One. Who taught you about patience? Your auntie?” He opened his hand again, and, scowling, Touma extracted a single crumb. Renji tilted his head up toward Rukia. “It would be good to get our stories straight, I think,” he said, “but maybe you should hold off on explainin’ to your sister ‘how we are’ until we get that figured out ourselves, eh?”

Rukia’s cheeks burned. “Did you hear the part where she wants you to marry me, you dummy?”

Renji tossed another crumb into the pond. “I heard it.” He didn’t say anything further.

“Oh,” was all Rukia could think to say.

Chapter Text

“I knew that I would regret appointing a man taller than myself as my second,” Byakuya grumbled, watching Abarai swing the presumptive 29th Head of the Kuchiki Clan onto his back like a sack of potatoes.

“Lieutenant Abarai is a novelty,” Hisana reassured him. “You will always be Touma’s favorite.”

“Ah,” Byakuya said, regarding his wife with a glint in his eye. “A novelty. I had been wondering why I was now being forced to endure my adjutant outside of working hours, but that would explain it. I am sure Rukia will be quite relieved when something else catches your fancy and she no longer needs to endure your transparent attempts at matrimonial arbitrage.”

Hisana regarded him out of the corner of her eye. “Ah. You caught me.”

“Were you attempting any sort of discretion?” Byakuya asked with the slightest tip of his eyebrows.

Hisana bumped her shoulder against him, in the manner of an affectionate cat. Byakuya both hated it and loved it when she did that. Additionally, he hated that he loved it.

Hisana switched from her sneaky mode into the talking-very-quickly mode she used once the jig, as it were, was up. “I knew you were going to need to eeeaase into this idea, but he would be such a good addition to the family! He’s very strong, obviously, and proved himself terribly loyal to you. All the cousins who complained about you appointing him have their mouths too full of crow to bitch if you married him in now, and then they would no longer have that ‘vice-captain of the Sixth should be family’ hill to die on.” Hisana made a small frown. “Assuming… well, we don’t need to discuss it, I’m sure you’ve worried yourself about it enough already.”

“Worried about what?” Byakuya frowned, his eyebrows beetling.

Hisana raised her own eyebrows, surprised at him. “That there are three companies without captains right now, and he’s got the what-d’you-call-it, the thing that captains have to do?”

Oh. That. To be honest, Byakuya hadn’t given it all that much consideration. He had offered Yamamoto his unsolicited judgement that none of the vice-captains of 3, 5 or 9 were worthy of even being named acting captain, but he hadn’t considered what would happen if the head captain were forced to go looking elsewhere. Indeed, the available options seemed rather thin. While Byakuya stood by his assessment, he was suddenly left wondering if maybe he should have kept his opinion to himself.

“Hisana, I know you know the word ‘bankai’,” he replied, refusing to let his composure slip. “And there are other requisites for a candidacy. He’s very young, he knows nothing, he would be a horrible candidate. You need not worry about him leaving me in the lurch.”

Hisana blinked innocently. “Ah, yes, because your noble Captain-Commander is known for his great discretion and thoughtfulness in appointing captains, and surely, Abarai would consult you for advice before making any further career decisions,” she replied with perfect sincerity.

Byakuya’s eye twitched. Abarai had been in his employ for barely two months, hardly even enough time to bother remembering what the man’s face looked like, and yet, the idea of losing him at this point distressed him deeply. It might have had something to do with Abarai’s grim willingness to stand by his side, even as he betrayed his own pride in the name of saving his sister. Or perhaps it was that the man was just now getting the hang of doing his paperwork in the manner Byakuya preferred. It certainly wasn’t because he enjoyed their early morning sparring matches or that morale was up across the entire division or that Abarai had chuckled at Byakuya’s very funny wordplay about pickled radishes last Tuesday. Hisana had the right of it. That short-sighted old bastard would absolutely offer Abarai a captaincy, and the fool would take it without a moment’s hesitation.

“I was a bit worried, you see,” Hisana nattered on, “that maybe he wasn’t the marrying sort, or that he wouldn’t have any interest in marrying into the nobility-- but he showed up, didn’t he!”

“I doubt he has any interest in it in general, but in the specific, he would appear to have a great deal of interest,” Byakuya replied.

Hisana gave him a quizzical look. “Kuchiki or bust, eh? Well, our gain, I suppose. So, who do you think might catch his eye? Cousin Hanae? The oldest Ohno girl? No one who serves in the Sixth, obviously, that would be inappropriate. Do you think Cousin Shizue of the North Rukongai line is too young? She would love to move to the city, I think.” Hisana tapped her chin. “Not every girl in the clan would be happy with such a match, but I think we could find one who could… appreciate his charms.”

“He does not have charms,” Byakuya replied automatically. His brain suddenly skipped a step. “Wait, what about Rukia?”

“I’m hoping she’ll have some ideas, that’s why I sent her on ahead to get to know him.”

Byakuya’s eyes darted ahead, to where Abarai was leaning over to say something to Rukia. Byakuya had felt that dinner had featured far too many lovelorn gazes, but he did not consider himself the best judge of these things, and if Hisana--who could detect yearning at a hundred paces--hadn’t… “You don’t think he seems… rather fond of her?”

Hisana blinked, and then did a double take at the couple ahead of them on the path. “Wait-- you think Renji is smitten with Rukia?”

Byakuya made a face as though he had just eaten something distasteful. “Must you refer to my adjutant by his first name?”

Hisana’s forehead was creased in thought. “Impossible. They’ve just met... haven’t they?”

Byakuya opened his mouth and then closed it again. It appeared his wife did not know her sister’s shared history with his lieutenant. Possessing personal information about someone that his wife did not was not a situation Byakuya was not used to being in, and he choked. “There was the rescue, of course. And he kept personal watch over her much of the time she was detained at the Sixth.”

Hisana stared at him. “Do you find the holding cells at the Sixth conducive to romance?”

Byakuya bristled, at this impugnment of his romantic sensibilities. “I know what it is like to be verbally assaulted by a beautiful woman for several days, only to find oneself inexplicably attached to her, if that is worth anything.”

Hisana smiled at him slyly. “You are such a sap.” She cocked her head curiously, regarding her sister and her possible beau. “Hmm. It’s possible. But also impossible. Rukia is much too far above him. Unless…”

“Unless what?” Byakuya asked suspiciously.

“Well, obviously, if she was taken with him, too, that would be a different matter, wouldn’t it?”

“Er,” Byakuya managed.

“It’s very difficult to tell with Rukia, sometimes,” Hisana mused. “Although she told me quite vocally what she thought of some of the other gentlemen I introduced her to. She is a very keen judge of character, you know, not one to be taken in by some flowery poetry and the silkiest hair in Soul Society.”

“My poetry is not flowery,” Byakuya grumbled.

“Your hair is so silky, though,” Hisana replied, with a smoldering look.

Byakuya smoldered back at her, very much hoping that this conversation was about to go off in a very different direction. Instead, Hisana suddenly skidded to a halt, which was impressive, given the glacial pace at which they had been processing. She clutched at Byakuya’s sleeve. “Shh!” she demanded, waving a hand in his face. “What’s happening?”

They both leaned forward, squinting. Up ahead, on the bridge, Renji had his head tipped down toward Rukia’s. It was a little far away, but both their faces seemed very serious. It only lasted a moment, before he knelt down beside Touma, talking solemnly to the small boy, and pointing down at the water.

“Did you see that?” Hisana whispered breathlessly.

“Was he holding her hand?” Byakuya hissed back. Later, if one were to ask him at what moment he had become completely invested in his adjutant’s courtship of his sister, he would not have been able to answer, but it was, in fact, this one. He blamed his wife, whose enthusiasm in these matters was like a contagion.

“I think so! And he didn’t pull back a stump!”

Hisana turned to him, eyes narrowed. Byakuya mirrored the expression back at her.

“It is probably nothing,” Byakuya posited.

“Oh, surely. You know Rukia. It’s very difficult to get past her shell. Almost impossible, really.”

There was a long pause.

“Perhaps,” Byakuya suggested, “you should hold off on introducing him to other young ladies of the family until we are able to better discern Rukia’s motivations.”

Hisana nodded. “Good plan.”

Chapter Text

Renji pounded his fist against the doorframe. He waited. He pounded again. “KIRA!” he bellowed. “KIRA, IT’S ME, ABARAI! OPEN UP, I NEED YOU!”

Slowly, the door slid open, and the exhausted lieutenant of Squad 3 squinted at Renji with purple-shadowed eyes.

“Kira, how do noble people get married?” Renji demanded.

Izuru stared at him for a moment, taking into account the hour, the fact that Renji was dressed in his New Year’s best, and finally, the question. He rubbed at his hair and blinked, before realization penetrated his haze of sleep-deprivation. “What have you done?” he gasped, horrified.

“You look bad, buddy,” Renji observed, before he suddenly remembered the probable cause of Kira’s condition. “Aw, cripes, Kira, I’m sorry. I forgot about, you know.”

“My captain being sent to the Maggot’s Nest?” Izuru asked dryly.

Renji cringed. “Something crazy happened and I thought o’ you, and I really wasn’t thinkin’ and I’m sorry. I’ll just go.”

Kira rubbed at his face tiredly and tried to blink his eyes into focus. “You cannot just show up here and ask me how to marry a noble person and then leave again.” He managed a small smile. “Besides, if you and your captain hadn’t cracked open Aizen’s conspiracy, who knows how much worse things would be. I probably owe you one anyway.”

Renji hunched his shoulders. “I didn’t do anything, aside from trying and failing to beat up that Kurosaki kid.”

Izuru smashed a fist into Renji’s shoulder. “Whatever, meathead. The fact is, I am so sick of auditing the last forty years of squad records that digging you out of whatever horrifying situation you have enmeshed yourself in will be a delightful distraction. Let’s consider it a mutual favor.” He stepped aside and waved his hand. “Come inside and tell me whose honor you have besmirched. I’ll put on tea.”

“I haven’t besmirched anyone’s honor!” Renji excused, trailing his old school friend into his quarters. “Lady Kuchiki wants me to marry Rukia.”

Izuru almost tripped on his way into the kitchen and had to catch himself on the edge of the counter. “What?”

“Not, like, this minute. I guess she’s taken a liking to me, probably ‘cause her baby likes me, and she’s been trying to find a nice husband for Rukia, which seems like a terrible mistake, and she’s made an even worse mistake insofar as judging my suitability for this, and I’m trying to take advantage of it before she catches on.”

Izuru squinted at him. “She wants you to marry Rukia because she likes you? Not because of your decades of loyal pining and sad puppy dog eyes?”

“She doesn’t even know about that,” Renji nodded incredulously.

Izuru set the kettle on the stove. “So, let me get this straight. Back when we were in school, right after Rukia was adopted, you came up with this incredibly half-baked plan to distinguish yourself in the Gotei, impress Captain Kuchiki, defeat him in battle, and… you always refused to say the last part out loud. What was the goal, anyway? To see Rukia again? To prove to her that the only difference between you and a man born all of the wealth and advantage you can imagine is a little elbow grease? To ask for her hand in marriage?”

“Something like that,” Renji replied vaguely.

“And you’re telling me it worked?”

“I didn’t even have to fight Captain Kuchiki!” Renji exclaimed, waving his arms. “Which is good, because you weren’t there when he fought Aizen, but even with my bankai, I’m pretty sure he can still kick my ass.”

Izuru shook his head. “You are simultaneously the most blessed and cursed idiot I have ever met.”

“I know it,” Renji admitted sincerely.

“Okay, so let’s talk about what actually happened,” Izuru said, pulling out a pair of fine tea cups painted with elegant blue cranes. “Did they extend you an offer?”

“Huh?” Renji echoed. “No, nothin’ like that.”

“She just said, Mr. Abarai, you seem like a sporting fellow, would you like to marry my troublesome sister?”

“Rukia is not troublesome! And it was more like, she invited me over for dinner, and afterwards, Rukia said, ‘Oh, my sister wants to marry me off because I’m troublesome and she’s picked you’.”

“Because you seem like a chump?”

“I am absolutely a chump, but I am pretty sure Lady Kuchiki genuinely likes me.” He scratched his head. “It’s weird that a person exists who would marry Captain Kuchiki and also likes me.”

Izuru nodded thoughtfully. “Indeed. And how does Rukia feel about this?”

Renji made a face. “Well, she’s not a huge fan of it, but she didn’t shut it down, either. She’s willing to consider it.”

“Hmm,” Izuru replied with mild surprise. “And Captain Kuchiki?”

“He… doesn’t hate me,” Renji shrugged. “I’m not sure he knows what his wife is up to.”

“I see,” Izuru nodded, pouring hot water into the cups. “And what about you?”

“Me?” Renji repeated.

“Yes, Abarai, you get an opinion, too, you know.” Izuru studied his own friend carefully for a moment, before saying, “People can change a lot in forty years. You two didn’t exactly part on the best of terms.”

Renji’s face stiffened. “I know.”

Izuru took a cautious sip of tea. “I didn’t mean anything by it. You’re my friend and I just want to make sure you’re doing something that will make you happy.”

Renji huffed. “Look, I said Rukia wasn’t quite on board yet, and I ain’t interested in marrying anyone who ain’t interested in marrying me.”

“Granted,” Izuru nodded, waiting for him to go on.

Renji stared at his teacup as he spun it in his hands. “I blew it. Back then. I’m not… I can’t…” He let out a frustrated breath. “Of course I want to get to know her again. I’m sure some things have changed. But I can’t screw this up again. If this is my shot, I gotta take it.”

Izuru knew how much it embarrassed Renji to admit things like this. He felt very grateful that, despite the rocks their friendship had hit over the years, Abarai still trusted him this much. He cleared his throat. “Good. I have the landscape of it. You’re interested, Rukia is open. Lady Kuchiki is for it, Captain Kuchiki exists.”

Renji thought for a moment, and then nodded. “Yeah. That sums it up pretty good.”

“So, let’s talk about the mechanics, which is why I suspect you’ve come to me. In general, it is your prerogative, as the guy, to propose. Very noble families, like the Kuchiki, might extend an offer of Rukia’s hand if they were trying to create an alliance or propose a deal with another family. It’s also possible that could happen if someone performed some great service to the family-- they very well could have offered her to that Kurosaki boy that stormed the Seireitei for her, for example.”

Renji’s shoulders went a little stiff, and Izuru realized he had hit a nerve. Maybe not quite a nerve. A soft spot. “He’s not even dead,” Renji pointed out, not sounding very confident that this was an adequate objection.

“Right, and he’s got no status in Soul Society at all, and also, they didn’t,” Izuru reassured him. “My point is, we should expect that the ball is in your court, at this point. There are two halves to this: proposing to Rukia and getting her Clan Head’s approval. Now, if you were rich and powerful enough, and didn’t care about Rukia’s feelings, you could skip her entirely, and go straight to Captain Kuchiki. Rukia would still have to agree, but it would be mostly on her family to get her buy in.”

“I don’t want that,” Renji mumbled.

“Exactly. Plus, you’re broke. You are still broke, right? If you’re not, you owe me 400 kan for your bar tab on Shuuhei’s birthday.”

“You mean when I had to leave early to drag Shuuhei home because he was blasted?”

“It was 600, but I’m giving you the good friend discount.”

Renji made a troubled face. “I am still broke, but I can pay you back.”

Izuru waved a hand. “Forget it, that wasn’t the point. The point is, and I cannot believe I am going to say this, but unless you plan on winning the lottery or passing your captain’s exam in the next few weeks, you are going to need to charm your way into this family. Lady Kuchiki likes you, but I am going to go out on a limb and say that it’s Rukia’s opinion of you that’s ultimately going to sway her, no?”

Renji nodded curtly. “That was my impression.”

“Then all of this is really a lot less complicated than you think. Spend some time with Rukia. See if she’s still the person you remember. Try to stay on Lord and Lady Kuchiki’s good side. Don’t jump the gun. If it’s meant to be, she should be so thrilled by the time you ask, she can help you wrangle the proper approvals from her sister and brother-in-law.”

Renji sighed, and took a long sip of tea. “What kinda odds you think I’ve got?”

Izuru gave a little shrug. “I’m frankly dumbfounded you’ve gotten this far. We are outside of the range of calculable probabilities.”

Renji fidgeted with the sleeve of his haori. “Do you really think… that Rukia might…”

Izuru settled his chin on one hand. “Abarai, in the time that I saw the two of you together, I found you and Rukia to have the most incomprehensible rapport I have ever seen between two people. I found her to be utterly impenetrable and you to be…” He trailed off. “Look, we’re outside of my area of expertise. I hope I was helpful on the nuts and bolts stuff.”

Renji’s eyebrows shot up. “Yeah! Yeah, thanks, Kira. You were super helpful. I’ll get outta here now, so you can get some sleep, I’m sorry to--”

“Hey!” Izuru interrupted him. “I didn’t tell you to leave. I just said we were out of my depth. Do you wanna call Momo? I’m pretty sure she hasn’t slept in a month, either.”

“Er…” Renji frowned. “Are you really sure--?”

Izuru was already on the phone. “Hey, Hinamori! How’s the endless cycle of self-recrimination going? Oh, you’re stress-baking again? Perfect. You want to get overly invested in Abarai’s personal life with me? Yeah, come over as soon as they’re done. No, you’re going to have to wait and hear him explain it, you would never believe me if I tried to tell you. Okay, great!” Izuru flipped his phone shut. “Momo’s in. She’ll be here in twenty minutes with dorayaki.” He paused. “You’re not imposing. This is good for us. Let us have this.”

“Ah,” said Renji. “Did you say dorayaki?”

Chapter Text

Rukia studied her own face in the mirror as her maid carefully unpinned her hair. She wondered if she was pretty. People told her she was sometimes. Being pretty wasn’t something she usually cared much about. She had two ice-based sword attacks, a third-rank kidou master certification, and was cleared to use shunpo in combat. She was the Fourth Seat of Squad Thirteen, and ever since she came back to duty, her captain had been making vague little hints about the vice-captain’s examination, something he didn’t do toward Kotetsu or Kotsubaki (both of whom she could beat at arm wrestling).

Anyone who wanted to marry her, she had long assumed, was in it for the surname, first and foremost. And who could blame them?

She was pretty sure Renji wasn’t in it for the surname. She wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

“You have to go, Rukia, they’re your family.”

Rukia chewed the inside of her cheek. She’d gnawed over that one for years, like a dog worrying a bone. Why couldn’t he have appealed to her sense of greed? Told her how great the noble life would be, all rich silks and richer food? She could have gone off with a cheeky wink and a mercenary grin. Maybe she could have convinced her family to still let her see him, toss a few favors to someone who had done so much for her in the past. Or maybe she would have just refused altogether, stayed at the Academy, virtuously giving up the fancy life to live according to her own principles. To stay with the only person left of the little family she’d made for herself.

Instead, he had pushed her away, as though the blood that she shared with Hisana had anything on the blood they had spilled for each other, time and again. She loved Hisana now of course, and Touma, and maybe Byakuya, a little, but that was a thing she had decided. A choice she had made-- to give her love to the people who wanted her, instead of the person who didn’t.

But… but maybe she had it all wrong. Maybe Renji had wanted to be the altruistic one, hadn’t wanted to stand in the way of her happiness. Maybe he had just said the first stupid thing that popped into his thick skull. Why had she spent so many years trying to assign meaning to the words of a knuckleheaded boy who used to get stuck trying to jump out of the window of the zanjutsu dojo in his eagerness to catch her attention? More than once, even.

She wondered if he thought she was pretty, either now or back then.

There was a light rap on the door.

Mikan nudged her. “Miss Rukia?”

“Ah, come in?” Rukia called, and Hisana’s face poked into the room. “Oh, hello, Sister.”

“Go have a cup of tea, will you, Mikan?” Hisana dismissed Rukia’s maid. “I want to dote on my sister for a bit.”

“Yes, Lady,” Mikan nodded, setting the last kanzashi on Rukia’s dressing table, and getting up to leave.

“Sooooo,” Hisana drew out, picking up a hairbrush and settling herself behind Rukia. “His manners could use a little work, eh?”

Rukia raised an eyebrow at her sister in the mirror. “Save it for Byakuya. I’m wise to your tricks.”

Hisana grinned mischievously. “So is Byakuya, he just enjoys indulging me.”

“If you believe that, I think he’s finally managed to pull one over on you.”

“Perhaps,” Hisana teased. “But I didn’t come here to talk about Byakuya.”

Rukia set her jaw. Feigning indifference would only play directly into Hisana’s hands. No, directness was her only hope. “He’s not terrible,” she announced. “Abarai, I mean. We both know how terrible Byakuya is.”

Hisana waved a hand dismissively. “Yes, that goes without saying. “Not terrible”? Goodness, I feel like I should order my sister-of-the-bride kimono!”

“Here is my offer,” Rukia plowed on, ignoring this tomfoolery. “I am willing to give Lieutenant Abarai a chance. But in exchange, I need some space. I barely know the man.” She tried to meet her sister’s eyes in the mirror, but Hisana was concentrating on untangling a knot that may or may not have actually existed. “Can you do that? Can you stop throwing lordlings and fancy boys at me for five minutes so I can actually consider one of them?”

Hisana hummed softly. “That seems very reasonable…” she said lightly, and Rukia prepared for the other shoe to drop. “As long as you actually give him a chance, and don’t just use this as a ploy to get me off your back.” Hisana looked up. “You’re very charming, Rukia, when you want to be, and Lieutenant Abarai seems like the sort of upright young gentleman you would rope into helping you pull a grift on your loving sister.”

“Hisana!” Rukia squawked. “He is neither upright, nor a gentleman, and also, I would never pull a grift on you!”

Hisana’s eyes were steely in the mirror. “That’s a rather harsh thing to say about someone you just met. And we both know there’s nothing shameful about an honest, well-executed grift.”

Rukia sighed. Well, she had been looking for an opportunity. It wasn’t a good one, but at least it was an opportunity. “Er, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

Hisana cocked an eyebrow. “Has there?”

Rukia picked up one of her kanzashi, adorned with a green and white water lily. She fiddled with it, running her thumb over the smooth enamel. “I wasn’t lying. I don’t know Lieutenant Abarai very well. But, er… this isn’t… exactly… the first time we’ve met.”

“He was involved in your rescue, no? And something about jail?”

Rukia pressed the pads of her finger over the sharp points of the hairpin. “Ye-esss. That’s all true. But also…” She took a deep breath and then forced the words up from her heart and out her mouth at a speed that would have impressed her brother-in-law. “Renji’s from Inuzuri. I knew him there. We came to the Seireitei together, enrolled at the Academy together. I haven’t spoken to him in years. He’s not a stranger, but he might as well be.” There. It was out.

Hisana leaned forward, eyes narrowed. “So, in Inuzuri, would you classify him as just someone you knew, or a friend? Or maybe a… rival?”

Rukia squeezed her eyes shut guiltily. “I may have pulled a grift or two with him!”

Hisana gasped. “Rukia! How could you?”

“I’m sorry, Sister!” Rukia wailed.

“How?” Hisana wailed in return, with the vibrato of a professional actress. “How could my own sister underestimate me like this?” Her face resolved into a deadpan. “Really, Rukia. They do a little profile in the Bulletin whenever someone new makes Captain or Vice-Captain. It listed Renji’s home district-- as if I couldn’t tell he was from the deep South after thirty seconds of talking to him--cripes, that accent is nostalgic. I also happened to notice that he graduated from school the same year you would have. There’s no way you wouldn’t have known him-- you would have met at the Consolidated Shinigami Recruitment Station, if nothing else.”

Rukia hunched with shame.

“I suspected there was something more to it, though-- why else would a young man like that want to work for your brother?”

“The position was open?” Rukia offered hopefully.

“The vice-captaincy of the Thirteenth has been open for years! He didn’t even apply-- presumably he didn’t want to be your commanding officer--”

“I wish you wouldn’t gossip about me with my captain,” Rukia groaned.

“I wasn’t,” Hisana excused. “We were gossiping about Renji. No, Byakuya came home, very pleased about this absolutely excessive job application he had received, the first day the position was open. Mark my words, Renji was waiting for Shirogane to retire. I bet he even hangs out at that awful sunglasses shop.”

“I don’t know why he does anything,” Rukia excused. “I haven’t talked to him in years. Maybe he has a crush on Brother.”

“Byakuya wasn’t the one he couldn’t keep his eyes off at dinner,” Hisana returned pointedly. “That kimono was a good call, no?”

Rukia wanted to shoot off another sharp-tongued retort, but she came up empty. Had Renji really been looking at her during dinner? She had been too grumpy to pay attention. It was highly likely Hisana was imagining things, or at best, exaggerating, but her stomach fluttered at the thought, anyway.

“Childhood friends, I supposed,” Hisana was grumbling. “Academy sweethearts, possibly. But your old grifting partner! I don’t believe this. I don’t believe you.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Rukia excused, knowing full well it had been exactly like that. “He’s the only other person I ever met down there with any decent spiritual pressure. And he’s painfully honest, he wasn’t even a very good con man.” Somehow this lie seemed more disloyal than anything else she had said about Renji. People were always trusting his stupid, honest face. He was creative and charismatic and had an excellent sense of people. He had never once let her down on a job. The only thing that made him a bad con artist was how much he hated doing it.

Hisana’s face had gone still and serious. “You left him. When Byakuya adopted you.”

“We were already drifting apart,” Rukia sniffed. It wasn’t exactly a lie, but it wasn’t enough to cover the larger truth they were both thinking. Of course she had left him. That’s what we do, isn’t it, Sister?

Hisana was brushing Rukia’s hair a bit too roughly, and Rukia let her. She clenched the hairpin in her fist, letting it bite into her palm.

“You’re very lucky,” Hisana finally said, her voice rough. “To get a second chance. Don’t… don’t make too many assumptions about his feelings. People… can be more forgiving than you expect.”

Rukia didn’t loosen her grip on the hairpin. She wanted to absolve her sister, to tell her she had done nothing wrong. But she couldn’t do that without absolving herself in the bargain, and that wasn't something she had any right to do. She didn’t particularly want Renji’s absolution, either, but maybe that’s what it would take to finally prove to Hisana that she really and truly forgave her. “Fine!” she announced, trying to pull the conversation out of this treacherous territory. “What proof do you want that I am honestly and truly entertaining that overgrown doofus as a romantic prospect? Wear his hair ribbon tied around my arm? Buy matching sunglasses? Smooch him in public? I assure you, Byakuya will hate all of those options.”

Hisana straightened, pulling herself back together as well. “Well, you have to stop calling him a doofus, for one.”

“That, I refuse to do.”

Hisana reached around Rukia to place the hairbrush back on the table, and smoothed her hair one last time with her hand. “Maybe you could just tell me how it’s going once in a while. I hear that’s a thing sisters do sometimes.”

Rukia swallowed. “I can do that.”

Hisana smiled, but it didn’t reach her eyes. She leaned forward, and kissed the back of Rukia’s head quickly before rising. “And don’t you worry about Byakuya. I have him under control.”

“Do you, though?” Rukia asked.

Hisana frowned thoughtfully. “Yes. Whatever you decide about Renji, I’ll bring him around.” She frowned. “But, uh, I’ve been playing a little fast and loose with details, so do me a favor, and try to talk to Byakuya about this as little as possible.”

“That,” said Rukia, “is something I can definitely agree to.”

Chapter Text

Renji had expected there might be some weirdness at the office the next day, but the last thing he had expected was Captain Kuchiki to be personable.

“Welcome back, Abarai,” he greeted pleasantly. “How was the Vice-Captains’ Meeting?”

Renji froze, wondering what kind of trap this was. “I’ll have my Vice-Captains’ Meeting Summary Memo to you by the end of the day, sir. I didn’t forget. The meeting only let out just now.”

“I was being conversational, Abarai,” Captain Kuchiki informed him. “And perhaps I was curious as to if there was any interesting news, perhaps… vis a vis promotions? The Head-Captain was irritatingly vague about the topic of replacement captains at our last meeting.”

“Oh!” Renji breathed out a sigh of relief. He would never have had the nerve to call Captain Kuchiki a gossip, but the man did enjoy being up on the latest Gotei scuttlebutt. “Well, it definitely seems like there aren’t gonna be any straight promotions. If we hadn’t caught Aizen and his cronies, I think it mighta been a different story-- trying to promote people real quick, whether or not they’re exactly ready.” Renji had spent a considerable amount of time, actually, trying to imagine Ikkaku getting strong-armed into taking a squad. Renji wasn’t sure which was more horrifying-- Ikkaku in charge of anything, or Squad 11 without the two people who kept it from devolving into utter chaos, since wherever Ikkaku went, Yumichika would surely follow.

“Indeed, that would have proven disastrous,” Byakuya agreed. “Captaincy is a serious business. Only a fool would accept such an appointment without the proper resume.”

Renji tilted his head to one side. “I dunno. Some people are good at rising to the occasion. Captain Hitsugaya, f’r instance, seems to be doing pretty well.”

Captain Kuchiki’s face went stony. “It would have been difficult not to make some sort of improvement over his predecessor.”

Renji liked to leave the strong personal opinions to his captain, so he soldiered onward. “Lieutenant Sasakibe had a few words and stern looks toward some of the older Vice-Captains about training for bankai. Omaeda’s never gonna get bankai, he’s barkin’ up the wrong tree, there. Kotetsu, maybe, but I can’t see her leavin’ the Fourth. I think Lieutenant Hisagi might be goin’ that direction, but Lieutenants Kira and Hinamori sound like they’d be just as happy to have someone new come in and take over.”

“They are both very young,” Byakuya agreed.

“They’re about the same age as me,” Renji agreed. “We were in the same class at school.”

“You are very young,” Byakuya informed him, seemingly having misinterpreted his intent. Captain Kuchiki did not say the words “a baby”, but a space hung in the air, exactly the size and shape of the words “a baby”, spoken in a mellifluous baritone.

Renji thought back on what Kira had said the night before. “Unless you’re planning on winning the lottery or passing the captain’s exam…” Renji didn’t have much faith in lotteries, but in the grand scheme of things, that white haori wasn’t entirely out of the question. Not now, obviously. Good gravy, he’d seen Kira’s stack of logbooks and the bags under his and Hinamori’s eyes. Who the hell would want to take over a squad that had been run as a front for a gaslighting madman? But maybe Byakuya expected to see more ambition from a man seeking his sister’s hand. And, all joking aside, Renji was perfectly aware that his ass would be out on the street the very minute Touma earned his lieutenant’s papers, so it was in his best interests to have his next career move lined up before then. “Speakin’ of which!” he blurted out, a bit too high on the volume.

Byakuya looked startled.

“Speaking of which,” Renji started again, a little softer this time. “My bankai. You said… you said it was gonna take some practice. I been thinking about this a lot. I always thought of Zabimaru as a melee-type zanpakutou and-- well, they are-- but the big thing is control, y’know, which is done with my spiritual pressure, and they aren’t that different, you see, than-- than Senbonzakura Kageyoshi.” That could have gone smoother. He had been thinking about asking for a while, but hadn’t decided for sure yet, hadn’t planned out what to say. It was too late now, he just had to keep going. Renji dove into a deep bow. “Sir, will you help train me with my bankai?”

Renji raised his head, just a fraction, trying to gauge his captain’s reaction. Captain Kuchiki looked like he was carved of marble. Unfortunately, that was just how he looked most of the time. Renji turned his eyes back to the floor.

Finally, Byakuya spoke. “Of course. As your captain, it is my duty. I warn you, though, Lieutenant, that if your assessment is correct, you are in for an arduous journey. It took far more time and effort to master my bankai than to achieve it.”

“I’m not afraid of hard work, sir,” Renji barked, too loud again. “And I know it’ll take a long time. That’s why I can’t afford to waste any!”

There was another long silence, and finally, Byakuya said, “I will work up a schedule. I expect that this will not affect your other responsibilities.”

“No, sir!” Renji replied, straightening up.

“Including that Vice-Captains’ Meeting Summary Memo.”

“Getting right on it, sir!”

Settled at his desk, shortly after, as he was mixing up some ink, Renji reflected on the fact that Byakuya had not bothered to critique any of his dubious etiquette from dinner the night before, and wondered if that was a good sign or a bad one. He decided that was going to be a losing battle, no matter what, and he might as well double down on being a good lieutenant. The best lieutenant, definitely on his way to captain. There was no way he could go wrong with that.

Chapter Text

Eighteen months ago

“You should rest,” the 28th Head of the Kuchiki Clan informed Rukia, regarding her with his cold, grey eyes. She had found him sitting in the library, Hisana’s favorite room. It was dim and chilly. The shoji that led to the gardens were shut tight, and the shutters as well, but Rukia could feel the snow swirling roughly in the wind that battered the house. She could feel it in her heart.

“How can I rest now?” she tried to keep her tone measured.

“I did not say you should sleep,” Byakuya responded, nodding to the zabuton on the floor across the table from him. “I should hope that the Fourth Seat of Squad Thirteen would know how to rest her body while keeping her mind alert. It is the essence of tracking Hollows.”

Grudgingly, Rukia sank into seiza. The normally uncomfortable sitting position was a relief after hours of pacing the floorboards, the weight of her exhausted sister heavy against her shoulder.

“Tea?” Byakuya offered. “I am afraid it is a bit bracing.”

“Bracing is good,” Rukia nodded. She tried to look at his face without staring. Purple shadows limned his eyes. How long had Hisana labored, anyway? The hours of walking up and down the hallways had blurred together. Singing rowdy old Rukongai songs, mostly together, with Rukia taking over when Hisana needed to lean into the pain of a contraction. Breaks to rub Hisana’s back or feet. Holding bits of crushed ice to Hisana’s lips. Both Hisana and Rukia’s maids hovered nearby like loyal lieutenants, ready to fetch things or take over, should Rukia falter.

Rukia appreciated their presence, but she would never falter, not in this duty. She had held strong right until that stupid, noble doctor had declared that Hisana was “in transition” and ejected Rukia from the room.

Byakuya carefully poured her a cup and passed it over. Rukia couldn’t remember her brother-in-law ever pouring her a cup of tea before. Hisana was the one who poured the tea. “How does she fare?” he asked. “And you need not lie to me.”

Rukia wiggled her fingers around the cup. It was too hot to hold, really, but she didn’t want to put it down. “She is tired,” she replied. “But fierce. You underestimate her.”

“I do not. I merely trust your frankness over that of the doctor.”

“I do not trust the doctor, either,” Rukia was quick to announce. “He said that she has moved into the last stage. It is the shortest, but the most dangerous. He told her to lie down and said I could not stay.”

Byakuya’s grey eyes bored into her. “Have you assisted at a childbirth before?”

Rukia’s cheeks flushed red. “No,” she admitted, her voice defensive. In this, as in so many things, she had fallen down as a sister. All her life, she had thrown in with the boys instead of the women. She could gut a squirrel, climb a tree, purify a Hollow, heal or break an arm as the situation called for. She didn’t know how to braid hair or perform a dance or talk a sister out taking foolhardy risks with her precarious health.

“You resent me,” Byakuya said suddenly, and Rukia’s shoulders went stiff. Byakuya took a sip of his tea. “Believe me, you cannot harm me with that blade; I have cut myself with it enough already.”

“I didn’t…” Rukia started, and suddenly had nothing further to say.

What would it be like, she wondered, to live in this house, with this man, without Hisana’s warmth? She would like to think that she had nothing in common with him, but in fact, they shared a number of terrible personality traits: stubbornness, pride, cynicism, a tendency to close themselves off. Hisana was just as stubborn than either of them, though, and her brilliant, teasing humor brought color and joy to the household. Rukia knew that she and Byakuya would protect Hisana against a thousand enemies, but what could they do in a situation where swords were of no use? And where would they turn their swords, if there were nothing left to protect?

“She is a difficult person to love,” Byakuya broke Rukia from her reverie. “She does what she will. I could no sooner forbid her from this than I could dissuade her from scouring the Rukon for you.” He was silent for a moment. “I thought she would never regain her full health, but having you back again has given her strength. I cannot imagine how unstoppable she will be after bearing my son.”

Rukia wrinkled her nose, indignant at his presumptuousness. “It could be a girl.”

Byakuya contemplated this briefly. “I am sure she would take great glee in my being further outnumbered, but I feel that her desire to spite my aunts outweighs her love of exasperating me.”

Rukia narrowed her eyes at him. Do you even know how this works? she wanted to ask him, but instead, she sipped at her tea, which was just barely approaching a drinkable temperature. It was very strong, but delicious, floral, with a light, natural sweetness.

“The fool doctor said it’s taking so long because the baby is big and healthy and Sister is so small,” Rukia finally said. “If I had been around, I would have told her not to marry someone so stupidly tall.” Her mouth snapped shut in horror. Rukia did not say such things to her noble brother-in-law. Rukia hardly ever said anything to her noble brother-in-law. Hisana might tease him, but she was his Lady Wife, his best beloved. She knew where best to aim her blunted arrows to provoke a smile or a rejoinder without prodding the sleeping beast of his legendary pride. He’s going to kick me out, Rukia’s heart seized. Out of this room, possibly out of his house entirely.

But instead, the Kuchiki Clan Head snorted softly. “Your absence was very fortunate for me. I am sure she would have taken your advice to heart,” Byakuya replied, and Rukia had absolutely no idea if he was being serious or not.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “That wasn’t nice. You’ve always been very kind to my sister, and to me.”

Byakuya stared back at her, curiously. Finally, he said, “I am also sorry. Your presence here is always appreciated. Thank you for staying with Hisana.”

They sat in silence, sipping their tea, Rukia unsuccessfully willing her muscles to relax. Had he gone strange and punchy out of tiredness and concern for his wife? Had she always overestimated his coldness, too fearful of provoking his wrath to see past his fierce reputation? Or perhaps… perhaps, though she never would have guessed it, he did harbor a tiny bit of familial affection for her. He had lost most of his immediate family long ago, and she gathered that he was not truly close to the other stern, powerful men he called friends. He had been sitting here, alone, for hours.

“It’s cold in here,” Rukia finally observed. “Is the kotatsu out of charcoal?”

“I keep throwing the servants out,” Byakuya admitted. “I am sure they are needed elsewhere. If you are cold, I will have it relit immediately.”

“I don’t get cold,” Rukia replied. “But Sister will have my head if she finds out I let you sit in here being cold and moody.”

Byakuya gave off another little snort.

Suddenly, there was a shuffle of feet outside the door, and Byakuya and Rukia both sat up straight.

“What is it?” Byakuya demanded, on his feet before anyone even had a chance to knock.

The shoji slid open, Seike, the head of household staff entered, joy overwriting the age lines on his face. “Lord Byakuya,” he choked out. “Your Lady is delivered of a son.”

Hisana was sitting up in bed. Her face was a bit pale, but she otherwise looked as fresh as a daisy. Her eyes flickered upward as what sounded like two water buffalo tried to jostle their way into her room, but her face remained tilted down toward the bundle of white silk blankets in her arms. “Here is the moment of truth,” she hummed in a little sing-song. “As to who is more interested in you and who cares more about me.”

Rukia, jammed into the doorway by Byakuya’s elbow, was momentarily dumbfounded. Obviously, her sister was of the utmost importance, but how could she ignore her sister’s glory, this crowning achievement that Hisana had wished and worked for over so many years?

Byakuya evidently had no such compunctions. “You,” he gasped thickly, pushing past Rukia to fall at his wife’s bedside and press her hand to his face.

Hisana looked shocked, not having expected her sallies to have such an effect. “What did that doctor tell you?” she asked. “You weren’t worried for me, were you? Women have babies all the time, you know.”

“All women are not you,” Byakuya replied, softly.

Rukia hung back in the entrance, unsure of what to do. Should she leave? She should have waited, this moment was for her sister and brother-in-law. Just as her feet started to shuffle backwards, Hisana called out “Rukia! Come take this lump of lead with your big shinigami muscles! This child is too heavy to hold in one hand, and Byakuya won’t give me back my other one!”

Pulling herself together, Rukia dashed to her sister’s side, and took the bundle of blankets into her own arms. “Some people have no appreciation of all your hard work,” she announced boldly. The baby seemed mostly asleep, although he scrunched his wrinkly little face as he was passed over. “I have never seen a more perfect child, truly,” she went on. It was true, of course, in the sense that she had never actually seen a newborn before. “He has both your strength and good looks, Sister!”

“I should hope not, he looks rather red and smushy to me,” Hisana replied.

“A future Gotei captain!” Rukia went on. “Head-Captain, possibly! Probably a poet, as well and an artist, surely! A very credit to the Kuchiki!”

“Byakuya, please go admire your son before Rukia proclaims him the next Soul King,” Hisana ordered dryly.

“He could be,” Rukia protested as Byakuya rose to his full height on the other side of Hisana’s bed, and regarded her icily. Unwilling to give in to her brother-in-law’s theatrics, Rukia gave the baby a last cuddle and a kiss on the forehead. “I am your auntie,” she informed him. “I will teach you everything I know. Everything.”

As Rukia finally passed the baby over to his father, Hisana grabbed her arm and tugged her down onto the bed. Her older sister pulled her close, burying her face in her hair. “Ah, Rukia, thank you so much. I could not have done it without you.”

“I rather think you would have,” Rukia informed her. “But I am glad I could be with you. I will always be here for you. And him.”

“I know,” Hisana whispered back to her.

A bit embarrassed at all this emotion, Rukia chanced a look up at her brother-in-law, who had been strangely silent. Not that he wasn’t usually silent, but this was the sort of occasion he would usually take to pontificate a bit. He was examining the baby, a look of utter bushwackedness on his face. Rukia stifled a laugh. Byakuya reminded her of nothing so much as the time her childhood friend, Renji, had unexpectedly speared an absolutely massive carp-- the way he had stood there in the river, mouth slack, eyes wide, arms wrapped around a flopping two-foot long fish, unable to believe his good fortune.

Rukia was fairly certain Byakuya wouldn’t appreciate being compared to an Inuzuri street rat any more than he would appreciate his son and heir being compared to a carp.

“Well?” Hisana demanded in her rudest voice, the one she used when she was trying to get Byakuya riled up. “Did I do it right? Did I make a Kuchiki? Or is it back to the drawing board?”

“Rukia is correct,” Byakuya managed, his voice rough and low. “I see much of you in him. He is perfect.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Hisana sighed dramatically, as if she had really been worried. She shot Rukia a conspiratorial glance and wagged her eyebrows slightly. “Remind me again, the name you picked out? Do you think it’s fitting?”

“You will find out,” Byakuya replied, in a gentle tone more directed at the baby than at his wife, “in seven days, at the naming ceremony, as is tradition.”

Hisana sighed. “It was worth a try. Well, I’ve got to call him something until then. Rukia, what shall it be?”

“Chappy,” Rukia replied automatically.

“Chappy, it is,” Hisana nodded curtly. “Seven days, or until we get a real name.”

“We must put up with them,” Byakuya solemnly informed his heir, “because we have no choice. But at least there are two of us against two of them, now.”

Rukia saw her sister opening her mouth again, so she slipped her arm around Hisana’s back and gave her a quick squeeze. “Let him have this,” she whispered, “we both know it won’t last long.”

Hisana just laughed and leaned back into her sister’s embrace.

Chapter Text

“I should have worn my uniform,” Renji grumbled, adjusting the neckline of his new kimono. It was a deep blue, with a subtle, lighter blue fletching pattern. It wasn’t a particularly fancy kimono, but at least he’d never spilled anything or bled on it, which was more than he could say for every other kimono he currently owned.

“You look very handsome,” Momo informed him, smacking his hand away. She had helped him shop, in the sense that she insisted he get a new kimono and then rejected all the ones he liked in favor of this one. She had said the fletching pattern symbolized good luck and determination, an arrow loosed from the bow, never to return. Also, she said the blue made his eyes look nice.

“We shouldn’t have brought Izuru,” Renji replied grimly. “How am I supposed to look handsome next to him?”

Izuru, who had endured decades of looking pathetically short, pale, and scrawny standing next to Renji in group photos, shot him an absolutely withering glare. Izuru’s kimono was a lighter, slate blue. It was an old one that he had already owned, but there was a lot to be said for quality of materials and tailoring.

“You both look very handsome,” Momo replied, much to Izuru’s discomfiture.

“You, ah, also look, very nice,” Izuru managed, but Momo wasn’t paying any attention.

“And the goal,” she continued on blithely, “is to look like the sort of person who owns clothes that aren’t uniforms. Look around-- how many shihakushou do you see?”

“Not enough,” Renji grunted. Squad Six was supposed to be on security detail, and even though he had personally handled the volunteer wrangling, he had delegated the actual management of this dog-and-pony show to Fifth Seat Kuchiki Takehiko. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. The event was both high-profile and unimportant, and Takehiko was both eminent and a half-asser. Renji was definitely regretting not taking on the responsibility personally.

“This is fun,” Hinamori declared, admiring a table full of ikebana up for judging. “We should do things like this more often. Oooh, this one is so pretty! Izuru, it’s Captain Unohana’s, did you know she did flower arranging? Hers will win for sure.”

“She teaches a class,” Izuru pointed out.

“Really?” Momo chirped. “Gosh, I would love to learn ikebana.”

Renji squinted at the paper map of the Botanical Garden he had picked up at the entrance. “Stop messin’ around. The Kuchiki got a whole booth around here somewhere. Ugh, I hate maps. I’m just gonna try to feel out Captain’s reiatsu.”

Izuru snatched the map out of his hand. “You made us come to this stupid orchid show with you in the interest of appearing to be a person who would just casually go to an orchid show. Cool your jets. You can’t just barrel through this place like you’re searching for ryouka.”

Momo was examining the map over Izuru’s shoulder. “Here’s their kamon! It looks like we just need to go down this main aisle and turn left after the fountain.”

“Don’t try to pretend you know things about orchids,” Izuru warned Renji. “Just say they’re pretty or you like the color. Lord and Lady Kuchiki are both regular contributors to the Royal Botanical Digest, you will only embarrass yourself if you try to fake it.”

“Do you… do you read the Royal Botanical Digest?” Renji asked, half-horrified.

“The Fourth keeps it in the waiting areas,” Izuru excused. “Sometimes, shifts were slow.”

Renji set his jaw. “We should leave. I do not know any of this stuff. I didn’t even know there was a Royal Botanical Digest.”

Momo looped her elbow through his cheerfully. “We are absolutely not leaving. There is no kinder thing you can do for a person with a hobby than to show interest in it. I thought it was very sweet of you to come.”

“And we’re here to cover for you,” Izuru added. “So if you get stuck, just keep your mouth shut, and Momo or I will jump in.”

“Okay,” Renji agreed, as they rounded the fountain, which was much larger than it appeared on the map, and fed several little artificial rivers that branched off to various other parts of the Gardens. They crossed a little bridge into a double row of long tables, most of which were empty but for one or two pots of tall, elegant orchids. A number of tall, beautiful people conversed in quiet voices.

“I should probably know who most of these people are, right?” Renji hissed to Izuru. Suddenly, he perked up and gave a quick nod to a bored looking young man who was clearly assisting an elderly relative. “That was Taniguchi, he’s in my squad.”

Taniguchi waved back hopefully. Renji had never seen anyone who looked more like they wanted to be assigned 30 laps, but he wasn’t sure Captain Kuchiki would appreciate that.

“You’re doing fine, you’ll pick it up,” Izuru assured him.

“That’s Lady Makino,” Momo subtly tipped her head toward a woman in a very ostentatious kimono. “She’s a famous actress. The man she’s talking to is Lord Miyawaki. He is very rich and recently a widower.”

“Don’t overwhelm him!” Izuru scolded.

“Right, sorry!” Momo apologized eagerly.

“There it is!” Renji exclaimed as he caught sight of the Kuchiki booth. He pointed wildly, only narrowly avoiding whacking Kira in the head.

“Casual!” Izuru scolded him again, swatting at his hand.

It was too late, though, because Lady Kuchiki had spotted them, and was pointing back at Renji and waving frantically.

“She can do that, she’s the noble,” Izuru hissed at him. “That doesn’t mean you should!”

“Sorry! Sorry!”

“You’re fine!” Momo patted his arm. “Do you remember the introduction order?”

“Her, you, you, her,” Renji recited, as though he were trying to commit the steps of a drill to memory. “And then Kira, you, because it’s squad numerical order.”

“Perfect! Don’t forget to smile!”

Lady Kuchiki had turned around and was talking to someone behind her. “--look who’s here! It’s Lieutenant Abarai!”

As they drew closer, Renji spotted Rukia sitting in the back of the booth, her nose stuffed in a paperback novel. Her big, violet eyes slowly appeared over the top of it, wide as saucers. Renji dipped into a low bow. “Good afternoon, Lady Kuchiki, Lady Rukia!”

Byakuya was deep in a quiet, intense conversation with a spectacled gentleman at the other end of the table, but his eyes flickered over at Renji’s approach, and he gave a slight nod of acknowledgement. Renji had gotten used to honing in on his captain’s voice, and he distinctly caught the words, “--my second, dependable fellow--” before he went back to talking about root tip pigmentation.

Renji had absolutely no capacity at the moment for interrogating the warm feeling those four words sent bubbling in his chest, so he was grateful when Lady Kuchiki proclaimed, “Imagine seeing you here! What a delightful surprise, wouldn’t you say, Rukia?”

Slowly, Rukia lowered her book. Renji steeled himself for a Full Rukia Scowl, How Dare He Disturb Her in Her Place of… of whatever it was she did here. Instead, her mouth was twisted into the awkward, involuntary half-smile of someone who had no idea what their face was doing. “Uh, yeah,” she replied, and then, miraculously, the other half of her mouth drew up into an actual smile. It was a small one, to be sure, but between that and the “dependable fellow” comment, Renji would have fallen down on the ground and died, if Izuru hadn’t had the presence of mind to kick him in the ankle.

“Lady Kuchiki Hisana,” he barked out, “may I introduce my friends, Lieutenants Kira Izuru and Hinamori Momo, Acting Captains of the 3rd and 5th Divisions, respectively.”

“It is a great honor to meet you both, Acting Captains,” Hisana replied, her voice warm and friendly.

“It is an honor to meet you, too!” Momo replied brightly.

“‘Lieutenant’ will do nicely, though,” Kira corrected demurely, “as hopefully our current positions will be quite temporary.”

“As you like,” Hisana agreed, “Although even temporary authority deserves the appropriate respects. Are you one of the Asamoya Kira? I had the opportunity to work on a charity project with Lady Manami recently, and I was very impressed with her-- a very strong-willed and capable woman.”

“Yes,” Kira agreed stiltedly. Renji had met Lady Manami, and knew she had the supernatural ability to materialize out of nowhere and twist Kira’s ear if he were to say something unbecoming of her. “My sister.”

Hisana seemed surprised. “You must be the family head, then? I believe she said she only had one brother.”

“Er, yes,” Kira replied.

Kira’s family was much reduced from the height of its power, and Izuru had occasionally expressed the opinion that the name was likely to die out with him. Renji wasn’t quite sure what was going on, but he suspected that Lady Kuchiki was giving him a significantly higher amount of respect than he was due.

“I’ve never been up to Asamoya before, but I hear it’s very lovely,” Hisana went on. “A bit up in the mountains, isn’t it?”

“I’ve summered with the Kira,” Renji broke in grandiosely, meaning that he had spent a few school vacations with Izuru at his overgrown estate in North Rukongai. Those were some of the most peaceful memories of Renji’s life, tromping through cold mountain streams with Kira, building campfires to the delight of the younger Kira sisters, sitting out on the engawa when he couldn’t sleep, staring at the stars and hoping that Rukia was half as happy as he was. “Excellent place, well worth the side trip if you’re ever in the neighborhood.”

“I shall have to drop by sometime,” Hisana replied, a laugh in her voice, and Renji wondered what he had said that was so funny.

Kira looked downright mortified.

“Sister, come chat with us,” Hisana exhorted. “Have you met Lieutenant Kira? He’s very charming and I hear he has a house in the country!”

Kira’s ears were practically on fire.

“We’ve met,” Rukia assured her sister, packing away her paperback. “He’s very nice. Not stupidly tall like some people. But you and I had a deal, remember, Sister?”

“Ah, yes,” Hisana sighed, without actually looking very disappointed. “We did.”

Izuru shot Renji a questioning look, but Renji just shook his head slightly. He had no clue, either.

“So, what brings you three to the Orchid Show?” Hisana asked. “My husband was pleased to see some of his men had ‘volunteered’ their time to stand gate duty, but you don’t appear to be in uniform, Lieutenant.”

“Yes, well, Fifth Seat Kuchiki is handling things,” Renji excused, keeping in mind how close Takehiko was to the main branch. “Very competent man, our Fifth Seat.”

Hisana raised an eyebrow. “Byakuya was very surprised at the number of volunteers Cousin Takehiko seems to have mustered.

“I may have helped with that,” Renji admitted modestly. Squad Six was pretty easy to strong arm into things, generally, but he’d found that if you spread a few rumors about a “special duty” relating to “the captain’s personal interests”, there’d be a line out the door.

“Let’s just say your efforts were… appreciated,” Hisana noted. “So, to what do we owe the pleasure?”

“The weather is so gorgeous today,” Hinamori explained, “and Lieutenant Kira and I have been so cooped up with our paperwork that this sounded like a lovely excuse to get out of doors when Lieutenant Abarai suggested it.”

“Ah, all our talk of orchids piqued your interests, eh?” Hisana teased.

“Actually, I wanted to hear Rukia play her shamisen,” Renji blurted out stupidly.

Hisana’s face froze momentarily, and Renji knew, in his soul, that he had Blown It. Then, suddenly, a big grin spread over her Ladyship's face, the same grin Rukia got when she had come up with some absolutely diabolical scheme. Hisana opened her mouth to say something, but Rukia cut her off. She had stood up and was hefting a large, kiri-wood box, inlaid with a beautiful plum blossom design. It was practically bigger than she was. “Speaking of which, I should really head over.”

“We could walk you there,” Renji offered, a bit too eagerly.

“Oh, I have to be pretty early,” Rukia excused. “I won’t be playing for another thirty minutes. It would be pretty boring.”

“I don’t mind,” Renji replied.

“Your friends might,” Rukia pointed out.

“Maybe we could meet up with you later,” Hinamori offered brightly. “If Lady Kuchiki isn’t too busy, I would love to hear more about these orchids. Their color is extraordinary!”

Renji shot an extremely grateful look at Izuru, who returned a look that said listening to two beautiful women ramble about flowers for half an hour was hardly the worst thing that had ever happened to him.

“Perfect idea, Lieutenant!” Hisana cheered. “Believe it or not, these orchids are descended from a deep black orchid with unusually large chromoplasts-- that’s how I was able to breed such a rich shade of red. Ah, what a beauty that was-- Byakuya and I found her ourselves, out in the Wilds-- that’s how we met, you know.”

Renji was making a horrified face. The Wilds bordered Rukongai to the South-- it demarcated the very boundaries of Soul Society, where the order of the Afterlife began to bleed into wild magic. It was said to be a place of incredible beauty, but also, massive, strange monsters and twisted plantlife. Renji had found that up here, in civilization, people tended to regard it as some sort of made-up fairytale land, the place where a mysterious wizard might maintain an ambulatory castle. It was close enough to Inuzuri, though, that he knew better-- you didn't drink or bathe downstream of the Wilds and you wore a bandana tied over your face when the wind blew from the south. Once, a great boar-like thing with rolling yellow eyes and far too many tusks had come rampaging up through town, and it had taken thirty men to take it down. Renji had been very newly dead when that happened, it was before he even met Rukia. Later, he took her to go see its great skull, shiny and brown, displayed in the town square as a monument to the only thing thirty men in Inuzuri had ever worked together on.

“You coming or not?” Rukia asked bluntly, shaking him from his reverie.

“Uh, yeah,” Renji managed, coming back to himself. “Can I carry that for you?” he offered, gesturing towards Rukia’s instrument case. “I mean, I know you can carry it perfectly well yourself, but people will think I’m a clod, so, really, you’d be doing me a favor.”

“I don’t know,” Rukia drawled, hoisting it experimentally. “It’s pretty heavy.”

“Just don’t throw it at me,” Renji assured her. “I’m not great at catching stuff, but I’m pretty good at hauling precious things around without dropping ‘em.”

“I’ve seen you carry Touma,” Rukia reminded him as she dumped the shamisen case into his outstretched arms. “Try to keep it right side up.”

Chapter Text

“So, do your brother and sister have to stand around at their orchid booth all day?” Renji asked Rukia as they made their way past booths advertising advanced formula fertilizer and decorative orchid clips.

“They get to stand around at their orchid booth all day,” Rukia clarified. “People come up and admire their orchids and they get to talk about foliage variegations. They take turns wandering off to go talk to their orchid friends and see who has interesting rhizomes for sale. At some point, they will probably go promenade around to other people’s booths to offer their personal judgement on this year’s offerings.”

“Aren’t those orchids worth small fortunes?” Renji pressed, his brow furrowing in a way that made his tattoos scrunch together cutely.

Rukia glanced over at her friend, tall and clean-scrubbed in what was quite obviously a new kimono. Rukia would bet even money that Hinamori had picked it out. He had traded out his usual white hachimaki for a dark blue one, tied to cover most of his forehead. He looked desperately wholesome, her shamisen case slung over his shoulder like it weighed nothing. “Abarai,” Rukia asked in a low, conspiratorial tone, “are you thinking about pulling a heist at the Orchid Show?”

Renji’s cheeks abruptly turned bright red. “I was not!” he excused. “I was wondering if I signed up enough folks for security! I mean, I was thinking about it in the sense that there’s clearly a lot of movable, high-value merchandise and low crowd control.”

“There’s a lot more security than it looks, everyone’s got private ninja,” Rukia pointed out, highly amused at the thought that for all the new kimono and lieutenant’s badges, his brain couldn’t help but run the numbers, just as hers did. “Plus, orchids are difficult to fence-- you have to either care for them yourself or move them quickly, and they lose a lot of value without their provenance. Plus, there’s the risk of bringing down the wrath of all the noble houses, led by my own brother, if you got caught. He’s not supposed to bring his zanpakutou to this thing, but, ah, Sister is very sneaky. She’s a terrible influence on him.”

“You’ve thought about it, eh?” Renji asked, his mouth quirking up at one side. “This purely theoretical orchid show heist?”

“I’ve thought about it so much,” Rukia admitted, ducking her head. “I’ve sat through so many of these things.”

“The real reason I asked,” Renji went on with a chuckle, “is because I was wondering if your sister and brother were gonna come hear you play.”

Rukia’s mouth dropped open for a brief moment. “Oh, goodness, no,” she flapped a dismissive hand at him. “They’ve heard me play hundreds of times before. That’s valuable time they could be previewing next year’s offerings in sphagnum moss.”

Renji’s face tilted down toward her, his forehead creased with concern. This dummy, Rukia’s heart sighed. These rich people feed me and wrap me in silly kimono and give me everything in the world, and he’s upset that they won’t come to my stupid little recital. She smiled back reassuringly. “I think you’ve gotten the wrong idea. This isn’t like… a concert. It’s ambient music. I’m decorative, just a pretty girl plunking away at a stringed instrument. Ideally, you don’t even notice me.”

“Impossible,” Renji declared, and her heart skipped another beat, just before he ruined it with, “not while you’re wearing that.”

Rukia laughed, trying to cover her momentary lapse of coolness. “Oh, I was wondering if you noticed it.” It would have been hard not to. Her outfit was very flowy and very pink, covered in frilly butterflies landing on floofy peonies. She had been having such a nice time talking to Renji that she had forgotten to hate it for an entire five minutes. “It’s lovely, isn’t it? The pinnacle of feminine beauty.”

Renji eyed her appraisingly. “Not that fond of it, to be honest. I prefer the blue one you had on the other day.”

A bold gambit, Lieutenant Abarai! Rukia arched an eyebrow at him, without uttering a word, daring him to second guess the claim he had just staked.

Renji backpedaled, but it was clear he was only willing to give away so much ground. “Er, I mean, it’s a lovely kimono. I’m sure a person who knew anything about kimono would have a lot of nice stuff to say. I just never thought pink was your color and I got no idea how you’re gonna play a shamisen around those sleeves.” He tried to run his fingers over his hair, and realized he couldn’t with the way his bandana was tied. “It’s nothing personal. I like you just as much in a shihakushou, to be honest.” He winced, realizing that wasn’t the right thing to say, either, and threw up his hands. “Look, if you’re gonna hit me, go ahead and do it, just watch out for the shamisen.”

Rukia snorted and cracked a grin. “It’s an abomination, Abarai, and you should say it. Like I said, Lady Akizuki, who arranges the musical program, feels that we should be ornamental, as lovely to look at as we are to listen to.”

“Gross,” Renji declared. “And insulting to true fans of shamisen music.”

“Oh, like yourself?” Rukia chuckled.

“Absolutely not. The shamisen is the one with the long neck and the strings, right? People play it during puppet shows?”

Rukia really did hit him this time, for making her laugh. “Why did you lie to my sister, then?”

“Me? I did not!”

“You did, you told her you came to hear me play the shamisen!”

“I did!” Renji protested indignantly. “I came to hear you. I’d come to see you juggle knives or arm wrestle a bear or put on a puppet show, if that’s what you were doing!”

“Oh,” Rukia replied, looking away. There was a warm feeling in her chest that might have been embarrassment or possibly something else.

Renji rubbed the back of his neck. “Well, uh, not just that, I guess. I also came to ask you if, ah, if you wanted to go out on a date with me.”

“A date?” Rukia repeated, her heart vibrating like a plucked shamisen string.

“Yeah. I guess I got a little overwhelmed last week at dinner, and I left before we made plans again. I thought about droppin’ by your division, seein’ if you wanted to get drinks after work sometime, but I thought that was maybe a little forward, especially if the Thirteenth gossips as bad as the Sixth. Also, maybe Ladies don’t get drinks after work. Then I started to write you a letter that I was gonna send home with the captain and I realized how hard it was gonna be to figure out where and when and what we could do all in a letter, so I thought maybe I’d just catch you at the Orchid Show and we could, uh, talk about it.” Renji offered her a small, hopeful smile.

Rukia wasn’t used to small gestures from Renji. She was used to shouting and kicking down doors and crashing through windows. That small, hopeful smile just about killed her dead.

After a few moments, it was followed by a small, hopeful “Well? Whaddya say?”

“You haven’t actually asked me anything,” Rukia pointed out, even though the real reason she hadn’t answered was because she was too busy feeling small and hopeful herself.

“Oh!” He cleared his throat. “Will you go out on a date with me? One day next week, maybe?”

“Sure,” Rukia agreed. She cogitated for a minute on his other question-- what could they do? Brother and Sister gave her quite a bit of freedom in some respects-- they’d let her join the Gotei, for one. Sister had insisted that she be allowed to try for a rank, even though Brother was against it initially. She had expected him to put his foot down and pull her out after Kaien’s death, but instead, the opposite had occurred-- it was Byakuya who had talked her through her grief, convinced her that she had acted correctly. He seemed to regard her with more respect ever since, and, unfortunately, higher expectations as well.

Socializing was another story, however. Her periodic entreaties to maintain quarters on-base were always discarded out of hand. Sister had approved of the Shiba whole-heartedly, and had trusted them as chaperones of a sort. Since their death, Rukia’s social circle had shrank down significantly. Captain Ukitake, of course, was a close friend of the family. Rukia occasionally had lunch with Kiyone and Sentarou-- high-ranking officers from good Seireitei families. She’d managed to beg permission to attend after-hours squad functions before, but a casual meet-up in one of the Gotei-frequented izakaya would be right out. “Drinks is a little iffy,” she said slowly. “We could go out to dinner. Especially if it were at a Kuchiki-owned restaurant. Friday?”

Renji’s face lit up briefly and then fell. “Friday won’t work. I got something Friday. Er-- I mean-- well, you would be welcome to come to that, I guess, but if your family wouldn’t approve of drinks with just me, they sure ain’t gonna approve of this. I could try to get out of it, but Matsumoto gets sneaky if you try to cancel plans on her…”

“Relax,” Rukia jabbed him with her elbow. “How about Saturday, instead? Or are you going to be too hungover from drinking with Lieutenant Matsumoto? That sounds dangerous.”

Renji frowned seriously. “I’m not that big of a drinker anymore. I mean, I like to drink! I just don’t like feeling it the next day. Guess I’m an old man now.”

Rukia got ready to rib him, when her brain put two and two together. “Friday’s your birthday!” she hooted. “The 31st, that’s right! That’s why you can’t get out of it. You are an old man!”

“I can’t believe you remembered,” Renji mumbled self-consciously.

“I remember things that are important!” Rukia protested. “And are you free Saturday or not? I can buy you dinner with Brother’s money, and then I don’t have to buy you a present.”

“You don’t have to buy me a present anyway,” he protested.

“Very rude,” Rukia teased. “Asking a girl out just before your own birthday.”

“You’re hard to pin down, y’know,” he grumped. “I gotta ask you these things while I got the chance.” He seemed to be thinking about something for a moment, before his face softened into a smile. “Saturday would be great. Gives me all day to wash my hair and try on outfits.”

“Oh, just let Hinamori dress you again,” Rukia declared. “That blue looks nice on you. Or was it Kira? He always had good taste, too.”

Renji opened his mouth, prepared to get offended, then closed it again. “Thanks,” he said. “And it was Hinamori.”

Chapter Text

“--ah, yes, well, best of luck to you, Lord Kuchiki. Truly, a marvelous specimen, this year, as always.”

“And the same to you, Lord Kannogi,” Byakuya replied, as his fellow orchidophile took his leave. Old goat, he sneered in his head, knowing that Kannogi’s line of Neofinetia falcata was the only one here who held a candle to his own. He desperately wanted to sneak down to row 7 and see what the competition looked like, but of course, he would never give Kannogi the satisfaction. Maybe he could get Rukia to do it. Rukia had always been game for scouting out the competition for him. Maybe she could take Abarai with her. It would do Abarai good to learn a thing or two about orchids. Furthermore, looking at orchids and cultivating an interest in orchids was very conducive to romance, in Byakuya’s personal experience.

Both Rukia and Abarai appeared to have disappeared. Curious.

Abarai’s two friends were still here. Hisana was deep in conversation with the girl from the Fifth. Byakuya narrowed his eyes.

Aizen Sousuke, in his eternal pretentiousness, had owned an orchid that he claimed was “a modest specimen,” “for my own enjoyment”, “hardly worth anything.” Byakuya had never seen it, although it was always fuzzily present in the background of any photograph of Aizen that made its way into the Seireitei Bulletin. It was the opinion of many that it was a wildly rare cultivar, unspeakably valuable. Byakuya had never believed this line of twaddle and certainly didn’t believe it now that all of Aizen’s glamour had proved to be misdirection and smooth-talking. Hisana had at one point, postulated that it probably wasn’t even an orchid, it was probably a bunch of tissue glued to a dango skewer.

That being said, he desperately wanted to see it. It was his right, in his opinion, as the man who actually clocked Aizen on the back of the head, that he should have gotten Aizen’s stupid orchid as war spoils. That wasn’t the sort of thing you could just ask the Captain-Commander, though. The man had already given him a very critical look when he explained how he had used Abarai and Kurosaki as a distraction for Aizen to defeat and subsequently gloat over while he used his grandfather’s “closing your heart” technique to see through that bloviating narcissist’s illusions. It had worked, hadn’t it? Scars gave a young man character.

“It does seem to be doing all right, I’ve been keeping it watered,” Hinamori was saying. “I keep going back and forth, you know-- I don’t like to keep reminders of him, but it is a beautiful plant, and I hate to hold him against it.”

“I think you are exactly correct to prioritize the feelings of the orchid,” Hisana agreed. “If you’d like to bring it by the Manor some time, I’d love to give you some care tips.”

“Oh, your Ladyship, I couldn’t!”

“Of course you can, you should come over with Lieutenant Abarai some time, he’s practically family!”

Hisana clearly had the Hinamori girl well in hand. Byakuya’s heart swelled. His wife was incredible. Truly, he was the luckiest man in the Seireitei.

The other fellow, the lieutenant of the Third, kept glancing at him out of the corner of his eye, and Byakuya realized it would be appropriate to engage in small talk. He wasn’t sure he had ever talked to the young man before-- Kira came from a very old, if diminished family, and wrote excellent, if somewhat overwrought haiku.

“Lieutenant Kira,” he greeted.

“Captain Kuchiki,” Kira replied with a bow.

“What happened to Abarai?”

“He escorted Lady Rukia to her musical obligation.”

Ah, that would explain it. Very appropriate, in Byakuya’s opinion. He wondered if they could possibly conduct an entire courtship via Abarai escorting Rukia to her various obligations. That would simplify Byakuya’s life enormously.

It occurred to him that, since Hisana appeared to have things in hand as regarded Aizen’s orchid, he had an opportunity to gather some intelligence and possibly exert a bit of influence.

“You have been managing the affairs of the Third, I gather? I imagine the job is somewhat easier with Ichimaru no longer around.”

Kira stared at him in stunned silence.

“That was a joke,” Byakuya explained.

“I see!” Kira yelped. "Ha, ha!" Byakuya wondered if the man had some sort of nervous condition. “You are… not wrong.”

“I imagine you have been considering taking on the larger role yourself,” Byakuya mused. “I am sure that would provide some much needed continuity for your subordinates.”

Kira blinked at him, gaping like a fish. Every time Byakuya was forced to interact with someone else’s lieutenant, he was struck, once again, with how lucky he was to have stumbled upon the one he had. Abarai had possibly made a landed fish face once or twice in his first week, but had quickly learned the proper facial expressions for an adjutant to make. A very portrait of professionalism, once one learned to pretend the tattoos were some sort of congenital condition.

“I’m flattered that you think so, sir,” Kira finally managed. “I’m quite new in the position, though, and to be honest, I didn’t have the sort of mentorship relationship with Captain Ichimaru that you have with Abarai. Renji tells me he’s learning a great deal from you and your methodology. I’m not really… captain material… at the moment.”

Byakuya puzzled over the remarks about himself and his old schoolfellow. Was Kira implying that Abarai might be more prepared for captaincy than himself? Was that why they were socializing today? Could Kira be trying to convince Abarai to take over the Third? Hinamori was here, too, though. That might make things awkward… unless she was also angling for the Fifth, trying to beat Kira to the punch?

Byakuya decided to try to probe this a little further. “The Third is traditionally a very introspective and thoughtful squad. ‘Despair’ is your watchword, is it not?”

“Ye-es,” Kira agreed, drawing the word out.

“I imagine,” Byakuya twirled his fingers as he speculated, “you’ll be looking for an older captain. Experienced. Poetic. Philosophical. A deep thinker. Perhaps an aesthete.”

“That would be nice,” Kira agreed. “I don’t know where we would find such a person, though. There was talk about asking Acting Captain Iba to come back, but I hear she’s enjoying her retirement. Also, she doesn’t get along very well with the Head Captain.”

“She never made bankai, did she?” Byakuya recalled. The woman, whom Byakuya had always found abrasive, had been Outoribashi’s lieutenant, and had led the squad between the old captain’s disappearance and Ichimaru getting his captain’s papers.

“I suppose not,” Kira shrugged. “To be honest, if we could get a young captain, someone straightforward and energetic, that might be a nice change of pace for the Third.” Damnation. Damnation. “There’s someone from the Patrol Corps with bankai that’s being floated,” Kira added as an afterthought, but Byakuya didn't really register it.

Suddenly, Hisana was tootling a greeting and waving her hand again. Byakuya wondered if Abarai had returned again.

No, it was worse. Much worse.

“Oh,” Kira said, as though this weren’t an utter disaster. “Lieutenant Hisagi.”

“The press is here, the press is here!” Hisana trilled. “Lieutenant Hisagi, are you here to take a picture of my orchid?” She hefted a hip up onto the table to pose saucily next to her bloom.

Byakuya hated the press, generally. His grandfather had always encouraged him to be respectful, but to keep them at arm’s length, advice he would have taken to heart. Unfortunately, Hisana had other ideas, and had long ago befriended the generally disheveled Assistant Editor of the Bulletin, whom she deemed a more receptive audience to her charms than the straight-laced Captain Tousen. Byakuya tried to stay as far away from their exchanges of information as possible. He grudgingly admitted that the Kuchiki tended to receive very fair coverage these days, even if they received a few more family details than Byakuya would have preferred, in exchange.

“Hisana, behave yourself,” Byakuya muttered, as if he had the remotest chance of success.

“She’s going to take all the top prizes, you know,” Hisana went on, striking a different pose so that her hands framed the orchid.

“Oh, that’s a front page shot for sure, Lady Kuchiki!” the overly hair-gelled cretin replied, hefting the metal-and-glass apparatus hanging around his neck. His eyes darted over to Byakuya, who had flower petals shimmering in his eyes. “But, uh, perhaps a more formal shot?”

Hisana rearranged herself to stand ramrod straight behind her orchid, but she insisted on smiling her radiant smile. It was very difficult for Byakuya to impress the importance of a stoic facial expression for photographs, when his wife so frequently insisted on taking his very breath away. Additionally, the stack of newspaper clippings he kept in the bottom drawer of his desk at work gave him bothersome pangs of potential hypocrisy.

“I didn’t expect to run into you two here,” Hisagi ribbed his fellow vice-captains. “Since when are you flower enthusiasts?” His eyes widened. “Or is this some kind of date? Are you two on a date?”

Kira’s face ran bright scarlet, and a choked noise squeaked out of his throat.

“Abarai wanted to come,” Hinamori replied, ignoring Hisagi and oblivious of Kira.

There was a long, awkward silence. Hisagi raised an eyebrow. “What… happened to him? He fall in the fountain?” He blinked. “Wait, Abarai wanted to come to the Orchid Show?”

Kira managed to find his voice, although his skin hadn’t quite lost its bright tinge. “Lady Rukia is providing musical entertainment, and Lieutenant Abarai escorted her to the performance location.”

“Oh, Rukia’s here?” Hisagi asked. “Excellent.”

Hisana plopped one elbow on the table and narrowed her eyes. “Aren’t you the Editor-in-Charge at the Bulletin for now, Lieutenant Hisagi? And yet, you’ve chosen to cover the Orchid Show personally?”

Curses, another lieutenant of a captain-less squad! Asking about Abarai’s whereabouts again! Was there no end to them?

“It is a rather plum assignment,” Hisagi replied slyly.

“You haven’t taken a picture of my husband yet,” Hisana went on. “He’s the second favorite, you know.”

“I am the favorite,” Byakuya corrected.

“Captain Kuchiki, I don’t suppose you’d consent to a photograph of you and your orchid?” Hisagi asked, very politely.

Byakuya arranged himself behind his Neofinetia falcata, and composed his face into a very serious mien. He tilted his face slightly to the right optimistically. His left was his good hair side.

Hisagi frowned for a moment. “Can you turn your head the other way a little? People like to see the kenseiken.”

Of course they did. Byakuya swiveled his head back the other way. Hisagi took the picture.

“This is a very convenient event,” Hisana mused, tapping her chin, “if someone wanted access to a bunch of nobles.”

“Ah, you mean, if a reporter had, say, a piece of late breaking news, and wished to get some high-ranking reactions to it?” Hisagi replied, perfectly straight-faced.

Young Kira blew his heavy bangs out of his face in exasperation and rolled his eyes. For once, Byakuya agreed with him.

“The question is,” Hisana went on, dusting an imaginary speck of dust from an orchid leaf, “whose reaction are you hoping to get? And don’t think I didn’t notice the way your eyes lit up when you heard my sister was about.”

“Rukia does not have opinions,” Byakuya reminded his wife and also Editor-in-Chief Hisagi. “Rukia is off-limits to the press.”

“Rukia is getting old enough to make her own decisions,” Hisana replied archly. “Also, you’re ruining my negotiations, dear. I’m about ready to send you off to go buy me a bubble tea.”

Byakuya opened his mouth to protest, when Hisana interrupted with “The stand is over in row 7, you can sneak a look at Kannogi’s spindly old orchids while you’re there.” Byakuya closed his mouth.

“Unfortunately,” Hisagi drew out, “while your turns of phrase, Lady Kuchiki, are like jewels set within my stories, in this case, it is your husband’s opinion on the particular piece of intelligence I have come across that will be of prime interest to my readers. It has a certain relevance to the Gotei, you see.”

“Unfortunately,” Byakuya replied, “I do not care about your readers.”

A snerking noise emerged from Hisana’s shapely nose.

Hisagi shrugged. “That is unfortunate, sir. Guess I’ll just stick to the orchids, then. Thanks for the photos, Captain, Lady Kuchiki. Good luck with the competition, I’m sure you’ll sweep it!”

Hisana pouted. “My opinion isn’t better than none at all?”

“Well, if I tell you, you’ll just tell him. I have my professional pride. I’m pretty sure I spotted Captain Kyouraku on my way through, I’m sure he’ll be nearly as good.”

Byakuya’s nostrils flared slightly. Shunsui would offer an inane opinion on absolutely anything.

Hisagi shrugged casually. “It is a very good piece of gossip. I just hope the story doesn’t leak everywhere before Monday, when the paper comes out. But that’s one of the reasons I’m trying to put out a well-crafted analysis. We’re not just a tabloid, you know.”

Byakuya was expected to attend a garden party with the Kyouraku the next day. Assuming the man didn’t forget it, Shunsui would know something Byakuya did not. No, Shunsui didn’t actually forget things, he just pretended he did. He would bring it up a thousand times without actually ever revealing the secret. It would be… interminable.

“How juicy is this piece of gossip?” Hisana demanded grimly.

“So juicy,” Hisagi replied flippantly.

Hinamori and Kira appeared to be silently planning on how to extricate themselves from this situation.

“The really nice thing about working with me,” Hisagi went on, examining his fingernails, which were undoubtedly caked with ink, “is that when people read the article, everyone knows you were among the first to know.”

Byakuya’s back teeth clenched.

“You can describe his second reaction, and I’ll give you my opinion,” Hisana blurted out.

“I didn’t agree to that,” Byakuya pointed out.

“Too bad,” Hisana snapped.

“Deal,” Hisagi replied with a sunny smile. “So. As you know, we’ve been doing a number of long-form investigative articles on the ryouka invasion, and one of the things that was very interesting to me was the involvement of banished Captains Shihouin and Urahara, who apparently, have been abiding in the World of the Living. I stationed a reporter in the Seireitei Office for Special Permits and Exceptions, which usually handles migration between Rukongai and the Seireitei. However, its jurisdiction also extends to other realms, and sure enough, last week, they received a very interesting application, which was not the one I was expecting.” He leaned forward. Everyone else leaned forward.

Very quietly and seriously, Lieutenant Hisagi described the permit that had been applied for.

Hinamori gasped. Kira made a choking noise.

“No!” Hisana exclaimed. “That’s-- he’s-- I don’t believe it! Byakuya, can you believe it?”

Byakuya just stood up straight again. He stared out at the horizon. He contemplated the state of the universe, with and without this new piece of information. “I have completed my first reaction,” he announced. He continued to contemplate the horizon. He took a deep breath through his nose and let it out again.

Hisagi squinted at him. “What… what was that? Is he thunderstruck? Dumbfounded? I can’t… I can’t tell?”

“He is exceedingly happy,” Hisana declared. Damn her, Byakuya thought. Damn her and the way she could tell his every mood perfectly.

“I don’t get it,” Kira murmured.

“Yeah, why… does this make him happy?” Hinamori echoed.

“Isn’t it obvious?” Hisana replied. “Because he knows something no one else does. Now, who is ready for my opinions?”

Chapter Text

Renji was starting to understand how a person could want to write a poem.

He had made fun of Kira quite a few times on the subject of poetry. In the years when their friendship had been strained by his transfer to Squad 11, he used to read some of Kira’s poems that were published in the Bulletin. Mostly, Renji read them and scratched his chin, and wondered how he had ever been close to a guy who thought the end of a friendship was like a persimmon. Renji did not think the end of a friendship was like a persimmon, not even a little bit. Sometimes, though, Kira would hit on a particular turn of phrase, and even Renji’s barbarian heart would feel a twinge.

Currently, Renji sat on a little wooden bench in the Royal Botanical Gardens, the sun on his back, and the smell of flowers like a tangible mist in the air. There was the slight babbling from the little artificial river that ran down the edge of the path, underscoring the gentle twang of Rukia’s shamisen.

Rukia looked perfectly serene as she played, her eyes half-lidded. Her fingers danced over the strings, plucking long notes that hung in the air like flowers floating down a river. He hated himself for it, but he could definitely tell what she had meant when she said she was supposed to be decorative. She fit right into the tableau, like some gardener had planted her between the hydrangeas and the chrysanthemums. Unfortunately, every time she caught him staring at her, she would pull some absolutely hideous face. For the good of the Orchid Show, Renji had to content himself with appreciating the foliage and occasionally making Angry Squad 11 Guy faces at passing gentlemen who looked too appreciatively at her.

But mostly, he thought about how nice this felt, how he wasn’t sure he had ever felt so content in his entire life. He understood, suddenly, how there weren’t any words for the feelings in his heart, and how a guy might want to write a poem about the little turtle just hanging out in the artificial river, not because he gave any particular shits about turtles, but because thinking about that turtle would make him remember all the good things he was feeling right now.

“You weren’t kidding, he does have it bad! Look at that guy!”

Renji’s head whipped around, full Angry Squad 11 Guy face on display.

There was a loud click and a bright flash, and Renji was squinting and scrunching his face.

“Got it,” Hisagi announced, lowering his camera.

“What was that for, you jerk?” Renji asked, rubbing his eyes.

“For my private collection,” Shuuhei replied, plopping down on the bench next to him. Momo and Izuru settled on the other side of him, and Momo pushed two cold paper cups into his hands.

“I jokingly told him to get one where you were looking very serene,” Izuru apologized, before glaring at Shuuhei. “I didn't think he would actually take it.”

“What’s this?” Renji asked, examining the cups as the stars finally receded from his vision.

“Bubble tea,” Momo explained, sipping at her own. “We got hot. One of them is for you and the other is for Rukia, when she’s finished.”

“Oh,” Renji replied, wishing he had thought of that, and feeling grateful that he had thoughtful friends to keep him from screwing this up too badly.

“She’s pretty good,” Shuuhei declared. “Did I tell you that I’ve finally made some progress with that guitar I got from the Living World? That big ryouka kid, Chad, showed me how it works that week they were all hanging around.”

“Why are you here?” Renji asked. “And what are you wearing?”

“Your stupid subordinate said I couldn’t come in without sleeves,” Shuuhei scowled, flapping his arms ruefully. “And I am here for journalistic purposes.” He held his hands up, making a frame with his fingers around Rukia. “What do you think, should I take a picture? To convey the general ambiance? I’ll give you a copy.”

“Don’t distract her,” Renji hissed, although he desperately wanted a picture.

“I’ll turn off the flash,” Shuuhei replied agreeably.

The little turtle slipped down into the water and disappeared.

“How did it go with Captain and Lady Kuchiki?” Renji asked.

“Very well,” Momo replied. “I haven’t decided yet if I am going to try to get filthy rich by selling Captain Aizen’s stupid old orchid to Lady Kuchiki, or if I’m going to use it to try to become best friends with her.”

“Momo!” Renji yelped.

“Oh, relax, it’s a win-win for everyone either way. You were right, I think you’ve got her securely in your corner. She told me you were ‘practically family.’”

Practically family? Lady Kuchiki probably just meant his position at the Sixth, which would usually be a family member. Although Rukia had said she tended to go overboard… Hoo boy.

“I...may have blown it trying to talk to Captain Kuchiki,” Izuru admitted. “He is so intimidating. How… how do… work with him? How have you not had a nervous breakdown yet?”

Renji shrugged. “I dunno. There’s something kinda freeing, knowing that he’s not gonna like what I do anyway, so I just do my best. I’ve actually figured out that when he criticizes someone to their face, it’s a good sign, because it means he thinks they are worth improving.”

“I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think I want a new captain,” Izuru sighed. “Captains are terrible. In any case, I probably did you a favor by making you look good in comparison.”

Renji shrugged. “I’m sure that guy doesn’t even think about me when I’m not saying stuff directly at his face. Don’t sweat it. He’s probably forgotten you exist already.”

“That is… oddly reassuring,” Izuru frowned.

“I’m done.”

Renji’s head whipped around. Rukia, in all her pink peony’d glory, stood in front of him, her shamisen in her hands. He had missed the end of her performance.

Renji shot to his feet, holding the cups out in front of him like a shield. “You were amazing!” he barked. “Momo got you a tea!”

Rukia stared at the two cups uncomprehendingly.

“They’re the same,” Momo offered helpfully.

Renji stared at the cups stupidly, and then retracted his right hand. “This one’s mine, I guess,” he said, even more stupidly.

Rukia gave him a pity smile and said, “Do you mind holding it for me until I put my shamisen away?” She bowed gratefully to Momo. “Thank you, Lieutenant Hinamori, that was very thoughtful.”

“My pleasure!” Momo chirped. Her face was making the same expression as the first time she had seen Captain Komamura’s puppy, Gorou, whom she claimed was “so cute he made her want to explode.”

“Do you ever play in the tsugaru-jamisen style?” Shuuhei asked, the hint of a challenge in his voice.

Rukia briefly glanced back at where the next performer was still setting up a koto. She rolled her shoulders, and then strummed out a brief, upbeat improvisation, completely different in style than her other performance, with a rhythmic, percussive quality. “I have been known to, from time to time,” she replied, very seriously. Renji wondered if she had conned her shamisen instructor into teaching her to play like that, or if it was something she had learned on her own. It was not very ornamental. It was very cool.

“Nice,” Shuuhei declared.

Rukia winked at him. “I’ll be right back,” she promised, although she paused for a second in front of Renji. She jerked her chin at her tea, and he held it out so she could take a sip from the straw. “Thanks!”

Renji sighed wistfully as she headed back to pack up her things, before whirling on Shuuhei. “Don’t flirt with her! It’s bad enough you have to show up here looking better than me!”

“I was just admiring a fellow musician,” Shuuhei excused. “Are you guys together? Did you finally make a move? I sure hope so, because that means Matsumoto owes me a significant sum of money.”

“You were buttering her up because you want a quote for your story,” Momo pointed out. “And I told you, Renji, you look very handsome! All three of you are very handsome! Get over it!”

“What story?” Renji demanded. “And we’re-- I don’t know. We’re thinking about being together. Nothing’s settled, but I need all the help I can get, thank you, please try to be less cool when you’re around me!”

“You’re holding beverages for her, that seems pretty together. And it’s just a little back page item I thought she might want to comment on.”

Izuru narrowed his eyes. “It didn’t sound like Captain Kuchiki wanted you taking statements from Rukia.”

“You don’t think her sister’s gonna tell her within the hour? I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell her and if some interesting commentary falls out of her mouth--”

“Tell her what?” Renji demanded. “What’s going on?”

“I think she does have a right to know,” Momo muttered. “But I don’t think you should quote her unless she wants to be quoted.”

“I do have journalistic integrity, you know,” Shuuhei protested. “I’m not quoting anyone who doesn’t want to be quoted.”

“Hisana’s orchid deserves ‘Best in Show’,” Rukia declared, returning with her shamisen case, which she thrust at Renji in exchange for her tea. “If anyone else wins, you may quote me as saying ‘Hisana was robbed!’, as long as you credit me as ‘Renowned Orchid Stuff Knower Kuchiki Rukia’. This includes Byakuya. His orchid is perfect, but it is boring and I am saying it.”

“I will certainly do that,” Shuuhei agreed. “But I happen to have another story that I thought you might have an opinion on.”

“Really?” Rukia frowned. “Why me?”

“Because no one else seems to have any clue what it means, and given recent circumstances, it seems possible you might have some insight.”

Rukia frowned thoughtfully.

“He didn’t say what it is,” Renji blurted out, “But he said he told your sister, so I’m sure you can just get it out of her.”

“Renji!” Shuuhei protested.

“Or Momo and I will just tell her,” Izuru put in.

Shuuhei sighed dramatically. “There is no respect for the Fourth Estate anymore! I am just trying to keep The People informed.”

“Why don’t you just tell me and I’ll decide if I want to be quoted or not,” Rukia broke in. “I am a grown-up who can make my own decisions. Can I be an anonymous source? You can even make me a really obvious anonymous source, like, ‘an anonymous 4’9” source in a very silly kimono said such-and-such’.”

“I will do you more justice than that,” Shuuhei promised. “What do you think of ‘an anonymous source with wicked shamisen plucking skills and questionable taste in men’?”

Renji glowered.

“Perfect!” Rukia agreed. “It’s a deal.”

“It’s a deal,” Hisagi repeated. He cleared his throat. “So, I’ve been keeping my finger on the pulse of Seireitei bureaucracy.”

“This is definitely not my area of expertise,” Rukia mumbled out of the side of her mouth.

“And who, to my surprise, applied for a Soul Society re-entry permit this week, but one… Shiba… Isshin.”

Rukia had been unwisely taking a tip of her tea and began to cough violently. In seconds, Renji was on his feet, whacking her on the back.

“Enough, enough,” she wheezed, waving a hand at him. Renji eased his thumping into a softer, rubbing motion. Rukia swallowed roughly and cleared her throat. “What makes you think I know anything at all about that?”

“I thought it was strange, is all,” Shuuhei commented. “I had been watching the permit office, expecting Shihouin or Urahara to try to make a bid to get their banishments lifted. But Shiba? Everyone thought he was dead! Clearly, the man has been in hiding, but why come out now? It has to be connected to this ryouka business, it has to.”

Rukia was making a face like she had just eaten a sour lemon.

“You had dealings with Urahara. And you knew Shiba, back when, right? You would have recognized him if you, say, ran into him while you were in the World of the Living?”

Rukia scowled harder.

“His application has been granted. One month visa to the Rukongai, to reunite with his family. An additional month of Seireitei access pending in-person interview. I am sure the Captain-Commander is interested in having words with him. The Central 46 is barely functional at the moment, but I imagine they have some interest, as well.”

“Lady Kuchiki seemed to think he might be interested in returning permanently, to reestablish his family’s former position,” Kira added.

Rukia shook her head slightly, her forehead creased.

Renji realized he probably should have stopped touching her back by now, but she hadn’t yelled at him about it, and at this point, moving his hand would just bring attention to it.

Do you think he might want to take up a captaincy again?” Momo pondered. “I mean, he could end up being one of our captains.”

Rukia shook her head, a little more strongly this time. “That doesn’t sound like him,” she murmured, not loud enough for anyone but Renji to hear. “He probably just wants to see his family again.” Renji had no clue what any of this was about, but Rukia seemed concerned. Renji had met Captain Shiba once or twice-- he was Rangiku’s captain in the early days of their friendship, but he hadn’t known the man more than passingly.

“I haven’t even gotten to the kicker yet,” Shuuhei announced proudly.

Rukia looked up, eyes wide. “What is it?”

“The travel permit was for himself… and his three children.”

An anonymous source with wicked shamisen plucking skills and questionable taste in men uttered a very unprintable word.

Chapter Text

Byakuya tapped his brush against the edge of his inbox irritably. Hisana counted silently. More than one tap per second meant he’d gone into that aggravated mental state where he was likely to agree to anything if she suggested it in the right tone of voice. He hadn’t even asked why she had stopped by the office. The signs were auspicious.

“Hitsugaya and his lieutenant made a brief visit,” Byakuya bit off. “He said Shiba offered no explanation whatsoever. He wished to visit his relations, or some rot like that.”

“Imagine!” Hisana agreed, recrossing her legs. “Clearly a cover story.”

“Please do not sit on my adjutant’s desk,” Byakuya said absently, without looking up.

“He said I could,” Hisana lied, making no motion to move. It was clear Byakuya’s heart wasn’t in it anyway.

“The Captain-Commander wishes to meet with me this afternoon on the topic. Me, of all people!” Byakuya waved the brush in the air. “He probably feels we have an… an ‘in’ with them, given that the Kuchiki were the only Great Family to oppose the Shiba banishment.”

“Yes, I’m sure that’s the ‘in’,” Hisana replied drily. It had remained a secret for roughly five minutes after that Shiba set foot in Soul Society that the oldest of the Shiba children was none other than the immensely powerful Kurosaki boy who had stormed the Seireitei, humiliated the Gotei, and destroyed an ancient artifact of immense power, all in the interest of saving one unjustly condemned woman. The young woman in question had known his identity already, of course, although Rukia’s opinion on his return remained completely opaque. It was a lot to process, Hisana supposed, and, in her experience, pressing her sister for personal information was generally about as effective as pushing on a rope.

“If you are referring to our Rukia,” Byakuya replied, finally turning his handsome, steel-hard eyes toward his wife, “I will not allow the Captain-Commander to use her as a pawn, certainly not after this summer’s disgraces.”

“You don’t think she’d like to go see him?” Hisana suggested mildly. “Ichigo, that is, not the Captain-Commander.”

“In these circumstances, it would be highly impolitic,” Byakuya replied dismissively. “The other Great Houses are already trembling at the thought of the Shiba making a bid for reinstatement. No one would believe an innocent visit between youthful friends-- they would prefer to assume surreptitious collusion."

“I’m glad you think so,” Hisana agreed. “I think open collusion is much better.” She pulled a folded letter from her sleeve. “I wrote to Kuukaku on Saturday and asked if we could come give our regards, it’s been ages! I got her response this morning, she said she’d be delighted to have us!”

Byakuya’s face went slack. “You did what?”

Perhaps Kuukaku hadn’t actually used the word ‘delighted.’ Hisana couldn’t actually imagine Shiba Kuukaku using the word ‘delighted.’ Despite their differences in demeanor, though, Hisana had always felt a certain kinship with the woman. They were, in some ways, a matched set. One Rukongai nobody who dressed in silks and acted like the noblest woman in the land, and one daughter of an grand and ancient family who preferred to bum around the countryside in bare feet and uncombed hair. They could either become best friends or archnemeses, and Hisana would always pick friendship, given the choice. It had been a simple matter of pointing out how many noble fundoshi would be in a twist over an Official Kuchiki Visit and Kuukaku was on board. Hisana had also promised to bring significant amounts of good Kuchiki sake.

“Ah, the Rukon is so lovely this time of year,” Hisana sighed. “It gets cooler more quickly out there and the leaves will be starting to turn! We didn’t get out to the lake house even once this summer because, well, you know, and we didn’t go last year, either, because Touma was too small. Imagine how much he would love being able to run around out in the woods!”

Both senior Kuchiki turned to look at Touma, who had his tiny face plastered against the window that overlooked the practice yard. The squad was doing formation drills, their enthusiastic shouts dimly audible even inside the office.

“Were you like this as a child?” she asked, considering her son skeptically.

“Of course,” Byakuya replied. “I already had a practice sword at his age.”

Byakuya gave Hisana a very pointed look.

Hisana flung it right back.

The air crackled with electricity.

“The fresh Rukon air,” Byakuya recited, gazing out the window. “The verdure of its forests/A boy starts to train.”

Hisana counted out syllables frantically on her fingers. “He is a baby/Why would you give him a sword?/Is your brain broken?”

Byakuya gazed sadly at his child, and then out the window at 60 soldiers waving practice swords. “So much paperwork/My poor, disappointed wife/She must stay in town.”

Hisana squeezed her eyes closed. “Go tell old Fancy Beard you’ll do it if he gives you and Rukia a pass on the stupid paperwork for a week,” she bit off. “We’ll go wring the whole story out of Isshin and have a nice family vacation at the same time.”

Byakuya raised an eyebrow, waiting for it.

Hisana groaned. If her perfect orchid hadn’t snatched “Best in Show” from his grasping fingers, she would never have let him have this. “Give him the dumb sword/At least it’s not in our house/It will be your shins.”

Byakuya’s mouth curved into a grotesquely self-satisfied smile. “It has been a while since I have taken leave. I am sure Abarai can handle things in my absence.”

“Oh,” Hisana replied, lightly. That fusty old boys’ club had given him the Judges’ Choice Award, and she wasn’t about to forgive that. “I think we should take Renji with us.”

Touma poked at the window enthusiastically. “Re’ji!” he exclaimed.

Hisana squinted at her child. “Did he just say…?”

“No,” Byakuya replied. “And also, no. Why would we take him?”

“Because I like him?”

“That is not a reason. Who would run the Division?”

“Your Third Seat? Isn’t that how it works? Why else would you bother numbering them?”

Byakuya narrowed his eyes. “Hisana, you know I neither know about nor care for convoluted romantic schemes, but I know this much: attempting to orchestrate a love triangle will absolutely blow up in your face.”

“A what?” Hisana protested. “First of all, cut the crap, those dramatic samurai novels you like are at least twice as frothy as anything in Rukia’s romance manga collection. Secondly, I just thought a trip to the country would have some pleasant opportunities for two young people in the spring of their relationship. Are you trying to tell me Rukia has a thing for the Kurosaki boy?”

“Rather the other way around, I thought,” Byakuya mused. “With a non-zero probability of reciprocation.”

“Byakuya!” Hisana squealed, throwing the nearest reasonable projectile she could find at him. It turned out to be a deeply tacky pair of sunglasses. “Why wouldn’t you tell me this? What good are you?”

“I didn’t think it was important!” Byakuya protested, catching the sunglasses easily. “Besides, a young man travels to another world and risks his life for a young woman, what else is one to assume?”

Hisana waved her hands helplessly. The possibility had crossed her mind at the time, of course it had! Kurosaki had seemed like a nice boy, surely, but very, very young and very, very alive, and then when he left again so quickly, Hisana had just assumed… “I only met him the once, when he came over for dinner, after it was all over! He seemed interested in the other girl, the sweet one with the brown hair!”

“Was there another girl?” Byakuya frowned, trying to remember.

Hisana pulled at her hair. Sometimes she wondered why she had married this man, aside from the fact that he was incredibly handsome and also very rich. “If Rukia did have feelings for Ichigo, she must be over them by now!” she tried to reason out, not sure exactly who she was trying to convince. “It’s not like she’s been moping since he left, and I don’t think she would have agreed to give Renji a chance if she were still pining over someone else.”

“On the other hand, if he has been pinning for her, perhaps that’s why the family has returned to Soul Society,” Byakuya suggested loftily.

“Nonsense,” Hisana protested. “If that were the case, don’t you think Kuukaku would have been the one writing to me?”

“Unless she was confident that she didn’t need to. Which turned out to be true.”

Hisana gasped, placing her hand on her chest. “Are you saying I am predictable?”

“I would never say such a thing, my dear.”

“We have to take Renji, then,” Hisana decided.

“So that you can pretend to be playing hardball with your sister’s eligibility?” Byakuya frowned, his eyebrows furrowing.

“To keep Rukia’s heart where it belongs!” Hisana smacked her hand down on the desk. “With a nice dead boy with a bright future!”

“Kurosaki also has bankai, you know,” Byakuya pointed out idly. “And noble blood, it would seem. If you weren’t so hung up on your current scheme, you’d be making a different scheme out of him, instead.”

Hisana’s eyes widened. “Do you think he’s a better match for her?”

“Oh, absolutely not. He is a disrespectful youth, unduly influenced by the Shihouin woman. I am firmly ‘Team Abarai.’ But I do not think his presence will improve circumstances, and in fact has a strong chance of exacerbating them. We are not taking him, and that is final.”

“Take your lieutenant with you,” Yamamoto rumbled.

“What?” Byakuya echoed. “Why?”

“I want a full assessment of the fighting ability of Shiba and all his children.”

Byakuya pinched at his forehead. “My wife has wrangled a social call, Captain-Commander. We are guests. Do you propose I repay the Shiba’s hospitality by striding in with sword drawn?”

Yamamoto stroked his beard thoughtfully. “That’s where the lieutenant comes in. You’re training him toward getting his own post, I hear?”

Byakuya drew himself up to his full height. He knew it had been a mistake to spar with Abarai in the yard the moment those old gossips Kyouraku and Ukitake had showed up to rubberneck. “I most certainly am not! He has great difficulties with his bankai and asked for assistance! He’s a child! A buffoon! It will be decades before he’s ready for a promotion! Perhaps never!”

Yamamoto regarded Byakuya boredly. “Hmmph,” he replied, in a manner that said Every other captain I have asked has told me otherwise, and most of them would be happy to write him recommendations. “That sister of yours must be training for her lieutenant’s papers, then, eh?”

“No!” Byakuya protested again, although it occurred to him that Rukia was certainly skilled enough for that, but surely, she’d just been named Fourth Seat… goodness, had it been over a decade?

Yamamoto waved his hand. His patience for this conversation was clearly waning. “Take Abarai along with you. Say that someone is in training for something. Shiba will have his sword out in ten seconds flat. I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t take one look at that giant weasel skeleton monstrosity and not want to fight it.”

Byakuya turned to his last resort: glowering. “It is a snake and I am not taking my vice-captain on a family trip.”

The glowering was a failure.

“The family trip business is just a cover. And between a seasoned captain, a man about to get his captain’s papers, and a woman about to get her lieutenant’s, I think the three of you should be well-equipped to gauge their strength.”

I hate all of this, Byakuya thought to himself.

Rukia skidded into her captain’s office, panting and sweating. She’d been in the middle of a spar with the Seventh Seat, when she caught a flutter of scarlet silk entering the main building. Tatehata, stubborn jerk, wouldn’t give up on the match, so she’d iced his feet to the ground and made a break for it. Some people had no appreciation for what was important.

“Oh, I have some gummies! Can he have gummies?”

“He absolutely cannot have gummies, Juushirou.”

“Captain Ukitake! Sister!” Rukia exclaimed.

Captain Ukitake looked up from rummaging through his desk for candies, which he had piled into a towering heap on his desk. “Ah, Kuchiki! We were just talking about you!”

Touma was clawing and screeching against Hisana’s iron grip, trying to get to the glorious bounty. Hisana’s face, as always, was a portrait of calm and comportment.

“Ginger biscuit?” Ukitake asked hopefully, waving a packet of cookies.

“He may have one ginger biscuit,” Hisana agreed.

“What brings you to the Thirteenth, Sister?” Rukia asked, her voice a little shriller than she would have liked. “You know you can always count on me for any little favors you might need from Captain Ukitake since I… work… here.”

“Oh, I was over at the Sixth, anyway, and thought I would swing by. You know how Touma loves to see his Uncle Juushirou!”

Ukitake had finished unwrapping the biscuit, and presented it to Touma, who nearly took a finger along with it. “He looks so much like his father at that age!” Ukitake beamed.

“Just… a social call… then?” Rukia bit off.

“Oh, well, also, we’ve decided we’re going on a little trip, and I just thought I would make sure this old taskmaster would let you have the leave.”

Rukia’s shoulders sagged. Hisana always did this. “What trip?” she groaned. She turned to her captain. “I am sorry, sir.” Back to Hisana. “We could have talked about this,” she hissed under her breath. She highly doubted her presence was even necessary on whatever leaf-peeping venture her sister had planned.

“It’s actually Gotei business,” Captain Ukitake replied, not in the least bothered by Hisana’s meddling. “I guess the Captain-Commander and your sister think along the same lines, because he was asking me about this possibility earlier today, after the captain’s meeting. Of course, I always hate to spare one of my best officers, but you’re clearly the woman for the job.”

Rukia looked from her sister, trying to avoid having drool-soaked ginger crumbs sprayed all over her fine kimono, back to her captain, who had located a rubber toy fish in his desk and was trying to catch Touma’s eye with it. Rukia was getting a very bad feeling about what this trip might entail. “Where are we going?” she asked flatly.

“Juninran,” Hisana replied simply. “We’re going to spend a week with the Shiba.”

Rukia closed her eyes painfully. Of course. Of course they were going to go see the Shiba. At their stupid arm house. In Rukongai.

Byakuya. And Isshin. And Kuukaku. In a hideous house full of live ordinance. Together. For a week.

Ichigo would presumably be there, too. Rukia couldn’t decide if that would make things better or worse. Probably worse. She would very much like to see him again, but there was no denying that Ichigo was extremely talented at making things worse.

Hisana rose to her feet, giving Touma a brisk shake in order to de-crumb him. “We should go. Got to get started on preparations! Thank you, Juushirou, you are always so good to Rukia!”

“Thanks for stopping by, Hisana, it’s been a delight as always!” Ukitake waved.

“Preparations?” Rukia echoed. “When are we leaving?”

“Tomorrow morning!” Hisana replied. “Don’t worry, Sister, I’ll pack for you!”

Rukia’s heart sank, not just at the thought of Ichigo seeing her in a bunch of frou-frou kimono her sister had picked out. She was not looking forward to looking poor Renji in the face and telling him she had to cancel their date on account of leaving town to go hang out with her human friend who had nearly killed him on multiple occasions. On his birthday, no less. Also… she’d actually really been looking forward to that date. It was the one positive thing she’d had to focus on in the last few days of swirling gossip and speculation, everyone and their aunt asking her for her opinions on what was going to happen with the Shiba, as if she had the foggiest idea. “Okay,” she agreed glumly.

“You don’t seem very excited about this trip,” Captain Ukitake observed mildly, as Hisana and Touma made their exit. He plopped the rubber fish into the cup where he kept his writing brushes.

“I… just had some other plans that I have to cancel now,” Rukia said absently, shaking her head. She pressed her lips into a line. “Also, I feel like everyone expects me to know what’s going on, and I don’t.” She regarded her captain, but his face didn’t betray any hint of guilt. “So, what is it that the Captain-Commander wants me to talk Ichigo into doing? Or not doing?”

“Sharp as always, Kuchiki,” Ukitake wagged a finger at her. “Do you know about Substitute Shinigami?”

“No,” Rukia admitted.

“It’s a special designation for the rare human that develops shinigami powers while still alive. A way of allowing them to exist and operate, but still keeping them under the formal auspices of the Gotei. Before Kurosaki returned to the Living World at the end of July, I had requested he be given a Substitute’s badge. My request was denied.”

Rukia frowned. “Why?”

Ukitake shrugged. “Historically, substitute shinigami have been… a mixed bag. After what happened with Aizen, and the current chaos in the Central 46, the Captain-Commander wants to keep up the appearance of order and control. Deputizing an independent agent didn’t fit in well with that, I think. It might have been different if Aizen had escaped, if he were still on the loose. As is, he felt it would be better if Kurosaki just quietly disappeared.” Ukitake looked at Rukia carefully. “You did know that Kurosaki’s father was Shiba Isshin, yes?”

“Maybe,” Rukia replied noncommittally.

Ukitake chuckled. “Well, Isshin’s return is a bit of a nightmare for Yamamoto, I am afraid. It’s the uncertainty, mainly.” Ukitake held out one hand, palm up. “The ideal case is that Isshin wants his old job back. Well, someone’s old job back, anyway, there would have to be some juggling.”

“The Captain-Commander would go for that?” Rukia asked skeptically.

“He’s down three captains. Isshin’s more valuable to us in a haori than he is in Muken. Particularly if he wants to bring his son along as his vice-captain.”

Rukia snorted loudly. “Are you kidding?” She could just imagine either Ichigo or his father flying through the window of their division offices three to four times per day.

“I don’t know, Rukia,” her captain replied. “I haven’t seen Isshin in twenty years. You tell me.”

Rukia chewed her lip. She wasn’t sure what to say. Isshin had told her he’d lost his powers and she certainly hadn’t felt anything remotely like a captain’s reiatsu from him back in Karakura. On the other hand, he’d been in an Urahara-special-gigai and if she knew one thing about Shiba, it was that they were canny as hell. “Ichigo has bankai,” she pointed out instead. “Why stop at lieutenant?”

“Well, perhaps because he has no Gotei experience whatsoever,” Ukitake pointed out reasonably. “But that certainly didn’t stop our Kenpachi, did it?”

Rukia was definitely beginning to see how the Captain-Commander might be losing some sleep over this.

“Second best case,” Ukitake went on, holding out his other hand, “is that they have a nice visit and quietly go back home again.”

“So what’s the worst case?” Rukia asked.

Ukitake tipped his head. “The worst case is that they’re here to rail against the current ruling parties, to demand restitution for the Shiba’s demotion from the Five Great Families, and to foment rebellion in the Rukon.”

Rukia frowned. As much as the Seireitei deserved being rebelled against, in her personal opinion, she also knew how such a thing would end, and on which side of the class divide most of the casualties would lie. Furthermore, the Shiba had always been strong champions for improving the conditions outside the city walls. They could do far more good if they were restored to their former position than a civil war would achieve.

“I’m not asking you to convince anyone of anything,” Ukitake replied gently. “Aside from convincing the Shiba they have friends in Soul Society and that the Captain-Commander is open to talking.”

Coming from the same Captain-Commander who’d been ready to execute her for a minor crime a few weeks ago, Rukia had to admit, that was about as reasonable as one could expect.

“Of course they have friends,” Rukia finally agreed, grimly. “The Kuchiki are friends to the Shiba. You should remind the Captain-Commander of that fact, as well, just in case he’s thinking of double-crossing them. Sir.”

Ukitake snorted and shook his head ruefully. “Ah, Fourth Seat Kuchiki...the Kuchiki and Shiba are lucky to have you.” He leaned forward. “Speaking of…”

Rukia scowled. She had worked for Ukitake long enough to be wary of him once he started wheedling.

“I just mentioned the shortage of captains. I don’t know how this is going to get resolved, but it's possible we could end up a vice-captain or two short, instead. I’ve been suffering without long enough as it is, and you know how your brother deals with change. A trip to the Rukon is a great opportunity for training, and may keep Byakuya out of trouble, as well,” he singsonged.

Rukia squinted at her captain, uncomprehending for a moment, still trying to unwind the first thing he had said. Why would Byakuya have to deal with change? He had just gotten a new lieutenant. It's not like… “Renji?” she blurted out. “He’s being considered for captain?”

Now Ukitake was the one playing it coy. “I’ve heard his name floated a few times. Ichigo wasn’t the only one with a surprise bankai. Abarai’s well-regarded, a hard-worker. Byakuya-approved, which not many can say.” Ukitake paused. “I mentioned there might be some juggling. As much as I’d love to have you as my second, I’d be happy to take Hinamori or Kira if you’d rather go work for Abarai… or Kurosaki, for that matter. I’m sure you’d make a great team with either of them.”

Rukia’s mouth fell open and then snapped shut again. “I would never,” she grumbled. “They can be my vice-captains. It would take both of them to keep up with me.”

Ukitake laughed. “That’s the spirit, Kuchiki. But let’s get you through the vice-captain’s exam first.”

“This is absolutely foolishness,” Zabimaru snarled, whipping their snake tail back and forth, even though the snakehead didn’t appear to enjoy this very much. “We wish to go! Go fast!”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I hear you,” Renji mumbled absently, moving one of the giant vertebrae to the middle stack. He currently had Hihou Zabimaru completely disassembled, and was trying to arrange them into three columns suspended in mid-air.

“We are not building blocks!” the baboon head scolded him. “You should be training, not playing!”

Renji had come to realize that each bone had sort of a polarity-- that it was easier to arrange them in the correct orientation than the incorrect one, like trying to line up magnets.

“You are making us sorry we ever gave you--” POOF!

Renji looked over, and sure enough, his zanpakutou spirit had disapparated mid-complaint. The reason became obvious a few seconds later, as the familiar weight of Captain Kuchiki’s reiatsu washed over him.

“Isn’t this only the second of the five exercises I gave you?” the captain’s deep, judgemental voice followed.

“You said not to move on until I had completed each one,” Renji replied, a bit absently. “It’s really hard to get them balanced. They don’t like being arranged arbitrarily like this, they resist it. It was interesting, and I wanted to explore it.” He sighed, and broke his concentration. Immediately, each vertebrae snapped into its proper place with a loud thunk-thunk-thunk, exactly like his shikai retracting. Once the full snake was back in order, it disappeared in a puff of dust. “Sorry. I guess I’m gonna be even more work than you probably expected.”

Byakuya was standing at his side now, surveying the training field that Hihou Zabimaru had been occupying moments before. “Not at all. The point of these exercises is to identify the workings and peculiarities of your bankai. Exploration is important. You are learning your sword from scratch. It is a long and frequently frustrating process, especially after you have spent so long mastering your shikai. You must resist becoming impatient with yourself. It would certainly help no one if I were impatient with you.”

Renji swallowed, unsure what to do with this… praise? There weren’t actually any compliments in it, the way Aizen used to gush over him and his friends, but at the same time, it felt more sincere. More earned. Approval? Maybe it was approval.

“My zanpakutou spirit sure hates it,” Renji admitted, resheathing his sword. “That can’t be a good sign, right?”

Captain Kuchiki regarded him for a long moment. “Up until the moment they are granted bankai, a shinigami is reliant on their zanpakutou for their strength. But the further development of bankai is driven by the shinigami rather than the sword. They have been your mentor, but now you have proven yourself capable of overpowering them. You must henceforth work together as partners. They may chafe against this, certainly. But this is what separates captains from mere shinigami-- we lend our strength to our zanpakutou as much as they lend their strength to us.”

“Huh,” Renji replied, rubbing his thumb against the hilt of his sword somewhat affectionately. “That’s an interesting way to think about it.” He grinned. “I’m pretty good at whippin’ lazy shinigami into shape. Maybe this ain’t so different.”

“That’s not exactly…” Byakuya trailed off, before changing his mind. “It is true. You are very good at that. Perhaps that is an appropriate lens through which to approach this.”

Renji stood up a little straighter. That definitely sounded something like praise.

“That is not why I came out here,” Byakuya abruptly changed the subject. Welp. So much for that. “For one thing, it is past three. You have paperwork to complete.”

“Oh. Sorry, sir. I’ll get those mission assignments written up before I leave today, I promise.”

Byakuya drew a long breath in through his nose, and let it out again. “You will also need to finish the payroll tonight.”

“Today’s only Thursday, sir. Payroll is Friday.”

Byakuya drew a longer breath in through his nose. “Abarai, you are at least tangentially aware of the… Shiba debacle, no?”

“Uh, yeah, sir, I read Hisagi’s article.” Renji chose not to mention the four laps around the botanical gardens he’d marched Rukia through while she cycled through grim silence, mumbling incomprehensibly while staring into the middle distance, and colorfully impugning the Kurosaki - Shiba family (and, for good measure, Urahara Kisuke) before she’d felt well enough to face her family.

Byakuya nodded grimly. “Due to various forces conspiring against me, my family and I will be making a trip out to the Rukon. We are leaving tomorrow morning.”

“I see,” Renji agreed, immediately wondering if that included Rukia, and if she was going to need a few more circuits around the botanical gardens. “Well, I’ll hold down the fort here for you, sir.”

“Would that were the case, Abarai,” Byakuya lamented. “Your presence has been requested.”

Renji’s brows creased. “Really?” What the hell for? threatened to slip out of his mouth. He contemplated all the possible reasons anyone might have for sending him on a hoity toity visit between two noble families, and came up completely empty. “What the hell for?” he blurted out. Oops.

“I have been ordered to take the measure of Kurosaki’s fighting ability. What is your record for being in his presence before drawing steel? Five entire minutes?”

Renji felt his cheeks go hot. “We, ah. Settled our beef. Sir.”

Byakuya raised an eyebrow. “If he sees you in his backyard, putting your bankai through its paces, what do you expect to happen?”

“I think we both know,” Renji mumbled self-consciously.

“You need not be embarrassed, your talent for agitation is apparently an asset in this case. I am not looking forward to this either.” Byakuya settled his hands in his sleeves. “I am very sorry, Lieutenant, honestly. I do promise to make time for some training in earnest. It shall not be a total waste.”

Renji debated a moment before saying it, but decided that fortune favored the bold. “I do like your family, sir. I don’t ever see it as a waste to spend time with people I like.”

A very strange look came over Captain Kuchiki’s face. There was clearly some sort of internal struggle going on. Finally, Byakuya cleared his throat, raised an eyebrow and leaned forward. “My younger sister is very charming, is she not?” He very deliberately closed one eye and then opened it again. He did not manage to keep the other eye open throughout this process.

Renji stared, aghast, at Byakuya. He was trying very hard not to make a fish face, because Byakuya really hated it when people made fish faces.

Byakuya stared back, clearly waiting for a reaction of some kind.

“What was that?” Renji finally managed. “Did you just wink at me?”

“I was making sport of you, because you are clearly sweet on my sister.”

“Yeah… that’s… what I thought... you were doing. I was hoping I was wrong.”

“It was bad?”

“It wasn’t good.”

Byakuya contemplated this. “Perhaps we should never speak of this again.”

Renji nodded eagerly. “Good call, sir.”

Chapter Text

Renji had been late in the office, trying to cram as much paperwork in before his trip as possible, when he came across what appeared to be a piece of personal correspondence in the interoffice mail. He stared at it stupidly for a moment. It was written on very cute stationery, with fuzzy little bunnies and mice peeking out of wee mushroom houses.

It must have gotten lost.

No, no, there was his name, right on it. Lieutenant Abarai Renji, c/o Sixth Division Head Office.

Was it from Momo? Momo would definitely go in for woodland creature-themed note paper, although Renji doubted she would waste it on the likes of him. No, it wasn’t her handwriting anyway, it was too precise, too elegant, the ink thick and expen--

Renji had nearly tore the paper in his haste to get it unfolded.

“Tonight, 6:30. I’m not bringing the shamisen, but same spot.” It wasn’t signed, but there was a bunny with angry eyebrows scrawled at the bottom of the page, which counted as a signature if Renji had ever seen one.

Precisely fourteen minutes later, at 6:27, he sat in the Royal Botanical Gardens, on the same bench where he had sat and listened to a beautiful woman play a shamisen just a few days before. The sun was low in the sky, and the same bushes and flowers that had seemed so bright and cheerful then were now shady and intimate. The turtles had all gone to wherever turtles went at night. Renji’s knee bounced up and down nervously.

There was a soft footfall and Renji turned his head toward the sound. Rukia was rounding the corner, loaded down with a number of paper sacks. Renji scrambled to his feet in an attempt to relieve her of a few of them.

“You came,” she said, a slight quaver in her voice.

“I almost didn’t see your note,” Renji admitted, trying to examine one of the bags, which looked an awful lot like the ones they used at the taiyaki cart down in Two Fish Street, on the south side of the Thirteen Division. Rukia smacked his hand away. “What is all this?”

Rukia dumped the rest of her bags onto the bench and sank down with a sigh, hunching her shoulders. “We have to talk.”

Renji swallowed. Ever since Saturday afternoon, when he found out that Kurosaki Ichigo was back in Soul Society, he had been waiting for the other shoe to drop. He was ready for it. He had known this was too good to last. Renji sat down gingerly on the other side of the pile of bags, which smelled ridiculously good. Unfortunately, his stomach felt cramped and tight, and all the tasty smells just made him feel sick.

“I… I guess Brother probably mentioned the trip? To Rukongai?” Rukia said, dredging her toe through the dirt.

“Yeah,” Renji agreed neutrally.

“We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” Rukia continued miserably. “Hisana barely gave me any notice. And I’m really sorry, but I’m going to have to bail on our date. I feel like a huge dick. I swear I’ll make it up to you when we get back. We’ll do something really good, I promise. And, uh, I brought you dinner.” Rukia looked up hesitantly, pain written all over her expression. She cringed and slapped herself in the forehead before Renji realized he was gaping at her. “I’m so dumb. You’ve probably already eaten, it’s so late.”

Renji shook himself out of his stupor. “No. No! I was working late and when I found your note I panicked because I thought I wasn’t going to make it in time. I didn’t…. You brought me dinner?” If all these bags were food, there was probably enough to feed at least six people.

Rukia snorted and looked away again. “I guess I thought maybe we could have sort of a mini-date.” She sighed. “I realized I don’t even know what you like to eat. We used to eat any old garbage we could get our hands on back in Inuzuri and whatever the mess hall was serving when we were at school. Or… or maybe I just never paid enough attention. I’m so embarrassed. I hit up every food cart and take-out place within three blocks of the Thirteenth.”

Renji laughed, a loud bark that expelled the last of the nervousness and fear from his body. He suddenly realized he was starving. “That is not true,” he corrected her, fishing the taiyaki bag out of the pile. “You know what I like.”

Rukia made a grab for it. “That’s dessert, you animal!”

Renji didn’t usually like to take advantage of his superior wingspan, but taiyaki was at stake. “I bet it’s warm and crispy and perfect right now!” he protested, swinging it out of her reach. “Timing is everything!” He upended the bag over his face, catching one of the little fried waffles between his teeth, and tossing the other to Rukia, She scowled at him, but took a rueful bite out of it nevertheless. “How is it?” Renji asked around the enormous wad of delicious taiyaki wedged in his cheek.

“Perfect, just as you said,” Rukia grumbled. She chewed slowly for a moment. “So, you aren’t mad at me?”

Renji shrugged. “Rukia, I thought I was getting dumped, and instead, I find out that you brought me a bunch of greasy cart food. I am the happiest man in Soul Society right now.” He swallowed his bite. “I have only worked for Captain Kuchiki for a few months, but I can tell you already, he is going to ruin our plans constantly. I have already come to terms with it.”

“I think this one was actually Sister’s fault. Do you like okonomiyaki? I’ve got some okonomiyaki somewhere in here, and we should also eat that while it’s hot.”

“I do like okonomiyaki! And there’s something else I should probably tell you.”

“Oh, yeah?” Rukia asked skeptically, digging through her bags.

“Maybe you already know this, but from the way you were talking, it sounds like you didn’t… Captain’s making me go along to Rukongai with you.”

Rukia looked up, her eyes wide. “What? No, nobody told me! Why? Why would he do that?”

“I think the Captain-Commander ordered him to. He didn’t sound happy about it. Wants to find out how strong Ichigo is or something like that, and you know I’ve got one of those faces that people like to punch.”

“That’s true,” Rukia replied icily. “I’m taking my food and going back to the Thirteenth.”

“Aw, don’t do that!” Renji laughed. “I’m starving! And this is nice. I’ll feel better about going on this trip if we actually got to have our date first.”

“Fine! Only because I am also starving, and I already lied to Sister and told her I had to work late tonight because of the trip.” Rukia located the carton of okonomiyaki and started eating it herself, with extreme prejudice. Renji indulged himself in watching Rukia angrily shovel food into her face. It was even more adorable than he remembered, or maybe this was one of those cases of absence making the heart grow fonder. Eventually, his own hunger won out, and he investigated another bag, which turned out to contain pork buns.

“Hey. Renji?” Rukia was looking up at him, her eyebrows scrunched together. As usual, her anger was short-lived. ”Why did you think I was gonna dump you?”

Renji took his time chewing his pork bun while he thought about how to answer. “Well… maybe dump is a little strong, seein’ as we aren’t really anything official-like yet.”

Rukia glared at him, refusing to be sidetracked on technicalities.

“I guess I figured with Ichigo being back in town, it just mighta changed your mind about some stuff.”

Rukia took a deep breath in through her nose and let it out again slowly. She thrust the okonomiyaki carton at Renji. “Here. Give me one of those.” Renji accepted the carton, and passed a bun back over. Rukia examined her bun critically. Renji took a few bites of okonomiyaki. She’d gotten it with squid, his favorite. He wondered if it was just a lucky guess or if it was her favorite, too.

“I can’t explain my relationship with Ichigo,” Rukia finally said. “I’m sorry. I don’t have words for it. But it’s different-- it’s different from the relationship you and I had, and it’s different from the relationship I want to have with you. The relationship I maybe want to have with you. No promises.” She pulled the pork bun apart with her fingers. “The fact that he belongs in the Land of the Living, and I belong here complicates things,” she went on, “but it also simplifies them, you know? Or it did, until last week. I just… he has such a talent for getting into trouble, and I have no idea what he’s doing back here, and I’m just worried about him. He’s… he’s important to me.” She huffed out a sigh. “I’m sorry. I know this isn’t fair to you, but it’s how it is. If you want to put things on hold, or just, y’know, cut our losses, I would understand.”

“Stop ruinin’ that pork bun,” Renji demanded. “And that’s dumb. You have lots of people you care about, Rukia, and lots of people who care about you. That’s a feature, not a flaw. Forty years ago, I, an idiot teen, felt like I needed to step back so you could have a relationship with your long-lost sister. It was the dumbest fucking thing I ever did and I’m not doing it again.” He fiddled with his disposable chopsticks. “Just… be honest with me about it, okay? Try to be honest with yourself? He seems like a good guy. I’m glad you have him as a friend.” He sucked his teeth. “I’m not gonna promise not to punch him on this trip, but I will promise to only punch him out of friendship, and not out of ire.”

“Che, I would never promise not to punch him,” Rukia muttered. She frowned. “Renji… it… it wasn’t your fault that I…”

Renji didn’t want this. He was glad they had aired out the Ichigo thing, at least somewhat, but they’d be here all week if they started rehashing old mistakes. This was their first date, dammit, and he intended to enjoy it. “Hey, I been meaning to ask you something,” he interrupted, using his old loud, rude, Rukongai tough guy voice. Rukia’s mouth snapped shut abruptly. “Did your sister and brother really meet in the Wilds?”

Rukia blinked, startled by the change in conversational direction. “Oh. Yeah. Well, not exactly. They met when Brother hired Sister to take him to the Wilds. They fell in love in the Wilds.”

“What the actual fuck?” Renji waved his pork bun in the air. “Am I losing my mind? That is completely bananas, right?” It occurred to him faintly that maybe he was losing his mind, and Rukia would just punch him in the stomach for impugning the sanity of her family members.

Rukia shook her head slightly, as if she were trying to dislodge something. “It is!” she exclaimed, as if just coming to the conclusion herself. “It is absolutely gonzo! I have been listening to that story for thirty five years now, and they tell it in most matter-of-fact tones, and everyone just nods their heads and says ‘oh, how exotic’ and you, Abarai Renji, are correct, it is literally insane.”

Renji blew out a breath out of his cheeks and slumped on the bench. “Oh, thank goodness. I thought I was losing it.”

Rukia’s stare went a little glassy for a moment, and Renji hoped he hadn’t sent her too far down memory lane. It was hard not to think about the Wilds without pulling up the memory of lying in the squat, hearing howls in the night from the south and trying not to contemplate what sort of creature was making them; Mameji burrowing into him with a whimper, Rukia curled in a tight ball at his back. “It is a good story, though,” she rallied suddenly. “I can’t tell it as well as Sister, but I’ll do my best.” She contemplated for a moment. “The first thing you need to know is that my sister is a genius, Renji. She’s meaner and tougher and more ruthless than we ever were, and she deserves every penny Byakuya lavishes on her.”

“I believe it.” It was hard to imagine anyone tougher than Rukia, but then again, Hisana was married to Captain Kuchiki, and for all intents and purposes, seemed to enjoy it. She was clearly no ordinary woman.

Rukia seemed to be searching his face for something. Was she worried that he would judge her sister? Fat chance of that. Renji happened to have a bit of a thing for mean, tough, ruthless women, the smaller the better.

“Hisana realized pretty quickly that trying to survive in Inuzuri was a chump’s game. You know as well as I do that trying to climb up through the districts one-by-one is nearly impossible, so she came up with a plan to shoot her way to the top. Turns out that rich people in the city will pay stupid amounts of money for weird shit from the Wilds, and Hisana figured out that the most valuable weird shit of all was orchids.”

“Orchids?” Renji echoed.

“Orchids,” Rukia nodded. “She had it all planned out: she would start as a supplier, going into the Wilds and retrieving samples, which she could sell to these skeezy middlemen who came down from the upper districts. She eventually managed to get a dealer’s license, which allowed her to travel freely, and to sell directly to customers in the Seireitei. Her plan was to spin a business out of her expertise and connections, and eventually she wouldn’t have to go into the Wilds herself anymore, even though she was incredibly good at it, maybe the best there ever was.”

“Makes sense, I suppose,” Renji mused.

“It would have worked, too, assuming the Wilds didn’t rot out her lungs first, except for one unexpected development.” Rukia tipped her head toward him, eyes half-lidded, her mouth twisted up in a smirk, the classic Rukia tell that this was the good part. “On one of her first trips north, she met this pretty-boy with more money than sense who was willing to pay her an exorbitant amount of money to escort him to the Wilds so he could pick his own orchids.”

“Oh, no,” Renji guffawed, even though he had sensed this was coming. The thought of it was too much. “The captain. The captain did that.”

Rukia nodded, her smirk growing into a mischievous smile. “He wasn’t a captain then. Not that it matters. He likes everyone to think he is very serious, but he gets on these flights of fancy sometimes, and there’s absolutely no stopping him. That’s probably something you should know, if you plan to keep running around after him. My sister is the same way, and you really, really have to watch out for them when they get spun up on the same thing. We’re very lucky, you realize, that Brother couldn’t care less about me getting married. We'd be getting fitted for wedding kimono already."

Renji’s brain refused to process that last part and glossed over it instead, like an oyster layering a grain of sand with mother-of-pearl. “So, they just… fell in love?” he echoed. “Out in the poisonous jungle, fighting acid-spitting crocodile-bears?” Even as he said it, he could see it, quite clearly. Hisana, wrapped in a grimy traveler’s cloak and headscarf, hard and wiry and mean as hell. Captain Kuchiki, young and arrogant, turning up his nose at her, right until she saved his pasty ass from some choking vine or a three-headed viper. Cripes, it was no wonder he fell in love with her. Renji knew that he, himself, would have been a goner from the get-go.

“That’s the way they tell it,” Rukia shrugged. She seemed pretty pleased with the reception to her story. Renji wondered if she got to tell many stories these days. It was a shame if not. He had always loved a Rukia story.

“Maniacs,” he declared, but he honestly felt more kinship with his captain than he ever believed possible.

“My sister got very sick from living in the Wilds,” Rukia went on. She was trying to keep her voice light, but Renji couldn’t help but notice the little crease that appeared between her eyebrows. “She was expected to die. Everyone used to say all the time how lucky it was that Byakuya found me before she passed.”

Renji stayed silent. Lady Kuchiki’s long illness and miraculous recovery wasn’t exactly a secret. It was the generally accepted story that the return of her sister had restored her spirit. Renji had found this to be a slight balm to his lonely heart in the years that followed. Knowing Rukia, though, she probably just beat herself up over all the times, back in Inuzuri, that they had discussed becoming shinigami and decided against it, that she could have been reunited with her lonely, dying sister years earlier, if she had just managed to be a slightly less loyal friend.

“But I told you, she’s strong and she’s mean and she got better in spite of everything and everyone,” Rukia went on, her voice brassy with braggadocio.

“I’m sure the best doctors money can buy didn’t help at all,” Renji teased, just a little.

“Perhaps,” Rukia shrugged, then pursed her lips. “I am mostly telling you this because she acts tough, but she has relapses sometimes and her constitution isn’t great. If you’re going to start hanging around my family, you have to agree to protect her with your life, those’re the rules.”

Renji scoffed. “Get real, Rukia.” He stretched his arms behind his head. “That was already in my vice-captain’s oath, her and Touma both. I threw you in for free. You Kuchiki always gotta extract promises. Like I wouldn’t do it anyway.”

Rukia regarded him carefully, trying to decide if he was pulling her leg or not. It was certainly within the bounds of things Byakuya would make someone do. “Enough about me,” she finally decided. “We’re on a date, so you have to tell me stuff about yourself, too.”

“You already know everything about me,” he reminded her.

“I do not. Tell me your favorite food that’s not fish-shaped.”

“Easy. There’s a sobaya over by the Eleventh that serves the best katsudon in the city. The owner will give you double tonkatsu if you can beat him at arm wrestling. Maybe I’ll take you for our next date. Next one’s on me, right?”

Rukia snorted. “This one doesn’t count. I told you I’d take you out nice and I mean to.”

“What d’you mean this doesn’t count?” Renji protested, pulling another paper bag onto his lap and extracting a carton of curry rice. “It counts! I’m counting it!”

“It’s kind of a crummy date,” Rukia grumbled, her cheeks coloring.

“It is not! I love this place, and I love cart food and you’re here! You wore that outfit just for me, ‘cause I said I liked you in it, didn’t you?”

Rukia laughed as he gestured at her uniform. “You’re so dumb.”

“I know,” he grinned back.

“Are you still a weenie about spices?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at him.

“Yup!” Renji confirmed cheerfully. “A tender baby!”

“Then give me that curry rice, it’s so good, but it’s too fiery for your gentle constitution. You can have this yakitori, it’s Touma’s favorite.”

“I am not even going to take issue with that, I love yakitori.”

“Well, I love curry rice, so it works out for the best if I don’t have to share.”

Well, I love you, Renji wanted to say, I’d let you have it even if it was my favorite. He couldn’t say it of course, it was too soon, but he could let himself think it, which is more than he had allowed over the past few decades. Instead, he just ate his yakitori and watched Rukia make ecstatic faces over her atomic rice and felt deeply, deeply happy.

Chapter Text

“Believe it or not,” Renji announced proudly, “that was the first time I’ve ever been kicked out of a Botanical Garden.”

“I’m sure it won’t be the last,” Rukia reassured him.

‘Kicked out’ was probably a bit strong, they’d just been asked to move along when the sun started to go down and the groundskeeper wanted to close the main gates. Without really discussing it, Renji had walked her home. Rukia wasn’t sure if he was being gentlemanly or if he just didn’t want to stop talking to her, but she didn’t want to stop talking to him, either, so she didn’t press the issue until they reached the curve in the road leading up to the Kuchiki estate where they would be visible from the house.

“We should say our goodbyes here,” Rukia suggested, turning to face him. She liked the way the last rays of the sun caught in his hair.

“Ashamed to be seen with me, eh?” Renji teased. She also liked the tiny bit of fang that showed when he grinned like that.

“Only because I told my sister I was working late, and I pride myself on at least not being an obvious liar,” she sniffed, faking indignation.

Renji was studying her face carefully. “Do you lie to each other a lot?” he asked, very seriously.

Rukia blinked. “I love my sister very much,” she insisted.

“I didn’t say anything about that.”

Rukia sucked her teeth. She didn’t like the little germ of guilt he had set squirming in her gut. “Hisana and I…. enjoy a highly edited version of each other’s lives. I don’t tell her about the injuries I get in the line of duty, and she doesn’t tell me about what goes into the gross political sausage she’s always up to her elbows in. We’re honest about things that matter.”

“I see.” Renji cocked his head to the side. “Did you ever tell her about, y’know, our history? Before I have to spend a week in her company.”

“I did,” Rukia huffed.

When they had first come to the Seireitei, Renji had been absolutely insufferable in his attempts to throw off his wretched roots. When he wasn’t lecturing her on her posture or the dirt under her fingernails, he was confiscating the cigarettes she nicked from the rich kids, like it was any different from all the teabags he palmed from the cafeteria (“It’s not stealing when they’re free, Rukia!”) In retrospect, they’d both been scared, insecure kids, Renji grasping at the rules in hopes of making sense of their new life, and Rukia afraid to step away from the safe footing of their old rough and rowdy ways.

Now, as his clear brown eyes looked over her, it occurred to Rukia that he wasn’t a posturing, toffee-nosed snot anymore. He had actually grown into the man he’d always wanted to be-- honest, principled, honorable. For all her fancy kimono and affected manners, she was still the same squirrelly little con artist.

“Good,” he replied, and to her surprise, he grinned again. “That makes things easy. Do me a favor, and try to think over any other long cons you’re pulling on your family. Make me a cheat sheet or something, so I don’t screw up any of your grifts? I would feel terrible.”

“Renji…” she started, unsure of what she wanted to say. She hated feeling like she had to explain herself to him, even though he wasn’t actually asking her to.

“I like to be honest with people, generally,” he mused. “Mostly, because I’m pretty dumb, and that’s the easiest way to keep my stories straight. But I’ve been dealing with your brother for a while now, so I know exactly what you mean about ‘edited versions’ of events.” He crossed his arms across his chest. “Your family is your business; I’m still trying to get my head around it. Like I said earlier, I would prefer to keep things honest between the two of us, but I knew what I was gettin’ into, so if you don’t want to agree to that, I understand.”

“I… I think that’s fair,” Rukia admitted. “We were always honest with each other in the old days.”

“For the most part,” Renji concurred.

“‘For the most part’?” Rukia echoed. “What sorts of things were you lying to me about?”

Renji shrugged in a casual way that set her blood roaring in her ears. “More like there were a lot of omissions, if you get me.”

“I told you everything!” Rukia lied. It didn’t count as a lie when you were obvious about it. “I was an open book!”

Renji rolled his eyes indulgently. “Fine,” he agreed, in that same infuriatingly flip tone. “I omitted a lot of things, then.”

“What sorts of things?” she demanded.

“Mmm, mostly just times that I wanted to kiss you. There were a lot of ‘em, though.” He was thoughtful for a moment. “There were probably also a number of lies regarding the extent of various injuries and the number and size of the people responsible for them.”

“Everyone lies about that stuff,” Rukia flapped a hand. “That’s expected.” She chewed at her lip as he continued to watch her, expectantly. The first part of his confession still hung in the air like a haze of cigarette smoke, refusing to dissipate. “Do you, uh, want to kiss me right now?” she asked, hesitantly. The answer was obvious. He wouldn’t have brought it up if it wasn’t.

Renji wanted to play it cute, though. He tapped his chin thoughtfully. “Been tryin’ to decide. You showed me a pretty nice time, tonight. I just happened to notice that you were taking your time sayin’ goodbye, figured you were probably--”

“You’re so tedious, Abarai,” she accused, stepping toward him and going up on her tiptoes. “Just do it, already.”

She had expected him to hem and haw and maybe even chicken out after all his big talk, but maybe that was one more thing he’d outgrown. In a moment, his hands were on either side of her face, his lips firmly pressed against her own. Rukia’s breath caught in her throat. She hadn’t expected him to be so forward, so confident. It was a pretty chaste kiss, as these things went-- parted lips, but no tongue, and he never moved his hands aside from brushing his thumbs lightly up the curves of her cheeks, but it felt passionate. It was a kiss to break an enchantment, or to send a beloved off into battle. It was a kiss worth waiting forty years for.

“Thank you,” Renji murmured as he backed away, his fingers tangling momentarily in her hair before dropping to his sides.

Rukia’s knees felt wobbly. She was an idiot. A fool, for getting into this. A nincompoop. A dolt. “You taste like okonomiyaki,” she informed him.

Renji grinned. She liked the way he wore his happiness easily these days, the way it shone out his eyes. “Given the number of worse things you could have said, I am choosing to take that as a compliment.”

“I gotta go,” Rukia replied, hoping desperately that he would just leave before all her joints fell apart completely, and she could lay in a big heap of Rukia-parts in the driveway for a while, like a pile of snake vertebrae with no reiatsu to hold them together. Maybe one of the servants would find her and sweep her inside with a broom.

“Me, too,” he replied. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.” He started to turn, but then paused. The grin softened, his eyes crinkling around the corners. “I’m glad we got that in. I’ve been thinking all day about how hard it’s gonna be to stay on my best behavior for a whole week.”

“And you think that helped?!” Rukia blurted out. As if she was going to be able to look at him without her bones turning into mochi any time in the near future.

“I’m not exactly renowned for my good ideas.” He raised an eyebrow waggishly at her. “Are you mad at me?”

Rukia blew a strand of hair out of her face and crossed her arms over her chest. “Always! Fortunately for you, the Shiba don’t believe in good behavior, and neither do I. Watch your back, is all I’m saying.”

The intolerable man had the gall to wink at her. “Watch your own, Kuchiki.”

Chapter Text

“You do realize we are only going to be there a week, right?” Hisana remarked dryly, her chin resting in the palm of her hand. “How many times per day are you planning on changing your clothes?”

“I have observed,” Byakuya replied, equally dryly, “that when consorting with Shiba, ill fates tend to befall one’s garments.”

“Maybe you could consider packing something… I don’t know… practical?”

“Silk is the most practical fabric, Hisana. And do you expect me to not look my best? The Shiba may be a fallen house, but that is no reason to show up on their doorstep swathed in rags.”

“Mmm. Rags,” Hisana echoed, taking another glance out the window, where the sun was sinking low in the sky. A small, dark-clad figure was trotting up the drive. Finally! “Rukia’s home!” she sighed in relief. “I’m going to go check with her.”

“You should give her some time to get settled,” Byakuya suggested. “She probably hasn’t eaten.”

Hisana pursed her lips. “I don’t believe for a second that Ukitake made her work late. I think she’s mad at me.”

Byakuya contemplated two scarves being held up by his valet. “Both,” he decided. “She is not mad at you. It is a perfectly normal thing to make one’s subordinates work late when they are to be absent. I am sure Abarai is still at work as we speak. I imagine I shall need to rouse him at his desk tomorrow morning when we are ready to depart.”

Hisana glared at him. “Yes, dear, but Juushirou is nice and you are a monster.”

“Ah, right, I forgot. In any case, I see no reason Rukia should be displeased with you. She usually enjoys trips to the countryside, and it’s her friend we are visiting.”

“She seemed grumpy earlier.”

“Ah, what an odd change for our usually lighthearted and high-spirited Rukia.” Byakuya turned away from his assortment of fine kimono to favor his wife with a withering glare. “Are you sure that you are not, perhaps, feeling the pinpricks of guilt from your incessant interference in your sister’s personal dealings?”

Hisana wrinkled her nose. “Stuff it, Rich Boy.”

As it turned out, Rukia had headed straight for her room. Hisana hovered outside the door for a minute. She had already picked out the clothing she expected her sister to need, and Rukia was combing through the lot with her maid, Mikan.

“Oh, why are these all so fancy? Throw in some lighter yukata, something I can climb a tree in. I intend to spend every possible minute running around outside. Maybe the purple hakama that I use for archery practice? Those are pretty practical.”

“Would you rather just pack some uniforms, miss?”

“A girl can look cute while she’s been outdoorsy, Mikan.”

“So do you want to put some of these kimono back, miss?”

“Mm, let’s bring them anyway. Ichigo’s little sisters are nearly the same size as me, and maybe they’d like to borrow them for when they come to the Seireitei. Oh, did you pack the blue one, with the bellflowers? Sister says that one looks nice with my eyes.”

“Oh, I think so, too, miss!”

Rukia sounded surprisingly… cheerful. Upbeat. Left to her own devices, Rukia would usually pack for trips by chucking a pile of shihakushou into her luggage. Mikan’s tireless diligence and subtle demeanor was the only reason they were able to take Rukia anywhere.

So why the sudden enthusiasm? Rukia had seemed downright hostile to the idea, earlier. Had she changed her mind... or had the grumpiness been a ruse from the start?

An irritating idea was nagging at Hisana’s brain. It was Byakuya’s fault for bringing it up, of course, but what if Rukia did have feelings for the Kurosaki boy? That would explain the cheerfulness and the sudden interest in flattering attire. It would be very easy, Hisana thought, to have a few fluttery thoughts about a young man who stormed an entire city for you, although Rukia would rather be executed than admit to having a butterfly in her stomach. Furthermore, Rukia was a very sensible young woman, and it would be just like her to try to push aside an infatuation in favor of pragmatism. Of course she would brighten when handed a second chance at something that seemed like it could never be.

Hisana scowled. Why hide it, though? She was a kind and sympathetic sister! An excellent confidant! Except… except that she had just twisted Rukia’s arm into promising to give Abarai a fair shake.

Everything had seemed to be moving in a positive direction, when Byakuya’s lieutenant had showed up at the Orchid Show, looking very earnest and muscular and offering shamisen carrying services. Hisana thought she had even detected a bit of a spring in Rukia’s step as they had gone off together, her hand looped over his elbow. Of course, by the time they returned, Rukia had been in a foul temper, Abarai standing by, patient and stoic. Hisana had assumed it was all reaction to the Shiba bombshell, but maybe she had misinterpreted everything, though, maybe they’d had a bad time on top of it all, maybe he said something boorish about her shamisen playing--

“Sister, I know you’re out there,” Rukia called impatiently. “You can come in.”

“I just came to make sure you got some dinner,” Hisana breezed in, not allowing a hint of her troubled thoughts to show on her face. “That was beastly of Juushirou to keep you so late.”

“I picked something up,” Rukia replied. “And don’t blame him, he told me to go home. I just had a few things I wanted to finish up. I could hardly enjoy myself if I knew there was a mess waiting for me at work when I got home.”

“Well, I’m glad you’ve decided to make the best of things!” Hisana beamed. “I’m looking forward to it immensely.”

Rukia regarded her with lidded eyes. “I hear you caved on the practice sword.”

Mikan nervously sidled off toward Rukia’s dressing room.

Hisana sighed. “I’m tired of hearing about it,” she waved a hand dismissively.

“I think it’s a wonderful idea, to be honest. Perhaps Byakuya will be so distracted with being beaten about the knees and ankles that he’ll forget to get into a shouting match with Kuukaku. Do you think we’ll have a campfire? The Shiba make the best campfires.”

“Byakuya never shouts,” Hisana corrected. “He just does that weird thing where it seems like he’s shouting, but he’s just talking at a normal volume.”

“Kuukaku shouts.”

“All Shiba shout. That’s the only way they communicate. And speaking of people who like to shout, I have some other good news!” Hisana kept her voice light, but she was observing her sister keenly for a reaction. “I didn’t tell you earlier because it wasn’t a sure thing at the time, but it turns out Lieutenant Abarai will be accompanying us! Isn’t that fun?”

A strange look crossed Rukia’s face, a rather sly, calculating look that Hisana didn’t like. “Is that so?” she drawled. “Can’t imagine that was Brother’s idea.” She looked thoughtful for a moment. “Captain-Commander probably ordered him. Wants to get a measure of Ichigo and assumes they’ll go at it sooner or later.”

“Rukia!” Hisana scolded. “That’s not it at all! Apparently, your brother and Renji are in the middle of some very important bankai training that shouldn’t be interrupted.”

Rukia made a face of deep skepticism. “Bankai training takes years. But whatever. Sounds fun. Renji loves a campfire, especially if there’s roast yams.” She turned back to sifting through her garments. “Between this and the practice sword, Touma must be positively glowing.”

“I haven’t told him yet,” Hisana admitted. “On either count.” She had no intention of hearing about the practice sword non-stop for the entire trip out to Rukongai.

“Well,” said Rukia a bit stiffly. “I need to finish packing. Thank you for getting me started, I just need to make a few minor adjustments. I’m sure this won’t take long at all.”

“Rukia....” Hisana squeezed one hand with the other. “Is there anything… you’d like to talk about?”

“Nope!” Rukia chirped. “It’s been a long day, and it’s going to be an even longer one tomorrow, so I’d like to get to bed a little early, you know?”

“Of course,” Hisana agreed. “You know I am always here for you, right? You can tell me anything.”

Rukia looked up from the obi she was refolding and regarded her sister with a too-sincere look on her face. “Hisana. I tell you. I am looking forward to the trip. I am sure it will be a classic Shiba shitshow, but I am determined to have a good time.” Her eyes glinted with resolve.

Hisana did not doubt Rukia’s words, but she also wasn’t reassured by them. She, too, knew the secret of making ambiguous promises with a very specific meaning in mind. Rukia could keep her secrets for now. Hisana was infinitely patient, and she was quite sure that the fresh Rukongai air would clear up any number of mysteries.

“Perfect,” she replied. “So am I.”

Chapter Text

Renji was dreaming.

He was in Rukongai, making his way home on foot. “Home”, for the purposes of the dream, was the last squat they had lived in, down in the part of town that had been mostly washed out the year of the Big Floods. Most of the houses around here were splintering, moldy deathtraps, but they’d found one that was in decent shape once Rukia had repaired the biggest of holes in the roof.

It was sunset, and everything was painted gold and rose. Renji scrambled over a big downed tree, and as the house came into view, Renji’s knees locked, his feet refused to move.

On a hot summer day, a few months before Mameji died, before that last long, strange winter when everything changed, he’d had a few hours to kill and nothing better to do. For a lark, he had built a stupid little swing in the twisted little apple tree that stood in the front yard.

Rukia sat on the swing now. It was too low to the ground, and her heels dragged in the dirt. She bent her knees now and again, half-heartedly setting herself a-swing. She held something in her left hand that he couldn’t quite see. Mostly, she was looking up to the sky, watching the pink clouds turn steadily purpler with the setting sun. Occasionally, she would tip her head to one side, and her hair would fall across her face.

She was beautiful. She was the most beautiful thing Renji had ever seen. He wanted to run to her and put his arms around her and tell her she was safe, they never had to leave Inuzuri. He would protect her and they would stay here and he would promise to be happy with what he had, because he’d seen life in the Seireitei, and it wasn’t better, it wasn’t.

Rukia lifted the thing in her hand to her face, and Renji realized it was a dandelion, white and fluffy. Her cheeks puffed momentarily, and the seeds danced off into the wind.

His feet wouldn’t move.

Rukia laughed, and her voice was like bells.

A loud banging shocked Renji into consciousness.

His chest hurt. Everything hurt, actually.

Light was coming in the window from a strange angle. Was it the afternoon? Renji stumbled to his feet and made his way to the door, the dream still clinging to the inside of his skull like damp cotton candy. He was going to need to make a decision, and soon. He wanted to throw everything to the wind, to toss his badge aside and fight his way through every last person in the Seireitei who wanted Rukia dead. But what if that made things worse? What if there was something he could still do as an Assistant-Captain to help her? Maybe it was too late to jump ship, maybe he’d already missed his chance to make any difference at all.

Squinting and rubbing at his chest, Renji slid the door open.

Captain Kuchiki stood on his doorstep, hand raised to knock again.

Renji abruptly straightened up, sending spikes of pain down the muscles of his back. “Sir!” he managed. Shit, what the hell time was it? This wasn’t right. “I’m sorry, sir! Momo… Momo was supposed to come look in on me…” It wasn’t meant to be an excuse. He was just trying to remember things, and nothing was resolving clearly.

“Lieutenant Hinamori has been arrested,” Byakuya said sharply, and Renji’s blood ran to ice.

“What?” he managed, his voice tiny.

“May I come in?” Byakuya asked, sounding supremely uncomfortable.

“Uh, yeah,” Renji mumbled, moving aside. “You own the place, anyway.”

“I do not “own” the Squad 6 barracks, I merely finance them,” Byakuya corrected, sweeping into the room. Renji felt extremely conscious of the fact that he’d barely managed to unpack since he’d moved in a month ago, and he didn’t actually own any furniture, aside from his futon. There was nowhere to sit, no way to offer his captain a cup of tea or whatever you were supposed to do in these circumstances. He realized belatedly that he wasn’t even wearing a shirt. “I would normally never intrude on your private quarters like this, Lieutenant,” Byakuya said in a way that might have been an apology. “But I am afraid we are in extraordinary circumstances.”

Renji found a half-clean kosode draped over the kitchen counter, and started to pull it onto his shoulders. “What’s going on? How long was I out?”

“Your fight with Kurosaki Ichigo was roughly twenty-four hours ago,” Byakuya replied. “You have missed much.”

It wasn’t correct, Renji’s brain decided, Captain Kuchiki Byakuya here in his quarters, with his kenseiken and his white haori and his formal speech. Maybe this was still a dream. The sense of unreality grew as Byakuya recited off the frankly insane list of circumstances that had occurred in the time Renji had been sleeping off what should have been a death blow. Captain Aizen, dead, possibly murdered by the ryouka. Lieutenants Hinamori and Kira, the kind, sensible, self-controlled companions of his youth, thrown in the brig for brawling. With each other. The Kenpachi, defeated. Shihouin Yoruichi, the legendarily banished former head of the Onmitsukidou, appearing suddenly, apparently having thrown in with the ryouka.

When he reached the point of his narrative where Shihouin made off with Kurosaki under his very nose, Byakuya abruptly stopped. “What do you make of it?”

Renji blinked at his captain. “Me?”

Byakuya’s gaze was level. “Yes. You, Lieutenant, have been entangled in this as much as anyone. You have leveled swords with the ryouka boy twice. Your first captain, murdered. Your second captain, defeated. I assume you are acquainted with Lieutenants Kira and Hinamori? They seemed very concerned when they delivered your battered carcass to my barracks yesterday.”

“Yeah, we’re friends,” Renji replied emptily.

“Just about the only person in all of this you seem to have no relationship with is my sister,” Byakuya mused. “However you were drawn into--”

“We were childhood companions,” Renji interrupted, his tongue moving of its own volition. “Rukia and I. In Inuzuri. I wasn’t good enough for her, after… after. I avoided her for forty years. I thought that if I were your lieutenant… she’s everything to me.”

He hadn’t meant to say that last part.

He’d never said it aloud to anyone and now he’d gone and blurted it out in front of the worst person possible.

Or maybe not. Byakuya digested this piece of information without any sort of visible emotion showing on his face. “Ah,” he finally said. “I suppose that explains it.”

I suppose it does, Renji’s brain echoed back stupidly.

“So. I repeat: What do you make of it?”

“It doesn’t make any sense, none of it,” Renji muttered. “Kira and Hinamori are the most level-headed people I know. Or, they used to be. I don’t… we’re grown apart, recently. Captain Aizen… he always seems nice, but he’s savvy as Hell and twice as strong. I doubt there’s a single Gotei captain that could catch him off his guard, let alone a bunch of dumb human kids. And why would they? What does he have to do with anything? Ichigo is stupidly strong-- you said he beat Captain Zaraki? Really? -- but there’s no malice to him. He just wants to save Rukia, that’s all.” Renji paused. “Why did you stop him?”

Captain Kuchiki leaned forward slightly. “Hmm?”

“You said he nearly succeeded in freeing Rukia, but you stopped him. Why?”

Byakuya narrowed his eyes dangerously. “Have you forgotten, Abarai, that you and I were the ones who apprehended her? Do you no longer cleave to the laws and justice of Soul Society?”

Renji bit his tongue so hard that his mouth filled with copper. He could not manage to bring forth any words.

Byakuya's eyes bored into him. The silence was deafening.

“Where would they have gone, Abarai?” Byakuya said softly. “Should I have escaped with them? Harbored them at my home, perhaps, where my wife and child live? Or should I have let them go, only to face arrest myself, forfeiting all of my remaining power to go sit in a cell while my sister is executed?”

It was true. Captain Kuchiki had much to lose.

Renji wanted to laugh. It was funny, hilarious even that Captain Kuchiki was going through the exact same moral dilemma he was. He was absolutely free, he realized, to go throw his life away, to go protect the only thing that he’d ever had to lose. He had made his decision. His body felt weightless, a dandelion aloft.

“You are correct, Abarai,” Byakuya finally said, and it was suddenly obvious how hard the man was struggling with his own decision. “None of this makes sense. And to go further, why Rukia? At first, I expected a plot against my house. But there has been no pressure, no demands, no attempts at bargaining. In fact, my appeals have been returned with rote stamps of denial. I have been unable to contact any of my cousins that serve on the Central 46. I have not been afforded even the slightest courtesy of an explanation as to why the Clan Head of one of the Four Great Houses is being treated like a common pest. I fear this is not a conspiracy against the Kuchiki, but a conspiracy against all of Soul Society.”

“You figure it’s your duty to figure it out?” Renji asked in a voice that was far too flip for a lieutenant to use towards his captain.

Byakuya turned a stare on his adjutant that ought to have flayed Renji down to his bones, except that, in this moment, Renji was unflayable. “I do not fool myself, Abarai, by pretending at altruistic intentions. Yes, I intend to do all in my power to suss out whoever is behind this, and I do not plan to show my hand before I absolutely must, but I will protect my sister, if I must cross swords with the entire Gotei to do so.” He set his jaw and next words came out almost as a mutter. “You are terribly young and it is wrong of me to put you in this position, Abarai, but if you are willing, I would have you at my side.”

Renji rolled his stiff shoulders and finally got around to tucking in his shirt. “Wondered when you were gonna get around to asking, sir.”

“Years ago, Shihouin had a hideaway somewhere in the vicinity of Soukyoku Hill,” Captain Kuchiki had said dismissively. “I would start there.”

“Somewhere in the vicinity?” Renji remembers himself echoing blankly.

“I never knew the exact location. The boy spews reiatsu like a broken fountain, though, finding him should be trivial. I was given to understand that your tracking skills were exemplary.” A pause that lasted maybe a second and weighed at least three tons. “Or was I misinformed?”

There was no graceful way to respond to something like that, so Renji just went. Sure enough, he picked up Kurosaki’s presence almost immediately. It was almost comically easy, to be honest, he probably could have found this place even without the hint from the captain. There were explosive wards over the entrance, nasty pieces of work that would have taken an expert hours of careful work to unpick. Fortunately, Renji had an extendable sword and remarkable ambivalence toward getting blown up.

He tried to look cool as he landed amid a cascade of rubble and dust, and slung Zabimaru up onto one shoulder. He didn’t feel cool. He felt like Kurosaki was going to laugh in his face.

As the dust settled, he counted three pairs of eyes boring into him. A dark, slender woman who must be the disgraced Lady Shihouin, measuring Renji with the sharp gaze of a predatory cat. Kurosaki, clearly in the middle of training, red-faced and sweating, clutching his sword and gaping over his shoulder in horror. Finally, a disheveled, older man in a ragged shihakushou who didn’t seem quite real around the edges.

“I was wondering what you were doing down here,” Renji gave a short bark of laughter. “Training for bankai in secret, eh?” This fucking fucker. Of course he was. Of course this little shit would be manifesting his fucking zanpakutou spirit and achieving the highest levels of spiritual power after being a Soul Reaper for all of what, twenty minutes? Of course.

“What do you want?” Shihouin asked, her voice low and dangerous. Captain Kuchiki had warned Renji not to underestimate her, and he had no intention of doing so.

“Came to parley,” Renji grunted. “Got an offer for you.”

“You asked me to save Rukia,” Kurosaki said slowly. “You change your mind?”

“Not at all,” Renji replied. “Came to offer my services. Captain and I are defecting.”

“Baby Byakuya?! Defecting?” Shihouin hooted. “You are shitting me! Do not trust this man, Ichigo, he’s full of it.”

“She’s his family,” Renji said softly. “No one fucks with his family.” He swallowed. “He tried pulling strings, and they wouldn’t pull. I don’t know much about this stuff, but he says something rotten is going on. A traitor, a conspiracy, maybe even. He went to go talk to some people he trusts, I don’t know who, and he sent me to go talk to you.”

Kurosaki’s eyes darted between Renji and Shihouin. “What... what’s the deal?” he finally asked.

“Right now, it’s a two-man grift,” Renji explained. “I have gone rogue. Captain has already declared me AWOL and called for my arrest, as if anyone has time or inclination for that horseshit. My job is to disrupt the execution, sow chaos, and to protect Rukia with my life and anyone else’s who gets in the way.”

“That sounds a lot like our plan,” Kurosaki scowled, scratching his head.

“We figured. Thought it might go a little better with two men on the ground.”

“And Byakuya?” Shihouin demanded.

“Figured he’s more useful where he is, digging for answers and trying to convince everyone he’s a rank bastard who’d stand by and watch his baby sister get the ax. Hopefully, he’ll uncover what’s really going on and the execution will get cancelled all neatsy-tidy and we don’t have to do anything.”

“And he doesn’t?” Shihouin growled.

Renji shrugged. “Then he’ll be standin’ all nice and neat in that line of captains, ready to turn on his pals when shit starts to go down.”

“Even Byakuya can’t take down the Captain-General,” Shihouin pointed out.

“He doesn’t have to fight the Captain-General,” Renji replied. “All he has to do is pretend to fight Ichigo and take long enough that I can get Rukia the hell out of there.”

“Why don’t you fight your captain and I’ll run away with Rukia,” Ichigo suggested indignantly.

“Because no one would believe that I could keep him busy that long,” Renji growled.

“Oh,” Ichigo replied.

“It may not come to that. Like I said, he’s workin’ the angles. He said there were some other captains he thought he could trust. He didn’t give me much detail.”

“Ukitake, likely,” Shihouin mused. “And if Ukitake’s in, so is Kyouraku. Hmm. Interesting.”

“Why should we trust you?” Kurosaki snapped, and Renji realized that he wasn’t the only one who felt supremely uncool here.

“You don’t have to,” Renji shrugged. “You can kill me if you’d rather, we both know you can.” He sucked his teeth. “Captain said that. Said that’s why I had to go instead of him.”

Shihouin gave a dark chuckle. “Maybe Byakuya did send you after all. That does sound like him.”

Renji looked away. “Look, I’d honestly prefer if you didn’t. Kill me, that is. Not ‘cause I like living, which I do, but because I’d really like Rukia to keep living, and I think you can use all the help you can get.”

Kurosaki’s eyes slid to Shihouin. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” she laughed. “Well, if this punk is to be believed, this is a huge point in our favor. Byakuya is one of the strongest captains, and him being with us instead of against us makes this seem almost do-able. Also, he’s disgustingly honorable. I don’t think he make an offer like this as a trap, it would offend his sensibilities.” She waved a hand at Renji. “On, the other hand, I don’t know shit about this guy here.”

Kurosaki’s eyes returned to Renji. The kid scanned him up and down for a scant second. “Well, I trust ‘im. And this Byakuya guy seemed like kind of a dick to me, both times I met him, but I can’t believe he wouldn’t want to help his sister. I’m in.”

Renji blinked. “You… are?”

Shihouin snorted, but said nothing.

Kurosaki wiped his forehead with the back of his arm. “Not very good at listening, are you? Everything you said makes sense. I’m not gonna say no to help. You’re pretty strong and it’s obvious you got a lot of Rukia-feelings rattling around in there.” Before Renji could work up a good sputter of denial, Kurosaki grimaced. “I know how that is. She does that to everyone. She’s the worst.”

The sputter blew out Renji’s lips as a weak laugh. “Yeah, she really is.”

“It’s time to face reality, Abarai,” Aizen cooed soothingly. “You know, I had heard your new captain killed you earlier today. Poor little stray dog, always looking for a master, but none wants to have him. I was quite surprised to hear that you had survived, well done there. I can’t imagine you have much left after that, though. ”

“Renji,” Rukia implored, scrabbling at the front of his kosode. “Renji, you have to let me go, he’s going to kill you.”

“Rukia,” Renji murmured, and dipped his head toward her, hoping it looked like maybe he was saying some heartfelt last words. “I know you’re weak, so this is probably gonna be a little rough, but hold on.”

“Renji,” Rukia gasped. “What are you gonna do, you dumbass?”

“I tire of your stubbornness, Abarai,” Aizen said, taking a step forward. “If you won’t give me Rukia, then I’m afraid I can’t help you. But I’ll--”

Renji had gotten tired of Aizen’s horseshit a long time ago. “Bankai!!”

Aizen’s eyes widened maybe a millimeter in shock, Renji had to award himself a point for that. Gin made a very satisfying grunt of surprise, though, when Hihiou Zabimaru’s head slammed into him from the side.

“Bankai?” Aizen laughed, his voice going a bit high. “An actual surprise, Abarai, and you waste it attacking my subordinates? You fool. You idiot.”

“Naw. I mean, he is an idiot, but in this case, he’s just running defense, like we planned,” Ichigo announced, his sword ringing against Aizen’s as he slipped out of shunpo.

“Nice o’ you to finally show up!” Renji shouted, blocking a shakkahou from Tousen with a great loop of bone.

“Rukia, you okay?” Ichigo called. “You didn’t lose her somewhere, did you, Renji?”

“Pay attention to your opponent, boy,” Aizen snapped irritably. “You cannot afford to take me lightly!” Renji didn’t have much time to dwell on it, but Byakuya must have managed to throw some real wrenches into Aizen’s plans if he was losing his cool like this.

Ichigo in bankai was like lightning, too brilliant to look at and unspeakably fast. But he was also too young by far, too green. It was a miracle he was holding his own against Aizen, but a miracle whose time was limited.

Renji glanced down at the dazed woman in his arms, overcome by the maelstrom of spiritual pressure. He gave her a gentle jostle as he knocked Gin’s Shinsou aside. “Ru. Ru, stay with me. You’re safe. Me and Ichigo are gonna keep you safe.”

“You… two… stupid…” Rukia mumbled. “He’s too strong for you.”

“Yeah, probably,” Renji admitted, hefting her up a little on his chest. “But we don’t gotta do this for long. Hikotsu Taihou!”

“This is becoming exceedingly tedious!” Aizen yelled. He blocked one of Ichigo’s blows with a forearm, and slashed at the boy’s midsection. Ichigo tried to jump backwards, but blood sprayed the air. “Bankai or no, you children are no match for me. You cannot even perceive my true self, you morons, you-- You!” This time, his eyes really did go wide.

What happened next was difficult to follow, even for Renji, whose eyes were practiced at such things. The Aizen in front of Ichigo abruptly disappeared. Forty fathoms worth of reiatsu crushed down on their heads. Rukia lost her battle with consciousness. There was a flurry of battle, a flash of steel petals, the ozone smell of kidou. It occurred to Renji that he had thought he had the measure of his captain’s fighting ability, and he was completely, utterly wrong.

In his peripheral awareness, Captain Unohana and Hitsugaya arrived, dispatching Tousen and Gin with brutal efficiency. Ichigo appeared at Renji’s side, clutching his abdomen with one blood-covered arm, but his sword still held outward protectively. “She okay?” he asked, his voice edged with desperation.

“Mmm,” Renji grunted, “just passed out.” He shifted Rukia up onto his shoulder since Ichigo surely wouldn’t be satisfied until he could see her drooling all over Renji’s shihakushou with his own two eyes.

Hihiou Zabimaru continued to coil defensively around them, and Renji kept his eyes glued to the skirmish that was playing out before him in double flash time. Ichigo was just a kid, and Renji didn’t blame him if he needed a moment to gaze at the girl whose life he’d just saved. But someone had to keep their guard up until all this was truly over, and Renji was the battle-hardened professional here. Also, he felt like he owed Ichigo this.

A few moments that felt like forever dragged by, and then Captain Kuchiki stood over the bloodied mess of a man who had quite nearly pulled a fast one on the whole of Soul Society. He held in his hand a shimmering blade, one of the thousand swords of Senbonzakura Kageyoshi.

“You have made a number of mistakes,” Byakuya announced in his cool baritone. “First, in taking Abarai’s loyalty so lightly. You rejected a valuable thing out of hand, and then you were all too willing to believe that I would do likewise. But more importantly…” he drove the sword viciously down, “you aimed your blade at my family.”

Chapter Text

Kuchiki Touma raised his chubby hands in the air and snatched a leaf from the gingko tree overhead. It was bright green, still a few weeks away from its golden fall raiment. Touma waved the leaf in the air, enjoying the satisfying flappy noise it made.

Touma loved being tall.

“I’m pretty sure my sister gave him to you with the intention that you would deliver him to me,” Rukia said dryly, half leaning out the window of her palanquin.

“Look,” Renji replied, “she did that because he was getting antsy, all cooped up with his folks, right?” He gestured towards the other palanquin up ahead. “But he stopped fussing as soon as I put him on my shoulders. Problem solved, right?”

“Leaf!” Touma announced, waving the leaf in Renji’s face.

“Very nice,” Renji replied, his voice gentle with far more patience than Rukia ever would have expected from her childhood companion. “But one is enough! The trees need their leaves more than you do.”

“I wish I could get out and walk,” Rukia sighed glumly.

“What’s stopping you?” Renji asked. “These guys probably wouldn’t mind a break, eh, Palanquin Guys?”

“It is an honor to transport Lady Rukia!” one of the palanquin bearers barked in return. Renji was quickly learning that, although some of the lower servants laughed at his jokes, anyone who went around in the full purple Kuchiki livery usually took themselves very seriously.

“Propriety,” Rukia replied. “That’s what’s stopping me.”

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty sure hanging out that window isn’t exactly proprietous either,” Renji pointed out.

“First of all, that’s not a word, and secondly, It’s okay as long as we’re not going through a town,” Rukia excused. “I was just out here last month. It takes twenty minutes by flash step. I hate processions.”

“So cynical,” Renji teased. “The weather is perfect, we’ve got a whole week off work to goof around and be with friends, and the view is… gorgeous.”

He wasn’t looking at the trees.

“Only you would describe bankai training as ‘goofing around’,” Rukia said, but her voice was soft. She scolded her heart for thumping so loudly within her chest. One little kiss, and here she was, the tough-as-nails Fourth Seat of Squad 13, turning into a steaming pile of porridge whenever this big lunk made eyes at her. Worst of all, she could tell that he could tell what it was doing to her, and the shameless jerk was going to keep doing it. She had considered yelling at him or asking him to stop, but that had a serious downside, namely that he might actually stop.

“Auntie Rukia! Auntie Rukia! Look!”

Rukia craned her head out the window a little to admire Touma’s handiwork. He had stuffed at least two dozen leaves under the edges of Renji’s bandana and into the base of his ponytail.

“He’s pulled a bunch of leaves off the trees after I told him not to, eh?” Renji guessed, unable to see what was going on.

“Yeah, exactly,” Rukia lied. “Very pretty, Touma, but listen to Lieutenant Renji or he’ll put you down, okay?”

“Good boy Touma!” Touma insisted fiercely, as he did whenever he was subjected to mild reprimands.

Rukia took a deep breath, preparing to launch into the same fruitless speech Hisana always did, on the importance of listening and obedience, but Renji was faster. “How good a boy are you, Touma?”

“Very good boy Touma!”

“Let’s see about that. Future Lieutenant Touma, can you put both hands on your head?”

Touma grabbed at his own dark, wavy locks eagerly.

“I can’t see, Auntie Rukia, how’s he doin’?”

“He’s doing very well, Lieutenant Renji.”

“Okay, Future Lieutenant Touma, now make a silly face.”

Touma wrinkled his nose and stuck out his tongue.

“Oh, you can do better than that,” Rukia goaded.

Touma bugged his eyes.

“Well, I think Lieutenant Renji still looks sillier than you, but I suppose that will have to do,” Rukia teased.

“Next, Future Lieutenant…” Renji trailed off suddenly, his shoulders tensing. “Go to your Auntie!”

Rukia caught the whiff of reiatsu just as her nephew was pushed into her arms. “Renji, wait!” she shouted, but her voice was lost in the cacophony of breaking branches as something large and porcine came crashing through the woods.

“Hey-OOOOOOOOO!” a loud voice boomed at them. “Hey, buddy, is this the Kuchiki procession?”

Renji, sword drawn, crouched in a defensive posture, blinked at the wide, bristly face that had just emerged from the brush, and then, at a second wide, bristly face that appeared above it. “Uh, yeah,” he managed. Half a dozen Kuchiki guards converged belatedly on the palanquin.

“PIGGY!” Touma shouted delightedly.

“Hi, Ganju!” Rukia called wanly.

Two smaller, prettier faces popped up behind each of Ganju’s shoulders.

“Hi, Rukia!” Karin shouted, waving cheerfully.

“Is that your nephew?” Yuzu added. “Ichi-nii said you had one. He’s sooooooo cute!”

“No, that’s my brother’s lieutenant,” Rukia replied. She hefted Touma, who was making piggy noises. “This is my nephew.”

“Dammit, Rukia,” Renji grumbled.

“Nice leaf crown,” Ganju declared. “I’ll fight you later, if you want, but I should go ahead and tell Big Sis that you guys are here early. She didn’t think you would be here for another two hours because she says it takes Lord Kuchiki half the morning to do his hai--”

Two small hands slapped over Ganju’s mouth. “The house is just over the next hill!” Yuzu announced. “Ichi-nii is going to be so excited to see you, Rukia!”

“Assuming he’s woken up yet,” Karin added.

“Oh, don’t worry, we’ll make sure he’s up!” Yuzu flapped a hand. “See you soon! YEE-HA, BONNIE!”

The boar burst onto the road, did a lap around the palanquin, serpentined around the rest of the procession, and disappeared up the road.

There was a moment of silence, before Renji re-sheathed his sword with an unintelligible mutter.

“Are you all right, Lady?” one of the guards finally asked.

“I’m fine,” Rukia replied with a grin.

“Piggy?” Touma asked hopefully.

“Um, Lieutenant?” one of the guards asked Renji.

“Yeah?” he replied.

“You’ve got a bunch of leaves in your hair.”

“So I hear,” Renji replied, glaring at Rukia, but she just grinned mischievously back at him.

It took another half an hour before Rukia was finally able to get out of the cursed palanquin. Touma had been shuffled back up to his parents and Renji had unfortunately removed his leafy garland.

Kuukaku stood out in front of her house. She looked a little more formal than usual, in the sense that she was wearing an actual yukata, although it was tied rather casually about the chest, and lacked sleeves. She was sucking boredly at her pipe, blowing an occasional smoke ring. Isshin stood to her right, grinning a goofy, sheepish smile. Rukia almost didn’t recognize him at first, in a green, cloud-patterned kimono, instead of his usual white coat and loud shirt. The resemblance between him and Ganju was so strong they could have been brothers instead of cousins. Rukia wondered, with a pang, if Kaien ever would have aged into those broad shoulders and thicker neck, if he would have lost his lanky slouch and perpetually suspicious squint.

Speaking of lanky slouches and scowling, Ichigo was nowhere to be seen. Karin and Yuzu were standing next to their father, gazing wide-eyed at the procession and whispering to each other.

Brother and Sister were exchanging greetings with Kuukaku. Well, Sister was exchanging greetings. Brother was staring up at The House, its mighty arms eternally flexing. His eyes were narrowed in Deep Disapproval. Touma, in Byakuya’s much less impressive arms, was still shouting enthusiastically about the piggy.

“How many servants did you bring with you, anyway?” Kuukaku scratched the back of her head in a gesture that was so Kaien-like, it made Rukia’s heart ache.

“Oh, the bare minimum, but I’m sure we’ll manage somehow.”

“Look, I don’t really know how to tell you this, but when we set off the Flower Crane Cannon, it sort of blew out some of the lower levels, so we’re a little short on guest space--”

Suddenly, there was a distant crash from inside the house, and Ichigo came careening out the front door. His hair was soaking wet, his kimono had obviously been tied in a hurry, and his eyes were wild. “Ganju told me they wouldn’t be here for an hour!” he howled.

Rukia’s heart suddenly felt too big for her ribcage. She had been rationing the amount she allowed herself to miss him each day, and she hadn’t been prepared to have the full force of it hit her all at once.

Ganju shrugged. “I don’t know how long it takes processions to process.”

Ichigo started to launch himself at Ganju, pummeling-mode engaged, but Kuukaku cut him off with a foot to the side of his head.

“You are reflecting poorly on our family, Ichigo,” she intoned, her voice dripping with unspoken threats.

Ichigo’s shoulders slumped, and he dropped into a sloppy bow. “Hi, Byakuya. Hi, Mrs. Byakuya. I hope you had a good trip.”

“It’s Lady Kuchiki,” Hisana corrected airily. “We did, thank you, Ichigo.”

An irritated, gravelly rumble came out of Byakuya.

Ichigo’s eyes quickly scanned down the line, until they lighted on Rukia. His face suddenly split into a grin, eyes going wide and happy. Rukia expected him to remember at the last second that he was a teen boy, and recompose his features into his habitual scowl, but it never came. Maybe he’d left his reputation behind in Karakura. Maybe a week with his relatives had snapped his last threads of sanity. “Hey, Rukia,” he announced, his voice rough with affection.

Rukia, who still hadn’t forgiven him for rescuing her, did a much better job affecting a facade of cool indifference. “Hey,” she replied.

Ichigo’s gaze hung on her for a moment, then drifted slightly up and to the right. Rukia suddenly felt her muscles tense up, her body braced for shouting.

Instead, Ichigo’s grin just broke into something more relaxed, and his eyes lost that starry look. “Oh, you brought Renji, too? That’s great!”

“It is?” Rukia echoed vaguely.

“Yeah, it was nice o’ the Kuchiki to let me come along,” Renji replied casually. “Me and the captain got some training we’re in the middle of.”

“You’ll still be able to hang out, though?” Ichigo asked hopefully.

“I expect so. Even he gets tired of beating me up sometimes.”

“Why don’t you three go catch up?” Hisana suggested warmly.

“You can show ‘em your rock pile,” Ganju suggested.

“Shut up!” Ichigo yelled. “I haven’t even had breakfast yet!” He grabbed Rukia and Renji each by an arm. “C’mon, Yuzu and the big guys made pork rolls yesterday, let’s go down to the kitchen and see if there are any left.”

“Daddy ate all the pork rolls, but there are muffins!” Yuzu hollered over her shoulder.

“Even better,” Ichigo replied under his breath, and dragged Rukia and Renji after him.

Chapter Text

“The reason I slept in so late,” Ichigo explained around the half a raspberry muffin lodged in his cheek, “is because Kuukaku is trying to teach us all this weird elemental kidou that I guess Shiba specialize in, even when they don’t become shinigami?”

“Like Ganju’s sand attacks,” Rukia prompted.

“Yeah. ‘Zactly. Karin and Yuzu picked it up right away, because of course they did. I can’t do any of it, so Kuukaku made me do a bunch of dumb exercises that didn’t help at all, like making big piles of rocks and trying to break rocks by punching them and having Ganju throw rocks at me.” He scratched his head. “She says we might try water next. I’m honestly really scared of fire day.”

“You know, some zanpakutou don’t take too naturally to kidou,” Renji commented. “‘Specially ones with, y’know, like a chaos theme. You gotta get your reiatsu calmed down enough to shape it into a spell and you’re fighting yourself and it’s really tiring. Once you get the kidou figured out, it ain’t so bad, but the training is exhausting.” He took a huge bite of muffin. “Your sister’s a really good cook.”

“That’s horseshit,” Rukia accused. “You just made that up.”

“I did not! Your brother told me that when I told him that practicing kidou knocks me out! He says I just need to budget proper rest into my training schedule!”

“I’m going to ask him! Don’t think I won’t!” Rukia subtly tucked another muffin in her lap, before the boys ate them all. It wasn’t her fault they had such big mouths.

“Sounds legit to me,” Ichigo agreed. “Can you get Byakuya to tell Aunt Kuukaku I need more naps?”

“He won’t do it for you,” Rukia announced. “He’s gone soft for Renji. Extra naps. Please.”

“What kinda training are you guys doing anyway?” Ichigo asked curiously.

“Bankai stuff,” Renji replied.

“You already got bankai! I know, I was there!”

Renji brushed some crumbs off his shihakushou. “Yeah, I got it, but they don’t let you be captain until you’re actually competent at it. You’ve probably already mastered all the secrets of yours, but it takes a lot of work for most of us.”

“I haven’t actually practiced with mine much,” Ichigo admitted, rubbing the back of his neck. “D’you think Byakuya would mind if I sat in on some of your training? I’ll let you try to hit me with yours now and again, if you want.”

“You’re just trying to get out of your kidou training,” Rukia declared.

“Yes. So?”

“I”ll talk to him,” Renji replied. “He’ll probably say yes. He’s pretty curious about your bankai.” Renji sucked his teeth, slow-playing this a little. “He’ll probably want to fight you.”

“I’ll fight him if he wants!” Ichigo announced. “It’s gotta be better than getting buckets of water in the face, or whatever Kuukaku’s got planned for me.”

“You know who you should fight?” Renji asked before palming Rukia’s head and shaking it from side to side. “This one.”

“Stop that!” Rukia scolded, swatting at his hand. “You’re right though, he should. You’ve never even seen my zanpakutou, have you, Ichigo?”

“I mean, I saw it right before you stabbed me with it.”

“Dummy. It was sealed then.”

“It doesn’t look like mine did, back when I had your powers?”

Rukia shoved him in the shoulder. “You think I go around fighting with a giant-ass sword? That thing was literally taller than me. You moron.”

Renji snorted through his nose.

“I don’t know! How am I supposed to know?”

“Rukia has the most beautiful zanpakutou in Soul Society,” Renji provided matter-of-factly.

Ichigo stared at him for a second, startled, and then looked back at Rukia. “What… what?” he sputtered.

“My sword is generally regarded as the most beautiful zanpakutou in the Gotei, yes,” Rukia repeated irritably.

Ichigo ran his fingers through his hair, getting a bunch of muffin crumbs in it. “Oh. I thought that was just, like, his opinion. It just seemed like a really… un-Renji thing to say.”

“That’s true,” Renji agreed, and Rukia felt a momentary pang of hurt. “If I had to describe Rukia’s zanpakutou, I would use words like ‘deadly’ and ‘efficient’ and ‘extremely unpleasant to be hit by.’” The hurt was quickly quenched by a flood of affection. Great. Now he was making her go soft even when he wasn’t trying to flirt with her. Fantastic.

“You haven’t even fought me since I got shikai, dipshit,” she pointed out. “What do you know?”

“I know things,” he replied. “You should save me a slot on your dance card, too, by the way. My goal is to fight as many people as possible on this trip.”

“We’ll see,” Rukia sniffed.

Ichigo was looking back and forth between them, making the same face as the first time he tried to see a spirit ribbon. Rukia wondered what he was looking for. “Is this what you people do when you go on vacation?” he finally asked.

“Dunno,” Renji replied. “Never really been on vacation before.” He cracked his back, and then stood up. “To be honest, I’m not really on vacation now.” He nudged Rukia with his foot. “I should go check in with your brother, see if he needs me to do anything.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” Rukia frowned. “I’m sure he’s either changing his outfit for the third time, or complaining about the polish Kuukaku uses on her floors.” Why was he leaving? She had rather enjoyed being in the company of both her favorite boys. It was fun, splitting the banter three ways instead of two, and also, when they were both here, she didn’t need to interrogate her feelings for either one of them too deeply.

“Ah, well, doesn’t hurt to look conscientious,” Renji shrugged. “‘Sides, you two probably have some catching up to do. I’ll see you in a bit.”

Ichigo rubbed his chin as Renji disappeared over the hill. “What was that all about?”

“What was what all about?” Rukia grumbled. Renji knew that playing dumb was secret code for “let’s change the subject” but Ichigo had never been one for subtlety.

He gestured dramatically in the direction where Renji had disappeared, and then again at Rukia.

Rukia just stared at him pointedly.

“You know,” Ichigo proclaimed, “I wondered if you were always like this, or you’d just gotten stressed out from being ass-deep in alligators and trying to act like nothing was wrong all the time.” He paused. “And now I know.”

“For all you know,” Rukia rebutted, “Renji is a good friend who knows I get self-conscious about making displays of affection in front of others.”

Ichigo narrowed his eyes. “Are you going to display some affection? I’m not sure I believe that.”

This is revenge, Rukia told herself. He is asking for this. She tackled him around the middle and squeezed him as hard as she could. She had missed him so bad that it made her furious and she was going to make him feel every ounce of it.

Ichigo stiffened for a moment, and even though she couldn’t see his face, Rukia could imagine it perfectly. Eyes wide, pupils gone tiny, all the color washed from his cheeks directly into his ears.

Suddenly, his arms were around her shoulders, crushing her to his side painfully.

“You’re so full of shit,” he mumbled. “I missed you so bad.”

“I know,” she muttered back. “Same.”

There was a long pause. “Hey, Rukia?”

“Yeah?”

“Were you hiding a muffin in your lap?”

“...yes.”

Chapter Text

“I am just saying, we’ve got three people with bankai, two more high-ranking shinigami, and Soul Society’s greatest pyrotechnician. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to send a few of your security guards home.”

“Four. My lieutenant also has bankai,” Byakuya corrected coolly.

Kuukaku threw her arm in the air and made a frustrated noise.

Hisana sipped her sake and said nothing. She found all of this highly entertaining.

“How did you get a lieutenant with bankai?” Isshin demanded.

“Some of us do not pick our subordinates solely on the basis of good looks.”

“Hey, that’s unfair!” Isshin protested. “Rangiku is also fun.”

“That’s not the impression I get from Captain Hitsugaya,” Byakuya returned.

Hisana smirked around her cup. Captain Hitsugaya had been instrumental in helping Byakuya uncover Aizen’s betrayal of Soul Society-- each of them had collected a few of the puzzle pieces, but never would have put everything together on their own. Furthermore, even though they made an odd pair, they’d found in each other a dour, killjoy kindred spirit. Hisana had spent decades encouraging Byakuya to make friends, and regretted it the instant he’d actually found one.

“I can’t believe he’s gotten anyone to call him ‘Captain Hitsugaya’,” Isshin snorted. “You know, I’m pretty sure your lieutenant is one of Rangiku’s old drinking buddies. It’s been a long time, but between the tattoos and the hair, he’s pretty hard to forget. Speaking of drinking, need a top up, Hisana?”

“Thank you, handsome,” Hisana replied, looking very deliberately as her glowering husband, as Isshin refilled her cup.

“Abarai comports himself properly since becoming the adjutant of the Sixth,” Byakuya argued. I do not hold his former delinquencies against him.”

Both Shiba snorted and rolled their eyes in unison.

“It’s a good thing he married you, Hisana,” Kuukaku pointed out. “Or someone would have stolen the entire family out from under him by now.”

“Shh!” Hisana scolded. “He hasn’t noticed that I already have.”

“Just because you three are dishonest, unrepentant-- ah, here he is, we can hear the truth from the man’s own lips.”

Renji, who was rounding the corner of the house, froze in his steps, his eyes going wide and flooding with panic.

Hisana sighed. Honestly, her husband was hopeless. “Hello, there, Lieutenant!” she said cheerfully. “You kids are back already?”

Renji opened his mouth as if he were going to say one thing and then changed his mind. “Naw, it’s just me,” he finally said. “They had some stuff to talk about an’ I wanted to make sure Captain didn’t need me for anything.”

Hisana’s brain was flash-stepping around her skull. Rukia had third-wheeled him? Surely not! She was so close-fisted with her feelings she would never do something so obvious as to ask for privacy. On the other hand, Hisana didn’t know anything about the Kurosaki boy. He was known to be rather blunt. Argh! This was maddening.

Furthermore, Hisana, who considered herself an expert at reading people, was having a devil of a time with young Abarai. She was used to poker faces, to watching for the subtlest of tics and tells. Every emotion Renji had ever had seemed to make its way to his face immediately. Unfortunately, they seemed to pile up there without ever departing, which muddied the waters. Hisana was desperately trying to gauge his attitude toward having to leave Rukia in the company of another young man, but there was too much Byakuya-induced noise drowning the signal.

“You’re on vacation,” she scolded. “He doesn’t need you for anything! Stop asking!”

“Do not listen to my wife, you are not on vacation,” Byakuya corrected. “And you can settle something for us. Do you still carouse with Lieutenant Matsumoto?”

Renji’s cheeks turned an adorable pink and his eyes darted back and forth between the four nobles currently staring at him. “Well, I was s’posed to, but I cancelled, by which I mean, I left a note on her desk and then skipped town. Why?” He looked downright horrified by the possibilities. “She didn’t… show up or something, did she?”

Isshin let out a huge guffaw and slapped his knee. Kuukaku cocked a smug eyebrow at Byakuya, who looked like he was sucking a lemon.

“She is a most ill-mannered woman,” Byakuya declared, “to insist on your company when you clearly have higher priorities.”

“You aren’t dating her or anything?” Isshin asked obnoxiously. Hisana kicked him in the ankle. It was obviously he was just trying to get Byakuya’s goat, but poor Renji was on his way to giving himself an aneurysm.

“No! Nononononononononono!” he waved his hands frantically. “No! It’s just that it’s my birthday, so she went to the extra trouble of telling everyone it was my birthday, so she’ll be mad at me for bailing! She’ll complain about it all day and then forget I exist the minute she actually starts drinking!” He exhaled a puff of breath that was practically opaque with worriment.

There was a moment of stunned silence.

“See?” Byakuya announced. “A perfectly logical explanation.”

“It’s your birthday?” Kuukaku echoed.

“No,” Renji lied.

She narrowed her eyes.

“I’m sorry, ma’am, yes, it is,” Renji backed up. “It’s not an important one, though.”

“Koganehiko!” Kuukaku bellowed. “Shiroganehiko!”

The two massive house guards came piling out of the front door. “Yes, Lady Kuukaku!” they shouted.

Byakuya winced. Hisana idly wondered what he would do if a servant ever shouted at him. Fire them, most likely.

“What do we have for fireworks?” Kuukaku asked, stretching up to her full height.

Both servants opened their mouth, clearly prepared to spew forth a full inventory.

“Never mind,” Kuukaku cut them off. “We’ve got a birthday, apparently. Do we have enough good stuff for a birthday?”

“Oh, certainly, my lady!”

“We’re low on chrysanthemums, but we have plenty of peonies!”

“Do you want to use those serpents you were saving?”

“Oooh, can we do some comets?” Isshin asked eagerly.

“You’ll burn your eyebrows off!” Kuukaku snapped at her cousin reflexively. They stared at each other for a moment, before their faces broke into identical, crooked grins. “Of course, we can do comets. Hey, girls! You wanna have a bonfire tonight? And fireworks?” She craned her head around to Renji. “Hey, I forgot your name, Birthday Boy, do you like bonfires?”

“Uh, yeah,” Renji stuttered. “I love bonfires.”

A knot stuck in Hisana’s throat. Even after nearly fifty years in the Seireitei, she still found celebrating birthdays to be an emotionally fraught affair. She preferred to deal with them by throwing herself ostentatious parties to make up for everything she hadn’t had in her early years. Rukia insisted on the smallest possible acknowledgment for hers-- a favorite dinner, a practical gift. Hisana could definitely see how being hit with the full force of Shiba Exuberance might be a little overwhelming to a man who was clearly used to letting his friends use his birthday as an excuse to get toasted and then forgetting about him.

Karin and Yuzu ran up, Karin carrying Touma on her hip. “Whose birthday is it?” she asked.

“This guy,” Kuukaku said, jerking a thumb at Renji.

“Renji, his name is Renji,” Hisana supplied.

“His name is Lieutenant Abarai,” Byakuya corrected.

“Oh! Oh!” Yuzu clapped her hands together. “What kind of cake do you like, Lieutenant Abarai?”

Hisana blinked. What side of the family had this one come from?

“I’ve… never had cake before?” Renji managed. “Look, everyone’s making way too big a deal out of--”

“You’ve never had cake before?” Yuzu gasped, clearly scandalized.

“You have to make him a chocolate one,” Karin declared. “If someone only ever gets to eat one cake in their life, it should be chocolate.”

“Aunt Kuukaku, can I use the kitchen again?”

“Yes, Yuzu. I told you, you can use it for whatever you want.”

Yuzu knelt down to look Touma in the eyes. “Do you want to help, Touma?”

“TOUMA HELP!” Touma volunteered enthusiastically.

Byakuya bristled. Hisana wondered idly if he’d ever helped with anything in his entire childhood. Kuchiki children were for alternately pampering and criticizing, not for being useful. Hisana was rather charmed with the idea, though, especially if she didn’t have to be anywhere near it.

“Did it occur to any of you,” Byakuya announced, “that perhaps my lieutenant does not wish a fuss to be made of him?” He turned toward his subordinate. “Truly, they are like battering rams in human form. If you would prefer to spend your birthday in quiet contemplation, I brought several volumes of poetry you may peruse. You are also welcome to some of the good sake, if Hisana can bear to part with any.”

Kuukaku’s eyes practically rolled out of her head and Isshin was barely able to hold in a snerk. Only Hisana was capable of recognizing what she was actually witnessing. Byakuya, a lifelong introvert, had been raised to regard his role as a public figure as a sort of a sacred duty. Byakuya would love to skip a birthday party in favor of quiet contemplation, but his pride would never allow it. The only person he let out of elaborate birthday fetes was Rukia, and that said something in and of itself.

Hisana glanced over to Renji and suddenly realized that she was not the only one to appreciate the significance of this strange event. He rubbed the back of his neck and grinned sheepishly. “I appreciate that, sir, I really do, but to be honest, I kinda like the idea of cake and fireworks on my birthday.”

Byakuya studied his lieutenant’s face for a moment and then gave a sharp nod. “Then it appears we will be having a bonfire.”

Chapter Text

“So, I take it that you did know that my father used to be a Gotei captain?” Ichigo asked, laying back in the grass and closing his eyes.

“Well, the thing is…” Rukia tapped her index fingers together, “I didn’t recognize him at first. You humans age so quickly and he had almost no discernable reiatsu. Later, of course, I considered the possibility that he might have actually been a reincarnation of Shiba Isshin…” She glanced over. Ichigo had cracked one eye open and was regarding her skeptically. “Er, yes. I knew. He, ah, knew who I was, too. I guess his spiritual senses had been gradually coming back and being around the Hogyouku must have accelerated that process.”

“Mm-hmm,” Ichigo agreed. “That’s what he said, as well.”

Rukia flopped back in the grass next to him. “Is that why you’ve come to Soul Society? He wants his old position back?”

Ichigo frowned. “He didn’t say anything about that. He just sat us down a few days after I got back and told us the whole story.” Ichigo was quiet for a moment as if he were considering whether or not to say more. “I kinda thought that was that, but then, a couple weeks ago, he announced that he wanted us to see where we came from, and that we were going to Soul Society.” Ichigo’s frown turned sour. “I hope we’re back home before school starts. I know Dad wants to go see someone in the Seireitei and he’s waiting to get some sort of extra visa approved. I’m already missing… something I was looking forward to.”

“You’re not the only one who had to reschedule plans, you know,” Rukia replied haughtily.

“Why are you guys here, anyway?” Ichigo asked. “Seems like you ought to have better things to do.”

“My sister’s a busybody,” Rukia replied.

“I would not have called that.”

“Oh, like I would have guessed any member of your family from your personality.”

Ichigo was quiet for a moment. “I’m really glad you’re here,” he finally said.

Rukia rolled her head over to look at him. This was uncharacteristic. “Are you feeling alright?” she asked.

Ichigo sighed. “I dunno. I mean, I understand why Dad’s happy. I’ve thought a lot about how easily I could have gotten stuck here when I came to rescue you and never seen anyone in my family again and how happy I would be to see them again, especially if I had to wait twenty years. You have to understand that we never had any extended family. It was just Mom and Dad… and then it was just Dad. My sisters love Kuukaku, they think she’s the coolest person they’ve ever met. And I think that big goon Ganju is just about as happy to have my dad around… I guess he was pretty small when Pop left. Dad and Kaien used to pal around a lot, and Ganju looked up to them both...losing one and then the other was really rough on him.”

“But you aren’t feeling it, huh?” Rukia surmised.

“Maybe it’s because I met all these people first and now I have to deal with the fact that I’m related to them,” Ichigo sighed, not sounding convinced by his own argument.

“Maybe it’s because you’re a teen, and even though you’ve fantasized your whole life about finding more family, you’re at a point where you’re starting to think about being your own person and the things you want to do with your life. Then, all of sudden, you’re dumped in the middle of a family you don’t relate to and to top it off, they insist on treating you as a child,” Rukia deadpanned.

Now Ichigo was the one to turn and look at her. “You were supposed to call me an ungrateful moron. Since when are you insightful?”

Rukia waved a hand dismissively. “It’s a classic story.”

“Hrrmmm, yes, should have gone and checked out the young adult section at the library, probably a whole sub-genre,” Ichigo rolled his eyes. “Anyway, you’re here now, and you’re an adult, and I’m taller than you, so that makes me an adult by extension.”

“Bold of you to assume anyone treats me like an adult,” Rukia replied.

Ichigo wrinkled his nose. “What about Renji? Do people treat him like an adult?”

“Marginally,” Rukia declared. “But it’s no good, he’s taller than you.”

“Yeah, but he’s taller than everyone, so it cancels out. Between the two of you, I think it’ll be okay. For some reason, Dad and Kuukaku think it’s great that I’m friends with you, so as long as you’re here, maybe they’ll let us beat each other up or go run around in the woods.”

“What do you know about the woods, city boy?”

“I’ve been camping. Anyway, that’s the other reason we need Renji. He seems like the kind of guy who knows about moss and how to tie a knot and shit.”

“You are so dumb. I am much better at knots than Renji, although you’re right, he has me beat on mosses and lichens.”

“Do I want to know?” Ichigo mused.

“I’m only a noble by marriage, you know,” Rukia scowled. “We grew up in the Outer Rukon. It’s pretty wild out there.”

“You and your sister?”

“No, my sister and I got separated. I mean, we both grew up out there, but not together. I was talking about me and Renji.” She paused. “I thought he told you that.”

“He said something about knowing you when you were both younger. It was light on detail. Also, I was in the middle of trying to get bankai in three days, so I had a lot on my mind, Rukia.”

Rukia shrugged, the grass tickling her shoulders. “It’s not important anyway.”

Ichigo regarded her for a long moment, then turned his face back up toward the sky. “The guy’s pretty far gone on you, y’know.”

Rukia threw one arm over her face. “Yeah, I know,” she mumbled. “He told me.”

Suddenly, there was a hard shove on her shoulder. “What do you mean, ‘he told you’? Like, with words? That came out of his face?”

Rukia rolled over and kicked at his shins. “Shut up! Like you could ever!”

Ichigo laughed and tried to roll into a ball to avoid being kicked. “I was impressed! And I tell you about my feelings for you all the time! Like, Rukia, you’re really annoying, or Rukia, I think you broke all the bones in my foot.”

“Go to Hell!” Rukia howled.

“Is that what you told Renji when he confessed his undying love to you?” Ichigo asked, sotto voice.

Rukia finally landed a decent punch on Ichigo’s arm. “He didn’t confess his undying love, you clown, he just said he was interested in trying out, you know, the dating thing.”

Ichigo slowly uncurled, clearly wary of Rukia trying to get in a last-minute blow. “You didn’t answer the question. Did you tell him to go to Hell, or are two dating now?”

“It’s complicated and also none of your business.”

“Telling someone to go to Hell is really not very complicated, Rukia.”

“Look, this isn’t human high school, okay? We can’t just go to the malt shop and get a coke ice after school.”

“Rukia, I regret to inform you that it is no longer 1950, and also that there is no such thing as a ‘coke ice’.” He went so far as to make the finger quotes.

Rukia ignored the finger quotes. “I am the First Daughter of the Kuchiki, okay? Dating isn’t just dating for me. It’s courting. It’s chaperones and formal clothes and your families negotiating your worth, and it either ends in marriage or… or awkwardness? I don’t know! I’ve avoided it up until now!”

Ichigo had started wagging his foot in what Rukia recognized as one of his nervous gestures. “Do they have, like, arranged marriage and stuff here?”

“Yeah, it’s pretty common for nobles, actually. But no one is going to arrange a marriage between me and Renji. You need to have a family to arrange a marriage.”

“I see,” said Ichigo, in a way that definitely implied that he did not.

“Arranged marriages are about alliances between families. They’re usually a way to pass money back and forth in exchange for loyalty or a promise not to attack each other.” Rukia flapped a hand. “The Great Families haven’t gone to war in over five hundred years, a lot of it is just symbolic.”

“I feel like even without a family, there would be some value in Renji promising not to attack me,” Ichigo pointed out.

“I didn’t say he was without value,” Rukia defended. “His rank alone carries a lot of weight, and you probably don’t realize how ridiculously rare it is to achieve bankai. But the mechanics are different. Byakuya would just offer him a position in the family.” She pursed her lips. “If people weren’t worried about stepping on Byakuya’s toes, Renji’d probably be getting all kinds of marriage offers.” She hadn’t actually considered that before. She wondered if Renji knew what kind of other options he had.

“Huh,” Ichigo nodded. “Very interesting. You know, I, too, am the scion of a noble house. If you don’t want him, I might ask him if he wants to go to the malt shop with me. He’s kinda cute, and then we’d have three bankai to your one. Does he cook, d’you know?”

“Shut up!” Rukia howled. “Why do I ever bother to be nice to you?”

“C’mon,” Ichigo cajoled. “You’re acting like you like him and I want to tease you about it, but if you don’t like him, teasing you will make things all awkward and cringey.”

Rukia sighed heavily. “Fine. I like him. And for the record, I am definitely going to get bankai and the first thing I’m going to do with it is kick your ass.”

“So what’s the problem?” Ichigo asked. “Your brother and sister are against it, and you don’t want them to find out?”

“If only it were so simple. No, they are very pro-Renji. Sister, in particular, is desperate for us to start courting. And I just… I don’t want to rush. We were really close when we were kids and I fucked everything up, and I don’t want to do that again.”

“You couldn’t have fucked it up that bad,” Ichigo replied, watching a passing cloud, “since he still seems to like you pretty well.” He let a deep breath out through his nose. “You’re always like this. You get yourself condemned to execution and act like it’s no big deal, but you commit the smallest slight against another person, and you think it’s the end of the world.”

“I stabbed you, Ichigo.”

“And I got better.”

“You really didn’t.”

“Well, I forgave you, anyway, and you should forgive yourself, too, for this, and whatever newt you stuck in Renji’s underwear drawer 900 years ago.”

Rukia also looked up at the clouds, trying to pick out the cutest one. Clouds always looked like bunnies to her. “Are you, ah, okay with all this?”

Ichigo pulled a face of absolute mortification. “Am I okay with you having a boyfriend? Since when do I get a say in anything you do?”

“I didn’t say you got a say!” Rukia retorted. “I just asked if you were okay with it. I’m saying that if you have something to say about it, this is your big chance. Once he’s my boyfriend, I am obligated to beat you up for talking smack about him.”

“I don’t think that’s very fair,” Ichigo protested. “I mean, he seems fine, I guess, if you’re into tall, jacked guys, but I honestly don’t know him very well. Obviously, he’s stupid into you, which would normally be a point against his taste, but it’s a +1 in my book, because I have terrible opinions. Does he eat melon Pocky or does he enjoy the flavors that sane people do? Is he a connoisseur of deranged lesbian vampire manga? Does he cheat at Tekken? I feel like I should get a chance to hang out with him some before I have to decide if he deserves to have to be in a relationship with you.”

“I do not cheat at Tekken, I am a natural,” Rukia sniffed. “And I suppose that’s fair.” She paused. “Thank you.”

Ichigo shrugged. “I gotta admit, I’m a little weirded out, but it’s not really your fault. It turns out that while we were gone, Keigo and Michiru started going out. I mean, they had broken up again by the time we got back, but it’s got me really shook! People I know! Dating! Tatsuki says everyone pairs up during second year-- Tatsuki! What does she know? And now I come here, and you, too, except that you’re old, so you don’t count.”

“Thank you,” Rukia deadpanned.

“All I have to say is that if I get back and Chad has a boyfriend, I am going to riot,” Ichigo announced. He paused. “Actually, I would be very supportive. Chad deserves the best.”

“That is correct.”

Ichigo swallowed. “And so do you. For the record.”

“I don’t know about that,” Rukia protested. “Being a Kuchiki gives you kind of a skewed perspective on what, exactly, ‘the best’ is. I like Renji, though, and I think I like being with him.”

“Well,” said Ichigo, “then you deserve that, then.”

Chapter Text

Hisana was not hovering. She was… supervising. Keeping an eye on things.

Things were going fine, actually, thanks to her careful and attentive supervision.

The sweet little Kurosaki girls had hauled Touma off to the kitchen, which was likely now in shambles. Kuukaku had drafted Ganju and Shiroganehiko to help with fireworks, leaving Renji and Koganehiko with Isshin on bonfire duty. Hisana rather admired that the Shiba just… decided to do something, and then attacked it with great enthusiasm. Enthusiasm wasn’t something prized by the Kuchiki.

Byakuya was off consulting with his senior service staff. Apparently, the Shiba compound didn’t actually have enough space to accommodate the entire Kuchiki entourage, and even if some of them were sent home, there was going to be some degree of doubling up. For a moment, Hisana thought she was going to have to talk Byakuya out of taking them all home on principle, but he seemed to have accepted his fate, and was either trying to make the best of things, or was extremely desperate to avoid Isshin’s vociferous opinions on bonfire construction.

Finally, finally, Rukia and Ichigo appeared, meandering up the path that led from the house. Hisana desperately wanted them to walk faster, but she composed herself, and tried to read their body language. Rukia seemed uncharacteristically relaxed. She wasn’t smiling, but she was talking a lot, making a face like she was delivering a lecture. Kurosaki kept making this obnoxious shit-eating grin at her. He said something back to her, and they both burst into laughter.

Hisana’s heart clenched. It was so rare to see Rukia this light-hearted. This was what she had wanted for Rukia-- someone she could laugh with, someone who would bring joy to her face. But on the other hand, there was nothing inherently romantic about their interactions. They walked a sensible distance apart. There were no blushes or stolen glances at each other. Then again, Rukia was a skilled actress, she was quite capable of projecting exactly the image she wished. Hisana hated being beaten at her own game.

Just as the pair stepped up onto the rear engawa, Hisana slipped into view, a trick she had made her husband teach her after he pulled in on her one time too many.

Ichigo startled, but Rukia took it in stride.

“Did you two have a nice catch-up?” Hisana asked sweetly.

“Uhhh,” Ichigo stammered.

“Yes, it was very nice,” Rukia took over for her tongue-tied friend. “How are things here? Has Brother had to go have a lie-down already?”

“He’s sorting out something with the servants,” Hisana dismissed, waving a hand. “There are going to be some festivities tonight. Apparently, there’s a birthday.”

Some fleeting emotion-- guilt perhaps-- flickered through Rukia’s eyes, but before she really had time to react, Ichigo slapped himself in the forehead and groaned loudly. “My old man has zero chill about birthdays, and I bet the rest of ‘em are even worse. Who is the poor sap?”

“It’s Renji,” Rukia provided grimly.

“Well, he likes shouting and getting attacked, so maybe he’ll enjoy it,” Ichigo shrugged.

“I’m not sure he actually likes getting attacked, I think it just happens to him,” Rukia excused. “He does like shouting.”

“If you want to be helpful,” Hisana suggested, aiming the full force of her charm toward Ichigo, “Kuukaku is out in the fireworks shed or Isshin is building a bonfire.”

“I should probably take this back to the kitchen,” Ichigo excused, sounding a little suspicious of women bearing chores. He gestured toward the box he had tucked under one arm. It looked like it had once contained far more muffins than three young people could reasonably be expected to eat in the amount of time they had been gone.

“My understanding is that cake is happening in the kitchen,” Hisana pointed out mildly.

Ichigo grabbed Rukia’s arm. “C’mon, Rukia, that still sounds far less flammable than the other two options. Is Yuzu in charge?”

“Mm-hmm,” Hisana agreed. “Although Touma is helping.”

“A terrible idea,” Rukia declared. “We should go intervene.”

“Why do you always want to go to where the trouble is?” Ichigo griped at Rukia. “There’s something wrong with you! I only wanted to go because I thought there would be icing and no mayhem!”

Maybe you should go on ahead and scout it out, Ichigo?” Hisana urged, her voice thickening into honey. “I need to have a quick little discussion with my sister.”

Ichigo tensed and his eyes darted to Rukia. He didn’t make a grab at his waist for a sword he wasn’t carrying, as Hisana had seen Byakuya do from time to time, but he was clearly bracing for danger.

Rukia shook her head at him. “Go on ahead, you coward. I’d rather set things on fire, anyway!”

“You only say that because you’d don’t know how serious Shiba are about setting things on fire!”

Hisana’s heart clenched like a fist. They sounded exactly like Kaien and Miyako.

Not Rukia and Kaien. Their relationship had been different-- he had always been more of a big brother to her, and Rukia had always been very respectful and even a little bashful toward him. On the other hand, Miyako had never hesitated for an instant to bust her husband’s chops. Rukia had idolized her, wanted to be just like her. Hisana wondered if it had even occurred to her sister how well she had succeeded.

“Hisana?” Rukia prodded, and Hisana realized she’d become lost in thought, watching Ichigo’s retreating back. “Was there something you wanted to talk about?”

Hisana collected herself. “Well, I take it that you already knew it was Renji’s birthday.”

“I did, in fact,” Rukia replied coolly.

Hisana glared at her sister pointedly. “And did you wish him a happy birthday?”

“Twice, actually,” Rukia provided. “Back before you bothered to tell me he was coming on this trip, I sent him a nice note that I was sorry I was going to miss it. Then I wished him a happy birthday this morning before we left town.” She didn’t add the “so there”, but it hung there, in the air, obvious to both of them.

“You should have told me,” Hisana decided, determined to score the last point. “You know I like to be on top of these things.”

“You would have made a fuss over him and embarrassed him in front of Brother,” Rukia rejoined. “The Shiba are just using him as an excuse to light some things on fire that they wanted to set on fire anyway, aren’t they?”

“That seems roughly correct.”

“It’s for the best. Renji likes when people make a fuss adjacent to him but not directly at him. Is someone letting him help with the fireworks?”

“The bonfire,” Hisana supplied grudgingly. She wanted to throw her arms in the air, but she had better self-control than that. Talking to Rukia was maddening. How could a person walk about, leaking chemistry with one boy like an industrial accident, and then turn around and say something so thoughtful and caring about another, without letting slip even a hint of being taken with either one of them?

“I can go tell him happy birthday again if it would make you happy,” Rukia offered, her voice as dry as an Inuzuri field in the height of summer.

“It would be nice of you,” Hisana suggested.

“I have been very nice to him, lately,” Rukia noted loftily. “He’s starting to get suspicious.”

“Suspicious of what?” Hisana fumed. “Maybe that you’re fond of him?”

“Probably that I’m planning to put pepper in his socks or something,” Rukia shrugged. “He’s pretty daft at picking up signals.”

“Maybe you should just tell him that you’re fond of him, then. I’ve heard it works wonders.”

“That sounds drastic,” Rukia teased. She suddenly furrowed her brows. “Why are you so worried? It’s going fine, Hisana. I told you I would tell you how things are going and I am telling you everything is fine. You worry about him too much. He knew very well what he was getting into.”

“Are you fond of him, Rukia?”

Rukia’s face softened. “Yes. I am.” She tilted her head to one side. “Which I am sure he is aware of, even without me telling him.”

“Then he’s better at reading poker faces than I am,” Hisana said sternly. “And I’m pretty good.”

“He does work for Brother, you know,” Rukia returned. “If I go help him with his bonfire, will it make you feel better?”

“Yes, actually, it would,” Hisana replied. “Try not to show him up, though! And be sure to admire his work!”

Rukia flashed an absolutely phony smile, and Hisana’s nerves sizzled. “Anything for you, Sister.”

“--you should have read this beautiful essay she wrote on the injustices of gym class uniforms! The soul of a poet, my Karin, even though she puts up a tough front! Prop this log up a little higher, Abarai, we need more air flow to the center. I credit my Masaki, of course. She loved poetry, had a lot of it memorized, and used to recite it to the children.”

Shiba Isshin had been waxing affectionate for his children and wife for close to an hour, occasionally throwing in some opinions on the proper bonfire construction, as if the conversation wasn’t hard enough to follow in the first place.

Renji, whose survival into adulthood had hinged on his fire-building abilities and was still considered an authority on firecraft among members of Squad 11, listened patiently and handed Isshin logs when asked. Isshin seemed perfectly competent at the task, and Renji wasn’t about to start an argument on fires with a guy carrying a fire zanpakutou. Even though he was having a little trouble sorting through all the names in the stories, let alone the fact that most of them required a lot of World of the Living context, Renji liked listening to the man talk. He didn’t know that many people with families, aside from Byakuya, and Byakuya certainly never talked about his loved ones with such obvious enthusiasm.

“Oi, dummy, what’s this mess? You forget everything I ever taught you about building fires?”

Renji almost dropped the log he was carrying. “I’m just helpin’!” he defended. “And this is a fire for showiness, not for efficiency, it’s a perfectly valid setup!”

“It’s your birthday, you should get to be in charge of the fire,” Rukia replied, crossing her arms over her chest. Mischief glittered in her eyes.

“We’re the visitors, Rukia. I am happy to let a man build a fire in his own ancestral home.”

“Ah, Rukia!” Isshin boomed. “What happened to my shiftless younger son? Has he been eaten by a Hollow already? After all the time I spent training him to be prepared for anything!”

“He abandoned you for cake,” Rukia replied. “And what do you mean ‘younger son’?”

“I have decided that Abarai is an excellent fire-building assistant and he has outstanding sideburns, just like me. He is now my son.”

“He is not,” Rukia insisted.

“Rukia,” Renji deadpanned. “My chance at a family.”

“My Masaki would have loved him,” Isshin bewailed. “She always said she wanted another boy to round out the set.”

“Fine, you can have him, but the Kuchiki retain all rights to his services as regards any sports competitions that may break out.” Rukia tapped her chin. “Eating contests, too. If we play trivia or something you can have him.”

“You wound me!” Isshin cried, clutching at his heart. “A Shiba would never participate in a contest of intellect! Abarai, I apologize, but I cannot abide split loyalties. You are still welcome to come for dinner whenever you are in the World of the Living.”

“I understand,” Renji sighed, passing the last of his sticks to him.

“Don’t sleep on that dinner invitation,” Rukia noted. “Yuzu makes a mean curry.”

“I bet. Those muffins were great.” Renji brushed his hands off and stepped out of the fire ring. Koganehiko, with a fresh armful of wood, took his place. “I’m gonna go get another load from the woodshed,” he announced.

“Can I help?” Rukia asked.

A joke about her carrying capacity that popped into his head reflexively, but Renji ignored it. Instead, he smiled at her and said, “Sure, it’s out this way.” He thought about asking her how the talk with Ichigo had gone, and decided against that, too. That was their business. “You really think a football game might spontaneously break out?” he asked hopefully, having finally landed on a topic that seemed safe.

“It’s certainly happened before,” Rukia acknowledged. “And if it happens, believe me, we’re gonna need your help. We have… not distinguished ourselves well in the past.”

“Does the captain play?” Renji asked, incredulous.

“He does,” Rukia sighed. “He’s fast, at least. And ruthless, obviously. That’s about it. We’d do much better if he’d play defense and leave the offense to Hisana and me, but you know how he is. He makes the House Guard play defense. Some of them are okay, but they always prioritize keeping me and Hisana from getting hurt over the actual game, which, of course, the Shiba capitalize on.”

“I would never,” Renji sniffed. “The game is all that matters.” He frowned curiously. “Your sister plays?”

“Oh, yes. She’s really good, actually, although her stamina isn’t great. She and I have a good system, where I do most of the ball-carrying and set up, and she does most of the shooting. Byakuya mostly just kicks people in the shins.”

“Who do I have to trash-talk to make this happen?” Renji asked. “I’d love to see that.” He paused. “You and your sister kicking ass at football. Not Byakuya kicking people in the shins. I can see that at work anytime.”

Rukia laughed and Renji felt like the luckiest guy in Soul Society. He knew that making fun of his boss was dangerous territory, but there was a lot a man would risk for a laugh from Kuchiki Rukia.

“Speaking of my sister,” Rukia said with a smile,”she was very concerned.”

“Concerned?” Renji echoed. Lady Kuchiki had seemed relaxed and amiable throughout the afternoon, at least to his mind. Why did all Kuchiki have to be so inscrutable, and yet in completely different ways?

“Well, for one, she thinks I ditched you to go hang out with Ichigo.”

Renji’s brow furrowed. “It wasn’t that way at all.”

Rukia slipped her hand into his and squeezed it reassuringly. Renji’s heart nearly stopped. “It was very sweet of you, by the way, and I appreciate it. But you don’t need to do it again, unless I ask, okay? Ichigo isn’t the one I want private time with.”

“Ah, uh,” Renji stuttered, his brain desperately clawing for some smooth and debonair response. Unfortunately, as usual, it retreated into the practical, instead. “Scratch behind the ears? Is that the sign for privacy?” he asked, demonstrating one of their old secret grifting cues.

A funny look came over Rukia’s face, but she laughed again, and Renji didn’t think much of it. “You look like a hound dog when you do that,” she informed him. “Maybe more like this, now that we live in a town where most people don’t have fleas.” She gave a delicate scratch behind her ear with one finger.

Renji tried it out. “That could work, I suppose, but it assumes you’re actually paying attention to me.”

Rukia’s thumb rubbed over his knuckles. “That’s not a problem.”

Renji swallowed. She was killing him, here. He was sorry he had ever trash-talked her about how bad he was going to flirt with her, because he had deeply underestimated how terrible his own defense was going to be.

“However…” Rukia went on. “That was the other thing. Hisana felt I had not

paid you adequate attention on your birthday.”

Renji rolled his face skyward. “Aw, cripes. This is not my fault. It slipped out. These Shiba--”

“Oh believe me, I know,” Rukia cut him off. “But you know, there’s nothing wrong with enjoying being celebrated. You certainly had enough crummy birthdays back in Inuzuri. If anyone deserves fireworks, it’s you.”

“The only bad birthday I had in Inuzuri was the year we had those bad floods and it rained for two weeks straight and there was nothing to eat and we were all sick to death of one another.” Renji proclaimed. “At least we had water, though.”

Rukia regarded him skeptically. “You’re hopeless. What about the year Watanabe Yuuto broke your nose?”

Renji wagged a finger at her. “That was extremely painful, true, and I got blood all over everything I owned, but you made a big fuss over me. Worth it.”

“Your standards, Renji,” Rukia scolded, but her cheeks had gone a little pink.

“Fujimaru said I was officially the ugliest one in the gang, and you had him in a headlock in about six seconds, even though he was absolutely correct.” Renji wondered if Rukia remembered the next part. “And you gave me a piece of candy you’d been hoarding. It was that awful, rock-hard toffee that I’ve never seen outside of Inuzuri. Glue your jaw right shut.”

“Stop it,” Rukia insisted, looking away.

Renji squeezed her hand gently. “I wasn’t making fun of you. That is genuinely one of my favorite memories.”

“I know, and that’s terrible,” she muttered. “So the question is, have I done better this year than a bloody nose and bad candy? I am beginning to suspect that Hisana may be right, and I’ve fallen down on the job.”

Renji contemplated this while trying to undo the latch on the woodshed one-handed. It was awkward, but he had absolutely no intention of letting go of Rukia’s hand, come Hell or Hollow. “Yesterday was perfect,” he decided. “I got taiyaki and a smooch. Probably the best birthday I’ve had in 40 years, and that was before it was even officially my birthday.”

“Well, I can’t very well tell her about that,” Rukia pouted. “Besides, that was yesterday.”

“I’m pretty sure you wished me a good one this morning,” Renji went on. Setting off from the Seireitei already felt like it had taken place roughly a thousand years ago, but he had been holding the half-lidded set of her eyes and the throaty way she pronounced “Lieutenant Abarai” in his head all day, savoring it like a fine sake.

“I told her about that,” Rukia agreed. “She didn’t seem convinced. And maybe she had a point.”

“A point?” Renji repeated, as he finally managed to wrestle the door open. “I mean, I know you’ve done enough.”

“But what really constitutes ‘enough’?” Rukia mused philosophically, as she grabbed Renji by the obi and hauled him into the woodshed.

“Oh,” said Renji, suddenly realizing that an already good birthday was about to get even better. “Oh.”

Rukia gave him a hard shove, and Renji lost his footing, sitting down hard on a stack of firewood. It wasn’t intended as a seat, and he had to shift his weight around to get it to balance properly, before he caused a log avalanche. The door had swung shut again, and the interior of the shed was dim and dusty. By the time he got himself situated, he found himself with a lap full of Rukia. She leaned forward until their foreheads touched.

“Hi,” she said.

Renji tried to swallow, but it felt like his mouth was full of sawdust. “Hi,” he echoed.

“Happy birthday,” Rukia said.

“Thanks,” Renji replied.

She tilted her chin forward until her lips just barely brushed against his. Renji wanted to grab her waist, to pull her flush to him, to kiss her with everything he had in his heart. He wasn’t used to subtlety from Rukia, though, so instead, he held perfectly still, barely breathing. His lips skimmed hers back, light as a dragonfly on a still pond.

After what felt like simultaneously an instant and an eternity, Rukia pulled back and smiled at him, cocking her head to the side cutely. A deep breath shuddered out of Renji, and Rukia’s smile grew wider at the corners.

“You’re a pretty good kisser, anyone ever tell you that?” she teased.

“You’re just being nice to me because it’s my birthday,” Renji excused.

“Maybe.” Rukia scootched a little closer to him, settling her hands on his chest. She was sitting on his lap with her legs tucked to the side, in a strangely ladylike position that made it a little tricky for her to move around. “Or maybe I like kissing you and I’m trying to trick you into letting me do it again.”

Renji took the cue, and wrapping one arm around her, pulled her closer. He ran his other hand up the side of her face, his fingers threading through her hair, until he was able to angle her face back towards his. “Why do Kuchiki feel the need to make everything into a match of verbal shogi? I’m an Inuzuri boy, Ru. You can just kiss me.”

“Is it really that easy?” Rukia asked lazily, pressing a kiss onto the tip of his nose.

“It really is,” he agreed, tipping his face higher to catch her lips with his own.

“Finally, you’re back! We were about to send out a search party!” Isshin hollered, waving a stick in the air. “What took so long?”

“This idiot tried to carry too much wood at once and dropped it all,” Rukia announced. She was very primly carrying a single log neatly cradled in her arms like a sleeping kitten.

“Yes. That is exactly what happened,” Renji’s voice emanated from somewhere behind his own towering stack of firewood.

Isshin nodded grimly. “Grandstanding is the Shiba way, son. It happens to the best of us.”

Chapter Text

The lighter-haired Kurosaki girl leaned forward, her hands on her knees, staring intently at Abarai.

Byakuya was rather impressed with her fortitude. Not many of his officers would willingly endure such proximity to Abarai’s tattooed visage. Byakuya wondered if Shiba’s daughters had given any thought to Gotei service and if anyone had yet elucidated the advantages and disadvantages of different companies (with particular attention to why the Sixth was the best, naturally).

“Yuzu, give him some space,” Ichigo grumbled.

“Does your sister tell you how to swing a sword?” Isshin decried, gesturing emphatically.

“Hurry up, dummy,” Rukia urged Renji. “Everyone’s waiting for you.”

Touma was not waiting. Touma was trying to climb Byakuya’s body like a small arboreal creature in order to reach the plate dangled in his upraised hand.

“Do you want me to take that?” Hisana offered, clearly doubting Byakuya’s fathering abilities. “Or I could take him…?”

Byakuya managed to get his free arm around Touma’s midsection and tucked him under one armpit like a parcel. “I am handling it.”

“Cake!” Touma wailed. “Caaaaaaaaake!”

Abarai finished chewing. Abarai contemplated the cake. Abarai took another bite, this one consisting only of frosting.

Ganju and Karin groaned dramatically in unison.

Abarai gave a curt nod, his face set in the same mien he used while making decisions during intrasquad mock battles. “It’s good,” he finally declared. “It’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever eaten.”

“Everyone can eat the cake!” Kuukaku hollered at the top of her lungs, and a roar of approval went up among the Shiba and their affiliates.

Hisana let out a tiny, relieved sigh. Byakuya maintained his standard facial expression. Kuchiki did not cheer.

Well. Fully grown Kuchiki did not cheer. “Cake, Dada!” Touma whooped. “Cake now!”

“Yes, Touma, calm yourself,” Byakuya replied, setting his son down and preparing an appropriately sized morsel. “Are you sure it is healthy for him to have so much chocolate at this age?” he asked Hisana.

“I think he’s going to tear your arm off if you don’t put some cake in him immediately,” Hisana hummed while delicately tasting her own cake. Byakuya had never preferred sweet things, but Hisana was a great fan of fanciful confections in the Living World style, particularly where chocolate was involved, and a caring husband should be knowledgeable of his wife’s interests. “Mm, this is good! You should try a bite, just the cake part. All the sweetness is in the icing. Ooh, are these sour cherries?”

Byakuya looked down at his cake. Touma had finished his first bite and helped himself to a second, his tiny fist plunged up to the wrist in the treat. “Oh, dear,” Byakuya remarked. “I didn’t send the nurse home with the extra guards, did I?”

“No, dear, she was at the top of your ‘keep’ list. However, I told her to enjoy the party, and I won’t have you pestering her during her break. Here,” Hisana waved a very white handkerchief at him.

Gingerly, Byakuya took the handkerchief and tried to strategize a point of entry. The situation was degrading rapidly. There was now icing all over Touma’s face as well as his arm. Byakuya gently pulled the boy’s elbow away from his body and began trying to swab the chocolate from it.

Touma stuffed his other hand into the cake.

“Touma, you are being very undignified,” Byakuya informed him. “You must use the fork. I know it is unfamiliar to you, but Father is here to help.”

“Cake, Dada!” Touma crowed, and with the legendary speed of the Kuchiki, shoved his sticky hand directly at Byakuya’s open mouth.

Byakuya paused to contemplate the bit of unwanted baked good on his tongue. The sponge was moist and rich, but a very dark chocolate, verging on bitter. The sweetness was supplied (in excess) by a cloying chocolate buttercream, but it was adequately tempered by a layer of cherry curd in addition to the decorative topping, pleasantly sharp. Overall, a remarkable showing, especially for such a young baker. Yes, he was definitely going to keep an eye on Kurosaki Yuzu. “Er, thank you, Touma,” Byakuya said, once he’d managed to swallow.

“Byakuya,” Hisana mused thoughtfully, “Did you have friends growing up?”

Byakuya bristled. “Of course. I had many youthful companions in my boyhood.”

“What sort of things did you do with them?”

“We practiced kendo. Compared our poetry. Sat quietly next to one another while our elders conducted business. Why?”

“I didn’t really have friends, either,” Hisana sighed.

Byakuya followed her eyes to one of the other picnic tables, where Rukia sat between Abarai and Kurosaki. She was clearly telling a story to the rapt Kurosaki girls, likely a tale of her own derring-do. Byakuya, a student of history, was very fond of oral storytelling, despite having little talent for it himself. He had determined it must be some sort of community pastime in Inuzuri. His wife and his adjutant were both very fond of it, and would launch into an overblown and most-likely apocryphal story at the drop of a hat. Rukia was generally more reluctant to indulge, but with her subtle sense of audience and her ability to build suspense, Byakuya actually considered her the most skilled raconteur of the three. Kurosaki and Abarai would put in a comment from time to time, and it was clear which of the two was more interested in staying within Rukia’s good graces. Abarai’s contributions generally earned him a wink or a sly grin, whereas Kurosaki was mostly receiving elbows to the ribcage.

“I guess I always thought she was like me,” Hisana frowned. “A loner. Or an introvert like you. But maybe she just didn’t like the people she was surrounded with. The people I surrounded her with.”

“Life would be easier for all of us if we could predict the acquaintances who would bring us the most joy,” Byakuya philosophized. “Or better yet, if we could select them. I am sure my grandfather would have been much happier if I could have found it within myself to fall in love with any of the noble daughters he paraded before me. But alas.”

The corner of Hisana’s mouth twitched. Byakuya suspected she was struggling not to smile. “You told me those two boys didn’t get along,” she accused, she changed the subject, waving a hand at the youths in question.

It appeared that Abarai had made the mistake of agreeing with Kurosaki on some point of the narrative, and was now getting an earful from Rukia for his troubles.

“I do not recall saying that,” Byakuya defended. “I simply said that I expected fisticuffs to break out at some juncture. The alliances of young men are mercurial. In any given moment, they may seem unpredictable, but the underlying pattern always emerges eventually.” Touma was waving the fork at him again. (Wait, how had Touma gotten the fork??) Byakuya deftly disarmed the child and absently ate the cake off it before realizing what he had done. “I may have taken action to…” he gestured vaguely with the fork, “jog things along.”

Hisana’s head swiveled around, her eyes pinning him like daggers. “Byakuya. What have you done?”

“Well, as you know, there is a shortage of sleeping space.”

“You didn’t.”

“It was Kuukaku’s proposal, actually, I merely agreed to it. The alternative, apparently, was Ichigo bunking with young Ganju, and Lady Shiba asked if I thought my adjutant would provide a less volatile roommate. It may be true. I told her Abarai was a paragon of civility, as one would expect from an officer of the Sixth.”

Hisana spluttered. Byakuya felt exceedingly pleased with himself.

The boys were now engaged in some inscrutable game with Rukia that appeared to involve stealing cherries from each other’s cake. Rukia appeared to be consistently getting the best of both young men, until Kurosaki smeared frosting across her nose.

“I give it three days, tops,” Byakuya declared.

Hisana shook her head, and then did a double take. “Er, Byakuya.” She pointed at his lap.

Byakuya looked down at Touma and groaned. “Do you have another handkerchief, my love?”

As Byakuya resumed daubing fruitlessly at his frosting-coated heir, Kuukaku leapt atop one of the tables and began shouting again. “Ganju! Isshin! Koganehiko! Shiroganehiko! It’s time to set off the fireworks! Ichigo, I’m leaving you Head-Shiba-in-Charge, in case we all die in a blaze of glory!”

“I do not want this!” Ichigo shouted back.

Kuukaku frowned. “Well, you can’t help with the fireworks, you couldn’t even do the ignition kidou.”

“I want that even less!” Ichigo howled.

“We’ll help!” Karin volunteered enthusiastically.

“Yes, please, Aunt Kuukaku, can we?” Yuzu jumped in.

“Please?” Karin echoed. “I did the ignition kidou and you said Yuzu did the guidance one perfectly!”

Kuukaku scratched her head and looked pained. “Look, girls. You two are doing great and I’m real proud of you, but… er…. Isshin?”

“All Shiba eventually develop stupidly strong reiatsu fields that protect us when we blow ourselves up!” Isshin thundered. “I am sure yours will grow in after a few weeks in Soul Society. It took your brother hardly any time at all! In the meantime, you will have to admire the fireworks from afar, my precious and talented daughters!”

“Is that true?” Hisana asked under her breath.

“The evidence would seem to support it,” Byakuya replied, who had since given up trying to remove cake from his progeny. Touma was now licking his own hands, like a cat, and Byakuya figured this had to be at least as effective as the handkerchief. Mostly, he was just grateful that Touma was not also insistent on helping with the firework display. Byakuya was fairly certain that this would be the first time Touma would be able to actually appreciate fireworks, assuming he didn’t fall asleep first. He was rather looking forward to seeing the little boy’s reaction, actually. He was certain Touma possessed the innate Kuchiki ability for appreciating beauty, but sometimes loud noises could be scary.

It would hopefully be better than that of the Kurosaki girls, who looked devastated, despite Ichigo’s generous offers to let them be Co-Head-Shiba-in-Charge.

Suddenly, Hisana’s sharp elbow jabbed into his side. “Look!” she hissed. “What’s happening?”

Byakuya followed her gaze over to where Abarai was leaning over Rukia’s shoulder, saying something in her ear. Rukia listened gravely, nodding from time to time.

Byakuya leaned over, taking a similar posture toward his own wife. “I believe,” he murmured, “that Abarai is whispering something to Rukia.”

“I can tell that!” Hisana screwed her elbow deeper into his ribcage. “What is he saying?”

“I don’t think you understand the point of whispering, my beloved.”

“Where do you think is the best spot to watch the fireworks?” Rukia suddenly wondered to no one in particular. Abarai had leaned back again, and looked over curiously, a thoroughly innocent expression on his face. Byakuya filed this information away. He had previously rated Abarai as “mildly sneaky”, but this little act indicated that an upgrade was warranted.

“That’s a good question!” Kuukaku replied. “There are lots of good spots. We like to set them off high enough so that people can enjoy them a few districts away.”

“The roof!” Ganji suggested. “Not up on the arms, though, it gets too windy up there. Just the regular roof.”

“The big hill you came over on the way from Junrinan-town offers a nice view,” Koganehiko added.

“Or the far side of Boulder Lake,” Shiroganehiko put in.

“Oh, yeah, that would be my pick,” Kuukaku declared. “Especially because Ganju’s goons always take over the roof.”

“That’s the lake where we went fishing last week, right?” Yuzu asked hopefully. “Where Brother fell in?”

“It was on purpose, I did not fall--”

“We know the way!” Karin volunteered, cutting off her brother. “We can show you, Rukia!”

“Is that okay, Dad?” Yuzu pressed. “Rukia will be with us so we won’t get in any trouble!”

Ichigo slapped both hands over his mouth, but not before a snort of laughter escaped. Rukia promptly jabbed him in the ribs again.

“Interesting,” Byakuya observed.

“What?” Hisana asked.

Byakuya gave a tiny head shake. “I, personally, consider fireworks to be a very grand and inspiring occasion, and, were it my birthday, I would use the opportunity to…” he rolled his wrist thoughtfully, “...romance the object of my affections? As opposed to assuaging the feelings of some preadolescent girls?”

“Byakuya!” Hisana scolded.

“Well, I would.” A thought crossed his mind, and he raised his eyebrows at her. “It is not my birthday, as it happens, but if this one happens to fall asleep, as he often does, I may try it anyway.”

Hisana flashed back a blistering smoulder, and Byakuya felt his heart stutter in the best possible way. “You just try it, Kuchiki.” As was often the case with Hisana, it was unclear whether this was a warning or an invitation.

Byakuya couldn’t wait to find out.

Chapter Text

“So, uh… sorry about all this.”

Renji was lying in the cool grass alongside the banks of a peaceful lake. The evening was cool, which felt lovely after a hot day. The sun had just finished setting, and stars were becoming visible one-by-one in the darkening sky. A few yards away, Rukia, Yuzu, and Karin were up to their knees in the lake, trying to get the twilight dragonflies to perch on their fingers. He had taken off his sandals at some point and currently had no clue to their whereabouts. He hoped to never see them again.

Slowly, Renji flopped his head over to one side to regard the young man lying in a similar posture a few feet away. “What the hell are you sorry for? This is great.”

Ichigo scratched an elbow irritably. “Look, I am not an expert or anything, but if it were my birthday and there were fireworks and I had a new girlfriend, I would not want to go help my friend keep an eye on his kid sisters, y’know?”

“We’re not really, um, dating or whatever. Not yet.”

“You are, actually. You’re just idiots and won’t admit it.”

Renji snorted. “Yeah. Probably.” Renji propped himself up on his elbows for a moment to regard the possible girlfriend in question. She’d girded her kimono up around her thighs, like she used to do when they went fishing in the river as kids. She had a lilypad on her head and was trying to hold very still, while Ichigo’s sisters giggled hysterically. “Maybe I am getting old,” he sighed. “Making out is nice, but really, I just like to see her happy like this. She… when we were kids, she was the big sister, even if she was the smallest out of all of us. I think she misses being a big sister.”

Ichigo was staring at him strangely, his eyes narrowed.

“We made out earlier if it makes you feel better,” Renji excused.

“It does not. It makes me feel like I need to go wash my brain, thank you.”

Renji tipped his head back to look at the stars again. I’m sorry, too, he wanted to say. I’m sorry there’s only one of her. Ichigo was being gracious enough, maybe more gracious than Renji would have been. Rukia had accepted his congratulations as genuine, and they probably were, that’s the kind of guy Ichigo was, but Rukia also had a tendency to hear what she wanted to hear. Renji had lived with a shattered heart for close to forty years, and he recognized the faraway look in the kid’s eyes all too well. It wasn’t a broken heart, per se, but it wasn’t one that was entirely intact, either.

That being said, there wasn’t much Renji could do about it. He remembered being that age all too well, and having some old, uncool dude try to talk about it would have been mortifying, let alone the old, uncool dude your girl had passed you over for.

So, Renji did the politest thing he could have done in the circumstances. He changed the subject.

“How are your, uh, friends doing?” he asked. “The ones who came to Soul Society with you.”

“They aren’t really my…” Ichigo started and then realized he was falling into his own trap. “We weren’t really friends before we went. They were just some people I knew from school. Even Chad… I thought of Chad as my friend, but it’s not like we hung out much.” His face was screwed up a little, and he shook his head, like he was trying to dislodge a feeling. “Everyone’s good,” he restarted. “Wait, no, that’s not true. Uryuu, the guy with glasses that you beat up? In the rain? When you arrested Rukia?”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember,” Renji nodded. “Real pencil-neck.”

“That’s the one,” Ichigo agreed, nodding. “Well, I guess he burnt his powers out.”

“Jeez,” Renji inhaled. “I didn’t do that, did I?”

“You wish. No, he fought-- does one of the Gotei captains look like a clown? With facepaint and stuff? I didn’t meet that guy, but that’s what Orihime said. Uryuu refuses to admit he fought a clown, but it sounds to me like Uryuu fought a clown.”

“Oh, you mean Captain Kurotsuchi? I heard he got trashed pretty bad-- your nerdy friend did that? Good on him! Nobody likes that guy.”

“Well, yeah, I suppose, except like I said, poof! no powers now. Uryuu says he doesn’t care and that he’s just happy it pissed off his dad and stuff, but he’s really down about it.” Ichigo rubbed the back of his neck. “My dad and Mr. Urahara have me on a pretty intense training schedule and t’be honest, I wouldn’ta picked up on it, but I guess Chad and Orihime got worried about him, and they kept coming up with all kinds of stupid things to do to cheer him up, and dragging my ass into it.” The side of his mouth twitched a little. “It’s, uh, been kinda nice.”

Renji thought he remembered Ichigo saying that he hadn’t worked on his bankai much. The grifter part of his brain wondered what kind of training he was doing instead, and filed away this fact for future interrogation. The friendlier half of Renji’s brain kept listening to Ichigo complain about how horrible it was to have friends. It was honestly no wonder that Rukia got along so well with this kid.

“We were actually going to-- well-- Orihime’s birthday is on Monday. We were planning a surprise party for her. I mean, Uryuu was doing most of the planning, he loves that shit, but I’m really mad I have to miss it. I’m not… I’m not as good at being nice as Chad and Uryuu and Tatsuki and I don’t want her to think I just ditched.”

“You could tell her that,” Renji suggested. “When you get back.”

Ichigo regarded Renji skeptically. “I realize you have been having success with this whole ‘telling girls things’ but I’m not buying it.”

“No, really.” Renji took a deep breath. It sounded like maybe Ichigo did want some old, uncool guy reassurances after all. “Rukia got real worried that she was gonna miss my birthday ‘cause o’ this trip and she went to all this trouble of apologizing for it. It was really… touching… y’know? That she cared.”

“Rukia did that?” Ichigo blew some air out of his cheeks. “I guess she really does like you. She woulda just yelled at me for having my birthday at a time that inconvenienced her.”

“Obviously, this situation is a little different,” Renji waved a hand. “Since this girl is just a friend and all, but I think it’s good to tell your friends how you feel about them. That’s some old guy wisdom I had to learn the hard way, but I am giving you for free.”

Ichigo chewed on a thumbnail. “Hrmph,” he declared. Renji got the impression that the “Hrmph” wasn’t directed at him specifically, but perhaps the universe at large.

Suddenly, there was a resounding boom, and the sky lit up with brilliant red sparkles.

“Fireworks! Fireworks, Ichi-nii! Fireworks!”

There was a pounding of feet, and Ichigo’s very damp sisters slammed into him, knocking him back onto the grass again.

“Gosh, are they?” Ichigo echoed. “Are you sure?”

Renji chuckled softly, easing himself back down to the ground and resting his head on his interlaced fingers.

“Is this pile Kurosaki-exclusive?” Rukia asked, grinning and wringing out the tails of her kimono.

“There’s room for you, too, Rukia!” Yuzu chirped, and Rukia flopped down in the grass between her and Renji.

“Oooh, that one’s a brocade crown!” Karin announced, pointing at the golden burst of sparks in the sky.

“You think the old man’s set his beard on fire yet?” Ichigo pondered, a note of hope in his voice.

“You should have more faith in Daddy, Ichi-nii!”

“Yeah, I’m sure he’s managed to set his entire head on fire by now,” Karin put in.

Renji felt a small, cool hand tug on his elbow.

“Hey,” Rukia whispered.

“Hey, what?” Renji whispered back.

“Get over here.”

“Why? So you can make my clothes wet and sap all my body heat now that the sun’s gone down?”

“Well, Ichigo doesn’t have enough for all three of us,” Rukia teased.

Smiling, Renji scooted closer to her, and carefully wrapped one arm around her shoulders in a way he hoped wouldn’t be too obvious to Ichigo’s little sister on Rukia’s other side.

“My favorites are the loud ones,” Rukia announced, laying one arm across her chest so she could put her hand on top of Renji’s.

“Of course they are,” Ichigo shot back.

“Like whistlers, or just loud booms?” Karin asked.

“Just loud,” Rukia declared. “Loud and big and bright.”

“How about you, Lieutenant Abarai?” Yuzu asked. “What are your favorites?”

“His name is Renji,” Rukia interrupted.

“Hmm,” Renji contemplated. “I like the ones that shoot way up high and then dissolve into a bunch of little tiny stars.”

“You’re both wrong,” Ichigo declared. “You can’t just like one kind of firework. Fireworks are the best when there are a bunch of different kinds all going off at once. A group effort.”

“How can we be wrong about our opinions, you fool?”

“I dunno, but you manage it somehow!”

“Oh, Ichi-nii, don’t be mean!”

Maybe Ichigo was right, Renji thought, pretending to stretch, but really snuggling a little closer to Rukia. Maybe his opinions were bad. Maybe it would be better to be out here, just him and Rukia, completely ignoring the fireworks that were going on in the sky.

But he liked this. He liked it a lot. Five kids on a hill under a sky brilliant with sparks and stars and fireflies. Their bellies full, their limbs tired, and a bit of good-natured bickering that he wasn’t even obligated to take part in.

Rukia’s hand suddenly tugged at his (a marked improvement from her usual elbow to the ribs), and Renji realized he’d let his attention drift.

“Aren’t you even going to defend yourself?” she demanded.

“Eh? Did Ichigo insult me again? I’m too full of cake to care.”

Ichigo let out a barking laugh that probably meant his barb had been directly on target. His sisters scolded him again. Rukia let out a long-suffering, fond sigh, and Renji quietly pressed a kiss into her hair as bursts of green and gold lit up the sky.

Chapter Text

“GOOOOOOOOD MORRRRRRRNING, ICHIGOOOOOOOOOOOO!”

Despite being only 10% awake, Ichigo observed that Isshin had put a lot of emphasis on the first syllable of “morning”, which usually meant that his dad was going to elbow-drop him. Rolling out of bed straight onto the floor was usually an effective evasive tactic. Unfortunately, Ichigo had forgotten that he was sleeping on a futon instead of a bed, and completely flubbed it. Frantically, he threw his arms over his face, tucked his knees up to his stomach, and braced for the worst.

“OH, NO, YOU DON’T! HOWL, ZABIMARU!”

There was a loud crash, and Ichigo peeked out between his fingers just in time to see Renji tackle his father out the window, both of them shouting and pummeling each other.

Ichigo blinked for a moment, then rolled back himself into bed and pulled the blanket over his head.

An hour later, Ichigo trudged into the dining room, yawning and scratching his stomach.

For a long time, Ichigo had thought about his family heritage in a very simplistic way. There was his mom, a gauzy memory of love and safety and beauty. And then there was his dad. Everything that was good and nice and special about Ichigo and his sisters (mostly his sisters), clearly came from their mom. Everything weird and awful and related to hair growing on weird parts of his body was the old man’s genes at work. Isshin himself had always been very supportive of this worldview.

But now there were other Shiba, and while there was no question that they were universally weird and awful and hairy, they were other things, too. They were, for example, breakfast people.

Ichigo knew he had long been spoiled by Yuzu’s morning offerings, but Koganehiko and Shiroganehiko really took things to the next level. The table practically groaned under the weight of literally every possible component of a traditional Japanese breakfast he could think of.

Ichigo contemplated what he felt like eating as he made a beeline for the coffee pot that Old Goatface had made Urahara jury rig for him so that it would work in Soul Society. Ichigo had seen what passed for “technology” over here in the land of the dead. The pink, squishy powerpack mounted to the back of the thing where the power cable used to be was seriously off putting, but a guy needed his joe in the morning.

The pot was empty.

“What the junk?” Ichigo groused. “Who drank all the coffee?”

“Byakuya,” Rukia announced, taking a loud slurp from a mug with what appeared to be Bonnie-chan painted on it by someone with more enthusiasm than talent.

“That seems incorrect,” Ichigo replied, trying to see into her mug. “He’s not even here.”

“That man came and went with the dawn. You snooze, you lose, kid,” Kuukaku gestured with her own mug, which was emblazoned with the slogan ‘Soul Society’s Okayest Clan Head.’ “And you have snozt and lost.”

“Can we make more?” Ichigo pleaded.

“You father hid the beans. He says he’s rationing them carefully,” Kuukaku replied.

“Well, he’s gonna be mad when he finds out that,” Ichigo made finger quotes, “‘Byakuya’ drank all his coffee.”

“Oh, no, he and Byakuya had their coffee together, early,” Hisana added. “They were making plans. Something something training heirs in the traditional arts of martial combat.”

“I don’t like the sound of that,” Ichigo frowned, giving up on the coffee and scooping himself a big portion of rice. He scanned the room and realized that Renji wasn’t there, either. RIP, Rukia’s hot boyfriend, it was nice training in a cave with you that one time.

“That’s because you’re afraid of hard work, you shirker,” Rukia declared.

“I don’t see you training, either!” Ichigo protested.

Rukia stood up and Ichigo belatedly realized she was wearing her shihakushou, unlike the pretty kimono she’d worn the day before. “I am not going within 100 yards of Touma with a sword in his hands, wooden or no. But everyone should be thoroughly tired out by now. Come along, Ichigo, let’s go attack whomever’s still standing.”

“I haven’t even eaten yet!” Ichigo wailed as she snagged the back of his collar. “Can I have the rest of your coffee?”

“I can’t believe you wouldn’t let me eat breakfast,” Ichigo grumbled as he followed Rukia out into the yard.

“I can’t believe we had to go back to your room to get your sword. Why wouldn’t you bring it to breakfast with you?”

“Because… because we’re all on vacation? I know you said you wanted to do some training, but I thought you might… wait until a normal hour of the day?”

“A poor assumption, made by a fool.”

Ichigo sighed heavily. Rukia was really in fine form this morning. Just as she was rounding the corner of the house, she stopped suddenly, and ducked back to stay out of view. Ichigo ran smack into her back. “Oof, what?”

“Oh, no,” Rukia gasped, her hands going to her mouth, as she peeked around the wall. Ichigo craned his head overtop hers to see what was so funny.

Byakuya stood ramrod straight, stone-faced, looking like the universe's most unpleasable drill instructor. He was counting, his voice cool and perfectly steady, like a metronome.

With each count, Touma swung his tiny practice sword enthusiastically. His stance was awful. His form was worse. He had an extremely serious look on his face.

Standing a few feet away from him was Renji. In bankai. On every count, he was also swinging his sword, which caused the gigantic head of Hihiou Zabimaru to rear forward, and then snap back.

Isshin stood next to Byakuya, arms crossed over his chest, and making a comment to Byakuya now and again.

Ichigo tried to hold the guffaw in his mouth, but it sputtered out despite his best efforts.

“Shh! Don’t interrupt them!” Rukia hissed, her voice going high-pitched with delight.

“You’re becoming noisy again, Lieutenant,” Byakuya said sternly, but not unkindly. “I realize my sister is watching, but you must keep it tight.”

“Yessir,” Renji replied.

Ichigo scratched his head. There was something really weird about this scene, and not because it involved three grown men doing sword drills with a toddler. “Rukia,” he hissed in her ear. “How is your baby nephew able to stand next to Renji when he’s in bankai? Shouldn’t he be passed out or something?”

“He is a Kuchiki, of course,” Rukia sniffed.

“I mean, okay… but still…”

“Also, Renji has his reiatsu pulled in very close. It’s a control exercise. Did you not wonder why you couldn’t feel him yourself?”

“Oh,” Ichigo replied. “I guess that makes sense. Doesn’t feeling people with your reiatsu go both ways, though? How did he feel you, then?

Rukia’s cheeks colored. “I doubt he did, I’m sure Brother was just teasing him.”

“Hmm,” Ichigo replied noncommittally, and Rukia glared at him.

“Fifty,” Byakuya intoned. “Excellent work, Touma. Excellent work, Lieutenant.”

“Great job, boys!” Isshin bellowed, giving two thumbs up.

“That is enough for this morning,” Byakuya continued.

Renji let out a big sigh, and he wiped at his forehead with the back of his arm, before shooting a grin to Rukia and Ichigo, peering around the corner of the house.

Touma’s face split into a big grin and he ran at his father, sword swinging wildly. Isshin made a frantic jump to the side, but Byakuya just reached down and disarmed his child in a move that was irritatingly similar to the one he had pulled on Ichigo the first time they met. Touma did not appear to be concerned by this. He waved his arms and yelled “UP, Dada!”

Byakuya looked profoundly uncomfortable.

“What’s wrong?” Ichigo asked quietly.

“Byakuya isn’t really big on public affection,” Rukia explained. “Most nobles aren’t.”

“Don’t be a dick, Byakuya!” Isshin roared, clenching a fist. “Modern pediatrics recommends easy praise and frequent close contact! It’s important for building self-confidence!”

“Watch your language in front of my child, if you will, Shiba,” Byakuya responded coolly, before lifting Touma into his arms and giving him what appeared to be a very normal hug.

“I can’t believe he did it!” Rukia gasped.

Ichigo regarded her out of the corner of his eye. His family was weird, sure, but Rukia’s family was weird in an entirely different set of dimensions.

“Big boy Touma!” Touma sang.

“You have done very well,” Byakuya agreed, setting the boy back down on the ground. “Your mother will be very proud.”

Rukia snorted.

Touma then ran over Renji, who was taking a drink of water. “Big boy Touma!” he shouted.

“It’s true,” Renji nodded. “You held up your half and I did promise. You still okay with this, Captain?”

“You showed excellent control during that exercise, Lieutenant. I approve.”

Renji set down his water and cracked his shoulders. “Here we go!” Hihiou Zabimaru raised its head, and slithered forward, tilting its nose down so that Touma could clamber up onto the flat space between the eyes.

“What?!” Rukia clenched her fists indignantly. “Why does Touma get to ride on Hihiou Zabimaru? I want to ride on Hihiou Zabimaru!”

“Have you… asked?” Ichigo suggested. Come to think of it, he, too, kinda wanted to ride on Hihiou Zabimaru.

“Byakuya preemptively forbid me,” Rukia grumbled. “He said it was undignified.”

“Sucks to be you,” Ichigo replied. “We Shiba specialize in indignities. Hey, Renji! If I kick your ass, can I ride on your bankai, too?”

“You see what comes of cursing in front of your offspring?” Byakuya waved a hand. “Disrespect.”

“Only good boys who do their sword exercises get Zabi-rides,” Renji singsonged, trundling Touma around the yard at the walking speed of an octogenarian.

“You are not allowed to fight Abarai! You shirked your training with your own father!” Isshin scolded.

“I didn’t shirk! Renji just… took over for me. I heard you tried to adopt him yesterday! Seems fair for you to pick on one of your fake kids for a change.”

“And now I’m tired, so cut me some slack!” Renji protested. His eyebrows drew together for a moment. “Maybe you can return the favor, and fight my captain for me. He gets antsy if he doesn’t get a good workout in the morning, and I ain’t sure I’m gonna give him too much of one at the moment.”

Aw, geez. Ichigo had talked big about fighting Byakuya before, and Renji, like the Good Bro he was, had taken him seriously and was now trying to do him a solid. Ichigo’s eyes darted over to Byakuya, who seemed to be considering the idea. Well, it’s not like he was going to back out of it now. Renji got his ass kicked by this guy everyday before lunch, Ichigo could probably handle it. Come to think of it , he had beaten that Kenpachi guy, right? Maybe this wasn’t a total lost cause.

Old Goatface wasn’t having it, though. “Work before play, Ichigo! Training with Daddy comes before you are allowed to bully any of the Kuchiki!”

“You speak boldly, Shiba, for a man twenty years out of action,” Byakuya drawled.

“What if Ichigo and I take on both of you at once?” Rukia suddenly piped up. Ichigo looked at her out of the corner of his eye. Yup. Completely serious, as usual. Completely serious and completely bonkers.

“That is hardly a fair match, Rukia,” Byakuya pointed out.

“I don’t know, Byakuya, I feel like we need to teach these youngsters a little respect!” Isshin’s eyes glinted manically.

“Rukia is very respectful, under normal circumstances!” Byakuya protested. “It is a shame that none of it appears to have rubbed off on your son!”

Ichigo shot an Is this guy for real? look at Renji, who just shrugged.

“Abarai!”

Renji’s head whipped around.

“Please escort Touma back to my wife, if you will. It is time for his N-A-P.” Byakuya’s hand brushed over the hilt of his sword. “I suspect it may get a bit...intense, out here.”

“Okay, but slow-play it, please, Captain! I’ll be sad if you’ve trashed both of ‘em by the time I get back.”

“Traitor!” Rukia hissed in his direction.

Renji pretended to ignore her. “Arright, buddy, you ready to go tell your mama you’re ready for the Shin’ou entrance exams?”

“Hungry!” Touma announced.

“I bet you are, hard work builds up an appetite! Let’s go see if we can rustle you up a snack.”

Ichigo wondered why no one else seemed to find it profoundly weird the way Abarai, with his tatts and his giant spiky snake skeleton and his tough guy way of talking just chatted amiably with a toddler like it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Abarai!” Byakuya called after them, as they headed back toward the house. “Do not let my wife see him on your bankai.”

“Lady Kuchiki’s a good sport, sir!”

“I know that, Abarai. She is too good a sport. She will want a turn. Do not give her a turn. I will fire you.”

“Ah, got it.” Renji shot Ichigo and Rukia a jaunty little salute as he passed. “Good luck! I’m cheerin’ for your side!”

Rukia winked at him and clicked at him with her tongue.

Ichigo leaned his head in close to her. “Rukia!” he hissed. “Do you have some sort of plan? How are we going to fight two captains? You probably think my dad is rusty and he may be, I don’t know, but I’ve been fighting him a lot lately and he is scary.”

Rukia made a face at him. “What is this cowardice? Were you not the man who stormed Soul Society on my behalf?”

“Well, yeah, but I was too stupid to know what I was doing, then.”

Rukia rolled her eyes. “Look, we have one major advantage, okay?”

“Which is?”

“Which is that my brother does not fight well with others. He has no concept of friendly fire. The only person who can fight with him is Renji, who, for some reason, is extremely good at predicting his moves and uses this ability primarily to stay out of his way. Here’s what we’re going to do: You get Byakuya’s attention. Byakuya and I will take out Isshin, and then I’ll come back and help you with Byakuya.”

“Your plan sucks.”

“My plan is brilliant. Also, do not shit around, go to bankai immediately.”

“I was gonna do that anyway!”

“Perfect.” Rukia straightened up, and put her hand on the hilt of her sword. “We’re ready!”

“Give us a minute, we’re strategizing,” the old man called back. “Hey, Byakuya, you plannin’ on going to bankai?”

“On these two? No.” Byakuya rolled his eyes toward Ichigo’s father. “Yourself?”

“Eh, you remember what a pain mine is.”

“I wasn’t sure you were still capable of it, to be honest.”

“That’s a good question, innit?”

Ichigo didn’t actually know the answer to that, either. He had never seen his dad’s bankai. When he first got home from Soul Society after rescuing Rukia, he had gotten the distinct impression that his dad was not at his peak. Ichigo hadn’t fought his dad in a few weeks, though, not since the role of Ichigo-Head-Trainer had been foisted off onto Urahara's weird friend Hirako and his pals. Isshin did a lot of hanging out, though, and Ichigo had privately been wondering if the old man was just shitting around by arm-wrestling Lisa and headbutting Muguruma all the time, or if this was some kind of secret Shiba strength training.

He was not looking forward to finding out.

“I don’t care what you guys are doing, let’s get this over with,” Ichigo complained. “Bankai!”

“Dance, Sode no Shirayuki!” Rukia called, just a moment behind.

Ichigo watched out of the corner of his eye as the color bled out of her sword and a delicate ribbon streamed from its hilt. Renji was right. It was a beautiful sword, too beautiful to even be real. The blade looked so thin and delicate, and refracted the light in strange ways, like bright sun on snow. But Ichigo reminded himself that as normal as it seemed, Soul Society was a magical realm, and the idea of things had power here. It wasn’t a hunk of metal that Rukia wielded, but a piece of her soul, and it was just as deadly as the sliver of solidified darkness that Ichigo held in his own hand or that stretchy hacksaw monstrosity Renji carried.

“Tsugi no mai, Hakuren!” Rukia shouted, a blast of cold air pushing her hair away from her face as a huge avalanche of ice crashed across the yard.

“Burn, Engetsu!” Isshin shouted, his sword erupting in flames that burned back against Rukia’s onslaught.

“Show off,” Ichigo grunted, knowing his dad could have dodged it just as easily. Suddenly, he remembered what he was supposed to be doing, and got Zangetsu up just in time to block a strike that rang through his body like a thunderbolt.

“My sister’s sword is very distracting,” Byakuya noted in that chilly voice of his, “but you would do best to mind your surroundings, Kurosaki Ichigo.”

“Just… thought I would give you a head start,” Ichigo grunted, pushing Byakuya’s sword away and leaping back. He took a defensive stance. “Well? Aren’t you gonna go all flower petally?”

“Perhaps. We shall see if it becomes necessary.” Byakuya slashed at him, and Ichigo parried the blow. Byakuya seemed to be waiting for Ichigo to return the favor, so Ichigo swung his sword upward. Byakuya blocked it off to the side easily, and replied with a lightning quick thrust.

Ichigo didn’t like this. Byakuya wasn’t acting like he actually wanted to fight him, he was acting like a teacher with a student, trying to trick him into doing something dumb. Furthermore, how was he supposed to accidentally take out Isshin if he wouldn’t even unseal his sword?

“This is boring!” Ichigo announced, and skipped directly to top speed.

Unfortunately, Byakuya seemed to have anticipated this, and danced back, nimbly blocking or dodging Ichigo’s every attempt.

“Have you ever actually studied swordcraft, Kurosaki Ichigo?” Byakuya asked, his voice tinged with bored curiosity. “Or have you just depended on your speed and ridiculous reiatsu to overwhelm your opponents?”

“I… read a book on it once!” Ichigo replied defensively. He hadn’t actually read the book. It had been on his bedside table for a month. He’d flipped through it and looked at some of the diagrams. He thoroughly intended to read it, but other things kept getting in the way.

Byakuya was no longer merely acting defensively, but throwing in a strike now and again. He wasn’t as fast as Ichigo but he was pretty damn fast, and it looked like he was actually running through kata, not just reacting, which is all he, Ichigo could seem to manage.

This never happened in a real fight. In a real fight, it was always so clear what to do, which move to make, where to put pressure. There was a sense of connection with his opponent, what drove them, what they were going to do next. But there was nothing to read from Byakuya. He was just running through a bunch of fighting moves he practiced every day of his life, and getting what passed for Byakuya-jollies by making Ichigo sweat.

“Sokatsui!”

Ichigo startled out of his spiraling as Byakuya suddenly dove backwards, a blue kidou sailing past the spot where his face had been a moment ago.

“Don’t let him lead you around like that!” Rukia hollered. She was hanging off Isshin’s shoulder, one hand gripping a hank of the old man's hair, the other smoking with the remains of her kidou. “Make some space!”

“Mind your own ass!” Ichigo yelled, leaping backwards, because making some space sounded like an excellent idea. “Getsuga tenshou!”

Byakuya tried to stop the blast with his sword, but it drove him backward, his heels digging deep ruts in the ground. “Shakkahou,” he responded grimly, a ball of red light flying from his fingertips.

Ichigo was ready for this one, though. He gathered another getsuga, but kept it on his blade until the kidou made contact, at which point, he slammed them both into the ground, throwing up an explosion of dirt and raw power.

As the dust settled, a wall of shimmering silver-pink parted to reveal Byakuya, irritatingly spotless as always.

Ichigo sneered at him. “Looks like you needed to unseal your zanpakutou after all, eh?”

“Your swordsmanship is hardly better than Touma’s. You do become more interesting when pressed.”

Abruptly, the petals shot toward him, wave after wave of them. The individual petals weren’t nearly as fast as Byakuya himself and Ichigo found he could block or evade them well enough, if he kept on his toes. He led Senbonzakura on a merry chase around the practice yard, dodging gouts of flame and jumping over lurching ice pillars.

coward

Ichigo nearly tripped as the faintest echoes of a voice he really did not want to hear right now bounced around the back of his mind. He imagined that tripping in bankai shunpo would both scrape all the skin off his face and be tremendously embarrassing, although that was currently the least of his worries.

You stay the fuck outta here, nobody asked your opinion, he shot back into the recesses of his skull.

you’re gonna get your ass kicked without me, you know

I am not, Ichigo protested. It’s just sparring. Byakuya is someone’s dad, he’s not gonna hurt me for real. He reminded himself to tell that to himself. It was Ichigo that needed to stay calm. When Ichigo was calm, the Hollow couldn’t get a grip on him. Arguing with it was a trap, a pit of quicksand.

“I am disappointed, Kurosaki Ichigo. I had heard better things of you, but it does not surprise me that Zaraki Kenpachi is a liar. Or perhaps my sister needs to be in danger before you are willing to put in any serious effort.” With that, a swirl of petals spun off to the side, where Rukia had just sprang back from locking blades with Isshin, their swords sputtering out gouts of steam.

Rukia could take care of herself.

Byakuya would never hurt Rukia.

The entire plan in the first place had been to get Byakuya to hit Isshin.

Ichigo knew these things. But knowing those things did jack shit when red and black rushed into the periphery of his vision. No no no no no now was not the--

Suddenly, there was a deafening rumble, a freight train of noise and spiritual pressure, and a coil of enormous snake vertebrae swung between Rukia and Senbonzakura, very conveniently deflecting most of the shimmering blades directly into Isshin’s face. Another loop of bone smacked into Ichigo’s side, sending him ass over teakettle. When the world stopped spinning, his chin was in the dirt, his ass was in the air, and he was staring at a pair of large feet in waraji. A second pair, similarly shod but much smaller, landed nearby.

“My captain givin’ you trouble?” Renji’s voice rumbled from somewhere far above.

“Little,” Rukia admitted, from a significantly shorter distance away.

Ichigo sat up, spitting out dirt, and came eye-to-eye socket with the hideous head of Renji’s bankai. The three of them--Ichigo, Rukia and Renji, were huddled behind a protective wall of snake skeleton while Renji called plays.

“Rukia, load up,” Renji barked, jerking his head toward the skull.

“Really?” Rukia asked, her eyes positively glittering.

“Here’s the plan,” Renji went on, leaning forward. “I’m gonna throw Rukia at Byakuya. Ru, can you pull off a hakuren in mid-air?”

“I need to anchor my reiatsu first, so I have to be on something solid. Do you think Zabimaru can take that?”

Renji rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Probably, but doesn’t sound like something we should try for the first time in the middle of a fight. How about a shakkahou?”

“Shakkahou, I can do. We’re practicing the hakuren later, though.”

“Yeah, of course!” Renji turned to Ichigo. “Ichigo, you gotta get around his back while he’s distracted. Aim for the hakusui.”

“The what?” Ichigo echoed.

“Between the shoulder blades,” Rukia clarified, testing her balance as she stood astride Zabimaru’s bony brow.

“We’re outta time,” Renji declared. “You good, Ichigo? We’re counting on you.”

Ichigo blinked and realized he was good. Getting knocked on the head must’ve jarred the Hollow back to wherever it went when it wasn’t trying to ruin his day. Rukia was looking down at him, waiting for his confirmation, her eyes bright and confident. Confident in him. “Yeah, let’s do this,” he agreed, clambering to his feet.

The great loops of bone that had been sheltering them from their opponents lifted as Hihiou Zabimaru reared up to its full height.

They probably actually could have had another minute. Byakuya had Isshin pinned with whichever kidou it was that made you look like you were stuck in a big golden flower. This had only marginally slowed down Old Goatface, who was literally spitting fireballs back at Byakuya. Both of their heads whipped to the side as Renji’s snake let out its awful Godzilla screech and charged. It occurred to Ichigo that Renji had probably never seen Godzilla, which seemed like a shame. He wondered how hard it would be for Renji and Rukia to get some sort of pass to come visit the Living World the next time Orihime had a movie night. Orihime was a big fan of Godzilla.

This was no time to be thinking about that. In fact, Ichigo could barely spare a moment to appreciate Rukia’s absolutely manic grin, lit up by the kidou forming in her hands. He had a job to do. Rukia and Renji were counting on him. He serpentined around his father, hoping Byakuya would see the move and assume that he and Rukia were splitting up again, swapping opponents. Then Ichigo made a sharp turn, and came out of flashstep directly facing Byakuya’s back. Grinning, he thrust his sword upward--only to have Byakuya spin and parry it with a spray of Senbonzakura’s petals, even as he blocked Rukia’s kidou with the other hand.

Rukia twisted in mid-air and hit the ground rolling away to the side. “Ichigo, MOVE!” she screamed. Ichigo was pretty sure he could get the better of Byakuya with his attention diverted like this, but there was something about the tone of Rukia’s voice that bypassed the decision-making part of his brain and took direct control of his nervous system. He threw himself to the side just as Renji bellowed “Hikotsu Tai-HOUUUUUU!” and red light flooded his vision.

Chapter Text

“The thing is, Yuzu, you really don’t actually have to do this. One of the side effects of having high spiritual pressure is that I heal really fast here in Soul Society and they’re really very small cuts-- urrrnnnnh!” Ichigo gritted his teeth and tried not to let his face betray how horrible Yuzu’s attempts at kaido felt.

“I just… want to get the practice in,” Yuzu frowned, squinting at her work.

“You need to relax more,” Isshin advised. “Imagine you are a fire, casting warmth on your precious brother. Warm him gently, like a kitten who has been out in the cold! Do not toast him like a marshmallow!”

“I wasn’t any good at the fire kidou,” Yuzu complained, shooting a jealous glance at her twin. Ichigo had escaped the morning’s adventures with a few Senbonzakura scrapes and a bit of road rash, but Isshin looked like he’d taken a header into a gravel pit. Fortunately, the numerous cuts and burns that made his face even craggier than usual were melting away under Karin’s more competent hand.

“I can’t heal at all,” Ichigo admitted, in hopes of making Yuzu feel better. He hated to see her face crumple like that. Karin had always been better at most things than Yuzu, but Ichigo would have guessed Yuzu would have been the more natural healer. She just seemed to have the personality for it-- gentle, thoughtful, caring. Like Hanatarou. Or Captain Unohana. Or, well, Orihime, of course, who was so kind that she could practically heal someone just by smiling at them. “Rukia’s good at it,” he put in. “Maybe you can ask her for tips that don’t involve Dad’s dumb fire metaphors.”

Yuzu’s face lit up at the prospect of spending time with her new personal idol. “Really? Do you think she would help me?”

“Sure. She loves telling people how to do things. I am sure there will be plenty more injuries to come on this trip.”

“ISSHIN! ICHIGO!”

“It would be nice if Kuukaku would let us heal the injuries we have before giving us more,” Isshin opined.

Kuukaku slammed the door open, and stomped into the room. “You two are numbskulls!” she hollered.

“What else is new?” Isshin asked.

“If you’re going to fight the Kuchiki, you could at least try not to embarrass us!”

“We weren’t even on the same team, I don’t see how we got embarrassed,” Ichigo grumbled.

Kuukaku ground her knuckles into Isshin’s scalp. “You always schooled Byakuya’s pasty ass in the old days, what’s wrong with you?”

“You what now?” Ichigo echoed blankly.

“I never take anything seriously, you know that! And he takes everything seriously! Twenty years of that will catch up with you! Besides, we were just trying to check each other’s kids out. That Rukia’s gotten pretty strong, you know? Jeez, I still remember her showing off her shikai when she first got it.” Isshin grinned. “Thought Kaien was going to explode with pride. She tries to fight like Byakuya, but you can see the Shiba influence all over her form.”

Ichigo squirmed, not just because Yuzu’s attempts at healing itched horrifically. He knew, logically, that Rukia was very old. She told him every chance she got. But he still didn’t believe it. She seemed like a kid, like him, maybe a tiny bit older. Someone young, who did dumb shit and made mistakes and had her whole life ahead of her. He hated the idea that his dad had known her as an adult, years before he, Ichigo, was even born. Ichigo realized, suddenly and with complete horror, that he had no idea how old his dad was.

“I remember that, too,” Kuukaku grinned, too, her ire gone as quickly as it had come on. “I think Kaien would have adopted her if Byakuya hadn’t gotten to her first.” She got a bit of a faraway look, the same look she always got when she was thinking about her lost brother. “Hey, girls!” she said suddenly. “I meant to tell you. Ganju’s getting the boars ready for their weekly baths. You wanna help?”

Yuzu perked up. “Oh, can we, Daddy?”

“Go, go,” Isshin made a little shooing motion with his hand.

Karin frowned. “You’re still missing a lot of face. I should probably stay and finish.”

“No, no, my daughters should run free and enjoy themselves! I deserve this punishment for my buffoonery. Perhaps lovely Hisana will take pity when she sees what her husband has done to me!”

“Fat chance,” Kuukaku rolled her eyes, as the girls piled past her out of the room. “Ichigo? Not interested in deep conditioning in a boar?”

“I'll pass,” Ichigo replied dryly.

“Figured you might,” Kuukaku said, plopping down next to Isshin and pulling out her pipe. “So, you get a clue what the Kuchiki want, yet?”

Ichigo’s eyes suddenly darted from Kuukaku to his father.

“Eh, Byakuya wants me to come back and be a captain, for some damn reason. You know how obvious he is.”

“Hmm,” Kuukaku nodded. “Do you mean that he, personally, wants that, or his higher-ups want that?”

“Well, he, personally, definitely wants it, which is odd, y’know, because I don’t recall him having very many nice things to say about my job performance back in the day. It’s possible that Yamamoto wants it, too. Hard to say. Down three captains has to be pretty inconvenient for him, especially not knowing how many science fair projects Aizen left running around. I tried to find out if they’re planning to send anyone out to Hueco Mundo, and all I got was a long, crabby speech about how much he hates sand. You get anything out of Hisana?”

Kuukaku shook her head. “Only social niceties and city gossip. That woman is a bear trap.” She jerked her chin towards Ichigo. “She seemed a little curious about you, pal, mostly as regards her sister, but you’ll be happy to know that I was absolutely no help in that department. Speaking of the sister, don’t s’pose Rukia happened to drop any hints as to why her eminent family has decided to grace us with their presence?”

“Hold on, hold on!” Ichigo said, waving his hands frantically. “Why are you guys so paranoid? I thought you were friends! Maybe they’re just visiting… because you’re friends?”

Isshin and Kuukaku both burst into laughter.

“Oh, kid,” Kuukaku sighed, wiping away a tear. “Of course we’re friends. But the Kuchiki are nobles, and nobles don’t give away anything for free. They’re angling for something, sure as death and fireworks.”

“Rukia isn’t like that,” Ichigo scowled, even though his mind immediately decided to cue up a highlight reel of Rukia pretending to be a cutesy high school student, Rukia making ridiculous excuses about why they had to leave class, Rukia lying to his principal to get them all out of trouble after the Don Kanonji incident.

“I don’t doubt that Rukia is here because she’s your friend,” Kuukaku replied seriously. “She’s deeply in your debt, and she’s always been cut from a different cloth than her siblings, anyway. I don’t think she would do anything to hurt or betray you. But would she try to wheedle some gossip out of you and then tell it to Hisana? Be honest with yourself.”

Why are you here, anyway? Ichigo had asked.

Because my sister’s a busybody, Rukia had replied.

Ichigo set his jaw. “What kind of gossip? How is it possibly valuable to them, anyway?”

Kuukaku shook her head. “It’s all Great Family insider trading. You don’t need to worry about it. Just… if Rukia happens to say anything weird or interesting, pass it along, wouldja?”

Ichigo looked back and forth from Kuukaku’s face to his father’s. “No. I want to understand. Can you explain it to me?”

Kuukaku and Isshin exchanged a look for a long moment.

“I think that’s fair,” Isshin finally said.

Kuukaku nodded tersely. “He’s your kid, you get to explain it.”

Isshin cracked his neck. “Okay. Feel free to correct me on more recent developments.”

“Oh, I will.”

Isshin slapped his hands on his knees and cleared his throat. “So! You already know the basics of Soul Society’s social strata. The vast majority of people arrive by dying and are sent to Rukongai. But very strong souls are able to have children, which is how new souls are produced. These souls tend to be even stronger than their parents, and that’s how you get noble families. Even among those, there are five families that are very, very old and very, very strong. They helped to build the Seireitei centuries ago, and hold a tremendous amount of wealth and power, but at the same time are responsible for the protection, governance and well-being of the city. Got it?”

“I guess?” Ichigo echoed.

“They used to be known as the Five Great Families, until the Shiba got kicked out, and then it was just Four,” Isshin went on. “One of which is the Kuchiki.”

“I got that part,” Ichigo nodded. “Although I was never quite clear on what we did to get kicked out. It had something to do with Cousin Kaien dying? But that doesn’t seem fair-- to die in service and have your family lose its position?”

Kuukaku gave an angry exhale.

“Well, as I said, the Families are expected to make contributions,” Isshin continued. “The primary ways of doing that are either financial, or by providing officers to the Gotei-13. Most of the Families strongly prefer the cash option. They want to keep their strongest members at home to protect their own assets, and the Clan Heads would prefer to keep living so that they can actually enjoy all their wealth and power. The Kuchiki are huge hardasses, as you may have noticed-- the Clan Head and Heir are nearly always in service, even though they could certainly afford to avoid that.”

“Isn’t Yoruichi from an important family?” Ichigo interrupted. That’s how she was able to get a hold of weird stuff like the Cape of Skeletal Bird Hands, or whatever that thing was called. At least that’s what she had told him. “And she used to be a captain, right? Before she got banished?”

“The Shihouin head up the Onmitsukidou, as well as the Second Division,” Isshin agreed. “But you don’t exactly have to overflow with altruism to run a black ops organization that collects secrets and makes your enemies disappear. It’s rare for the captain of the Second to actually put themselves in danger. Usually, they run their secret conspiracies from behind thirty layers of ninja.”

“Yoruichi was an exception,” Kuukaku added. “All noble families manage to accidentally produce a good person every few generations.”

“Her little brother’s the current head?” Isshin asked.

“Right, and the Clan Elders are determined to make sure he doesn’t go the way of his sister. They keep that poor kid loaded down under so many tutors and retainers and courtesans that he can barely see straight.”

“How does Yoruichi have a brother who’s a kid?” Ichigo asked, scratching his head.

“Aging is weird in Soul Society, even for born nobles,” Isshin explained. “Sometimes people go slow. It probably means he’s got a powerful zanpakutou he’s not allowed to train with. Has the little squirt managed to grow at all? He was about the size of my girls the last time I saw him.”

Kuukaku shook her head. “Nah. Still about the same.”

Ichigo blinked. He couldn’t imagine being stuck at the size of a middle schooler for over a century.

“We’re getting off track,” the old goat pointed out. “Now, most of the other families own a lot of businesses and real estate and other things that make money for them. The Shiba have traditionally eschewed this, frankly, feudalistic system, and as a result, uh, we’re not as, um, liquid as some of the other families.”

“That’s not the only reason. There was a lot of poor decision making involved, over hundreds of years.”

“Oh, yes, so many bad decisions!”

“We’re poor,” Ichigo clarified.

Isshin and Kuukaku nodded in unison.

“But what we have,” Isshin tried to make it sound better, “or had, anyway, is the ability to keep pumping out meathead babies full of reiatsu.”

Ichigo closed his eyes painfully.

“Captain-class shinigami are vanishingly rare. They’re worth a lot to the Gotei.”

“When your dad, um, disappeared,” Kuukaku filled in, “we were no longer holding up our proper contribution. The other families cut us some slack, though, because everyone assumed that Kaien was close to taking up his position, and that Miyako would become a Vice-Captain.” She sucked her teeth for a moment. “Then, they died, instead. If… if either Kaien or your dad had left kids behind, it might have been a different story. There are other Shiba branches, of course, but ours were the two strongest lines, and they both got clipped short, so the Families declared us a loss.”

“You didn’t get any insulting ultimatums about getting married to someone’s convenient second-cousin and plopping out babies?” Isshin asked, dryly.

“Of course I did, and I think you know where I told them to shove that,” Kuukaku growled.

“What about Ganju?” Ichigo pressed.

Kuukaku shook her head. “He was just a kid at the time, and no one trusted me to raise him right. It was too much uncertainty. Besides, it benefited a number of the other houses to see us out the door, and with our strength down to just me, we had no power to fight back. I did try.”

Ichigo furrowed his eyebrows as he looked at his father. “But… if you became a captain again, they might let us back in?”

Isshin’s face was grim. “It wouldn’t be enough.”

“There’s the matter of… back taxes,” Kuukaku added. “Which we ain’t got.”

“But you’ve got kids,” Ichigo pressed. “Yuzu and Karin are picking up everything anyone will teach them! And… and… I could…”

“You kids start school in three weeks, you don’t have time to be serving in the undead military,” Isshin grunted.

“You would stay here and make us go home by ourselves? Leave Urahara to look after us?”

“No! Although, Tessai is a great dad, you would be--No! I would not! Even if I could trick Byakuya into paying our back dues for us, one captaincy wouldn’t cut it. And I want you kids to have the future that you want. My whole life, everything was just carved out for me, straight in a line and I was bored as hell.” He looked away. “That was maybe why I didn’t hesitate for very long when Urahara told me I had to give up everything to save your mom.”

Kuukaku was looking away, too.

“Why would Byakuya pay your back taxes?” Ichigo asked, trying to steer away from the touchy subject.

“Because right now, he’s on the losing side of every proposal that benefits the Gotei. Sometimes he can get the Shihouin on his side, but even then, that only gets him to a tie. The other Houses don’t want us back in because one-quarter of the power in Soul Society is a lot better than one-fifth. But two-fifths is even better than one quarter.”

“Byakuya’s also a doofus about stuff like the deep history of Soul Society,” Kuukaku shook her head. “Things like, in times of crisis, the Five Founding Families will be needed to face the threats, garbage like that.”

“Also, he just thinks that we should be doing our duty,” Isshin shrugged. “Or who knows what he wants! He can be really incomprehensible sometimes. That’s what we’ve been trying to figure out.”

“I see,” Ichigo nodded, frowning seriously. “Thanks. For filling me in.”

Isshin clapped his hand on Ichigo’s shoulder. “I told you because you wanted to know. And because you’re getting to be pretty grown up, and people here in Soul Society are likely to treat you that way. I’m not trying to lay any of this on you or your sisters, and neither is Kuukaku.”

“That’s right,” Kuukaku agreed.

“But I am part of this family, too,” Ichigo pointed out. “And so are Karin and Yuzu.”

“It’s true,” Isshin conceded. “Do you have any thoughts on the matter?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” Ichigo said slowly. “It’s too much to think about all at once.”

Kuukaku inclined her head toward her cousin. “A thinker. Haven’t had one of those in the family in a while.”

“There’s one thing that’s still not clear to me,” Ichigo noted. “Do we actually want to be a Great Family again?”

“Ah!” Isshin replied, his face lighting up. “Let’s just say… it’s helpful if everyone thinks we do.”

Chapter Text

Hisana might not have a zanpakutou, but she felt like she deserved her own fancy white haori for putting an overtired toddler down for a nap after he had not only been given a wooden sword by his idolized father, but been allowed to ride around on a giant bone dragon. She was also sorry to have missed out on the Big Fight. Byakuya often gave Rukia lessons at home, which could sometimes be rather fun to watch, although they were usually very formal and one-sided. Hisana would love to see her husband in a really challenging fight, perhaps even one where his robes might go a little askew, perhaps flash a little ankle.

“--scatterbrained, easily led astray! He wears his inexperience like a mantle!”

It wasn’t hard to locate the rest of her family, Hisana merely had to follow the sounds of Byakuya’s speechifying. He was sitting out on the engawa, one sleeve rolled up to his shoulder. Rukia knelt at his side, her hands lit with the green glow of a healing spell. Abarai stood in the grass nearby, testing the balance on Touma’s practice sword and nodding at Byakuya from time to time to show he was listening.

“Young Kurosaki got the best of you, then?” Hisana butted in sweetly. “That burn looks pretty painful. He takes after his father, I take it?”

“Actually, my loyal lieutenant did this to me,” Byakuya replied, shooting a pointed glare at Renji.

“I told you I was sorry, sir, but my respect for you is too strong to hold back in a fight. Both my teammates sacrificed themselves just so I could get that hit in. I had to do it, sir, for the sake of their pride.”

Hisana squinted at her husband’s new sidekick. Abarai seemed utterly sincere. Either he had the best liar’s face she had ever seen (and she had seen many), or he was as nearly as ridiculous as the ridiculous man she had married.

“Understandable, Abarai. How could I fault you the very principles I am constantly trying to instill in the squad?” Byakuya replied magnanimously. “Speaking of which, did you see the way Kurosaki’s entire countenance changed when you gave him a bit of direction? It was a rout before you showed up, and then the tables turned completely. A century from now, Kurosaki Ichigo will be the most powerful captain in the Gotei, once he graduates from Shin’ou and spends a few decades in the ranks, accumulating a bit of experience and hardening his battle nerves, but right now, he needs leadership! To rush him would be naught but a disservice to all involved.”

“So you’re just going to recruit him for the Sixth, instead, then?” Hisana teased.

“I would take him, certainly,” Byakuya puffed. “I am sure Abarai would have him whipped into shape in no time!”

Abarai made an extremely skeptical face.

“He doesn’t know any kidou,” Rukia pointed out. “Don’t you have minimum requirements?” She glanced over at Renji, who scowled back at her. “They can’t possibly be very strict, though.”

“None? He doesn’t know any?”

“Nope. Not a single spell.”

Byakuya let out an exasperated sigh.

“Hey, Rukia, have you ever seen him do any hand-to-hand?” Renji asked suddenly.

Rukia frowned thoughtfully. “I’m not sure he has any formal hakuda training.”

“Not hakuda, just punching people.”

“Oh, yeah, he punches people all the time! He got in a lot of fights at school, you know, like young men with big mouths and overdeveloped senses of justice tend to do.” She grinned at Renji, who grinned back at her.

Hisana tried to catch Byakuya’s eye, but he was busy staring at a leaf on a tree. Hisana had been strictly forbidden to tell Rukia any of the stories she’d heard about Byakuya’s own hot-tempered schoolboy days.

“What are you thinking, Lieutenant?” Byaykuya frowned.

“Oh, just a hunch I got. I’ll poke around and let you know if anything comes of it.”

Byakuya nodded curtly. “Very well.”

Rukia wrinkled her nose, and glanced between captain and lieutenant, presumably irritated at being left out of the loop.

“How does Isshin look?” Hisana asked, “He used to take you to the mat regularly in your youth, or so I hear.”

Byakuya’s nostrils flared. “Senbonzakura is a difficult sword that took many years to fully master. Engetsu just… explodes things. They are hardly comparable.”

Rukia turned her face away to hide her laughter. Renji’s eyebrows had disappeared up under the edge of his bandana.

“Furthermore, either he has lost quite a few steps, or he was not fighting seriously. I cannot tell if the man can still perform bankai, and it is driving me mad. I regret agreeing to fight on the same team, I am sure he would have been pushed into it had I confronted him.”

“Sorry, Brother,” Rukia ducked her head sheepishly.

Byakuya looked surprised. “I did not mean… you did very well, Rukia. Kurosaki Isshin became a captain at a remarkably young age. His zanpakutou was renowned for the sheer amount of power it possessed. Whether or not he is at his peak, it speaks well to your training that you could stand against him, bearing a sword of the opposing element.”

Rukia’s eyes went wide, and a small smile crept onto her face. Byakuya wasn’t easy in his praise and he always, always meant what he said.

“I’m pretty sure I heard the word ‘lieutenant’s exam,’ being bandied about when I was visiting your captain the other week,” Hisana added, knowing that Rukia would never mention it to Byakuya on her own, even as she fretted over whether or not he would approve of the attempt.

“I’ve...been thinking about it,” Rukia admitted, her eyes darting to Byakuya nervously.

“It would be appropriate, I think,” Byakuya replied. “Abarai! You just took the exam a few months ago. Rukia could pass it easily, do you think?”

“Very easily,” Renji agreed.

Hisana’s eyes darted to her sister, whose ears had gone pink. She was wrinkling her nose at Renji, a face that Rukia frequently aimed at Hisana herself. In this new context, Hisana couldn’t tell if it conferred affection or irritation or possible a melange of the two. Why did her stupid sister have to flirt like a goblin instead of a normal person?

“You would make a far more appropriate vice captain than Kurosaki Ichigo!” Byakuya carried on. Oh, wonderful, they had circled back around to this again. “If Yamamoto even tries it, he shall have nothing but my most vehement objections!”

“Oh, Brother, he was a little off his game this morning,” Rukia admitted. “I should have let him eat breakfast.” She repositioned her kaido a little higher on Byakuya’s shoulder. “To be fair, I don’t think he even wants to join the Gotei. He wants to graduate high school and grow up as a human.”

“Has he no devotion to his family?” Byakuya griped. “He may want those things, but I should think that if it made the difference between the Shiba regaining their rightful status, he would make the sacrifice.”

“We don’t know for sure that any of them want that,” Hisana pointed out.

“How could they not?” Byakuya sniffed.

“It would be a pretty big lifestyle change,” Rukia said simply.

“The Kurosaki girls seem to be enjoying themselves well enough,” Byakuya observed. “And it is my understanding that they have been showing great aptitude for the shinigami arts.”

“They were hounding Rukia to teach them everything she knows last night,” Renji noted.

“Perhaps they are a little impressed with me,” Rukia replied, in a very Byakuya tone of voice, “but a week’s vacation is very different from a permanent move. Besides which, would they even get the chance? A house deep in arrears with three single young people bursting with spiritual energy? Seems like the vultures will be coming out other woodwork with marriage offers. Not all the other houses approve of wives serving in the Gotei.”

“Not everyone sees marrying into a wealthy family as a fate worse than execution, Rukia,” Hisana pointed out dryly.

“The Shiba do not deal in arranged marriages,” Byakuya added.

Rukia squinted at him. “That’s not true. Kaien and Miyako had an arranged marriage. They always used to say so!”

Hisana chuckled. “They did, in a manner of speaking. Miyako’s family was wealthy, but lesser nobility, and they desperately wanted the prestige of being associated with one of the Great Families. Knowing that they couldn’t just buy themselves a marriage, they used to dress her up and try to make sure she was at all the places Kaien would be, in hopes that he would be struck by her beauty and fall in love with her.”

“Did it work?” Rukia asked, vaguely aghast.

“Of course it worked, you knew Kaien,” Hisana smirked. It was hard to know Shiba Kaien for more than about five or ten minutes without learning that he was deeply, deeply in love with his wife. It was one of his most fetching attributes, in Hisana’s opinion.

“Miyako was a lovely woman, very charming and talented,” Byakuya noted. “Excellent sword arm, as well. Why she agreed to the marriage, I will never understand.”

Hisana rolled her eyes. “You’re just sore that your Grandfather wouldn’t let you court her because he thought she was beneath you.”

Rukia’s eyes went wide as saucers.

“Untrue,” Byakuya smoothly returned. “I was unable to court her because she declared me ‘a pompous ass’ and hit me on the head in our zanjutsu class. I told you she had an excellent sword arm.”

A strangled gurgling noise came out of Renji.

Hisana grinned. Miyako had been a good friend, one of the few nobles who didn’t care about Hisana’s low origins. Hisana rather suspected that Byakuya’s choice of wife may have redeemed him in Miyako’s eyes. “As she told it to me,” she explained, “she wasn’t keen on the plan initially, but came around once she got to know Kaien. Or rather, after Captain Ukitake talked up some of his finer points. Anyway, the joke after that was that the only way to arrange a marriage with a Shiba was to arrange for them to fall in love with you.”

“That sounds even worse, in my opinion,” Rukia announced.

“Having a Shiba in love with you?” Hisana asked. “I don’t know, they have their charm.”

Byakuya rolled his eyes so hard the temperature dropped by two degrees.

“No!” Rukia protested. “Having people trying to win your affections! Assuming love is just a matter of proximity! It’s--” her eyes suddenly darted to Byakuya, and her mouth snapped shut. She swallowed, and put on her Good Kuchiki face. “It’s very gauche, in my opinion.”

“You are absolutely correct,” Byakuya agreed, and now Hisana was the one rolling her eyes. “That is why the clan head should be the public face of marriage negotiations. You may rest assured, Rukia, that in your clan, your leader takes affection and compatibility into account, in addition to social position, financial security and benefit to the family. A marriage is sure to be a long and happy one when it is built on such a firm foundation.”

Abarai had gone a bit pale, but appeared to be trying to make himself look as tall as possible. Rukia, on the other hand, was attempting to shrink into her kosode. These poor children.

“Is that what you told your grandfather when you informed him you were marrying me whether he liked it or not?” Hisana asked dryly.

“I am a very good judge of potential marriages. It is not my fault if he is not.”

Hisana placed her hand on her sister’s back gently. “Stop worrying, Rukia. Kaien and Miyako only joked about it because they loved each other so much. There are many ways to be happy in life, and I am sure Isshin cares deeply for his children’s best interests, whether they stay here in Soul Society or return to the World of the Living.”

Rukia did not look particularly reassured.

Hisana frowned. She knew that Rukia had never been fond of many of the realities of noble life, but she usually bore them in silence. But that was before she met Kurosaki Ichigo. There was something bubbling under Rukia’s skin now, Hisana could feel it, something that was increasingly less willing to bear things in silence. Maybe it was simply Kurosaki-inspired. Hisana could imagine how it must chafe to hear about Kurosaki’s fate being decided for him when he was the one who had broken every rule in the book to help Rukia.

But that being said, there was no sense in getting worked up over hypotheticals. Hisana didn’t know Ichigo very well, but she could already imagine the face he would make if some noble family tried to throw a pretty face his way. No, he was too much like Rukia herself-- the kind of boy who only fell for someone who managed to work their way under his skin. Was Rukia really worried that he would be tricked into a bad match? Or… or was she worried that he really might fall for someone else? Someone who wasn’t her.

“Do you have plans for this afternoon?” Hisana decided to just change the subject to a little plan she’d thought up while waiting for Touma to drift off. “Surely you’ve had enough roughhousing for one day.”

“Sword practice is an elegant and noble pastime--” Byakuya wound up.

“Have you ever been to Juninran Town?” Hisana cut him off. “It looks very cute.”

“I’ve...been,” Rukia said slowly.

“I know it pretty well, actually,” Renji added. “Got a friend from there-- you remember Lieutenant Hinamori, from the orchid show? We used to hang out some, on holidays.”

“Oh, yes,” Hisana agreed. “What a lovely young lady, I’d love to get to know her better! You two should definitely go make an afternoon of it!” She stared at her little sister, waiting for the reaction.

Rukia narrowed her eyes and leaned into her work for a moment, as though the kaidou had suddenly taken up all of her concentration. Slowly, she swiveled her head over to Renji, who was looking at her earnestly, his eyes darting occasionally to Byakuya, who, for his part, had his eyes closed, having completely checked out of this conversation.

Renji raised his eyebrows as soon as he achieved eye contact. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “You wanna go see if Ichigo and his sisters wanna come?”

Wait. No. That wasn’t supposed to happen. “Actually, what I meant was--” Hisana started.

“Okay!” Rukia chirped, her face immediately brightening. “Let’s go!” She snapped her hands apart, and the green glow between them disappeared. “All better, Brother! Make sure to eat a good lunch!”

“Thank you, Sister, a fine job, as usual,” Byakuya replied, rolling his sleeve back down. “Excellent thinking, Abarai! Be sure to emphasize to Kurosaki all the ways in which Soul Society is superior to the Living World!”

Betrayal! By her own beloved husband!

“Uh, I’m not that familiar with the Living World,” Renji excused, handing Touma’s sword to Byakuya and holding out a hand to help Rukia jump down from the engawa. “I’ll do my best.”

“It falls to you, then, Sister, to convince him.”

Rukia opened her mouth, but Renji cut her off.

“Good point, sir! There are a lotta nice things about Soul Society, but the fact that Rukia lives here has to be near the top of the list.”

Rukia stomped on his foot, hard, her face scarlet. “You’re insufferable!” she growled, before grabbing his elbow and hauling him away.

“Don’t walk so fast,” Renji’s receding voice protested. “I think my foot may have become broken very suddenly!”

Hisana glowered at her husband, who was chuckling to himself. “I withdraw my support for Abarai.”

“I thought it was a rather clever joke.”

“Of course you did. Why is he ruining my plan? Maybe he’s not interested in Rukia? In that way?”

“I assure you, he is, dear. So are you throwing your support in with Kurosaki, then?”

“What? No? Well. Maybe. I don’t know! I want her to be happy, and I’m worried that she’s so determined to spite me that she’s throwing away her chance at happiness. She seemed awfully concerned about the prospect of Ichigo being married off against his will.”

“I thought her concern was for his sisters.”

“That’s because you pay attention to what people say with their mouths and not what they say with their hearts!”

“Perhaps I give people the respect of listening to what they have to tell me, and not projecting my own notions onto them.” Byakuya was silent for a moment. “If the Shiba do wish to restore themselves to their former position, they will need the assistance of one of the other Great Families.”

“I know that.”

“One with deep pockets.”

“Right.”

“But all they really have to offer in return is bloodline.”

“But what a bloodline!”

“Truly.”

They were both silent for a few moments.

“The Shiba don’t arrange marriages,” Byakuya pointed out.

“Exactly. It’s against their principles. The only chance they have is if a young Shiba happened to, well, accidentally fall in love with a high-ranking member of another house.”

Most silence.

“We should try to find out, is all I’m saying.”

Byakuya made an irritated noise. “I still prefer Abarai.”

“I know, darling,” Hisana nodded, rubbing her hand over his back. “I know.”

Chapter Text

“Thanks for the save back there, by the way,” Rukia mumbled, scuffing her toe in the dirt. “It’s not that I wouldn’t like to spend a day in town alone with you.”

They were waiting in the yard for Ichigo and his sisters to get ready to go. Rukia wondered if maybe she shouldn’t go make sure Karin and Yuzu didn’t need any help. The kimono she had loaned to the girls might be a little more finicky and old fashioned compared to what they were used to. On the other hand, she felt she owed Renji a bit of an explanation, even though the words seemed reluctant to come out of her mouth.

“I’m sure she means well,” Renji replied mildly, “but your sister has no business pushing you into admitting we’re together, especially given that we haven’t even decided that between us, yet.” He adjusted his shoulders in his yukata. It was the same one he’d worn to the flower show. He really did look nice in blue, Rukia decided. “And I don’t mind taking some of the blame for it. I’d rather her to get the impression that we’re both a little unsure than for her to think that I’m hounding you into something you don’t want.”

After all these years, it was astonishing how well he still understood her, how he could look at her and see the Rukia she was, not the Rukia he wanted her to be. When she was feeling generous, Rukia tried to feel flattered by the idea that her sister and brother thought she had the makings of an elegant lady, a true daughter of the Kuchiki. Most of the time, though, she just felt… insufficient. Like she would never be enough. To be honest, she wasn’t really sure she was enough for Renji, either. He knew exactly how she was, and it honestly made her want to yell at him to set his sights a little higher.

“Have you decided, then?” she demanded.

Renji wrinkled his nose thoughtfully. “I woke up this morning and remembered I was gonna get to see you today, and that made me happy.”

“That’s not a decision,” Rukia protested.

Renji shrugged. “Okay, here’s a decision I just made, then: I think you owe me one kiss for every time I graciously agree to hang out with your punk buddy, instead of hogging all your attention for myself.”

Rukia made a skeptical face at him. “So, I owe you two kisses, then?”

“Yes. Two kisses, payable at your leisure.”

Rukia arched an eyebrow. “I feel like you’re getting cheated, to be honest. One measly kiss for an entire afternoon?”

“Your kisses are very precious to me. Priceless, even. But you have a good point. I am missing out on the chance to hold your hand, which is basically also priceless. You’re good at bargaining, give me some advice. Should I hold out for more?”

Rukia bumped him with her shoulder. “I believe I have a conflict of interest.”

“Oh, because you enjoy giving me the kisses so much?”

Rukia snorted good-naturedly. “I think I owe you two dates, along with the appropriate number of kisses that would normally accompany them.”

“Two dates! Is this on top of the date you already owe me?”

Rukia sighed. “Yes.”

Renji leaned down and spoke in a low voice. “I hate to tell you this, but I don’t think there’s a whole lot of difference between owing me three dates and just...dating.”

Rukia considered this, her cheeks growing warm. “Maybe there isn’t,” she agreed, knowing full well that this was also not a decision.

“Hmm,” Renji replied, straightening up again, a small, dreamy smile on his lips.

Rukia looked away, suddenly unable to stand his forbearance. There was more she wanted to say, but she was having trouble putting it into words.

She wasn’t unsure. She wasn’t unsure at all. She liked Renji. She liked him so, so much, and everything felt right when she was with him. She… she wanted to rush, grab him by the hand and jump into this with both feet, dragging him after her, like she always had, like they were kids again. But, she also wanted to keep it special and small, a secret just between the two of them. Maybe that was the problem. This was supposed to be her romance, not Hisana’s. If she kissed Renji, she wanted him to know it was because she liked the shape of his lips and the feel of his hand on her face, not because her dumb sister had dogged her into it. She felt like she was only showing him the tiniest fraction of her heart, and the big dummy seemed happy with it. But how could she ever convince him how much she really liked him and that absolutely none of it was due to her family looming over her shoulder?

Then again, where would they be if it weren’t for Hisana’s meddling? Nowhere, that’s where they’d be. She tried to imagine herself swinging by the Squad 6 offices to drop something off for Brother, and she could picture it all too well, sticking her nose in the air and pretending that she didn’t recognize him, while that vein in his forehead throbbed so hard it made his tattoos twitch.

“Ah, there he is! Looking sharp, pal!” Renji boomed.

Rukia shook herself out of her ruminations.

Ichigo was emerging from the house. There was something… different about him. He was wearing a kimono, which wasn’t how she was used to seeing him, but that didn’t seem to be the problem. He looked strangely attractive and it made Rukia feel weird and confused. Ichigo tentatively bounced his palms off the tips of his own hair. “What the fuck is this stuff? It’s amazing.”

Renji wagged a finger knowingly. “I think I’ve probably tried every hair product available for money in Soul Society and that shit is the best. It better be, it’s as expensive as Hell.”

Rukia squinted. Ichigo’s hair was still a mess, but it looked much less like he had just rolled out of bed, and more… on purpose. His tousled locks framed his face better, and that lumpy cowlick on the back left finally seemed to have been tamed into submission. The spikes somehow looked simultaneously more defined but softer, as though you could just sink your hand into them and it would feel like a chinchilla or something.

“Touch it!” Ichigo demanded.

Rukia paled. “I’m not gonna touch your dumb--”

Renji smashed his hand right into Ichigo’s tresses. When he retracted it, the spikes sprang exactly back into place. It was uncanny. “It’s like a fucking cloud,” Renji announced proudly.

“I know!” Ichigo hooted in agreement. “C’mon, Rukia, touch it.”

“I am not going to touch it.”

“Touch it!”

“It probably just feels like Renji’s,” Rukia grumbled, and abruptly realized that was hardly a slight. She had gotten to play with Renji’s ponytail the other day when they were making out, but she hadn’t really gotten to luxuriate in the experience. An item for the to-do list, for sure.

“Nah, mine is way fluffier,” Ichigo rudely butted into her Renji-hair-stroking fantasies.

“You have natural volume and you should be very grateful, I have to use a lot of mousse.”

“Yeah, but yours is so silky and it drapes really nicely when it’s down.”

“I hate that you two have become friends,” Rukia announced.

“That’s because you haven’t touched his hair,” Renji admonished her.

“Ugh, fine,” she grumbled, as Ichigo leaned down, a beatific look on his face. She patted it. It was insanely soft. Like a bunny. One of those fancy-ass fluffy bunnies that Hisana’s friend, Lady Ohara bred (Byakuya cruelly refused to let Rukia have one).

“What are you two doing?” a voice asked dryly, and Rukia snatched her hand back like she was recoiling from a hot stove.

“Abarai loaned me some premium hair product and we are all admiring my newfound handsomeness,” Ichigo declared to the sister that had just appeared at his elbow.

“Whatever,” Karin groaned.

“And no, you can’t touch it.”

“Perfect, because I don’t want to.”

“Can I touch it, Ichi-nii?” Yuzu’s fingers grasped toward Ichigo’s hair.

“Sure, but only because you’re my favorite sister.”

Karin rolled her eyes. “Since when did you start caring so much about your hair, anyway?”

“Oooh, it’s so soft, isn’t it, Rukia?” Yuzu kneaded both hands into her brother’s hair.

“Er,” Rukia replied, her cheeks turning pink.

“This stuff is much better than that other stuff you tried, the stuff that made your hair all sad and floppy!” Yuzu declared.

Now, Ichigo’s face turned red. “It was just an experiment! I got that stuff from Chad. It was meant for curls!” he sputtered. “And you don’t need to go around tellin’ everyone about it! I don’t tell everyone about the time you tried to do that mascara tutorial and made yourself look like a raccoon!”

“Chad does have nice curls,” Yuzu decided, rearranging a few of Ichigo’s spikes better to her liking.

Rukia realized that Karin was regarding her… maybe not suspiciously, but with a solid Shiba Squint, like she was trying to figure something out. Rukia swallowed and tried to put on a sunny smile. It wasn’t a Kuchiki Mask of Indifference, but it was a Hisana expression for sure. “How do those yukata fit? Do you think they’ll work out?”

Karin’s face went blank for a moment, and then recomposed itself into a friendlier expression. “Oh, they’re great! Thanks for the loan, that was really nice of you.”

“Oh, it’s no problem, I have far too many,” Rukia flapped a hand dismissively.

“They’re so beautiful, though!” Yuzu exclaimed, doing a twirl. “How do we look?”

“Like you belong right at home in Soul Society,” Renji replied, in that natural, friendly way of his.

“Really?” Yuzu beamed. “I hope we get to stay! Daddy says we’re going home before school starts, but I really like it here.”

“We’re not staying,” Ichigo reminded her grimly.

“It’s so old-fashioned,” Karin added, although Rukia had noticed the way her eyes had widened just a whisker at Renji’s compliment. “We’ll get tired of it soon enough, I’m sure. They don’t have boxed curry or football or anything.”

“Excuse you,” Renji replied. “We do so have football.”

Karin frowned. “Toushirou said there wasn’t. He said there was just kemari, but that’s not the same--”

“Toushirou? You mean Captain Hitsugaya?” Renji echoed.

“Yeah, he and Rangiku were here last week to see Dad,” Ichigo explained.

“Lieutenant Matsumoto is so cool!” Yuzu announced.

Renji snorted. “Of course we have football. There’s a pro league, the upper districts all field teams. We even have a Gotei recreational futsal league. I’m the captain of Sixth Company’s team.” He paused for a second, and Rukia could tell he was trying not to burst out laughing. “Captain Hitsugaya heads the Tenth’s squad. He’s one of the best players in the league.”

Karin’s face flushed deep red.

“I didn’t know he had a sense of humor, to be honest,” Renji shrugged.

“Oh, of course he does,” Rukia scolded. “It’s exactly the same as Brother’s, which is to say, awful.”

“I wonder why he would tell you that, Karin,” Yuzu frowned.

Ichigo snorted and rolled his eyes.

“Dad better get his Seireitei visa,” Karin grumbled. “Apparently, there’s someone there I need to punch in the stomach.”

“Threats against a captain? Rukia and I are going to have to pretend we didn’t hear that,” Renji hummed.

“Whatever, Mr. Serious Vice-Captain,” Rukia waved him off, cheerfully linked elbows with Karin and started off in the direction of town. “Let’s get a move on! Hisana and I are big fans of the Seireitei Firebirds, the city team. Byakuya gets us box seats every year. Depending on how long you’re in town, maybe we can catch a game!”

“Really?” Karin asked, her eyes wide.

“You have box seats?” Renji called after them as Ichigo and Yuzu scrambled to catch up. “Rukia?”

Chapter Text

Renji let his eyes wander through the selection of historical fiction novels. He didn’t see anything he hadn’t already read-- there was usually a delay between when books were published in the Seireitei and when they managed to trickle out to the Rukon. Besides, books were one of the few things that were more expensive outside the gates of the city. He didn’t mind, though. It was always nice to be in a bookstore. Ichigo was flipping through volumes at the other end of the aisle, and it reminded Renji of lazy bookstore afternoons with Momo and Izuru back in the days of old.

“There you two are!” Rukia exclaimed, sticking her head into their aisle. “Should have known I’d find you in the nerd section.”

Ichigo made a rude hand gesture, but didn’t look up from his book.

“The girls had a chuckle over what passes for manga on this side, but they didn’t see anything they wanted,” Rukia explained. “They do want something to take home, though. Renji, do you know how to get to that shop where Momo gets her kanzashi? She always had such cute ones back in school, and it’s expensive to get hand-made ones in the World of the Living.”

“I do know how to get there,” Renji admitted. He’d spent many an interminable hour in that kanzashi shop while Momo asked him whether he liked the peonies or the chrysanthemums better and then proceeded to ignore his opinion completely. “Even better, I know that it’s down the street from a cafe that has good tea and wagashi.”

“Ooh, good idea!” Rukia’s brow wrinkled. “Since when are you into tea shops?”

“Wagashi are very restorative to a man who’s had to express too many opinions on kanzashi,” Renji explained.

Rukia chuckled. “I’ll keep that in mind. You ready to go, Ichigo?”

“Uh, I think I’m actually gonna get this,” Ichigo said, waving a fat volume that Renji recognized from his school days. “It’ll just take a minute to check out.”

“Or you can take the twins and go ahead,” Renji suggested. “You just go back to White Gate Road, head south three blocks, and turn left after the big kimono shop. We’ll catch up.”

“You’re just trying to get out of looking at hair pins,” Rukia teased.

“You do such a good job picking out your own,” Renji replied, letting his hand drift out to touch the short strands of hair at the base of her neck that had escaped today’s updo. “I would only get in the way.”

“Shut up,” Rukia grinned as she brushed his hand away, tangling her fingers with his, just for a moment. “We’ll see you in a bit.” She made a noise that would have sounded suspiciously like a giggle, if it had come from anyone that wasn’t Kuchiki Rukia.

“Yeah,” Renji agreed, gazing down at her face like he was trying to memorize it, as if she was leaving him for another forty years, instead of fifteen minutes.

Rukia flushed cutely and ducked away in a swirl of poppy-printed yukata.

Renji’s heart was still pounding pleasantly as he turned his attention back to Ichigo. The kid whipped his head around and stuffed his nose back in his book, pretending like he hadn’t seen any of that.

Renji cleared his throat and tried to act like he hadn’t just been making the dopiest face on this plane of existence. “If you don’t mind my askin’,” he said seriously, “what’s your interest in poetry?”

“A guy can like poetry!” Ichigo replied indignantly.

“Buddy, you don’t need to get defensive. I own a copy of that book,” Renji pointed out. “It’s a really generic, best of the cultural canon, literature class type of book. It’s not that great if there’s a particular kind you’re interested in--travel poetry, nature poetry, etc. I just wanted to make sure you were gettin’ the thing you really want.”

Ichigo looked up, slightly taken aback. “I wouldn’t’ve pegged you for a poetry guy.”

“I am definitely not a poetry guy, but I keep makin’ friends with poetry guys. I take it you’re a poetry guy?”

“I’m not a poetry guy,” Ichigo defended. “I just… well… maybe I am a poetry guy.” He made a thinky face for a minute. “Six weeks ago, I went crashing through this place because I needed to save my friend. I didn’t think at all about the people who live here or what damage I might cause. Now, it turns out, I’m the heir to one of the founding families. I feel like… I feel like I should try to appreciate some of the culture, if that makes any sense, and the easiest way to do that, for me, has always been through reading. A broad brush overview sounds perfect, actually.”

Renji contemplated this kid, this absolute wrecking ball of a human, who couldn’t seem to stop caring about the things he knocked to bits, mostly for their own good. “Seems like a good idea,” Renji declared. He walked over to Ichigo and scanned the shelves for a moment before picking out a different book and handing it to Ichigo. It was slightly fatter, and the binding wasn’t as fancy. “Get this one.”

“What’s the difference?”

“That one,” Renji pointed to the one in Ichigo’s hand, “is the classics. It’s published in the Seireitei and everything in it is written by a noble.” He shook the book in his hand. “This one has a lot of the same stuff, but it’s also got some poets from the Rukon. It’s still just the uppermost districts, since there ain’t much in the way of writing supplies further out, but you bein’ you, I imagine you’re interested in looking past the city walls.”

“Yeah,” Ichigo replied slowly, putting his book back and accepting Renji’s. “I am. Thanks.”

“You can probably find that first one for cheaper in the city, anyway, if you need,” Renji shrugged. “Or I can loan you my copy. But I like to spend money out here, when I can.”

“I see. That makes sense,” Ichigo said thoughtfully as they made their way to the front of the store to check out. “Um, speaking of which… er, do you remember when I mentioned that a friend of mine back home is having a birthday?”

“Orihime, right?”

“Ah, right, you remembered!” Ichigo’s cheeks flushed. “I was, uh, thinking about bringing her home a little present from Soul Society, d’you think that would be a good idea?” The last part came out in one big rush.

Renji shrugged. “Well, sure, that seems nice.”

“Um, do you have any ideas?”

Renji thought about it. “I think I remember Rukia saying she borrowed a lot of Orihime’s manga. Maybe she’d get a kick out of the kind we have here. It’s too bad Rukia already left.”

“Manga’s kind of… impersonal, y’know,” Ichigo hedged.

“I s’pose,” Renji agreed. He leaned down. “Giving presents to girls can be a little tricky sometimes. You don’t want her to read too much into it.”

“Riiiight,” Ichigo drew out. “In this case, I think I would like her to read the exact right amount into it, which is to say, not obviously romantic, but also… maybe… not excluding the possibility of romance?”

“Oh,” replied Renji. “Oh! I didn’t pick up on that.”

They stepped out the front door of the bookshop into the bright afternoon sunshine. Ichigo seemed very interested in a passing cloud. “It’s something I haven’t exactly come to any conclusions on myself, okay?” He scowled. “But she’s a really special girl in any case, and I don’t see any downside to giving her a nice birthday gift.” He glared at Renji. “And I’m askin’ you because it seems like you’re really good at treading that line on a girl who’s your friend but maybe you’d like to be more.”

“If by that, you mean that I already know sixteen things not to do, then, sure, you’ve come to the right guy,” Renji laughed.

“Mistakes are educational. I don’t think I have ever won a fight without almost dying first. I will accept your battle-hardened advice.”

“Well, I think you’re off to a good start, to be honest. Back when Rukia and I were kids, I was basically terrified of her ever finding out that I actually liked her, and would go to any lengths to pretend I didn’t. That was… a mistake.”

“You did, though? Like her?”

“Course I did,” Renji scoffed. He rubbed his chin. “So, not to be obvious, but we are on our way to the hair thingie store. Girls love hair thingies. They’re nice, too, because they exist on a wide spectrum. A hair thingie can be a cute trinket for a kid, or it can serve as a full-on betrothal present. I bet Lady Kuchiki’s got hair thingies that are worth more than I’ve made in my entire career.”

“There’s a problem with that, though,” Ichigo explained, pointing at his temples. “She’s already got these hairpins, see, that her brother gave her, before he died. She always wears them. They’re actually the focus of her powers.”

Renji sucked his teeth thoughtfully. “Okay, do not tell anyone else I said this, got it?”

“Okay.”

“There are multiple kinds of kanzashi that are used for different occasions and different hairstyles. Have you ever seen her dressed up for a holiday? What does she have in the way of combs? How does she hold a bun in place? A seasonal kanzashi can be a nice gift, because it’s used rarely, but it’s nice to have something special for a holiday or special event.”

Ichigo stared at Renji blankly. “What the actual fuck, man?”

Renji closed his eyes, as if he were in pain. “Look, I know I go around looking like tough shit all the time, but my two best friends, whom I used to bum around this town with, are a waify poet and nice, cute girl whom the poet had a crush on. They are both tremendous nerds. I learned some things from them.”

“Renji,” Ichigo said seriously. “Are you a nerd?”

“I am not a nerd.”

“I bet you are. You just said whom.”

“I like to collect a variety of useful information in my brain, and sometimes, it’s about how to break wrists and sometimes it’s about what to wear to a party, do you want my advice or not?”

“I do,” Ichigo admitted grudgingly.

“I think you should get her hair thingies. It’s a bold move. A coward would steer clear of them. A brave man would say, ‘I am a man of class who knows about hair thingies and I am not intimidated by the fact that she already owns hair thingies.’”

“Yeah, but I don’t know anything about hair thingies. Do you? Enough to pick one out?”

“Me? Hell, no. But fortunately for you, you are good friends with a woman who knows everything about fancy-ass hair thingies and also knows your ladyfriend’s tastes.”

“I am not asking Rukia.”

“You should ask Rukia.”

“I am not asking Rukia and you cannot tell Rukia that I might like Orihime.”

“Why not? Rukia thinks Orihime is the greatest thing since spirit phones. She told me all about her, and Rukia never gets excited about people.”

“Because she’ll never let me live it down, that’s why. And besides, isn’t it cheating to have a girl’s friend help pick out a present for her?”

Renji wagged a finger. “Here is a deep girl secret. Girls love it when you consult their friends. It feels like cheating, but to a girl, it’s putting in extra research effort, plus friend-approval is very important to girls. Besides, it’ll hedge your bets. If the gift comes across as too heartfelt, you can always pull the ‘Rukia helped me pick it out’ card, and some of the heartfeltness gets pushed onto Rukia. Girls can get away with doin’ incredibly heartfelt stuff for each other.”

“Everything you say sounds so logical and yet, so insane. I am still not telling Rukia.”

They were standing outside of the kanzashi shop, now. Renji could see Rukia and the girls through the big front window. Rukia happened to glance up and waved at him, making a very clear ‘get in here’ face.

“I will make her promise not to take the piss out of you.”

Ichigo’s eyes narrowed. “How are you going to do that? I don’t believe that you can do that.”

“I’ll do it.”

Ichigo huffed. “Okay, fine. But my sisters cannot find out. I draw the line there.”

Renji gestured at Rukia to come outside. She shot him a quizzical look in return, but made her way outside. “What’s up?”

“Go hang out with your sisters,” Renji ordered Ichigo.

Ichigo still looked skeptical. “If you do me dirty, Abarai, I swear I will kill you.”

“I am not going to do you dirty, get in there!” Renji waved his hand exasperatedly.

Rukia was grinning ear to ear. “What the Hell is going on?” she asked gleefully.

“I need a favor,” Renji announced. “A big favor. Name your price.”

“You can’t just come in cold like that!” Rukia chided. “No ‘Rukia, my beloved’? No ‘You’re looking especially adorable today, Lady Rukia?’”

“I respect you too much for that. You do look cute today.”

“You do, too, but you really could have played it up if you were serious. Loosened up your neckline a little. Tousled up your hair a bit. Artfully smudged your eyeliner.”

Renji cocked an eyebrow at her. “Would any of that have worked?”

Rukia looked up at him through her lashes. “Maybe? It wouldn’t have hurt.”

Renji snorted. “C’mon. What’ll it be? I can let you out of one of those dates you owe me.”

“Noooooo!” Rukia scowled. “I like owing you all those dates.”

“I could owe you a date. I think I already owe you one date.”

“What am I doing in return for this favor, anyway? I see you trying to trick me into agreeing to something before I know what it is.”

Renji had wondered how long it would take before she called him on that. “I’m gonna tell you something and you can’t be an asshole to Ichigo about it.”

Rukia huffed, mock offended. “Me? An asshole? Lieutenant Abarai, I am shocked at this groundless accusation!”

“Oh, I see. You’ll be nice about it without needin’ a favor from me, then?”

Rukia frowned. “Let’s not be hasty. I want my favor.”

“How about this then? You promise not to give the kid any shit, I tell you the thing, and you can tell me what you think it’s worth.”

Rukia’s eyes widened. “That’s a pretty generous offer!”

Renji shrugged. “As it happens, there is very little I wouldn’t do for you.”

Rukia shot him some serious side eye. “Is this some sort of reverse psychology thing?”

“It is not.”

Rukia’s nose wrinkled with distrust. “Okay. Deal. Now spill.”

Renji cleared his throat. Admittedly, he had a slight ulterior motive in this. Rukia had insisted that she didn’t harbor romantic feelings for Ichigo, and Renji believed that she believed that, but he also knew how good Rukia was at lying to herself. If that was the case, he wanted her to get the news in the gentlest possible way. If he had to bear the brunt of her reaction, well, better than some of the alternatives. “Ichigo might like a girl.”

Rukia gasped, and clapped her hands over her mouth. “No!” she exclaimed. “Do you know who it is?”

“I do. I don’t know her, but you do.”

Rukia grabbed the front of his kimono with both hands. “Is it Orihime?” she hissed.

“It is Orihime.”

Rukia pumped a fist. “Yesssssssss!”

Renji mentally breathed out a huge sigh of relief. “So, you approve?”

“Approve of him liking her? Of course I do. Orihime is a ray of sunshine, and I respect anyone who has a crush on her.” Rukia frowned. “I might have a crush on her.”

“Easy, slugger,” Renji gave a frown of exaggerated disapproval.

“I can have multiple crushes,” Rukia sang. “But in any case, why did Ichigo tell you?”

“I dunno. He wants help thinking up a birthday present for her. I told him he should get you to help him pick out a set of hair combs for her. He says she has a set of hairpins she wears all the time, and I was thinking that probably means no one ever gets her hair stuff, and she might like, you know…” He waved vaguely at the back of his head. “The special occasion kind.”

Rukia stared at him for a moment.

“What? Is that a terrible idea?”

Rukia grabbed his kimono again, and jerked him down to give him a quick peck on the lips. “You’re really sweet, you know that?”

Renji felt his cheeks growing hot. “So you’ll help?”

“Of course I’ll help, you dope!”

“And you won’t give Ichigo a hard time?”

Rukia heaved a long-suffering sigh. “I suppose.”

“Oh, there’s one more thing.”

“Abarai, if you weren’t so pretty, I swear…”

“He doesn’t want his sisters to find out.”

“He doesn’t want…” Rukia shook her head and closed her eyes. “Fine. How much do you remember of our old shoplifting signs?”

Renji winked at her. “You can count on me, boss.”

“I am just going to use them to point out which ones to buy, do not actually shoplift them.”

“I understood that part.”

Rukia tilted her head and smiled at him fondly. “I can’t tell you how nice it is to have someone around who makes my life easier, for a change.”

“To be fair, I’m the one who got you into this.”

“I’m still not sure why you’re doing me a favor in return for me doing Ichigo a favor.”

Renji scratched his head. “That’s just the kind of guy I am?”

Rukia regarded him for a long moment with a look in her eyes that Renji couldn’t quite parse. “I’ve decided what I want for my favor, by the way.”

“Oh, yeah?” Renji asked.

She told him.

Chapter Text

Byakuya was in a good mood.

After Rukia and her assorted hangers-on hied off to Junrinan town, Byakuya had feared his beloved wife would mar the beauty of her lovely face with brooding over the continued failure of her meddling. Clearly, this was unacceptable, so he took the initiative to distract her most thoroughly.

Touma, of course, was napping like a literal and metaphorical baby in their room, but fortunately, the Shiba Estate was surrounded by acres of overgrown wildflower fields. It had been quite some time since Byakuya had been naked out of doors and afterward, dressed again and headed back to the house, he was feeling so frisky and generally pleased with himself that he suggested they break out a bottle or two of the good sake, a proposal to which Hisana immediately agreed.

This seemed to have summoned Kuukaku and Isshin, seemingly by magic. At first, Byakuya had found this to be rather irritating, because he wanted to kiss his wife some more, and he certainly wasn’t going to do so in the presence of those degenerates. On the other hand, they seemed to be chatty, and the sooner Byakuya wrung some information out of them, the sooner he could go home. Getting people to inadvertently slip important facts was usually Hisana’s department, but Byakuya felt like he had managed to lull Isshin into a false sense of security, and the man was going to reveal something juicy any minute now. The Captain Commander was going to be so impressed with Byakuya’s feats of social engineering.

Also, somewhere along the line, he seemed to have become a bit inebriated.

“Your son’s bankai,” Byakuya drawled slowly, “is not at all like your bankai. Do you find there are any useful parallels, though? Do you find yourself going to bankai much, in order to teach him?”

“Not really, no.”

“I ask, you see, because my lieutenant has bankai and I am trying to teach him how to use it. I thought perhaps we could commiserate.”

Isshin stretched, and scratched his side. “No, Kisuke and Yoruichi really rushed things in Ichigo’s initial training, so we’re trying to back up and get him a little more solid on the basics. You’re helping out your lieutenant? That’s so cuuuuuute!”

“It is not cute, it is the duty of a captain to his subordinate! I am an excellent teacher and mentor, I will have you know. Rukia will most likely have bankai within a few years as well, and you saw for yourself how, even at a young age, Touma already intuitively grasps the basics of swordwork.”

“I can’t believe how good Rukia has gotten,” Isshin waved his cup enthusiastically. “But she’s still so tiny. Why is she so tiny? Is it something about ice-and-snow zanpakutou? My other son, Toushirou, is also very tiny. I expected him to get bigger, but he staunchly refused.”

“I know him. I have met him,” Byakuya insisted. He paused. “I had never considered that connection, but it is an interesting hypothesis. In any case, four bankai users in the family at the same time, that will be very impressive of us, don’t you think? I might even count my lieutenant, since he is in Squad 6, and he is generally more useful than much of my actual family. That would be five.”

Isshin made a face. “Can your grandfather still do bankai? He’s what, nine thousand years old?”

“Roughly. As far as I know, he can still do it. Can you still do bankai? While we’re on the topic?”

“Ugh, bankai, what a pain, am I right? Good thing the Kuchiki are doing such a good job holding up the Gotei captain-class.” Isshin took a sip from his cup. “This is good sake.”

“You’re being a bit optimistic, dear,” Hisana flapped her sleeve at him. “Grandfather is retired, and Touma has a ways to go. And you know Rukia might well marry out of the family before she gets bankai.” She leaned over toward Kuukaku. “He doesn’t want that, he’d much rather she brought someone with bankai into our family, but now that we have an heir, I think Rukia could do better for herself by marrying into a high position in another family.” She frowned (very cutely, in Byakuya’s opinion.) “Although I suppose she might get a better offer if she waited until she got bankai herself. I hear people with bankai are very popular.”

Byakuya could tell that Hisana was Doing a Thing, and also that she wanted him to Play Along. Rukia was very, very good at Playing Along, and Byakuya rather wished she were here. Nevertheless, his wife was counting on him.

“Hisana, my love, you are being very...open,” he tried to sound stern, but not too stern.

Hisana scoffed at him. “Is any of this news? I bet Isshin’s gotten a steady stream of offers for Ichigo’s hand since he got here, eh?” She sipped her drink, but kept her eyes steadily on Isshin the whole time.

“Eh, not really,” Isshin shrugged. “Yoruichi was very obnoxious about bringing the girls by to meet her brother when we get into town, but to be honest, it seems like the other Great Families aren’t so… optimistic as you are.”

“We don’t do arranged marriages in the Shiba Clan,” Kuukaku added, a few chips of ice in her voice.

“Oh, I know that!” Hisana replied brightly. “I didn’t expect you’d accept any, I was just curious to know who was trying. That’s disappointing, honestly, I’d think someone would be trying to get in on the ground floor.”

“We’re a bit of a risky investment,” Kuukuku said dryly. She held out her cup. “Fill ‘er up, will you, Hisana?”

“Of course!”

“We are definitely not arranging a marriage for Rukia, either,” Byakuya announced. “My wife likes to strategize about these things, but our Rukia is very devoted to her career and would only be interested in marriage if she were to fall deeply in love with someone, in which case, we would make that person an extremely generous offer, befitting our beloved sister.” Ha ha, let’s see them ignore that bait!

Hisana gave him a look glowing with her love and admiration for him. “He doesn’t want her to get married and leave him, because then he’d have no one to laugh at his horrifically dry jokes about the other captains. I’m certainly not going to do it.”

Byakuya made his best ‘I have been betrayed by my wife in a low-stakes social situation’ face. That was just a standard face that he made quite often, and also, it didn’t actually require any acting.

“I don’t blame you, pal,” Isshin flung his arm around Byakuya. “That Rukia is a gem, I just love her. We’re both very lucky, I think, to have such great young people in our families, and even luckier that they managed to find each other across an entire plane of existence!”

“Mmm,” Byakuya agreed. “Very lucky, indeed.”

Chapter Text

“What a dope! I swear, he would forget his own head if it weren’t attached to his body,” Karin grumbled, after Ichigo had abandoned them at the tea shop, claiming that he “left his pen” back at the bookstore.

Rukia sipped her tea, unperturbed. She knew very well that it was a thin excuse to go back to the kanzashi shop so that he could purchase Orihime’s birthday present unseen by pesky sisters. Furthermore, she did not choose to think about how much of Ichigo’s perceived flightiness might have anything to do with being dragged off to fight Hollows at the drop of a hat. “I’m sure he’s just trying to spend as little time as possible in a cutesy wagashi cafe,” she dismissed. “You’ll notice that it took Renji an entire microsecond before offering to accompany him.”

Yuzu made a fierce face at her sister, and Rukia got the distinct impression of an ankle being kicked under the table. Karin winced, but then looked apologetic.

“I’m sure he really forgot that pen!” Yuzu excused. “He’s been carrying a notebook around, because he says he doesn’t want to forget anything about this trip.”

Karin looked like she desperately wanted to call her brother a nerd, but was holding her tongue.

“He acts grumpy, but he’s really happy to be here, you know,” Yuzu pointed out.

“Oh, I know how he is,” Rukia agreed.

“I think he’ll be really… sad, after we go home,” Yuzu continued to press, playing with her dessert.

“Do you think you’ll get stationed, in, um, the World of the Living again, anytime soon, Rukia?” Karin asked.

“Probably not,” Rukia replied, nibbling on a dango. “I’ll be trying for my lieutenant’s badge soon, and it’s rare for captain-class officers to be sent out on routine patrols like that.”

“Oh,” Karin replied, looking a little crestfallen. “Aren’t there… things… that you’ll miss?

“I tend to miss people more than things,” Rukia explained. She had been surprised, really, how much she had missed Touma of all people while she was in the Living World. He was her nephew, so of course she loved him, but he was also loud and sticky and wearying. She had honestly thought that a solo patrol mission would give her a chance for some much needed solitude. It hadn’t, as it happened, and furthermore, she’d spent much of the time wondering if Touma had learned any new words, or what his new favorite toy was, and then, eventually, if she would ever get to see him again.

Karin and Yuzu were looking at each other knowingly, and Rukia wondered if she’d missed something.

“Maybe we’ll get more chances to visit you, instead,” Yuzu said brightly. “I think Ichigo looks so handsome in a kimono.”

“Certainly better than the way he usually dresses,” Karin chipped in. “Don’t you think? Rukia?”

Rukai frowned. “Er… this is sort of hard to explain… I’m not really used to the nuances of Living World dress, but I actually really like it?” Tight pants for boys. Rukia was a huge fan of tight pants for boys. Her brain took a brief sojourn into imagining what Renji would look like in a pair of skinny jeans and almost combusted.

“Gosh, I never thought about that!” Karin exclaimed. “I guess the Living World must seem sort of… futuristic to you, huh?”

“Thinking about the future as different from the present is a very human concept,” Rukia explained. “Soul Society is just Soul Society. It’s very difficult for things to change, and when they do, it tends to happen all at once, not gradually over time.”

Karin and Yuzu looked at one another.

“If our family became a Great Family again…” Yuzu said slowly, “that would be a big change, right?”

Rukia sipped her tea thoughtfully. “Brother is a great student of history, and he says that Aizen’s rebellion is what he calls a bifurcation point. A chance for change to take place. Our entire central governing body has been wiped out. Ichigo stormed our impregnable city and destroyed the Soukyoku, a symbol of the power of the Gotei. Now, things may well go back to normal. The Central 46 may be replaced by the same sort of self-interested nobles we already had. The Soukyoku may be rebuilt. Or not. Brother says that we’ve already avoided a potential seismic shift, in the sense that if Aizen’s plan hadn’t been caught in time, Soul Society might have been plunged into war like we haven’t seen in centuries. But we’re still at a point where there’s potential for change. There are three captains’ slots open and no one knows who is going to fill them. And as you say, the return of the Shiba would be very significant indeed.”

“Well, the way Ichi-nii tells it, it sounds like Soul Society could use some shaking up,” Karin announced. “Don’t you think it would be a good thing, if he stayed?”

Rukia chuckled. “It would be exciting, that’s for sure. But I’m pretty sure your brother wants to go home at the end of this.”

“He says that,” Karin excused. “He’s always putting up fronts, you know, acting like he doesn’t like anything.”

“The more he acts like he doesn’t like something, the more he really does, you know,” Yuzu jumped in. “In fact, Karin and I think--”

“Success!” Ichigo’s triumphant voice cut her off, and Yuzu’s shoulders hunched with guilt. Karin tried to look nonchalant. Rukia had the sense that they were trying to pull something on her, but she wasn’t sure exactly what.

Ichigo tried to sit down between his sisters, but they scooted closer together. He sighed, and took the seat between Rukia and Karin. He wiggled his Kurosaki Neighborhood Medical Clinic ballpoint pen in Rukia’s face obnoxiously. “Your liar friend tried to convince me that cheap Living World pens are super valuable in Soul Society.”

Renji slid into the space on Rukia’s other side. “What motivation do I have to lie? If I wanted to lie to you, I would have defrauded you out of your fancy pen, wouldn’t I?”

“We don’t have mass-manufacturing over here, dumbass,” Rukia scolded. “You try filling out Gotei reports for 8 hours a day with a brush and ink and then tell me how much you’d pay for a neat little writing stick that doesn’t run out of ink and you don’t have to clean.”

Ichigo’s eyes darted between Rukia and Renji, but their faces betrayed nothing. “I’m gonna ask Kuukaku!” he finally declared angrily, stuffing his pen in his bag. “Jeez, I thought you were bad enough before, but you’re ten times worse now that you’ve got a stooge.”

Rukia sniffed. “Fine thing to say to someone who saved a wagashi for a pen-loser like you.”

“Oh! You did?”

“You called me a liar, though, so I might just give it to my stooge, instead.”

“You didn’t save me a wagashi?” Renji asked in an incredibly cute fake-sad voice.

Under the table, Rukia hooked her foot around the back of his ankle. “I saved one for each of you, but you can choose first, because you are my beloved stooge.” She pushed her plate in front of him.

“Stop calling him that!” Ichigo protested. “Renji, do not make me eat the one that’s shaped like a bunny!”

“I can’t eat the one that’s shaped like a bunny. It’s too cute.”

“I’ll fight you for the green one!”

“It’s matcha,” Rukia pointed out. “Do you even like matcha?”

“I’m not big on matcha,” Renji decided, plucking the bunny-shaped sweet off the plate, and sliding it back to Ichigo. “I’ll still fight you later, if you want. Not in the tea shop, though, Momo would murder me if I got banned from her wagashi place.”

“Big talk for a man who’s 0 and 2 against me,” Ichigo griped before stuffing his wagashi in his mouth.

“My heart wasn’t in it,” Renji said off-handedly. “Either time.”

Rukia had been there for the first fight and knew what a blatant lie that was. She wondered what their second fight had been over. Neither of them had ever mentioned it to her.

“Besides,” Renji continued, “you’re too concerned with winning, because you only ever fight over things that matter. You have to take risks if you want to get better, and you can’t take risks when the outcome is do-or-die. That’s why you should fight over stupid things, constantly. So you can improve yourself.”

“That sounds like some Squad 11 bullshit,” Rukia proclaimed. Yuzu and Karin went a little wide-eyed, clearly impressed by Rukia’s cursing.

“That is definitely some Squad 11 bullshit,” Renji agreed, biting the head off his bunny.

Yuzu frowned. “Wait… Daddy was in…?”

“Ten,” Rukia supplied. “Very different atmosphere.”

“Anyway, Ichi-nii can’t do that, he cares too much about everything,” Karin put in. “Especially stupid things.”

“Do not!” Ichigo protested.

“You kind of do,” Yuzu shrugged.

Rukia nodded along sympathetically. “It’s sort of charming, actually.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Renji waved off, his mouth full of the other half of his wagashi. “We’ve got all week. I’m sure one of us’ll do something to piss the other one off for realsies between now and then.”

Rukia was too busy snorting into her tea to notice the fond gazes on both boys’ faces or the concerned looks on Yuzu and Karin’s.

Chapter Text

“--so, like, a week later, he says to me, ‘Hey, Ichigo, do you think I need to apologize to the new girl?’ It took him forever to start calling her by her name, but that’s how Chad is. So I said, ‘Chad, what did you do?’ and he says, ‘Well, I threw her at that monster.’”

Rukia made a snorty little laugh. Renji raised his eyebrows, waiting for the next bit. Renji was a good listener, Ichigo had discovered. He made a lot of good facial expressions. Really made you feel appreciated.

“Now, the way he said it, I was thinking that maybe he got scared and pushed her at the Hollow. That wouldn’t be like Chad at all, but y’know, it’s his first time getting attacked by a ghost, people react in funny ways, maybe he just panicked. So I said, ‘What do you mean, you threw Kuchiki at the monster?’ and he says, ‘Well, it was up in the air and I couldn’t reach it and she told me to throw her at it and she’s very hard to say ‘no’ to.”

Renji let out a big, braying laugh. “Happens to the best of us, pal!” he hooted.

“You have to understand,” Rukia broke in, trying to defend herself, “he couldn’t even see the Hollow. This kid is taller than you, Renji, and he’s swinging his arms and legs everywhere, just...hoping. Absolute maniac. You’d love him. I love him.”

“He’s the best,” Ichigo agreed.

“He did apologize to me, by the way,” Rukia pointed out.

“He did? I told him not to!”

“He did. He gave me a little tub of soup, too. I think it was some kind of soup, anyway, it was spicy and delicious.”

“Dang, you got soup? You made a real impression on him!”

“Not enough to learn my name, apparently!”

“He knows your name now,” Ichigo laughed, looking up at his sisters a dozen steps ahead. Their heads were tipped together, deep in conversation as they forged ahead through the tall grass surrounding the Shiba house.

It was so easy to walk and talk with Rukia and Renji that he’d hardly noticed the trip home. Renji walked in a sort of a weird, lazy lope that Ichigo realized was exactly one half the cadence of Rukia’s rapid scramble, and it worked out to almost exactly Ichigo’s natural pace. Rukia walked in the middle, a convenient arrangement, because it’s not like she impeded Renji and Ichigo’s view of each other. At one point, back near town, she’d had a fit of whimsy and looped her arms around each of their elbows. Ichigo did not want to admit, even to himself, how pleasant that had been, although it had gotten a little uncomfortable pretty quickly. Looping arms was probably much nicer, Ichigo conjectured, with someone even just a few inches taller than whatever ridiculous height Rukia insisted on being. To be honest, it was just as stubborn of Renji, being so tall. The two of them deserved each other.

“Aw, jeez, why is he waiting for us?” Rukia muttered suddenly and wheeled on Renji. “What did you do?”

Ichigo squinted ahead. In front of the house, perfectly centered between the Arms, the Head of the Kuchiki stood, his own arms tucked neatly behind his back.

Renji made a noise in his throat. “I didn’t do anything! He probably got an idea, and he’s all hopped up on it, waitin’ for us to get back.”

“Either way, it’s not good.”

“Agreed. Dunno why the guy can’t just day-drink on vacation like a normal person.”

“You better hope he hasn’t been day-drinking, it only makes him worse.”

Ichigo glanced between them. “Should we try to sneak around the back?”

“Nah, he’s already spotted us,” Renji grimly declared.

“I… I could make a distraction?” Ichigo offered.

Rukia regarded him for a moment, and then laughed, a bright, happy sound. Ichigo was used to wry chuckles from Rukia, or fake giggling, or occasionally big, snorting guffaws, usually at his expense, but he’d only ever heard her laugh like that here, at home, among her family. Ichigo liked her Soul Society laugh.

“That’s very sweet of you, Ichigo,” she managed. “But he’s my brother and Renji’s boss, we can’t just… run away from him.”

“For all we know, you might be the one he’s waiting for,” Renji pointed out, tipping his head at Ichigo.

“True,” Rukia agreed. “Don’t worry. If whatever he wants is ridiculous, Renji and I’ll talk him out of it.”

“What makes you think I can do that?” Renji protested.

“Act innocent if you want, I’m sure you have techniques for dealing with him.”

“I mean, I have a few! They’re pretty hit-and-miss!”

“Good afternoon, Brother!” Rukia called cheerfully as they made it into earshot. “Is something going on?”

“Welcome home, Rukia. Abarai. Kurosakis. Did you have a nice outing?”

“Oh, yes, we had lots of fun!” Yuzu announced. Yuzu might not be doing as well as Karin at the shinigami magic, but Ichigo was pretty impressed with how confident she was when interacting with the Kuchiki. He had a feeling that schmoozing might actually be a pretty valuable skill in Soul Society. If they were to stay here and be a noble family again. Not that they were going to do that.

“Ah, excellent,” Byakuya replied. “Soul Society is very charming and pleasant compared to the World of the Living, even out here in the country. I am sure you will find the Seireitei even more to your liking. Abarai!”

“Yes, sir?” Renji replied crisply.

“I have had an idea!”

Welp, Renji seemed to have called it.

“I recalled a very helpful exercise for building rapport with one’s zanpakutou, and I believe we have time to go through it before dinner, if we are efficient.”

Renji took a deep breath. “All right, sir. I’m rested up from this morning. Lemme go change my clothes real quick.”

“That will not be necessary, it is not a physical exercise.” Byakuya frowned thoughtfully. “Rukia, please join us.”

Ichigo glanced at Rukia. She’d made some brags about being close to bankai, but Ichigo had kind of assumed she was talking out of her ass, as usual. Then again, if two idiots like Renji and himself could make bankai, it was actually pretty surprising that she hadn’t gotten hers years ago.

Ichigo set his jaw. “Can I come?” he asked quickly.

Byakuya blinked at him.

“I mean, I want my bankai to get better too,” he said, trying to sound tough and ambitious. “Unless it’s some secret Kuchiki-only technique.”

“Of course not,” Byakuya waved. “Otherwise, why would I show it to Abarai?” He thought for a moment. “You are a friend of Rukia’s. Of course you may join us.”

“Sweet!” Ichigo replied.

Byakuya made a face like he had been caused physical pain by the use of slang in his general vicinity.

Ichigo hefted his knapsack over his head. “Yuz, could you put this in my room for me? Please?”

“Sure, Ichi-nii,” she agreed, and then made a face when he dropped the strap into her hands. “Geez, it’s heavy. You aren’t still trying to do that rock thing Aunt Kuu--”

“It’s that poetry book I bought,” Ichigo cut her off frantically. “Be careful with that, wouldja? I got all kinds of stuff in there.” All kinds of stuff including a very pretty set of black lacquer combs painted with bright blue and gold dragonflies. Ichigo absolutely hated to admit it, but Rukia really did have great taste, and Ichigo wasn’t sure which he was looking forward to seeing more-- Orihime’s face when he gave them to her, or how pretty she was gonna look with them in.

“Here, I’ll help,” Karin offered, grabbing the strap with one hand and waving vigorously with the other as she and Yuzu headed inside. “Have fun, Ichi-nii! Don’t worry about getting beaten up, I can try practicing my healing on you this time!”

“I had no idea you were a poetry enthusiast, Kurosaki Ichigo,” Byakuya noted, stepping off the porch and starting forth at a brisk pace. Rukia and Renji very quickly fell into step behind him, as though this were a thing they were practiced at, and Ichigo made a mad scramble to catch up.

“Uh, yeah, poetry’s great,” Ichigo agreed.

“You should have said something, I brought several of my favorite volumes with me. You are welcome to peruse them.”

Rukia’s face arranged itself into the serene mask Ichigo had seen her affect when dealing with teachers and other adult authority figures in the Living World. Renji was making a face that could only be described as long-suffering.

“Ah, it’s fine,” Ichigo waved off. “I like to write notes in the margins.”

Rukia’s eyes widened a millimeter, and her fake smile threatened to break her face in half. Renji somehow managed to appear even longer-suffering.

“A sign of true scholarship!” Byakuya declared. “You are not afraid to place your own mark upon the text! Perhaps you are a man of some courage after all, Kurosaki Ichigo.”

“You… really don’t have to use my full name every time.”

“Tell me of the poetry you have purchased, Kurosaki Ichigo,” Byakuya plowed on.

Cripes, this was literally worse than being dragged by his sisters. How did Rukia put up with this? For that matter, whatever happened to “don’t worry, Ichigo!”, “Renji and I have your back, Ichigo!”?

“I dunno, I haven’t read it, yet,” Ichigo blurted out. “Renji helped me pick it out, apparently, he’s a big poetry guy.”

He hadn’t meant to throw Renji under the bus. The dude had been really helpful this afternoon. It just sort of happened.

For his part, Renji continued to stare straight ahead stolidly. His face could have been made of stone. Ichigo reminded himself that, at least as far as he understood it, Renji had applied for his job. He had brought this suffering upon himself. Maybe he enjoyed it, even.

“Interesting,” Byakuya apprised in a voice that couldn’t possibly have sounded any less interested. “And what volume have you selected for our young visitor, Abarai?”

“Poems from the Land Beyond Death,” Renji replied stiffly, in the same tone that he might report the results of a mission. “Didn’t check which edition. Apologies, sir.”

Byakuya tipped his head to the side thoughtfully. “Not a bad collection for the casual poetry reader. I do not own that one, myself, but I hear it includes a good sampling of Yosano’s posthumous compositions. Ah, well, enough idle chit chat.”

That… that was idle chit chat?

“We have never discussed your process for achieving bankai, Abarai. Am I correct to assume you did so in the traditional way, by which I mean brute force?”

“Yes, sir. Wrestling, mostly.”

“You have never actually told me what form your zanpakutou spirit takes. You are not obligated, of course, some people find these things very personal, but it would be helpful for my part.”

“Not a big deal, sir. Ichigo’s even seen ‘em. Zabimaru’s a nue. Big white baboon body, striped like a tiger, snake for a tail. We’re about the same height at the shoulder, ‘cept they’re on all fours. Likes to be addressed in the plural.”

“A creature of folklore?” Byakuya hummed to himself.

“Is that… a problem?”

“Eh? No, not at all. Creatures of myth are actually very common in my family line, and I suspect you will find this technique very helpful. Kurosaki?”

“Um,” Ichigo sucked his teeth. “Well, Renji’s seen mine, too.”

Rukia waggled her eyebrows at him suggestively. Dammit, Byakuya was staring right at him, he couldn’t react, he could not react. Ichigo tried to look off in the other direction.

“He’s sort of an old guy? I mean, I guess he’s not that old, not like ‘Captain-Commander old’, more like ‘my dad old’. He wears sunglasses? Dresses kinda like a shinigami who’s seen The Matrix too many times?”

Byakuya’s eyes slid over to Renji, who just shrugged. “Seems about right?”

“I should probably mention that I didn’t-- you had to wrestle that thing into the real world? Like with your arms?” Ichigo stared blankly at Renji. “They were twice your size!”

“Buddy, you saw me fight ‘em.”

“I was busy! I wasn’t paying attention!”

Byakuya cleared his throat.

“Also, um, I kinda cheated,” Ichigo admitted.

Byakuya’s eyebrows shot up. “Cheated?”

Rukia’s eyes gleamed excitedly. Rukia loved cheating.

“Well, you know ol’ Urahara, right?”

Byakuya just stared at him.

“Well, he made this dummy thing that you can use to force a zanpakutou to manifest. It was Yoruichi’s idea. The thing is, though, once he was out, I only had three days to force Zangetsu into submission, or I’d never get another chance at bankai. I really only had two days, actually, because Rukia was getting executed, I am sure you remember that. I did it, though. I did it in two days, even though it’s very distracting having your friend about to be executed and other people and their nues just coming and going and also Yoruichi talks so much.”

“She truly does,” Byakuya said.

“He also made you find your real sword out of a bunch of fake swords,” Renji reminded him.

“Yeah, that, too,” Ichigo added. “He’s into that kinda stuff. Another time, he made me find my sword inside a bunch of boxes, and that one had, um, a pretty strict time limit, too.” And a nasty consequence at the end of it, not that he was going to mention that. He’d been strictly instructed not to mention the Hollow to anyone while he was here, although he was pretty sure his dad had said something to Kuukaku about it.

“I believe I get the idea,” Byakuya said. “Now, in both your cases, prior to the point of achieving bankai, your relationships with your zanpakutou had been confrontational, with your zanpakutou holding the upper hand, would you agree?”

“Sounds about right,” Renji nodded.

Ichigo wrinkled his nose. “I wouldn’t really call mine ‘confrontational.’ He’s mostly been pretty helpful, just in a high-pressure sort of way.” He thought for a moment. “He is definitely the one in charge, though.”

Byakuya nodded. “There is one school of thought that once a shinigami has defeated one’s zanpakutou, the shinigami should take the dominant position, and treat the zanpakutou as a tool to be used at will. Perhaps this works for some. What I am going to suggest, instead, is that you try to achieve a harmonious relationship with your zanpakutou spirit. Up until now, there has been a hard split between your inner world and the outer reality, but I want you to encourage your zanpakutou to attend you in the real world without fully manifesting.”

Ichigo tried to look at Renji out of the corner of his eye. Some words were coming out of Byakuya’s mouth and Ichigo kinda hoped that Renji didn’t know what they meant, either.

“Perhaps an illustrative example, Brother?” Rukia suggested.

“Of course. My own zanpakutou, as you know, is seasonally aligned with the springtime. Therefore, I take extra care to maintain a beautiful cherry orchard for his benefit, to meditate on the turning of the seasons, to sit among the vernal blooms and contemplate the beauty of new life, etcetera, etcetera. You get the picture.”

“My backyard is a little small for a cherry orchard,” Ichigo admitted.

“I don’t have a backyard,” Renji added.

“The reason Brother asked me along,” Rukia butted in, “is because my zanpakutou is very roundabout and likes to slither out of direct confrontations. I’ve already been practicing this, because Brother thinks it may be the only way I will ever get to bankai. You don’t actually need to do anything for your zanpakutou, you just sort of need to go out of your way to do the things they would like to do if they had a physical body. Make gestures that they would appreciate. Sode no Shirayuki is a yuki-onna, so she’s both seasonal and mythical. I haven’t been able to manifest her yet, but if I go out on a cold day and walk around until my hands and feet are numb, I can feel her on the edges of my awareness. You have to sort of learn to… listen for them. Make space for them. Figure out what they like and what they don’t. She likes it when I go out and find pretty icicles or trees all covered in ice, or when I leave my window open when I go to sleep on cold nights.”

“I would honestly rather fight mine,” Ichigo admitted.

“She is a part of my own soul and it is an honor to feel her presence,” Rukia sniffed.

“I’m just saying that I feel bad for the people who have to live with you,” Ichigo snapped back. What he wanted to say was that it was a good thing he’d only needed to suffer her as a houseguest over the late spring, but he wasn’t sure Byakuya or Renji actually knew where Rukia slept when she stayed in the World of the Living.

Byakuya shot him an icy look, then decided to ignore him instead and focus on his sister. “Rukia, you have done well with this exercise in previous winters. Summer is the most difficult time for you, but as we move into fall, I would like you to try to extend the conditions in which you can feel Sode no Shirayuki. I am often able to feel Senbonzakura’s presence on warm days in late winter, or by preparing for spring’s coming.”

“Yes, Brother,” Rukia replied eagerly.

“As for you two,” Byakuya continued, “you must consider ways in which you might feel attuned to your zanpakutou. Or perhaps, more accurately, the ways in which they might feel attuned to you.”

A rather strange look had come over Renji’s face.

“You seem troubled, Abarai.”

“Well… not troubled… I was just thinkin’ about the kinda stuff Zabimaru does when they’re just hanging out in my inner world.” He ticked off on his fingers. “Nappin’, especially if they find a good sunny spot. Climbin’ trees. Eatin’, usually fruit, but they’ll go nuts if they’ve caught a frog or something. Beatin’ me up. Scratchin’ an itchy spot. Is… is that the kinda thing you mean?”

Byakuya looked thoughtful. “I do believe you have the idea of it. You will have to conduct some experiments to see what is effective.”

“Yeah, eat some frogs, Renji,” Ichigo jabbed him with an elbow.

“I ain’t eatin’ any frogs, but I wouldn’t mind a mango now and again! And a nap in the sunshine sure beats trying to give myself frostbite (nothin’ personal, Rukia).”

“You’re probably lying about the naps.”

“I am not lying about the naps! You clearly have no idea what a pain in the ass it is to go into your Inner World and have to wait around for three hours because your zanpakutou spirit won’t get their lazy asses up!”

“What about you, Ichigo?” Rukia broke in. “What do you think Zangetsu would like?”

Ichigo took a deep breath and thought about it. “I’ve only been to my inner world a couple of times, and it’s usually for something important. I… I don’t know what he’s like when he’s not trying to keep me from dying.” Ichigo thought about it. “He likes puzzles, I guess.”

“I bet he likes it when you do cool poses,” Renji put in.

“Don’t be a pest,” Rukia scolded.

“First of all, where were you when he was making fun of me? And secondly, I was being serious! You know how it is when you one-shot a Hollow and you land on one knee, facing away from the dissolving corpse and you feel really cool? In your head, you can think, ‘that was for you, Zangetsu!’”

“Abarai,” Byakuya said in his judgiest voice, as if he himself weren’t constantly posing and making speeches.

Ichigo waved a hand. “No, no! I think he’s onto something!”

Renji nodded knowingly.

Rukia looked thoughtful. “I’m not saying you shouldn’t try that, because my zanpakutou is also a show-off, and I am definitely going to try that, but what Brother is talking about is more, um, everyday. In the little things.”

“Hmm,” Ichigo frowned. His inner world was a city, even if it was sideways. Maybe Zangetsu preferred an urban bustle. That was about the only thing he could think of, and it’s not like he could test it out here in Soul Society. Even the Seireitei wasn’t the right kind of city, Zangetsu should be among glass and steel, not wooden beams and tile roofs.

Also, Zangetsu wasn’t the only one who lived in that Inner World. The Hollow was there, too, and the last thing Ichigo wanted was that guy feeling free to pop around in Ichigo’s waking hours whenever he felt like it.

“Don’t worry if you don’t know right now!” Rukia said encouragingly. “That’s the whole idea, you see? Making the effort to get to know your zanpakutou? It’s not always obvious, and discovering unexpected things just helps you to understand them more. For me, going out in the cold was pretty obvious, but I didn’t expect that Sode no Shirayuki would also appreciate it when I come in afterward and have a cup of tea under the kotatsu to warm up.”

“Yes,” Byakuya agreed. “My Senbonzakura is quite vain, and I was certain he would enjoy it if I produced artistic renderings of him, but my intuition turned out to be incorrect.”

Rukia’s eyes widened. “I never thought of that! I wonder if Sode no Shirayuki would like it if I drew her…”

Ichigo bit down on his own tongue very hard.

“Alternatively, if you are at a loss for ideas, perhaps more jinzen is in order,” Byakuya prompted.

Ichigo frowned. He wasn’t supposed to be doing jinzen without Shinji or one of the other Visored to keep a watch on him from outside. The most recent time he’d tried, it had actually gone pretty well. Zangetsu hadn’t been very chatty, but Ichigo had been able to explore a bit, play around with the physics of his Inner World. The Hollow hadn’t been around at all, although Ichigo could feel him, soaked into the very fabric of the place. “Oh, I’ve got some ideas,” he excused. “It’s just that Zangetsu seems… how to put this? Very modern. I think he’d feel more at home in the World of the Living than here in Soul Society.”

“Oh! That’s very interesting,” Byakuya said.

It was kind of interesting, now that he thought about it. Zangetsu was the embodiment of his shinigami powers, it seemed like he ought to fit with Soul Society a little better. Ichigo decided this was something he was going to need to chew on for a bit. “I mean, I can still try it after I get home,” he shrugged.

“In the meantime, you can just try takin’ naps and climbing trees with me,” Renji suggested cheerfully. “Like Rukia said, you might end up being surprised. Also, I bet I’m a way better napper than you.”

“You’re a thousand years too early,” Ichigo retorted reflexively.

“Or we could all draw our zanpakutou together!” Rukia suggested, her eyes sparkling. “Ichigo, do you think Kuukaku has art supplies?”

“No.”

Rukia stroked her chin. “I packed my colored pencils, but they aren’t sparkly. I wonder what Hisana brought for Touma…”

“In any case,” Byakuya spoke mostly at Renji, “I felt that the change of venue and your excess free time might give you some opportunity for reflection. I suspected that your zanpakutou might …” Byakuya twirled his hand as he searched for the right word, “have an affinity for the outdoors.”

“I’ll give it a shot, sir!” Renji promised enthusiastically.

“Do not be discouraged if your early attempts are not successful,” Byakuya continued. His eyes darted briefly to Ichigo, and then to Rukia, where they lingered for a moment before returning to Renji. “It can be a lengthy process. Remember that your relationship with your zanpakutou will last throughout your life. Just as with souls, some bonds are formed instantly, and some must be built carefully and slowly. Whether the first or the second has no bearing on the ultimate strength of the relationship.”

Ichigo frowned. It was almost like Byakuya was talking about something else besides zanpakutou.

Renji gave a little snort through his nose. “Dealin’ with Zabimaru has never been easy. I’m used to it by now.”

Ichigo rubbed his neck. “That’s probably good advice for me. Up ‘til now, Zangetsu has just always been there when I needed him. But I want to have a good relationship with him and it makes sense that it’s gonna take some work. Thanks, Byakuya.”

Byakuya made the face he made every time Ichigo called him by his given name.

“Don’t work too hard, though!” Rukia put in. “It’s a relationship. It goes both ways. You want them to feel at home with you, but don't be a pushover about it! They are your own zanpakutou, you know, they do like you.”

“Another excellent point, Rukia!” Byakuya agreed.

Renji looked deeply skeptical.

Rukia cocked an eyebrow at him. “Don’t give me that look. I know how you are and that’s why I’m telling you this.” She jerked her head at Ichigo.”You’re just as bad.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Anyway, confidence is important. Your zanpakutou are lucky to have you. You’re both pretty great, you know. Isn’t that right, Brother?”

Byakuya made a pained face. “I agree about the importance of confidence. I leave the assessment of Abarai and Kurosaki’s greatness to you, Rukia.”

Chapter Text

Renji stood on the far side of the woodshed, waiting.

He tugged nervously at the too-short sleeves of his haori. It wasn’t actually cold enough to need one, but the jacket was a dark navy, and he was hoping it would make him less visible in the night. He’d covered his hair with a matching bandana, tied to cover more of his forehead than usual. On a whim, he’d left his hair down, since the ponytail made for a pretty recognizable silhouette. The bandana did a decent enough job of keeping it out of his face.

There was a soft footfall and a throaty “Hey.”

Renji looked up from his sleeves, blushing. “Uh, hey,” he replied.

Rukia looked him up and down. “What is this?”

“Well, I didn’t want to get caught, so I tried to wear dark colors.”

Rukia cleared her throat and gestured at herself. She was wearing her shihakushou, which, Renji recalled stupidly, was designed for blending into the shadows.

“You said,” Renji accused, “that for your favor, you wanted a romantic, moonlit walk. I take my debts very seriously, Kuchiki. You ask for romance, you get the whole sexy package.”

Rukia’s face split into a grin, and the corners of her eyes crinkled. “I see. The New Year’s haori makes another appearance... you’ve worn your hair down, very nice, and…” She squinted at him in the rapidly fading twilight. “Are you wearing make-up? Did you put on make-up for me?”

“Maybe! Look, I thought we were just going down to the lake, we aren’t doin’ any tree-climbin’ or anything athletic are we? I can go change--”

Rukia reached up and put her fingertips against his lips to shut him up. “You look great. You don’t need to change anything. I’m sorry I didn’t do the same for you.”

Renji caught her wrist as she tried to take her hand away, and kissed her fingertips. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he replied. “I’ve told you a hundred times how hot you are in a uniform.”

“Twice. You’ve told me twice.”

“Well, I’m telling you again, you look very dashing. I feel like I’m in one of those romance novels where I’m a handsome village boy and you’re the brave shinigami who saved me from a rampaging Hollow.” He intertwined his fingers with hers and swung their hands down into a more comfortable position for walking. “Shall we?”

“What kind of romance novels have you been reading?” Rukia laughed as they set off down the path that led to the lake.

“Sometimes Momo loans them to me,” Renji explained with a grin. “They have good characterization. The heroine always has a psychic link with her zanpakutou and her best friend is an owl or a hawk or something. Sometimes the handsome village boy is secretly a noble. I’m telling you right now, I am not secretly a noble.”

“Well,” Rukia replied with a sigh, “Maybe it’s finally the time for me to tell you that I am secretly a noble.”

“Aah, shit!” Renji cursed. “What do I even have to offer to this relationship?”

“Well, you are very, very pretty,” Rukia pointed out. “I hope you’re not losing too much beauty sleep to go sneaking around with me in the middle of the night.”

“For you, I’ll endure a few dark eye circles. Your brother will probably yell at me, though.” It wouldn’t be the first time.

“I was joking! It’s not even that late! Don’t tell me you still wake up with the chickens!”

Renji harrumphed dramatically. “The Eleventh does a lot of field missions in hairy conditions. You learn to sleep when the sleeping’s good.” He sucked his teeth for a moment. “All else being equal, though, it’s very healthy to get to bed at a decent hour--”

Rukia dissolved into laughter.

Renji kept up the high-and-mighty act. “I take it you still prefer to stay up ‘til all hours and then spend the better part of the day huddled in the corner with your blankets over your head?” Cripes, it had been years since he thought about Morning Rukia. He honestly could not square the memory with how pissed he used to get at her. She had been so cute, all puffy-faced and squinty-eyed, hair sticking up in every direction, begging to be left alone for “just five more minutes, Renji please.”

“I’ve gotten a little better! I do go to work, you know!”

“How about weekends?”

“Weekends are for resting! I rest!”

Renji tossed his head back to look at the stars. “Can’t marry you after all, I guess,” he teased. “We’d never see each other.”

Rukia tried to jab him in the ribs with her elbow, but he wouldn’t let go of her hand. There was a brief tussle, and then he somehow found her tucked comfortably under his arm. “So, you’ve been thinking about it, eh?”

“Hmm?” he asked. “Thinking about what?”

“Marrying me.”

Shit. Renji almost stumbled, but he caught himself before he brought Rukia down with him. “Er. Maybe. Just a little bit. Is that bad?”

Rukia just stared up at him, a faint smile on her lips. He could tell she was just letting him go on, and as usual, he couldn’t shut up.

“I dunno, whenever I hang out with someone else’s family, I, y’know, think about, ‘What if this was my family? What would it be like to not just be an intruder?” He shrugged. “And this time… there’s… a possibility, I guess. Not a likely one, but I guess I can’t help but think about it. That probably sounded really dumb.” You’d think that after forty years, he could have gathered a new family around himself again. He had friends, good friends and plenty of them, but making families didn’t seem to be a thing that Seireitei people did. Or maybe it wasn’t the Seireitei people. Maybe it was just him. Maybe he’d fit too perfectly in the family that he’d lost for anything to feel close to the same afterwards.

“I can’t believe you feel like that,” Rukia said.

“I told you it was dumb, forget I said it.”

“No, no, it’s not dumb! It’s just… I’m sure no one in the history of ever has thought of you as an intruder, Renji. You seem so comfortable wherever you go.” She studied his face for a moment with a squinty expression, like she’d forgotten what he looked like. “Do you remember that time, way back when we were at the Academy, and we spent New Year’s... well, here in Junrinan, actually? I thought Hinamori’s grandmother was going to adopt you. I was the one who no one asked for.”

Had she really felt like that? Rukia was so prickly in their school days-- if Momo and Izuru had been cool to her, it was probably because they were trying to give her the space they thought she wanted. Then again, it had taken him a while to get used to those two and their pre-emptive style of politeness. Maybe Rukia never had.

“Aw, that’s not true!” he reassured her. “I mean, Hinamori’s grandma took in Captain Hitsugaya, too. She loves little grumpuses!” He waited for her to bump him with her hip before continuing more softly. “The next time I went, everyone asked after you and talked about what a nice time you must be having with your new family.” He felt her stiffen a little under his arm. Fuck. He’d said the wrong thing, once again. “I take it you haven’t thought about it at all? The marriage thing?” he teased, hoping to lighten things up, before immediately realizing that normal people didn’t try to lighten things up by joking about getting married.

Fortunately, Rukia wasn’t exactly normal people, and found this to be a perfectly acceptable topic to riff on. “I… may have considered it,” she noted loftily. Briefly.”

“Oh? Any conclusions?”

“Conclusions! Certainly not. You know, now that you mention it, you say you’ve thought about it, but I bet you’ve only fantasized about the nice bits, like my brother being less of an ass to you, and seeing me in my underwear.”

“I would never--”

“First of all, it’s wishful thinking. He’ll just be an ass to you in slightly different ways. Secondly, I am very cute in my underwear, I would judge you more if you hadn’t fantasized about it. But the point is, there are a lot of downsides, too, you know! I doubt you’ve thought this through critically at all!”

“Like that’s ever stopped me before.”

“Number one! Brother will want you to take our name, have you considered that?”

Renji wrinkled his nose. “Geez. As if it isn’t confusing enough at work. We’ve already got six seated officers named Kuchiki, you know, not counting him, plus you’re also gonna be Lieutenant Kuchiki… what a bother. We’re gonna have to implement a nickname system, like they got in Eleven. Do you think I could pull off ‘Crusher’? ‘Snake Eyes’?”

“Brother would never let you implement a nickname system, but for the record, yours would be ‘Lamp Post.’”

“Lamp Post! Harsh!”

“Number two! Where are we going to live?” Rukia continued. “Are you going to move to the manor? I’m sure that’s what Sister will want. I don’t think Brother would allow me to move into the Squad Six barracks, and even if he did, that would be weird.”

“Squad Six barracks are pretty nice, just so you know. You should come by and check out my place before you reject it entirely. I wouldn’t mind moving in with you, though. The food’s pretty good, at least.”

“It is, but you have to dress up for dinner every night.”

“Oh.” Renji contemplated this for a moment. “I hate to ask, but d’you think there’s a dowry or something involved here? Because I really only have two nice kimono and it took most of last month’s salary just to buy this one.”

“Renji!”

“What?”

“You really think you would marry into the Kuchiki and they would make you buy your own clothes?” Rukia squawked.

“I don’t know! I don’t know how any of this works! I just want to be with you, and I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make that happen.” Renji’s mouth snapped shut. “I really shouldn’t’ve said that,” he amended quietly, and then immediately changed his mind. “Maybe I should have. I’ve been going on Kira’s advice so far, but honestly, Rukia, at some point, if this is something you want to happen, you are gonna have to help me out, because I do not know what I am doing.”

Rukia was staring at him, the whites of her eyes wide and pale in the darkness. “You mean that?”

“Mean what? That I’m a dummy? Of course I do.”

“No, you dummy. You want to be with me?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah, of course, that too. I thought it was obvious.”

“No, no!” Rukia stopped walking and stepped in front of him, pushing her hand against his chest. “I am a member of a rich and powerful family, you grasp that, right? And that is why people want to marry me, you see?”

“It’s not why I want to marry you. Er, that is, if I wanted to marry you. Which I have not decided yet, of course.” Renji had lost control of this conversation some time ago, but he felt obligated to keep trying to pretend like he hadn’t.

“You just said you liked to imagine you were part of my family!”

“Well, yeah! Your sister’s real nice and pretty, and we both know how your brother is, but he and I have a pretty good time now and again when we get going, and I think I would be a pretty good uncle--”

“You are such a dummy!”

Renji had played out scenarios in his head, many years ago, of telling Inuzuri Rukia that he cared for her, or that he wanted to make a life with her, first in Inuzuri, and then later, as they looked forward to the day when they would trade their Academy uniforms for shinigami blacks. In every last one of these boyish fantasies, she had responded by calling him a dummy. It was non-negotiable.

He could tell from the way her face crumpled that Rukia regretted saying it almost immediately.

It didn’t hurt, though. He’d expected it to hurt, no matter how much he knew it was coming, and it didn’t.

Somehow, the act of hearing it out loud had made Renji realize that she wasn’t calling him a dummy for being sentimental, for being an optimist, for thinking that anyone, let alone the noblest family in Soul Society, would want him as a part of their family.

She was calling him a dummy for wanting to be with her.

Renji stared out over the lake for a moment, trying to gather his thoughts and feelings on this matter. Maybe it did hurt, in a different way than he had expected. Rukia had always seemed so self-confident to him, a hurricane in human form, the queen of the ragged fringes of Soul Society they called their hometown. He’d always thought he’d known her so well, and the fact was, he’d been so busy covering up his own insecurities in bluster that he never realized she was doing the same thing. He was a dummy and so was she.

Renji took a deep breath through his nose, and looked down at her. “Rukia, do you like me? Not like like, just regular like?”

Rukia’s face quickly shifted from guilt into defensiveness. “Of course I do!” she snapped vehemently. “I like you and I like like you! You think I would ask you to sneak out and take romantic walks with me if I didn’t even like you? You think I would make out with you if I didn’t like you?”

“Why? I’m not rich and I’m not classy.”

“I don’t know! I just do!”

Renji regarded her seriously. “Well, I like you, too. You can call me a dummy for a lot of stuff, but don’t call me a dummy for that, okay?”

Rukia looked away, embarrassed. Renji wondered if she was going to ask him to take her back to the house. He didn’t regret saying what he’d said, though.

“It’s not true,” Rukia said suddenly, jerking her face back up to look him dead in the eye. “I do know why I like you. I like you because you’re a good person. You’re kind and funny and brave and you laugh at my jokes and put up with my bullshit.”

Renji snorted and he felt his face break into a grin. “I love your bullshit.”

Rukia shook her head and gave him a look that was somewhere between ‘fond’ and ‘indulgent.’ “I’ve known too many rich and allegedly classy people and you’re better than all of them. Maybe that’s why you’re the first one of Hisana’s suggestions I’ve actually been willing to consider.”

Renji turned to face Rukia, and put his hands on her upper arms. “Well, I appreciate your consideration, but remember that there are a lot of people in Soul Society. Just because I’m not terrible doesn’t mean you gotta settle for me.”

Rukia shoved him hard in the chest and flung her arm up toward the sky. “Look around, Abarai! We’re out on a moonlit walk, the stars are shining, the lake is beautiful, and you can’t even stop being a supportive friend for long enough to put a move on me!”

“Aah, shit, you’re right. I suck at this.” Renji chuckled, mostly just out of relief. That was enough introspection for one night. “Look, we could back up a little and I could try again?”

Rukia shook her head. “Nah, buddy, you blew it.”

Renji hung his head and sighed heavily. “I wonder if I can talk Ichigo’s pop into re-offering me that adoption.”

Rukia patted his arm. “Hold on, I’m being unfair. I’m the one who asked you out here, and you did put on make-up for me.” She looked around for a moment, surveying their current location. To their left, the lake shimmered with the reflection of the gibbous moon and the late summer constellations. On the right, the bank was fluffy with overgrown grass. It wasn’t quite as scenic a spot as where they’d watched the fireworks, but it was still pretty nice. “This’ll do. Take off your haori.”

“What?” Renji sputtered.

“It’s too hot for it, and I don’t want to get grass stains on 50% of your nice outfits. You need a new one, by the way.”

Renji looked stricken. “You’re always hot! Why are you trying to get my clothes off?”

Rukia crossed her arms. “I just asked for your haori, but if you’re offering…”

Renji shrugged off his jacket and handed it over suspiciously. Rukia promptly spread it out on the grass and plopped down on, her legs out in front of her. She patted the space between them. “Get down here.”

“Er…”

"Come on! It’s a beautiful night. Lie down and look at the stars while I play with your hair.” She wagged her eyebrows hopefully.

“Oh! Is that all?”

“What did you think I was going to do?”

“I didn’t know! You said you were gonna put a move on me and sometimes you are very aggressive!”

Rukia arched an eyebrow at him.

Gingerly, Renji sat down on the tail of his haori, and carefully leaned back. He misjudged the distance the first time and had to scoot his butt down a little further, but finally, he managed to get positioned with his head on Rukia’s thigh. “Um, is this okay? I’m not too heavy?”

“You’re fine,” Rukia assured him, as she loosened the knot on his bandana. “Sit up for a second, though, just so I can get your hair out from under your shoulders.”

Renji complied, and he could feel her scoop the heavy mass of his hair out from under him and spread it out to one side.

“Relax,” she urged as he tried to settle back down again.

“This is weird,” he informed her, trying to look up at her from his relatively upside-down position. She seemed more interested in combing his hair out into a fan with her fingers.

“It feels weird because you don’t know how to relax,” she chided him. “You were never good at it in the first place, and I can tell you’ve gotten worse in the last forty years.”

Renji tried to get his shoulders settled comfortably. “You’re one to talk,” he mumbled, as he let himself sink into the pleasant sensation of… well… being petted. Maybe there were worse things to be in the world than a scruffy old dog.

“Well, I’m relaxing now,” Rukia declared. “You have beautiful hair. I don’t know how this is possible, but it’s even silkier than I thought it would be.”

“Eggs,” Renji supplied.

“What?”

“On Thursday nights, I mix up a couple of egg yolks with some aloe and warm olive oil. Rub that shit into my hair, wrap it up in a towel and leave it for an hour. Earlier, I said you should come over some time-- let’s plan a Thursday, I’ll make a double batch.”

There was a peal of laughter and Renji felt the soft press of a kiss on his forehead. His own lips curled up into a peaceful smile.

“What do you do while you wait?” Rukia prompted him to continue.

“Lately, catch up on extra paperwork. Used to sit down with a book and a drink, back before I was busy all the time. Maybe take a bath.”

“Mm. That does sound nice.”

Renji’s eyes shot open. “I didn’t mean it that way. I mean-- I wouldn’t-- if you were there-- we could, um, play cards? Get take-out? I could read a book out loud to you, like I used to sometimes when we were at the Academy. Do you still like that? Did you ever like that?”

Rukia was laughing pretty hard now. “Stop it, you dope! I was kidding!” She sighed with contentment. “Ah, that sounds so nice, though. I… I wish we could. I wish we could date like normal people do. I would love to come to your horrible drunken birthday parties and get take-out with you and let you put weird goop in my hair.”

Renji interlaced his fingers and settled his hands on his chest. “I think you may be over-romanticizing haircare night in the barracks,” he informed her. “Have you ever actually dated anyone, y’know, your way?”

“Well, no,” Rukia admitted.

“Maybe it’ll be great,” Renji suggested dreamily. “I’ll dress up real nice for you, I promise, and make Kira teach me all about table manners. Other people’ll look at us and say, ‘Look at that guy’s table manners! Those Kuchiki sure know how to pick ‘em!’”

“That is absolutely not how that works,” Rukia said, but he could hear the laughter in her voice. There was a weird light tugging on one side of his head, and Renji had the sneaking suspicion she was braiding his hair, or possibly sticking flowers in it.

“Also, Ichigo reminded me I got that big poetry book from school holding up the wobbly end of my table, I can haul that over to your house and read you poems about frogs in ponds and falling leaves and stuff. Or am I supposed to memorize the poems?”

“You are supposed to memorize the poems, or better yet, write your own.”

“You definitely don’t want that. You never answered the question about whether you liked it when I read to you, so I am doing you the disservice of assuming that you did.”

“Your taste in novels was horrendous, but I liked the sound of your voice,” Rukia replied. She thought for a moment. “I still like the sound of your voice.”

“Oh,” Renji said. “Really?” He’d always sort of assumed that she had tolerated him for the sake of getting stories. Rukia hadn’t been a very strong reader when they first got to school and she used to complain that by the end of the day, she was tired of looking at words.

“Mmm,” Rukia hummed.

Renji still couldn’t wrap his head around it. “You live with Captain Kuchiki. His voice is like actual liquid gold.”

Rukia made another noncommittal noise. “His voice is good, too, but he doesn’t get excited about things and start talking too loud and too fast. He doesn’t have an Inuzuri accent. He hardly ever drops even a single ‘fuck’ into the middle of a sentence that does not require one. I’ve heard you pack three or even four in.”

“That man has never said ‘fuck’ even once in his entire life.”

“Hisana says she heard him say it once! She would not tell me the circumstances, but she said she would never marry a man who was incapable of saying it. I have not excluded the possibility that he only said it to get her to marry him.”

Renji shook his head. “Amazing. The things I learn from you.”

“Renji,” Rukia said, her voice suddenly firm.

“Eh?” Renji asked, opening his eyes. Was something wrong?

“You really want to? Do courting?”

Renji tried again to look at her from upside-down. He was sure she was looking at him very seriously, but from this position, she only looked adorable to him. “I do,” he replied. “I mean, I think I’d rather do it the other way, just like you, if there were a choice. But I think we could make it fun.”

A small smile crept onto Rukia’s face. “I think you’re right.” She looked up at the sky. “Courting is going to be very silly, you know.”

“If you are looking for someone who can keep a stony expression in the face of ridiculous pomp, remember that I am the vice-captain of Squad Six.”

“You’ll probably be better at this than I am,” Rukia smiled. “Let’s do it. I’ll talk to Hisana. She said she would sweet talk Byakuya for us. But… can we wait until we’re back in the city? Just a week or two more? I promise we’ll make it official, but I just… I just want to have you to myself for a little longer.”

Renji groped around until he found one of her hands, then pulled it down to kiss it. “You can call it whatever you want,” he promised. “Just as long as I get to be with you.”

Hisana knew that letting Touma nap all afternoon had been a mistake.

Afternoon naps had once been such a blessed constant of her life, but lately, the time it took to get him to go down was nearly longer than the span of the actual nap. Today, though, the excitement of being in a new place and being given a wooden sword and, of course, being the center of his beloved father’s attention for the entire morning had knocked the little guy out completely.

In retrospect, Hisana probably should have woken him up after two hours, but the fact of the matter was, all the young people had gone off to town and she had found herself the center of her beloved husband’s attention, and, well, Touma had slept straight through until dinner. Which was all well and good. Until it was bedtime.

So here it was, nearly midnight, and she was treading the halls of Kuukaku’s house, a toddler drooling on her shoulder. He was asleep at the moment, she was quite sure of that, but she wasn’t sure he was asleep deeply enough that he would remain asleep should she attempt to put him down in bed.

It’s true, she could have woken the nurse for this, and Byakuya would surely scold her for not doing so, but then she would wake up when the nurse brought him back to bed and well… well, he was just getting too big, was all. There wouldn’t be that many times of this, would there?

Kuukaku’s house was arranged in a strange, underground spiral that actually made it rather convenient for her purposes. She simply walked all the way down until she got to the dojo level, then turned around and went back up to the top again. She was on her third trip up when she ran into someone rather unexpected.

“Kurosaki Ichigo,” she greeted, her voice low so as to not wake the baby. “Fancy meeting you here.”

The Heir of the Shiba was wearing a rather strange outfit that consisted of a pair of soft, close-fitting purple pants, and one of those strange Living World style garments Rukia said was called a “t-shirt.” It had the words “Speaking is NOT Communication” printed on it, which Hisana thought was a rather interesting sentiment, especially to be wearing on one’s person.

“Uh, uh, hi, Lady Kuchiki,” Ichigo stammered. “I was. Um.” He looked down at the cup in his hand and then back up at Hisana. “Getting a drink of water.”

“You’re up rather late,” Hisana observed. “You must be a bit of a night owl, like Rukia and I.”

Ichigo rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand and tried to make eye contact with the ceiling. “Yeah, I was just, uh, y’know, doing a bit of journaling.”

“Journaling?” Hisana asked, pleasantly surprised. Who knew young Kurosaki was a man of the written word?

“Uh, yeah, y’know. Like you do.”

“I see,” Hisana replied, hefting Touma up a little higher onto her shoulder. An adorable snore sputtered out of him. “Is your roommate still up as well?”

Ichigo’s eyes went momentarily wide. “Uh, erm, no, that guy falls asleep early, like a grandma.” He paused. “Light on and everything, which is nice of him. So I can journal. He’s definitely extremely asleep right now. In our room. Good roommate.”

“I see,” Hisana said again.

“I should be very quiet when I go in,” Ichigo decided. “So I don’t wake him up. Not that he would wake up, because it seems like he sleeps very, very deeply. Like a log. Or a large reptile. But just in case, I’m gonna be very quiet and not open the door very wide. It was nice talking to you in the middle of the night, Lady Kuchiki, have a good one!”

And with that, he disappeared very quickly into his room, shutting the door behind him with a gust of wind.

“What a dreadful liar you are, Kurosaki Ichigo,” Hisana declared to his back. “I wonder where you’ve been.”

On the way back to her own room, Hisana took a brief detour past the room where Rukia was staying. No light shone from around the edges of shoji. Very carefully, Hisana slid the door open. A single ray of moonlight perfectly illuminated the futon in the middle of the room, lumped in the shape of a slumbering body.

Hisana was not an amateur. Quietly, she slipped into the room, her sleeping son still balanced on her shoulder. She nudged the blanket away with one foot.

There was just another blanket stuffed underneath.

“Well played, Rukia,” Hisana declared.

Chapter Text

The sun was streaming through the window the next morning when Ichigo woke. He stared at it blankly for a moment, trying to figure out what felt so strange, and then he realized that he had woken of his own accord, rather than from the horrible shouts of his horrible father.

Rubbing his gluey eyes, he glanced over at the other futon, which was neatly folded and tucked away in the corner. Ichigo wondered briefly if it had even been slept in, although he did have a vague, middle-of-the-night memory of the door opening and closing. An unpleasant feeling rolled over him as he recalled the other thing that had happened in the middle of the night.

He needed to find Rukia.

Ichigo dressed quickly and thundered out into the hallway. Conveniently enough, Rukia was shuffling inefficiently toward the dining room, yawning.

“Yo!” Ichigo shouted.

Rukia winced. “It’s too early for shouting.”

Ichigo trotted up to her. “We need to talk.”

“About what?” Rukia scowled, rubbing at her cheek.

Ichigo regarded her for a moment, this tiny grump in a rumpled kimono, squinting up at him. She had barrelled into his life at 90 miles per hour, ruined his sleep schedule, yelled at him constantly, yanked his heart out of his ribcage and stuffed it back in again, and made him into a better version of himself. He couldn’t believe he was saying this. “Didja have a nice time last night?”

Despite herself, Rukia’s mouth ticked up on one side. “Yeah. I did, actually. What of it?”

Ichigo blew a puff of air out of his nose. “I think your sister is on to you.”

Rukia’s half-smile quickly turned into a full frown. “What makes you say that?”

Ichigo crossed his arms. “I ran into her in the hallway last night and despite my smooth talking, I think she knew Renji wasn’t where he was supposed to be.”

“You mean you choked under pressure and let it slip?” Rukia asked dryly. Strangely, she didn’t sound nearly as angry as Ichigo had expected her to be.

“Something like that, yes. Your sister is very intimidating.”

“You’re pathetic. What’s the damage? Did you actually use the words ‘snuck out for a secret date with Rukia’?”

“Well, no, I didn’t actually say anything, I think she just got, you know, the impression.”

Rukia shook her head in disgust. “Have you ever snuck out in your life, you infant?”

“I snuck out almost every night to hunt Hollows with you!”

“Right. You do know that your father was absolutely aware of this, yes?”

Ichigo stuck out his lower lip. To be honest, he hadn’t thought that hard about it, but based on a number of Isshin’s later (non)reactions, it did seem likely in retrospect.

“Let’s say Hisana does think Renji snuck out. What does she care? She’s not Renji’s sister.”

“Well, sure.”

“So, she has a suspicion. What do you think she’s going to do, say ‘Rukia, I think you have been lying to me, based on your friend’s squirrelly excuse-mumbling’?”

“I am not squirrelly--”

“Because then she’ll sound like she’s been snooping. She hates to admit she’s a snoop even though she is very much a snoop.” Rukia shot him a finger gun. “Thanks for letting me know, though. I’ll keep my guard up.”

“I feel like you are not taking this seriously enough,” Ichigo pointed out.

Rukia shrugged. “I almost got executed a month ago. If my sister finds out I snuck out to hold hands with my kinda-secret boyfriend, it’s not quite the same, you know?”

Ichigo pressed his lips together. “You’re not the only one who could get in trouble, you know.”

This one actually appeared to hit home. “That’s a good point,” Rukia mused. “I’m sorry.” She grabbed the door to the dining room and slid it open.

“Karin!” Ichigo exclaimed. His sister was standing on the other side of the door, as if she were about to open it from the other side.

Karin looked panicked, and for a second, Ichigo thought she might have overheard part of their conversation. “There you guys are!” she exclaimed. “I was just coming to look for you! There’s an emergency!”

Ichigo drummed his fingers on the table, while Ganju gestured furiously at the chalk board set up behind him.

“She is very small and she doesn’t know much about the world and I’m sure she’s (sniff) hungry and (sniff) scared and--”

“Why don’t we just go out and look for her already?” Ichigo exclaimed.

The ‘emergency’, such as it was, was that one of Ganju’s piglets had wiggled out through a gap in the pen in the wee hours of the morning and was now missing. Ganju had prepared an entire briefing on his chalkboard, featuring a drawing of Clementine, a diagram of the boar pen, a map of the forest, and a list of various potential search strategies. Nearly everyone was gathered down in the dojo to witness this soggy, Soul Society Powerpoint presentation-equivalent. Koganehiko was out repairing the pen. Hisana had somehow gotten out of this by claiming that she didn’t want Touma to be upset about the missing piggy and whisked him off somewhere. Renji had gone out for a run in the early hours of the morning and hadn’t returned yet. Byakuya’s soul appeared to have departed his body, but he was present in a semi-corporeal sense, at least.

“If we go out without a plan of action, we’ll waste time!” Ganju yelled at Ichigo.

“Any plan you come up with is a waste of time!” Ichigo shouted back.

“Boys,” Isshin chided.

“The kid’s not wrong,” Kuukaku grumbled, examining her fingernails. “She’ll come back when she gets hungry, Ganju. Boars have good instincts when it comes to their stomachs.”

“She’s a precious baby!” Ganju wailed.

“Then you and your buddies and anyone else who wants to can go out to look for her, but I’ve honestly had all of this I can take. I think Byakuya might be in a coma.”

“I think we should split into teams of two and set out in different directions,” Rukia declared in an authoritative voice that hit Ichigo square in the lizard brain. She was going to make a terrifying vice-captain, in his personal opinion. “Ichigo and I will take the north path into the woods. I don’t care where anyone else goes. We should meet back here in two hours, regardless of if you find anything.” And then she walked right out of the room without waiting for any further planning. Ichigo blinked for a moment and then dashed after her. She could really move fast on those stubby little legs when she wanted to.

“Was-- was that a ploy?” he asked, once he had caught up to her. “To get out of Ganju’s terrible meeting?”

“Of course not, you fool!” Rukia replied. “A tiny piglet is lost and requires assistance. You were absolutely correct, time is of the essence.”

“Right,” Ichigo frowned. He knew very little about boars, but if Kuukaku said they came back on their own, he would probably just wait for the boar to come back on its own. On the other hand, the images of his sisters’ faces flashed through his eyes, their eyes brimming with tears. Fuck. “So do you have a plan or something?”

“I do.” As they stepped outside, Rukia looked around and then put her hands on her hips. “Do you still remember how to follow a spirit ribbon, or have you forgotten everything I taught you?”

Ichigo rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He’d followed a parakeet’s spirit ribbon once, although technically it had a human soul. “Do… do boars have spirit ribbons? I guess maybe here in Soul Society they do. Are they different from regular spirit ribbons? Maybe we could go over to the boar pen so I could see what they look like?”

Rukia was giving him a face like he was the stupidest person ever born. “Kurosaki, I do not know shit about finding boars and neither do you. But you know who is good at finding crap, especially stupid crap like cute little lost baby animals?”

Ichigo blinked and then snapped his fingers. “We’re gonna go find Renji and make him find the boar for us!”

Rukia shot a finger gun at him and winked. “Preeeee-cisely.”

Ichigo had a tiny bit of trouble getting started, only because Renji had been running around this entire area for several days now, and his spirit ribbon was tangled all over the place, along with Rukia’s and Byakuya’s and everyone else’s as well.

“Spirit ribbons are so much brighter here in Soul Society,” he grumbled.

“I see. You’re just too powerful for this,” Rukia teased.

“No, Renji’s just too loud,” Ichigo complained.

Rukia laughed. “He is, isn’t he?” She made a little humming noise and then pulled up that annoying pedantic tone she always used for lecturing him. “There are a lot of nuances to feeling out people from their reiatsu, you know. Using a ribbon to track down a person or a Hollow is a useful skill, to be sure, and it’s impressive that you were able to figure out how to do it so easily.” It was amazing, really, how Rukia was able to call something he’d done ‘impressive’ and still manage to make it sound vaguely insulting. “But now that you’re here in Soul Society, and especially once you are making social calls in the Seireitei, you’ll have to learn to feel out a given shinigami’s spirit ribbon from the noise of the general populace, which is a bit easier said than done. Furthermore, rather than just blindly follow a ribbon to its source, you ought be able to read it a little more finely. For example, how far away do you think Renji is? What is his mood?”

Ichigo arranged his face into an expression that he hoped conveyed that he was bored because this was so easy and also that he was bored because it was boring, and not at all that he had no idea how to do what she was asking. “His mood? What do I care?”

“Well, maybe mood is a bit strong, but you ought to be able to tell when he’s fighting, for example. Or you know. If he were hurt, you could feel that, too.”

“That’s easy, I can definitely tell when people are fighting,” Ichigo bragged. He frowned. “I can tell when people get hurt, too.” He sucked his teeth. “Chad got hurt pretty bad when we came to rescue you and for a second I thought he had died, but then I was able to find him again and I knew he hadn’t.”

Rukia looked troubled. “I’m glad you were able to tell. Sometimes… sometimes it’s hard. Sometimes the jump from fighting spirits to near-death is too abrupt. It leaves after-images, like when you stare at a bright light. Sometimes you can’t tell if you can still feel something or if it’s just… hoping.” She blinked a few times. “That’s why this is very important to practice, you see? And the better you know someone, sometimes you can tell more about how they feel. My captain has been with his partner, the captain of the Eighth, for centuries, and the two of them always know what the other is up to.” She frowned. “Either that, or it’s an elaborate joke they’ve been playing on us for years, I definitely wouldn’t put that past them. Anyway, give it a shot. What are you getting off Renji right now?”

Ichigo heaved a sigh as though this were the biggest pain in the ass he had ever experienced, but it was mostly to buy himself some time. How far away was Renji? Fuck if he knew. If they were in the World of the Living, he’d guess that they were practically on top of him, but everything was louder here, his sense of scale was all blown to hell. Trying to be subtle, he felt for Rukia’s reiatsu next to him.

It was basically no good. Ichigo thought that Rukia and Renji were similar in terms of the magnitude of their reiatsu, but he didn’t actually know which one of them was stronger, and how it varied with distance. It was all basically a wash.

“I never noticed this before,” Ichigo commented. “But you and Renji feel kinda the same. Like in the undertones.”

“That’s nonsense,” Rukia replied.

“No, you really do!” Once he noticed it, it was hard to un-notice. “Also, I’m listening to you both at once and it, kind of, um, hums? Whatsit called, when people sing the same thing at the same time, but at different pitches and it sounds really nice? Is that harmony?”

“Yes, that’s what harmony is,” Rukia grumbled. “And Renji can’t couldn’t carry a tune if someone threw one at him from the top of Sokyoku Hill.”

“I didn’t say anything about singing! I just said that your reiatsu… harmonizes.”

“It’s probably just because we were kids together,” Rukia excused. “Or you’re doing it wrong. You’re probably just-- Renji!”

Ichigo knew he wasn’t doing it wrong, because as Renji rounded the sharp turn in the path a few dozen paces ahead of them, Ichigo felt a little surge of emotion vibrate through Rukia’s spirit ribbon, and then an answering pulse echo back through Renji’s. It wasn’t like the angry flare of their fighting spirits at all. It was almost the opposite, actually, the relaxing of a muscle, the letting down of walls.

“Hey, what’s up, guys?”

“Hi, Ren...ji…” Ichigo trailed off. Spirit ribbon peculiarities abruptly flew out of his head as he actually caught sight of Rukia’s stupidly hunky boyfriend. A singular, bright ray of sunshine between the treetops perfectly illuminated the spot where Renji stood, catching all his sharp edges and lighting his stupid hair ablaze. Ichigo had certainly had a guycrush or two in his time, but he had never been broadsided with hotness like this before.

Renji was not wearing a shirt, that was the primary problem, and he was covered in a thin, gleaming sheen of sweat. When Ichigo went running, he mostly got sticky and damp-looking, like a wet sock that had fallen on the floor when the rest of the laundry got put in the dryer. He certainly didn’t get covered in a fine layer of artistic lustre with a few strategically placed drops of moisture enticingly running down the chiseled ridges of his muscled chest.

Maybe it was the tattoos. The tattoos were certainly helping. They were so mesmerizing that it took Ichigo probably a full minute to realize that Renji was wearing--

“Since when do you have shorts in Soul Society?” Ichigo exclaimed sourly.

“Huh?” Renji said, looking down and twisting his hips slightly, which unfortunately swung his rear end into view. His rear end was even better than his abs, which was honestly unfair. “Oh, these are my futsal shorts. They’re nice to run in. I get hot otherwise.”

He got hot. Right. Of course he did.

Ichigo was trying really hard not to look at Renji’s thighs, but the dude had incredible thighs. The thighs didn’t have any tattoos, which was a shame, because thighs like that deserved--no. Ichigo wrenched his eyes back up to Renji’s face, which was completely ruining his otherwise perfect Grecian sculpture impression. He had a big goofy grin plastered on his face, and his eyes were soft and crinkled around the edge.

It was the face Renji made every time he saw Rukia.

Cautiously, Ichigo’s head swiveled over to look at Rukia. He hoped she hadn’t died. He felt half-dead himself, he couldn’t imagine how Rukia, who was actually into the dude, was faring.

Mostly, Rukia was staring straight ahead, her mouth hanging slightly open. Ichigo very subtly kicked her in the ankle.

“You found the fucking pig!” wheezed out of Rukia’s mouth.

Ichigo hadn’t even noticed, but sure enough, a pair of red-rimmed, beady eyes peered suspiciously at them from the crook of Renji’s well-muscled arm. Renji looked down at her as though he had forgotten she was there. “Oh, yeah! I found this little baby snuffling around the woods, lookin’ lost! D’you think she might be one of Ganju’s? I mean, I know there are a lot of wild boar out here, but they don’t usually have ribbons around their neck or little lockets with their names engraved on them.”

“Is her name Calamine?” Ichigo asked.

“Clementine!” Rukia snapped.

“Clementine,” Ichigo corrected.

“Silly name for a boar, if you ask me,” Renji shrugged. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Looking for Clementine!” Rukia waved her hands in exasperation. “Ganju’s beside himself!”

“Aw, jeez, well let’s get back then. I did turn back as soon as I found her.”

“I should hope so!” Rukia scolded. “Although I wouldn’t put it past you to take a piglet on an exercise excursion! Speaking of things that are lost, what in the Nine Hells has happened to your shirt?”

“I told you, I get hot! It’s still here somewhere. Here, Ichigo, take the piggy.”

Clementine flashed a pair of yellow fangs at Ichigo, just daring him to try it.

“I will take Clementine,” Rukia announced, scooping Clementine into her arms and nuzzling the boarlet affectionately. Clementine seemed to enjoy this, oddly enough.

Renji shrugged back into his shirt, which had been hanging down from his sash. It was a short, sleeveless deal, the sort a lot of men in Rukongai seemed to wear. It shaved a sliver off his steamy-romance-novel-cover appeal, but Rukia was gazing at him with that misty, affectionate expression that Ichigo had never seen her use on anyone but Renji. Ichigo felt like he was missing something, but there was no accounting for Rukia’s tastes, never had been.

A weird feeling fell over Ichigo’s entire body. He simultaneously felt incredibly jealous of both his jerk-ass ghost best friend and her sexy ghost jock boyfriend, and also just… really, really happy for them.

“Both your faces are really red. Did you run out here?” Renji asked as they started down the road back to the house.

This just caused Rukia’s face to turn even redder. “We were arguing,” she excused gruffly.

Renji chuckled. “Figures.”

“Sorry your run got cut short,” Ichigo mumbled, hoping they could change the subject to something less embarrassing to him, personally.

“Aah, it’s okay. I was trying to do the thing Captain suggested-- thought Zabimaru would like running around in the woods. They did not, in fact, I guess maybe the idea of running for exercise is too formal for them, I dunno.”

“Renji, no one likes running for exercise, not even zanpakutou spirits,” Rukia pointed out.

“Gym teacher-ass zanpakutou spirit,” Ichigo threw in.

“Shut up,” Renji replied cheerfully.

“Like, what if Renji were a zanpakutou spirit?” Rukia continued. “And you had to do 600 bicep curls to get him to manifest?”

“I would rather die,” Ichigo declared.

“You’d die if you had to do 6 bicep curls.”

“Shut up, you!” Ichigo snapped. “Like you’re the queen of the weight room, stick arms!”

“Don’t call me ‘stick arms’, I bet I could beat you at arm wrestling!”

“Back in our school days, I used to be able to do two-handed bicep curls with Rukia,” Renji mused. “Like, as the weight. It was hard because she squirmed a lot.”

“You were such a menace, then,” Rukia accused, her face flushing red.

A laugh sputtered out of Ichigo’s mouth. The mental image was too much-- Rukia, absolutely furious, criticizing Renji’s form as he used her for a dumbbell.

“I’m much stronger now,” Renji went on. “I bet I could curl Ichigo.”

That mental image was too much, but in an entirely different way. “Dammit, Renji,” Ichigo muttered, his own face practically incandescent.

At that moment, they happened to emerge from the shady woods into the bright sunshine.

“You found her!!!”

Ichigo’s head snapped up just as Ganju barreled past, scooping Rukia, with Clementine in her arms, into a huge bear hug.

Apparently, Ichigo and Rukia had managed to find Renji, who had already found Clementine, in such record time that everyone else was just now exiting the house and getting ready to embark on their pig-hunting adventures. They were just in time, in fact, to see Renji striding out of the woods, flanked on either side by Rukia and Ichigo, red-faced and staunchly avoiding eye contact with one another.

Horrified, Ichigo looked up to see his entire family looking at him in various states of slack-jawed confusion. On the bright side, at least Byakuya still seemed to be entirely checked out. Or maybe that was just the face he always made.

“Well! Thank goodness that red hot nightmare is over!” Kuukaku announced, turned on her heel, and walked back into her house.

Chapter Text

“Good afternoon, art nerds!” Renji announced at the top of his voice. In his long acquaintance with Kira and Momo, he had learned that artists actually appreciated it when you approached them loudly so they had time to snap out of whatever weird art-flow they had enmeshed themselves in. Momo and Izuru didn’t usually appreciate being called nerds, but that was what they got for being friends with him in the first place.

Ichigo glanced up from his notebook, and Rukia’s curious face appeared around the side of her easel.

“How’s it going?” Renji asked, neutrally.

“Not… terrible,” Ichigo frowned down at his writing.

“Magnificent,” Rukia replied, her eyes glittering. “Prepare yourself.”

Ichigo shook his head and rapidly mouthed a bunch of words that Renji couldn’t even guess at.

Renji put his hands on his hips. “I am prepared!”

Rukia swung her canvas around.

It was so sparkly.

From behind Rukia’s shoulder, Ichigo was gesticulating wildly and pulling faces.

Renji stroked his chin. “Is Sode no Shirayuki actually a bunny-woman?”

Rukia looked slightly guilty. “I am not very good at drawing human-shaped people.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean anything by it!” Renji waved his hands. “I just thought that would be really interesting if she was!”

“She has different forms, but I was trying to draw her yuki-onna form, because it’s the prettiest,” Rukia continued, looking less confident. “But, you know. As a bunny.”

“She looks very pretty!” Renji reassured her. “I like all the detail you put into the kimono. It’s hard to draw white-on-white like that.” He took a moment to be grateful to Izuru, who had always been very good at complimenting Momo’s drawings, and also to Momo, who had complained about that white thing many, many times over the years.

“Ah, yes, I’ve actually used a bunch of shades of pale pink and lavender, but it tricks the eye, you see, because white reflects the things around it!” Rukia explained eagerly. “Hisana is a very accomplished painter. She’s taught me a lot.”

“I can tell!” Renji replied. “I didn’t want to say so at first, but you’ve improved so much since we were kids!”

A strangled gurgling noise came out of Ichigo.

Rukia did not appear to notice. A faint blush of pink had risen on her cheeks. “Well, after forty years, I would hope so.”

“I mean it! It looks really incredible, Rukia. I’m sure your zanpakutou loves it.”

Rukia looked thoughtful. “I’m not sure I felt her, but it’s so early. Usually she won’t come out before December at the earliest. I feel good about this as a practice though, I think I’m going to stick with it.”

Ichigo shook his head in horrified disbelief, and Renji shot him a stern warning glare.

“I might do another one,” Rukia mused. “I have plenty of art supplies! Do you want to do one of Zabimaru? I thought Ichigo was going to join me but he said he wanted to work on his poetry instead.” Disdain dripped from the word “poetry” like acid.

“Maybe later,” Renji agreed, his voice noncommittal. “I was actually coming to see if I could borrow Ichigo.”

Ichigo momentarily stopped making faces. “Borrow me? For what?”

“A little light roughhousing, if you’re up for it. No one’s using the training field right now.”

“Roughhousing?” Ichigo echoed.

“Yeah, you know.” Renji threw a few punches at the air.

“Didn’t you spend half the morning training with Byakuya?”

“Yeah, but it was all sword stuff. Byakuya doesn’t care for fisticuffs.” Renji used his best Byakuya-voice for the last word and Rukia’s face lit up with delight. “Look, there is nothing Zabimaru loves more than fisticuffs. Back in Eleven, you couldn’t walk around a corner without running into two guys giving each other the business, but it occurred to me that brawling with your pop the other morning was the first time I’ve taken a fist to the kidneys in ages.”

“Ask him, then.”

“I mean, I will if you don’t want to. I just thought it would be fun, you and me. For old times sake.”

“‘Old times’? You mean last month?”

“I’ll fight you if he won’t,” Rukia volunteered.

To be honest, Renji would love to go at it with Rukia. Rukia’s speed was famous throughout the Gotei, but not as famous as Renji’s devastating right cross. They’d fought a lot for fun and for practice as kids, and the fact that they occasionally kissed now had done nothing to dampen his itch for a rematch. But this had nothing to do with fun, or even with Zabimaru-- he was trying to get a feel for Ichigo’s unarmed combat style. He regarded Rukia with half-lidded eyes. “Maybe later, when your family isn’t wandering around everywhere.”

“Mm, getting punched in the face get you all hot and bothered, Abarai?” Rukia purred back.

“Ugh!” Ichigo exclaimed. “You guys are so gross!” He shuddered. “If I fight you, will you stop flirting with each other?”

“I will stop flirting with her where you can see it,” Renji said, at the same time Rukia said “I will never stop.”

Ichigo clapped his writing journal shut and stuffed the pen down the spiral binding before tossing it at Rukia. “Don’t sell my ballpoint pen on the black market while I’m gone. Also, don’t read my poetry.”

Rukia shuddered. “I would never read your horrible poetry.”

Renji regarded her sternly. “Rukia. Do not disparage a man’s poetry.”

Rukia screwed up her face into a pout. “You didn’t hear him earlier, ragging on my art! He was very mean to me!”

Renji’s gaze slid over to Ichigo, suddenly very cold and very hard. “You were making fun of her artwork?”

“Oh, come on!” Ichigo protested. “You have eyes, my dude!”

Renji cracked his knuckles in the very ominous way that he and Iba used to sit around their room and practice. “That’s it. This was gonna be a friendly fight, but that’s it. I’m gonna rearrange your face.”

“It can’t possibly end up worse than one of Rukia’s drawings!” Ichigo hooted.

“Get down off that engawa!” Renji howled.

“Fuck ‘im up, Renji,” Rukia growled. Something about this nostalgic display of support hit Renji right in the adolescent hormones. Even though he knew it was all joking around, Renji felt like he had just grown two inches taller.

Ichigo jumped down off the porch. “It’s like your pea-brain forgot what happened the last two times we did this.”

“I never forget,” Renji returned. “I just never learn, either.” He waved cheerfully to Rukia. “Back soon!”

She winked at him as she clipped a new piece of paper to her easel.

Several minutes earlier...

Hisana hummed to herself as she trotted through the hallways of the Shiba house, quite pleased with her own cleverness.

After lunch, everyone scattered to spend the heat of the day in various quiet activities (or as quiet as things ever got around here). Rukia and Ichigo set up camp on the west engawa for some creative pursuits. One accessed that engawa from a sunny room where Hisana had spent part of the morning embroidering while Touma played on the floor.

She waited for Byakuya to return from lecturing his lieutenant (Abarai seemed to require an awful lot of lecturing). “Oh dear,” she said, as soon as Touma was snugly nestled into his father’s lap with a storybook, “I think I must have dropped my sewing scissors in the sitting room. I’ll be back in a jiff.”

She knew exactly where her sewing scissors were. They were tucked into her sleeve. But they were a very convenient excuse to find herself only a thin shoji door away from perhaps a bit of interesting conversation.

Slowly, she eased open the door from the hallway to the sunroom-- and to her surprise, two small figures were already crouched by the outer door. The Kurosaki sisters turned wide, guilty eyes on her.

Thinking fast, Hisana affected an offended facial expression and frantically gestured for them to come out to the hallway. Shoulders hunched, the twins slunk out. Hisana shut the door behind them. “What were you doing?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Yuzu mumbled to her toes.

“I should hope not,” Hisana declared.

“What are you doing here?” Karin asked boldly.

Hisana affected an affronted expression. “I was sewing in that room earlier and I must have dropped my scissors. I came to look for them.”

“So you didn’t come to eavesdrop on your sister and my brother?”

“Karin!” Yuzu yelped.

Hisana raised both eyebrows.

“She wouldn’t’ve made us come out to the hallway to chew us out if she wasn’t worried about being overheard,” Karin pointed out.

Hisana knew that her husband had already taken a liking to Yuzu, but this Karin was one to watch out for as well. “Very astute,” Hisana commented, knowing when it was better to jump ship than to double down. “I don’t suppose you heard anything interesting?”

“Hold on a second,” Karin frowned. “I don’t see why we should share anything with you, unless you’re gonna share something with us.”

Oho, a formidable Shiba, indeed!

“I’ll agree to that,” Hisana nodded. “An even exchange. I’ll go first, if you like.”

“Why are you spying on our brother?”

“I was not. I was spying on my sister. I am trying to figure out if there is more to their relationship than she claims,” Hisana replied simply.

“What does she say their relationship is?” Yuzu asked, clasping her hands together eagerly.

“Ah, ah! Your turn-- why are you spying on your brother?”

Karin and Yuzu looked at each other for a moment. “We think Ichi-nii has a crush on Rukia and we wanted to know if it was mutual,” Karin finally answered.

A very useful piece of information indeed! Hisana decided to press on and see what else she might find out from these enterprising little sisters. “Rukia claims they are just friends,” she provided. “I am not entirely sure I believe her. What makes you think your brother is smitten with her?”

“Well, first of all, who wouldn’t be?” Karin mumbled.

Hisana gave a curt nod of approval. “Excellent point, go on!”

“Yesterday, when we went to town, we went to a kanzashi shop and there was one set that Rukia was admiring, and--”

“And after we left, Ichi-nii snuck back and bought them!” Yuzu broke in.

“Interesting! Did you catch him?” As if it would even be difficult. Kurosaki Ichigo had to be one of the least devious people Hisana had ever met.

Yuzu sucked her teeth guiltily. “I found them in his bag.”

“And what else?” Karin urged.

Yuzu scowled. “Don’t act like you weren’t there, Karin! Anyway, we read his journal and it was full of poetry he wrote! Ichi-nii is always paranoid, so it didn’t say her name, but it was obviously about how pretty she is and what a sweet and gentle soul she has.”

Sometimes men in love got strange ideas in their heads, Hisana reminded herself.

“It was super sappy,” Karin editorialized.

“He bought a book of Soul Society poetry, too,” Yuzu supplied. “I bet he wants to read it so he’ll know what kind of poetry Rukia likes!”

The kind of poetry Rukia liked was usually of the humorous variety that usually didn’t get printed in books or repeated in polite company, but Hisana wasn’t about to say it.

“That’s enough, I think,” Karin decided. “Your turn again. What reason would Rukia have to lie to you about not liking Ichigo if she really did?”

Damn, this child was canny! Hisana wondered if Byakuya would let them offer to foster the girls. He could teach Yuzu to stab things with swords and she could teach Karin all about wringing information from overconfident snobs.

“Rukia already has someone under consideration for a potential courtship.” That seemed sufficiently vague.

“You mean she’s already seeing someone?” Yuzu asked, sounding deeply dismayed.

Perhaps it had been too vague. “Nothing so official. My understanding is that there is mutual interest, but a decision has not yet been reached.”

“What kind of person is it?” Karin pressed, but Hisana only raised an eyebrow at her. Karin scowled. “Okay. Fine. This morning, when I went to tell Ichigo that Clementine was missing, I heard them talking and it sounded like--”

Unfortunately, Hisana didn’t get to find out what it sounded like, because a muffled bellow of “Get down off that engawa!” shook through two sets of shoji.

Three heads whipped toward the door.

“Who was that?” Karin wondered, her brow wrinkling. “It wasn’t Ganju.”

“It was Renji,” Hisana said without thinking.

Karin flung open the shoji and ran into the sunroom.

“Don’t--” Hisana started and then just ran after her instead.

By the time Karin got the outer doors open, Renji and Ichigo were already stomping their way out toward the field where all the people who liked fighting went to have a go at each other. Ichigo tried to punch Renji in the shoulder as they lumbered westward, but Renji just caught Ichigo in a headlock and frogmarched him for a few paces before Ichigo kicked Renji in the back of the knee and twisted himself free.

“Rukia, what happened?” Karin gasped.

Rukia seemed utterly unconcerned, engrossed in blocking out a new sketch. “The usual buffoonery,” she sniffed. “Don’t worry about it, they don’t have their swords.”

“Lieutenant Abarai sounded really mad!” Karin pressed, her brow creased with concern.

Rukia turned to regard Karin with a softer look. “He really isn’t. I tell you, they’re just fooling around.”

In fact, Hisana realized Renji was actually just doing his job, which was to try and figure out what Ichigo’s fighting skills were. She’d heard him say he was going to do that with his own lips, but the man was so earnest all the time that she’d been totally taken in for a second there. Young Abarai was more dangerous than he looked. Or perhaps he was just dangerous in entirely different ways than he looked. It was no wonder Rukia liked him.

Karin looked at Hisana, her face blank for a moment, and then her eyes went wide and she clapped her hand over her mouth. She spun to face her twin, still standing back in the hallway. “Lieutenant Abarai!”

Rukia shot a confused look at Hisana, but evidently, Yuzu got it right away. All the blood drained out of her face before she turned on her heel and dashed down the hallway screaming “Daddy! Aunt Kuukaku! Daddy! Aunt Kuukaku! Lieutenant Abarai is going to kill Ichigo! Daddy!”

“Oh dear,” Hisana sighed.

Renji faced Ichigo and dropped into a ready crouch. “Go ahead,” he encouraged. “You can take the first hit.”

Ichigo, still standing dead upright, cocked an eyebrow at him. “No thanks, Kenpachi.”

Renji bounced on the balls of his feet and flexed his fingers open and closed. “You sure?”

Ichigo continued to appear unconcerned. “Yeah, come at me, bro. Let’s see what you’ve got.”

Ichigo probably assumed he’d want to keep jawing, but instead, Renji shot forward, impossibly fast. Ichigo leapt to the side nimbly, less flatfooted than he’d looked, but Renji had expected this. Ichigo’s leg shot out in a disinterested kick, but Renji’s arm came up to block it with time to spare.

Ichigo’s eyes widened with surprise, as the force of the block reverberated back up his leg, and then his nose wrinkled when he realized that he was gonna have to work at this.

Renji threw a left hook, and Ichigo reacted by attempting to kick him in the stomach. Ichigo’s leg was longer than Renji’s arms, and it would have connected if Renji hadn’t spun out of the way. Whether Ichigo was expecting this, or his reaction time was just superlative, he aimed a punch at Renji’s head while he was off-balance. Instead, Renji swung up into a roundhouse kick. This didn’t particularly seem to surprise Ichigo either, he just let the momentum of his punch carry him to the side so that dropped down to duck under Renji’s leg. His movements looked so lazy and fluid that to watch him, you’d almost think he was moving in slow-motion, except that he wasn’t, he was blazingly fast for a human.

In other words, it was pretty much what Renji had expected.

Renji tended to consider himself a sword guy. From the moment the old shinigami at the District 70 Consolidated Shinigami Recruitment Station pressed a bokuto into his hand, worn smooth and shiny with use, he’d felt complete, like a limb had been restored that he’d never known he’d been missing. Zabimaru had been a difficult sword to learn and for a few years there, had taken up all of Renji’s time and energy. Difficult, but worth it. Renji wouldn’t trade a minute of those lonely late night practice sessions in a dim Fifth Company dojo or a single one of the thousand bruises Ikkaku had given him for a lesser blade.

Hakudo was more like… a hobby. And a fallback. From the earliest days he could remember, his fists had been one of the few things he could count on. As much as he liked having a weapon, he never wanted to forget how to fight without one.

What most shinigami called “hakuda” were the standard forms they taught at Shin’ou. Renji had no beef with classical hakuda. It was practical and useful enough for a shinigami who didn’t intend to specialize in unarmed combat, and it provided a good pedagogical foundation for those who did. Renji figured out that the standard advanced track of hakuda-- the stuff that got you into the Second or that weird shit the Kidou Corp practiced-- required the ability to very precisely manipulate huge amounts of reiatsu. It was the same skillset that allowed people to funnel massive amounts of power into destruction kidou, something that no amount of practice was ever going to make viable for him. It wasn’t until he got to the Eleventh that he learned that there was another school of hand-to-hand.

School was the wrong word for it, it was honestly more like detention. It was for big, dumb people with shitloads of reiatsu, but it involved using it as a cudgel instead of a dagger. It was a style that a lot of guys sort of came at independently, but Zaraki and Madarame had refined it into the most ass-pulled martial art Renji had ever seen. He loved it immediately.

Renji wasn’t sure if he was him or Iba or something they came up with together (probably while drunk), but he’d been at Eleven for a couple of decades at the point when one of them got the idea of combining Big Dumb Guy Hakuda with gross reiatsu control. It wasn’t the “turn your hand into a killing weapon” shit, it was more like, swing your entire spiritual pressure to one side to counterweight yourself on a really sick kick, or how to hold your brain in place so you didn’t give yourself a concussion when you headbutted someone really hard. Iba was more of a try-it-and-see-guy, but Renji felt like this merited some research, and what his research revealed was that someone had already invented this: the Shiba.

Shiba-style hakuda required a level of finesse and dedication that Renji didn’t have the time to put in, but he was really impressed by a lot of its ideas. He’d known how to sink his reiatsu into the earth to ground himself against both physical and kidou attacks since his first month of school, but the Shiba could ground themselves in moving water or even the air around them. The Shiba could focus their entire body’s worth of reiatsu down into their index finger and give you a forehead flick with the power of a sokatsui behind it.

Or at least they could, if there were any Shiba left. Renji had been vaguely aware of the loss of both Captain and Lieutenant Shiba, but he hadn’t realized that their entire house had been disbanded. The Eleventh wasn’t much for current events. Matsumoto knew a few Shiba techniques, probably more than she would admit, but she refused to teach him any because she said it would ‘ruin her image’ and that if she were caught teaching some guy from the Eleventh how to fight, her captain might start expecting her to ‘do things.’

So, the Abarai-Iba School of Hakuda for Cool Dudes Who Love Sunglasses had progressed without too much influence from the Shiba School, but Renji had read enough about it to recognize it as soon as Shiba Isshin had started using it against him at six o’ clock in the friggin’ morning while attempting to get his son out of bed. And, just as he had suspected, Kurosaki Ichigo knew all of the moves and none of the reiatsu control.

“Hey--HEY, stop for a minute!” Renji yelled when he had seen enough to confirm his theory.

Ichigo was too busy throwing a haymaker to listen. Renji simply ducked the blow and stepped forward, still bent over. He grabbed Ichigo around his midsection and then just stood up with 135 lbs of flailing teenager draped over his shoulder.

“This is mildly humiliating,” Ichigo finally announced when he realized he wasn’t going anywhere. “I am guessing you could have done that at literally any time.”

“Yeah,” Renji agreed, setting him back down on his feet. “Can I show you something?”

Ichigo glowered. “I guess.”

“Look, I am sure you are a very effective fighter in the Living World, even if you’re kind of chaotic. Your dad teach you to fight that way?”

“Yeah,” Ichigo grunted. “I know a little karate, but mostly it’s the Old Goatface School of Unpredictable Attacks. It works pretty well against the juvenile delinquents I usually fight.”

Renji nodded. “So, you know about mass, right? And momentum and inertia? The heavier something is, the harder it is to move, or the harder it hurts when it hits you?”

“Yeeeaah…” Ichigo said, narrowing his eyes skeptically. The Squad 11 guys always hated when Renji tried to explain physics to them, too.

“So, in Soul Society, you’ve also got reiatsu. And I know you knew how to use it as pressure-- how to drive the air out of someone’s lungs and shit like that. But you can also use it like mass.” Renji pulled up enough reiatsu to get a good glow going. “Imagine compacting it into a big weight or an anchor or whatever image works for you, and then you just drop it straight down.” He let his spiritual pressure thunk down into the earth. “Try to hit me.”

“I can see where this is going and I refuse.”

“Okay, fine.” Renji stood on one leg and started to lean over to one side. “Maybe this is a better demo anyway.”

Ichigo’s nose scrunched as Renji tipped over way past his natural center of gravity. “That’s creepy.”

“It’s weird, I know. Even for us shinigami. We start out with fundamentally human brains and human instincts, and you just have to unlearn that.” He pulled back against his own spiritual anchor and wrenched himself back upright, which he knew was even weirder. “Have you noticed that a lot of your attacks are just on the edge of being overbalanced?”

Ichigo rubbed the back of his head. “Yeah, that’s another of Dad’s dumb ideas. He says you always need to know the limits of what you can do and the most effective attacks operate just barely inside them.”

“And how often do you end up overreaching or misjudging?”

“Not as much as the old man does, I can tell you that.”

“Yeah, it’s almost as if he’s used to having some other means of counterweighting himself, eh?”

Ichigo blinked twice and then his eyes went wide and his mouth curled. “That fucker!”

“Well, the good news is, I think that as soon as you learn a couple of basic principles, you’re gonna get real good real fast.”

Ichigo glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “That’s sort of how I operate.”

“Believe me, I’ve noticed.”

Ichigo’s nostrils flared, and a moment later, his reiatsu burst into bright tongues of white-gold flame around him. “Compact it,” he recited carefully, and the flames abruptly sucked into his body. “Drop it.”

Renji felt the spiritual foundation of the ground beneath his feet shudder a little and he wondered absently if he shouldn’t have to get some sort of permit to teach Kurosaki Ichigo things. He cracked his neck. “I’m gonna bum rush you, how much Renji do you want?”

Ichigo took a deep inhale through his nose. “I do not want a Hihiou Zabimaru worth of Renji,” he declared. “Can I get a regular Zabimaru worth of Renji?”

Renji started to say that he didn’t have his zanpakutou on him, he couldn’t go to shikai, but then he realized that he could feel the shadow of baboon muscles overlaying his shoulders, the swish of a tail that wasn’t a tail. Finally, something that interested that asshole. Renji was able to resist the urge to paw the ground, but he did flash a little fang as he growled, “Here we come!”

Renji’s feet ripped great divots into the dirt as he tore across the training yard. Ichigo’s hair was standing on end, spitting off the occasionally golden spark. Both of them were screaming. Renji slammed into Ichigo’s midsection with the force of one large nue moving at high speed. There was the strange feeling of distortion, like a large boulder being dropped into the lake of reality.

Ichigo didn’t budge an inch.

For a brief moment, there was silence. And then, just as everything began to settle, a new barge-load of reiatsu rolled onto the training field.

“What in the name of the Soul King’s left nut are you dingdongs doing out here?” Kuukaku roared. “Besides breaking everything in my damn house?”

Renji and Ichigo abruptly fell over. They tried to stand up again, but kept getting their arms and legs tangled up.

“We were, um, training,” Ichigo tried to excuse at the same time Renji said, “Just horsin’ around a little!”

Kuukaku’s eyes slid back and forth over them as Ichigo tried to wrench his ankle out of Renji’s armpit. “You twits weren’t fighting for real, were you?”

“Huh? No!”

“Course not!”

“Renji was just showing me a trick!”

“Ichigo doesn’t know his own strength! What would we fight over, anyway?”

“Yeah, we’re pals now, besties, even!”

Renji finally managed to get to his feet. He grabbed Ichigo by the collar and hauled him up to standing.

Kuukaku appeared to be looking at something down at her side. “See? I told you they were just boys-being-destructive-idiots.”

Renji’s eyes drifted downward, and he realized that Ichigo’s sisters were hovering behind Kuukaku, looking a little nervous. Why would they think--?

Renji’s thoughts were cut off by a familiar, braying laugh. “I wouldn’t leave these two alone for five seconds, Kuukaku! I’m surprised your house is still standing!”

Kuukaku sighed. “The big one is Kuchiki’s subordinate. He saved a baby pig yesterday.”

“You should know better than to trust a Kuchiki! They’re perfectly polite and well-behaved right up until they aren’t. Don’t you remember my birthday party when little Byakuya dumped a bowl of anmitsu down the back of Kisuke’s shirt?”

“That was hilarious.”

“That was hilarious.”

“Why are you here?” Ichigo exclaimed in exasperation.

“Oh, yeah, we have a guest,” Kuukaku snapped. “Hell of a welcome, boys! She would have had a lapful of tea if her reflexes weren’t so good!”

Shihouin Yoruichi wagged one elegant eyebrow. “To be fair, I should have known better than to attempt to drink a hot beverage in your house. The girls were impressed, weren’t you, girls?”

“It was pretty cool,” Karin mumbled.

“Do you girls know how to juggle?”

“I can juggle!” Yuzu volunteered. “Daddy tried to teach us all, but Karin and Ichigo said they were too cool for it!”

“That’s where they are wrong! Juggling a foundational skill for many cool tricks. Later on, I will show you--”

“Why! Are you here!” Ichigo bellowed.

Yoruichi turned her smug, golden gaze on him. “I brought news.”

Chapter Text

--he knows the physical moves of the form, he’s just missing the entire half where you use your reiatsu to actually make it effective.”

Byakuya studied his adjutant’s calm, serious face. Abarai always delivered these sorts of reports as though recognizing the subtleties of extremely specialized fighting forms was just standard subject matter expertise that all vice-captains were supposed to possess. This was a thing Byakuya liked about Abarai. Quiet competence was not what one expected when looking at a young man like that, and yet...

“To be fair,” Byakuya pointed out, “the level of gross reiatsu manipulation required by the Shiba form isn’t exactly easy to pick up.”

“True, but this is Ichigo we’re talking about. If he made a concerned study of it, I’d give him six weeks before he could reliably kick my ass with it.”

“You know, if you’d asked me directly instead of being so vague about it, I could have told you Ichigo knew Shiba form,” Rukia grouched. “It’s not like I served under two expert practitioners of it for twenty five years or anything like that.”

Abarai looked genuinely stricken, a face that Byakuya wasn’t sure he was even capable of evoking in Abarai.

“I didn’t think of that.”

“Obviously.” Rukia shrugged. “It’s no matter. At least you had some fun.”

“It is my understanding that your hijinks destroyed an antique heirloom vase,” Byakuya pointed out.

“Oh, Kuukaku was having one over on you, and possibly trying to trick you into paying for it,” Hisana flapped a hand at him. “If you think there’s anything breakable in this house that’s more than a week old, you’re a mark.”

“Well, it caused me to mar my calligraphy,” Byakuya amended. “But in any case, thank you for the intelligence, Lieutenant. I will add it to the report.”

“Do you know Shiba form?” Renji was asking Rukia. “Like, can you do it?”

Byakuya noticed his sister’s eyes dart to him briefly, checking to see if he was paying attention. Kuchiki fought with swords, a fact he had needed to remind Rukia of frequently in her early days as a shinigami. It had been a bit of a tightrope walk in those days-- he appreciated the time and energy her Vice-Captain and Third Seat had invested in her, but it would be quite untoward for a member of his household to fight in the distinctive style of another house.

“I know some of the principles,” Rukia waved off. It was a half-truth, of course, the sort of polite fiction that had maintained Kuchiki family harmony for countless generations. Byakuya decided that he would cheerfully part with at least a million kan for the opportunity to see his little sister clobber his lieutenant with a Shiba headbutt.

Abarai clearly recognized this as a lie, as well, and looked in danger of vibrating out of his own skin as he suppressed the urge to demand that Rukia tell him everything.

Quiet competence. Insatiable enthusiast of arcane fighting forms. Keen observer of the complex rules of Kuchiki social mores, even if he was severely lacking in the formal etiquette department. It seemed impossible that Rukia could prefer the Kurosaki boy. If it were up to Byakuya, of course, Rukia would never get married. Their family was perfect, as far as he was concerned, although it had become slightly perfecter with Touma’s arrival. But if he must tolerate an addition… well, one could do much worse.

“Are you ready, yet, dear?” Hisana asked pointedly.

“Anything else, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir.”

“I am ready.”

Shihouin Yoruichi had suggested a brief meeting of all clan heads, present and former, before dinnertime. Byakuya was quite curious as to what intelligence she might have that she would choose to share with Hisana and himself. More likely than not, it involved money, specifically requests for.

“Rukia, if Touma gets tiresome, just call his nurse, please,” Hisana implored.

“I will,” Rukia replied in a tone that implied she intended to do no such thing. Currently, she was helping Touma to construct a model metropolis out of some wooden blocks. Rukia seemed intent on building the tallest, most spindly spire possible. It wobbled ominously over the rest of the city. Touma, who had a minor obsession with conveyances, was busy pushing a little red block along the thoroughfares.

“Blue cart, Auntie Rukia!” Touma shouted at her, waving a second block in her direction.

“I’m busy, Touma,” she replied.

“Blue cart, Renji!” Touma demanded.

“You are not required to be the blue cart,” Byakuya informed his adjutant as Hisana tugged him through the doorway.

“I can be the blue cart,” Renji shrugged amiably, dropping his lanky frame down on the floor between Rukia and Touma.

Byakuya and Hisana processed through the corridors in a dramatic fluttering of expensive silk. Byakuya always enjoyed going places with his wife, even if it was just from one part of a house to another part.

“He puts up with a lot,” Hisana said out of nowhere. Byakuya assumed she was referring to Abarai. “Rukia needs someone like that.”

“Rukia is a Kuchiki and a fine one,” Byakuya replied. “I think my lieutenant merely regards it an honor to be in her presence. As he should.”

“Right,” Hisana said slowly. “Look, do you really think he just picked a fight with Ichigo just for the purposes of seeing him fight?”

Byakuya looked at his wife, mildly perplexed. “Yes? What other reason would he have for ‘picking a fight’, as you put it?”

“Well, you know. Emotions. The sort of emotions young men tend to have.”

“You worry over nothing, Hisana. This was the plan from the start. He is merely going about his duty, admirably in my estimation.”

“Well… I know it was the plan, but… you really don’t think there was any more to it than that?”

“I truly do not.”

Hisana sighed, but she did not press the matter. “So, do we have a strategy going into this?”

“Disinterest.”

“Go on.”

“I care naught for anything Shihouin has to offer. I would have been happy to go another century without seeing her vainglorious smirk. Three centuries.”

“You never told me she was gorgeous.”

“So are poisonous serpents, Hisana. In any case, we are here because we have been invited. We have been invited because they want something. Our strategy is to sit back and allow them to try to tempt us into giving it to them.”

“I do like being tempted.”

Byakuya allowed the corner of his mouth to tip up coyly.

“How do you want to play it? Well, you always play the stoneface, but how do you want me to play it? Approachable wife? Sympathetic ear?”

“I would also like you to affect an unapproachable demeanor. We shall present a united front of utter disregard.”

Hisana drew in a sharp breath. “We are so sexy when we do that.”

“I am aware.”

Hisana was thoughtful for a moment. “You don’t have any guesses as to what this may be about?”

“I do not. I do not believe Shihouin has the proper permissions to even be in Soul Society at this time; as far as I know, her banishment is still in force, although I doubt there is the will to enforce it, given her recent actions and the state of the Central 46. I can only assume that her presence here is related to Kurosaki’s, that she was perhaps seeking support for him within her own clan.” Byakuya pursed his lips. “The fact that we are being consulted suggests that her entreaties were unsuccessful.”

“Mmm,” Hisana agreed.

“This is all conjecture, of course.”

“Of course.”

Isshin, Kuukaku, and Shihouin were already lounging around Kuukaku’s sitting room when Byakuya and Hisana swept in.

“I don’t believe it, they’ve changed their clothes,” Kuukaku groaned.

Shihouin appeared to be in the throes of ecstasy. “Shut your mouth, Shiba, I love a Kuchiki. They’re perfect.”

“I said we were just going to have a little chat before dinner, this isn’t some sort of Clan Conclave,” Kuukaku went on.

Byakuya and Hisana sank smoothly, in one perfectly synchronized motion, onto the pair of zabuton that were clearly for them.

“Play at extempore if you like, Shiba,” Byakuya replied coolly. “You have requested an audience with us and that is what you are receiving.”

“Can we just get on with this?” Isshin asked, uncharacteristically grumpy.

Shihouin gave him a curt nod, and placed her hands on knees. She was sitting in an atrocious, cross-legged position. “So, I’ve spent the last week in the city, catching up with some old acquaintances and trying to feel out support for our… little project.”

“Am I correct to assume that you are still legally a fugitive, and that it is a crime for you to even be present in Soul Society at this time, let alone the Seireitei?” Byakuya asked.

“That’s right. You never saw me, Bya-baby.” She clicked her tongue and winked saucily at him.

Byakuya did not deign to react.

“The good news is that my precious baby brother was very excited to hear of your return, and has begged me to extend his invitation that you stay at the Shihoin Mansion during your visit to the city.”

“That’s very generous of him,” Isshin replied in a carefully measured tone.

“Unfortunately,” Yoruichi went on, “my brother’s power is limited, and hospitality is about all you’re going to get from the Shihouin. It appears that the true power-holders of my clan refuse to acknowledge any claim Isshin might have as Shiba Clan Head.”

“That’s horseshit!” Kuukaku exploded. “They supported my bid for leadership before I was banished!”

Shihouin’s face was serious. “And that’s exactly the excuse they are using. They claim that you are the rightful clan head, that Isshin was bypassed from consideration then, and has therefore withdrawn any claim he might have.”

“He was dead at the time!”

“I really wasn’t,” Isshin mumbled.

“That’s stupid, anyway! My claim was ultimately rejected, and then the Shihouin voted along with the banishment because they said we couldn’t have a clan without a head! What in Hell do they want?”

Shihouin shrugged. “Of course it doesn’t make sense. It’s just an excuse. I’ll be blunt-- we all know my house is a nest of vipers, and a Fifth Great House back in the mix is an opportunity for some of the lower vipers to get their fangs into the current chief vipers, which, obviously, the chief vipers would like to avoid. They don’t care about the good of Soul Society or even the good of the Shihouin. With the Kuchiki distracted by keeping the Gotei afloat and the other two houses concerned only with their own finances, it is no disadvantage having a weak clan head to puppet.”

“If it came to a vote,” Isshin said slowly, “it would be up to Yuushirou, though.”

“That’s true! If you get that far, he’d cheerfully piss off everyone and support you with a big dumb smile on his face. I love that kid. But to get there, you need purse strings and political influence and we can’t help you with either of those.” Her golden, catlike eyes slid over to Byakuya and Hisana, who remained perfect statues.

“And that leads right into the other thing-- I have it on good authority that your visa to enter the Seireitei is going to be approved--”

“That’s great!” Kuukaku exclaimed.

“--conditionally,” Shihouin finished grimly. “I’d expect an official message in the next few days.”

“Knew it,” Isshin grumbled. “Don’t ‘spose you know what the condition is?”

“They want a hearing to address your desertion. Not the full Central 46, since it’s still basically in shambles. A subcommittee, probably, with special guest star Captain-Commander Yamamoto.”

Isshin groaned. “Why should I bother going, if they just intend to throw me directly in the Maggot’s Nest?”

“Because they don’t want to throw you in the Maggot’s Nest, obviously. They want you to see what you’re willing to do to not get thrown in the Maggot’s Nest, which could be as simple as a fine and as bothersome as them making you clean up Aizen’s old division.”

Isshin’s face crumpled. “They would at least let me have Rangiku and Toushirou back, though, right?” He glanced at Byakuya hopefully.

“Highly doubtful,” Byakuya conjectured. “The Captain-Commander is very fond of Captain Hitsugaya, primarily due to the efficiency with which he completes his paperwork. I believe you would need to negotiate with Captain Hitsugaya for Lieutenant Matsumoto.” Byakuya paused. “My impression is that you might have a chance there.”

Isshin didn’t look any happier. “I love Rangiku, but Rangiku without Toushirou is asking for it. You’re wrong, he’d never give her up, anyway, no matter how much he pretends he would.”

“What would be the point of a fine?” Kuukaku tried to steer things back on topic. “Since we don’t have it.”

“Pressure to put yourself in the debt of someone who does,” Yoruichi suggested. “I hear the new head of the Central 46 Subcommittee on Gotei Affairs is a Tsunayashiro.”

“Aw, jeez, are they still Like That?”

“I don’t know why you think they wouldn’t be,” Shihouin groused. “Nothing ever changes in Soul Society, least of all the personalities of the Great Houses.” Byakuya did not miss the way her eyes darted to him, if ever so briefly.

“I was against that appointment,” Byakuya noted. “The Tsunayashiro have pulled away from the Gotei since a scandal involving one of their branch families some years back. It is an insult for them to be given any sort of oversight over it.”

“Perhaps they wish to regain a foothold by allying themselves with a family willing to serve on their behalf,” Hisana mused. “I have heard much grumbling lately that the Gotei has too much power, mostly from those least concerned with it.”

“Astute, my darling,” Byakuya agreed, “but ‘allying’ may be too generous. ‘Controlling’, more likely.”

“Eh, don’t get your panties in a twist,” Isshin waved a meaty hand. “I’m dumb, but I’m not dumb enough to get myself trapped under the Tsunayashiros’ thumb.”

“It would be unwise, obviously, to enter this hearing without either having reached a prior agreement with the Captain-Commander or having negotiated the support of some rich and/or powerful entity,” Byakuya suggested with a heavy air of indifference.

“Look, Kuchiki,” Shihouin said, leaning forward. “I didn’t need to tell you any of this, but I thought you might find it useful. It would be nice if you could return the favor and at least tell us where you stand, vis a vis that support you just mentioned.”

“I am already doing you the favor of taking your statements at face value and not assuming this is all a ploy to force my hand,” Byakuya rejoined.

“Our trip out here was public knowledge,” Hisana added. “I have not yet dismissed the possibility that this is all a Tsunayashiro ploy to force our hand.”

“Agreed.” Byakuya let an appropriate amount of silence pass. “But because of the friendship between our houses, I will tell you: While I am hardly in the same position as your unfortunate brother, I do not reign over my house as an extravagant rake, throwing away the resources of the Kuchiki to my slightest whimsy. Regardless of my personal feelings for you, I cannot possibly offer material support without first consulting other high ranking members of my family. Further, if they were to agree to such support, it would not come cheaply. I may be a sentimental man, but my relatives will hardly be moved by the bonds of affection between your son and my sister. They will expect to be offered something more tangible.” He let another short silence pass. “If you wish, I can easily arrange an audience with Captain-Commander Yamamoto.”

Byakuya realized that Hisana was regarding him out of the corner of her eye. Only he, and possibly Rukia would have recognized the shock in her look, and felt a minor pang of embarrassment. What a soft touch he was becoming! He did not like to blame fatherhood, but he strongly suspected it was fatherhood that had made him thus.

Shihouin regarded him with a particularly catlike mien, as though she were searching for a tripwire within his words.

“Thanks, B,” Isshin said, his voice a little loud with false cheer. “I appreciate the candor.”

“Do not call me ‘B’,” Byakuya replied.

“I’ll have to think about if I have anything of tangible value,” Isshin went on, cocking his head toward Kuukaku. “Lifetime supply of fireworks? Ooh, you wouldn’t be interested in a late-model Toyota FunCargo, eh? Great family car. The children are absolutely mortified by it.”

“No,” Byakuya said quickly, before Hisana could manage to open her mouth.

“Eh, well, sounds like we have a day or so before I get the official summons,” Isshin shrugged. “Think about if there’s anything that might sweeten the pot for your relatives. You’re not my only option, of course, including the fact that we could obviously just go home. But as you said, the kids are friends.”

“We do, of course, wish you the very best of luck,” Hisana said very sweetly.

Kuukaku looked like she was biting her tongue to keep from saying something rude, but Isshin seemed determined to carry on with the pretense of cheer.

“Much appreciated!” he beamed. “That’s enough serious talk, I think. It’s past time for dinner, the kids’ll be chewing on the floorboards if we keep them much longer.”

“They’re not the only ones,” Yoruichi agreed.

Byakuya rose and offered his hand to his wife. She gave his fingers the tiniest of squeezes as he rose. He squeezed back in agreement. Everything had gone precisely as planned.

Chapter Text

“That was painful,” Ichigo sighed, poking at his tokoroten. At least they’d been allowed to take their dessert outside instead of having to listen to a third straight hour of Yoruichi gross-flirting with Hisana while Byakuya alternated between pretending like she didn’t exist and lobbing his dry, obscure Byakuya-sick-burns at her.

“I don’t see what you mean,” Rukia replied. She was sitting on the grass, trying to cuddle Clementine, who was either more interested in Renji or Renji’s dessert. “Lady Shihouin seems pretty amazing to me. Captain Ukitake has a lot of good stories about her, but she’s even cooler in person.”

“She’s not cool,” Ichigo insisted, even though he knew this was objectively false.

“I can’t believe you two got to train for bankai with her,” Rukia sighed wistfully.

“She punched Zabimaru in the baboon-face while Ichigo and I were taking a water break,” Renji noted. “Just to see if she could.” There was no judgement in his voice, he was simply relating a thing that had happened. “They weren’t even mad about it.”

“You don’t find it weird that she keeps hitting on your sister?” Ichigo grumbled.

“Hisana is very beautiful,” Rukia sniffed.

“Yeah, but she’s...married,” Ichigo protested.

“Nobles are just like that. If you flirt with single people, they might think you mean it. Flirting with married people is just a fun game.” Rukia gave Clementine a kiss on her bristly head and paused thoughtfully. “Well. Some people are trolling for affairs. That is very much a thing that also happens.”

“Also, your sister looks just like you. Doesn’t that… I don’t know…?”

“Does she?” Rukia looked at Ichigo blankly as though this had never occurred to her before. “You really think so?”

“You look identical, Rukia.”

Rukia blinked, then wheeled on Renji. “Renji! Do I look like Hisana?”

Renji chewed his jelly noodles contemplatively. “I mean. You look like sisters. I would never have trouble telling you apart, though.”

“You’re such a suck-up,” Ichigo accused.

“How is that sucking up?” Rukia shot back. “You’re the one who just said I look like the most gorgeous woman in Soul Society.”

“That’s not what I said!” Ichigo protested.

There was the shush of a shoji opening behind him. “Did I hear someone talking about me?” Yoruichi’s brassy voice rang out.

“No,” Ichigo grumbled.

“Hello, Lady Shihouin!” Rukia chirped.

“Lady Shihouin,” Renji added politely.

“We should hang out sometime, Kuchiki Junior,” Yoruichi announced, shooting a finger gun at Rukia. “I want to be friends with anyone who’s looked the Soukyoku in its beady little eyes and lived.”

“I also did that,” Ichigo pointed out.

Yoruichi ignored him. “Abarai! Good to see you’ve made it yet another day without Byakuya murdering you!”

“I say that to myself every morning.”

“I don’t even know Byakuya anymore, the man has gone so weird and soft. I blame your magnificent sister, Kuchiki.”

“I’m afraid I can’t comment, I didn’t know him before he met her,” Rukia admitted diplomatically.

“I did and will tell you stories,” Yoruichi remarked. “But unfortunately, I don’t have the time right now. Kurosaki! You up for a little walk? I’d like to have a word with you.”

Slowly, Ichigo dumped the last of his tokoroten from his bowl directly into the mouth, and set his bowl on the engawa next to Rukia’s, which was still untouched.

“We’ll take that in for you,” Renji offered, nesting his own bowl inside Ichigo’s. “Rukia, come eat your dessert! I’ll distract Clementine for you.”

“Okay, but you have to give her back when I’m done!”

“I promise.”

Ichigo hopped off the edge of the deck and followed after Yoruichi. He could hear Rukia asking Renji something about if he thought Hisana was pretty. Ichigo knew if it were him, that conversation would end with a faceful of Rukia’s pointy little knuckles. It might very well go the same way for Renji, but there was also a very real chance the dude might turn it around to his advantage. Renji seemed to have some sort of uncanny knack for just narrowly staying on Rukia’s good side, but Ichigo didn’t envy him whatever horrifying training he’d gone through to gain this ability. “Ganbatte, Abarai,” Ichigo mumbled under his breath.

Yoruichi set off at a brisk pace, like she had somewhere to be. “So, how’s it going, kid?”

“Uh, fine, I guess,” Ichigo shrugged. “Better than most vacations I’ve taken with the old man, since at least he’s got Ganju and Kuukaku to take up most of his attention.”

Yoruichi nodded, and it was obvious that she was only engaging in niceties until they were far enough away from the house. “I’ll be headed back to the World of Living later tonight,” she put out casually. “You got any messages for anyone on the other side?”

Ichigo swallowed. It seemed weird to ask Yoruichi, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. “Can you-- can you wish Inoue a happy birthday for me?” he asked. “Tell her I’m sorry I missed her birthday party.”

Yoruichi made a face like he’d just asked her to kiss a boar. “I meant Shinji! Or Kisuke! I’m not getting in the middle of your little high school romances! Gross!”

“Sorry,” Ichigo hunched, embarrassed.

Yoruichi made a face of deep discomfort. “I heard they moved the party anyway.”

“What?” Ichigo gasped.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about it,” Yoruichi muttered. “I think they were gonna hold it at the Shouten and then they came to their senses and decided to wait until you got back so they could use your backyard.”

“Oh,” Ichigo echoed. “Great! Er. I mean-- I hope they did something nice for Inoue for her actual birthday!”

“I don’t know!” Yoruichi snapped defensively. “Why would I know? I… I’m sure they did, your friends are very thoughtful.” She cleared her throat with an uncomfortable rumble, and adjusted the collar of her jacket.

“I do not have any messages for old Hat-n-Clogs or Hirako,” Ichigo changed the subject quickly. “Should I?”

Yoruichi took a quick glance backwards, gauging their distance from the house. “How is your Hollow, dummy?” she hissed.

Ichigo’s mouth opened and then closed again. “Oh. Um. He’s fine.”

Yoruichi stared at him like he was a moron, which, to be fair, he was.

“Er. I… haven’t seen much of him, actually? That was the plan, right? I’ve been following all of Hirako’s rules and I’ve been doing my meditations!” Ichigo scratched the back of his head. “He did show up once. I was sparring with Byakuya and…” Ichigo didn’t really like admitting things like this, but the Shouten folks and the Visored had been really helpful so far. “I panicked a little and he showed up. It was dumb. I’m sorry.”

“How bad was it? Just the mask or did you lose control? How did Byakuya react?”

“Huh? Oh, no! No, it wasn’t that bad! He was just creeping around my head, being a dick. Renji knocked me on my ass and yelled a battle plan at me and then I was okay after that.”

Yoruichi looked surprised. “You recovered? That’s great!”

“Well, it’s not like I can get Renji to follow me around and smack me whenever my Hollow starts to come out.” Ichigo frowned. “You know, he might actually go for that, now that I say it.”

“Look, kid,” Yoruichi said, hitting him on the shoulder with the back of her hand. “You saved all of Soul Society, I don’t want to diminish that, but you’ve only been fighting with a sword for what, three months, now? Byakuya is, and this causes me great pain to say, one of the strongest captains in the Gotei. It’s understandable that you’re gonna have a moment of losing your cool. The more confident you become in your fighting, the less that’s gonna happen.”

“Do you think that means I should do more bankai training?” Ichigo asked eagerly. “Maybe more sparring instead of Hiyori’s stupid treadmill?”

“I’m not the boss,” Yoruichi shrugged. “But it sounds like you could make a case for it.”

“Cool,” Ichigo declared. “Well, tell ‘em I’m doing a real good job and they don’t have to worry about me.”

Yoruichi looked confused for a moment. “When I asked…” she said slowly, “I wasn’t so much asking about you...personally...but...like imagine I’m Kisuke, asking his little nerd questions. How has your Hollow reacted to being back in Soul Society? Does the higher reishi content here give it more power? Is it restless, being in a plane that it doesn’t belong to? It doesn’t sound like that’s the case.”

Ichigo stared at her. “Urahara thought that might happen and he let me come, anyway?”

Yoruichi shrugged. “It’s not that he thought it would happen. More like… it could happen? I mean, you know him, always thinking the big thoughts.”

Ichigo did know Urahara and “thinking the big thoughts” was not how he would have put it so much as “letting people do things he knew were bad ideas, just because he wanted to see what happened.”

“Well, you can tell him the Hollow’s been pretty quiet, actually,” Ichigo replied. “Weirdly so, actually. Back home, he’d been showing up in my dreams every couple days, but I haven’t had a single Hollow dream since I’ve been here. Maybe that’s just because I haven’t been doing my Hollowification training, but I sure don’t miss ‘im.”

“That’s good news,” Yoruichi nodded. “I’ll pass it on.”

Ichigo knew, intellectually, that his Visored friends were technically banished from Soul Society, just like Urahara and Tessai, but it had never occurred to him that they didn’t even know what would happen to them if they came back, if they even could come back. He wondered if any of them had friends or family that missed them as much as Kuukaku and Ganju had missed his dad.

“Uh, tell everyone I said hi, too, and that I’m working hard,” Ichigo said very quickly.

Yoruichi looked at him out of the corner of her eye, and the corner of her lips quirked up. “Okay, kiddo.”

“Is… is that it? Is that what you wanted?”

“That was the main thing,” Yoruichi replied. “I’ll probably see you again in a week or so, assuming you end up going into the city.”

“What are you doing here, anyway? Ichigo prodded.

“Helping,” Yoruichi supplied unhelpfully.

“You had bad news for Dad, didn’t you?” Isshin had been obnoxious and boisterous during dinner, as usual, but Ichigo had noticed him fall quiet and contemplative a couple of times whenever someone else was carrying the conversation. Ichigo was pretty familiar with this mode of Isshin-depression-- trying to act “normal” and almost, but not quite pulling it off.

“It’ll work out,” Yoruichi replied. “Don’t worry about it. Your dad is going to need to accept someone’s help, which is hardly the worst thing in the world. I just came by to give him the lay of the land.”

“Can’t you help?” Ichigo asked. “You’ve got a noble house.”

Yoruichi scoffed. “If I could, we wouldn’t be going through any of this. Everything’s fine, though. Everyone seems to be acting very predictably.” Yoruichi’s brows creased. “I think. I’m gonna ask you something and it’s gonna make us both feel profoundly weird, are you ready?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Ichigo wrinkled his nose.

“You and Rukia-- you’re not a thing, right?”

“Gross, Yoruichi! I don’t want to talk about this with you!”

“I know! I told you it would be weird! Just say yes or no!”

“No!” Ichigo protested, and something in his chest loosened. It was no longer a token protest to plaster over a bunch of undefinable feelings he didn’t feel like interrogating. It was just the truth. He and Rukia were not a thing.

Yoruichi breathed out a puff of air. “Good. That’s what I thought.”

“What do you mean, ‘good’? What the Hell does it matter?”

“Well, for starters-- and I am telling you this so you don’t have a heart attack and die the first time you hear this from someone who isn’t me-- the broader Seireitei rumor mill thinks that the reason Byakuya hauled his bony ass out to the sticks--which he never does, by the way-- is because he’s trying to angle a marriage arrangement for his sister.”

There was a strangled gurgling noise and Ichigo realized it was coming from his own throat. “Why-- why would anyone think that?” he gasped.

“Because you rescued her in a rather dramatic fashion and nobles love drama?” Yoruichi shrugged as though this were all very obvious.

“Renji was there, too!”

“Renji works for Byakuya and was acting under Byakuya’s orders,” Yoruichi pointed out. “Which is not to say that the other rumor mill doesn’t have their own ideas about him.”

“What’s the other rumor mill?” Ichigo wheezed. His face felt very hot.

“Oh, just a couple of gossipy old Gotei captains I was having a drink with,” Yoruichi said off-handedly. “Apparently, it is generally accepted among the lieutenants that he has a huge crush on her.”

“You can’t know him for ten minutes without figuring that out,” Ichigo grumbled.

“My point is that you might think twice about getting into fistfights with him if you don’t want people jumping to conclusions.”

“Me? That meathead started it! Did people think that was a real fight?” All of sudden, the thing Yoruichi was implying fully soaked through Ichigo’s skull and washed over his brain. “Did people think we were fighting over Rukia?” he gasped.

“That was the general impression that I got,” Yoruichi said dryly.

“Who? Who said that?”

“Oh...just… seemed to be the general vibe. Apparently, he also dragged you and Pint-Size out of the woods, blushing this morning, as well? That was a thing I heard?”

Ichigo sputtered. “We were blushing because we accidentally saw Renji with his shirt off and his abs are honestly kind of overwhelming!”

“I see,” said Yoruichi in the tone of someone who has made a bad decision or two in their life for the sake of a really good washboard stomach. “The situation is complicated.”

“It’s not!” Ichigo protested. “It’s not complicated at all! Rukia is the best person I’ve ever met and I’d die for her and Renji is really hot and a weirdly good friend but they’re both way too much for me and also they like each other and I like-- I don’t like anyone!”

Yoruichi patted him on the head. “You’re okay, kid. Crushes are normal. You can admire someone, or think they’re hot, or look at a relationship and think that’s something you might want for yourself someday without actually wanting to act on any of it. It’s healthy. People get crushes on me all the time, you know--

“You can stop now. You’ve ruined it,” Ichigo cut her off.

“Whatever. I’m not your camp counselor. In any case, wrong impressions tend to be contagious, so you might want to do what you can to set the record straight. As abhorrent as it may sound, checking in with your pop might be a good idea.”

“I will definitely not be doing that,” Ichigo reassured her. “But thank you for telling me all this in the most distressing way possible.”

“No problem-o!” Yoruichi replied with a wink.

“Have a good trip home,” Ichigo mumbled in the barely audible and begrudging way that only a teenager could manage.

“I will! And I will definitely remember to tell the cutest girl in Karakura Town, whom you also do not have a crush on, that you miss her deeply, and that you hope she did not pine for you too tragically on the day of her birth.”

“I hope Urahara forgot to buy those little cat soups you like!”

“That is very hurtful, Ichigo. Also, Tessai is the one who buys my little soups, and he would never forget me.”

“Dammit,” Ichigo grumbled. “You’re right.”

Chapter Text

Renji glanced up over the top of his book as Ichigo climbed into bed with a great deal of huffing and blanket rearranging. They’d been rooming together for a few days now, and this was actually the first time he’d seen the kid go to sleep. Usually, Ichigo would be up into the wee hours, reading or scribbling in his notebook long after Renji had rolled over and passed out.

“Turnin’ in early?” Renji asked.

“I guess,” Ichigo admitted. “You want me to leave the light on?”

“Nah, I’m good,” Renji replied, putting his paperback aside.

Ichigo turned down the little oil lamp and the two of them lay in the darkness.

Renji had spent roughly ten years falling asleep across a room from Kira, who never stopped worrying, and thirty years falling asleep across a room from Iba, who never worried about anything.

“Something eatin’ you?” he asked.

“Kinda,” Ichigo’s voice wafted back, sounding a lot smaller and more unsure than Renji usually expected from that walking pile of bravado. “I wanna ask you something, but it’s gonna be really embarrassing.”

“Embarrassing for me or embarrassing for you?”

“Just… everyone.”

“Hit me with it.” A lot of embarrassing things had happened to Renji over the course of his posthumous existence. It wouldn’t be precisely correct to say he could no longer feel embarrassment, but he could take a lot of it before it started to bother him.

“Was Rukia your first love?”

Renji thought for a moment. Not about the question. He knew the answer to the question. It’s just that over forty years of forcing his friends to listen to his Rukia stories and put up with his moods and his manic schemes for defeating Kuchiki Byakuya, no one had ever actually asked him if he loved her, and he had certainly never volunteered that information. He’d never said it out loud. Not even once.

“Yeah,” he replied.

“Mm,” Ichigo agreed in a way that indicated this was mere confirmation of what he’d already suspected. There was a long pause. “I thought she might be mine, too.”

This, too, was a confirmation to what Renji had suspected. “As first loves go, you could do a lot worse,” he pointed out.

“Well, I’m not actually sure,” Ichigo admitted. “I mean, she was honestly just a pain in my ass at first.”

“Same,” Renji affirmed.

“Like, when she was in Karakura, if you had asked me if I was in love with her, I would have said no so fast.” He paused. “And then after you and your jerk boss dragged her back to Soul Society, I… I felt like my heart had been ripped out. All I could think about was that I had to save her, that I couldn’t let her die.” He let out a big breath. “But then I fought you that second time, and I realized that you felt some kinda way about her that was a lot like how I felt, but, like, with this entire extra dimension to it.”

Renji was quiet.

“Which was honestly crazy to me! I didn’t think it was possible to feel more feelings for Rukia than I already did, but you managed it somehow. This man is absolutely bonkers, I said to myself.”

“Thank you,” Renji replied.

“And once I had to go home, I thought I would be really, really sad. And I was kinda sad, but it wasn’t the absolutely devastated level of sad I had expected. It was like, as long as she was okay and happy, I could be okay, too. I missed her, don’t get me wrong, but I’d expected to feel ripped in two and I...wasn’t.”

Renji remembered expecting to feel that if Rukia was okay and happy, that he could be okay and happy, too. He hadn’t. He’d felt ripped in two.

“And then there’s this other girl I know that I told you about, Orihime. Well. I hadn’t really thought much about how I felt about her, until I tried sorting out my Rukia feelings. It wasn’t really on purpose, I just… I guess I was looking for some sort of baseline for comparison.”

“And?”

“And... I don’t have great big feelings about Orihime. I just have a lot of little feelings, but the little feelings add up, you know? Sometimes she smiles at me and I feel like I could bench press a horse.”

“I do know that feeling.”

“She’s a really good person, maybe the best person I’ve ever met. She’s kind to everyone, even strangers on the street and worms that she finds and Ishida. And you’d think that someone like that, like, they wouldn’t be fun, like you couldn’t joke around with them, but she has the buckwildest ideas and a great sense of humor and you can drag her and she’ll just laugh and drag you back.”

“It sounds a lot like you like her.”

“I do! I do like her! But...it’s not what I felt for Rukia. And I don’t even know what it is I feel for Rukia!” Ichigo heaved a big sigh. “It is not lost on me that you are the possibly the least appropriate person for me to be having this conversation with, but I feel that there is something very Rukia-specific about this that only you would understand. Maybe Orihime would understand but she’s probably even less appropriate.”

“Naw, it’s okay,” Renji replied, staring up at the dark ceiling. “I’ve had a lot of the same thoughts, except that I’ve had them over the course of fifty years and you’re getting them all at once, and that’s gotta be pretty overwhelming.”

“I guess my question is,” Ichigo said slowly, “what is being in love like? What is being in love with Rukia like? Was it love at first sight?”

Renji chuckled. “Hardly. I can see how you might guess that, but the fact is, we knew each other for years before it, y’know, dawned on me. That’s a thing I think about sometimes-- did it take me a long time to fall for her, or was I in love with her the whole time and just too dumb to realize it? It doesn’t matter, I guess. At least that’s what I tell myself, since I can’t ever decide.”

“So how did you know, then?”

“It wasn’t one big moment. There were a couple of medium-big moments that sort of led to it, I guess.” Renji had told a lot of Rukia-stories over the years, but he had never told anyone these particular Rukia stories. Usually, he enjoyed spinning a bit of a yarn when he told stories, but he found that he couldn’t. It was hard enough just to get the bare bones out. “She got hurt real bad once, almost died. I had to carry her up to this quack doctor in District 77, tied to my back. It’s a long hike, and I was alone in the dark, and I spent the entire time terrified that she was gonna bleed out before I got there. That’s when I knew that me and her were permanent, that we were stuck with each other.” He swallowed. “That I couldn’t go on without her.” That was the worst one, he hoped. “There was another time. We were out in the river, it was sunset. She was looking at some flowers. I was trying to stab a fish with a stick. And then I looked up at her and the sun caught her in just the right way and she was just the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. She’s been beautiful to me ever since.”

“I realize this is off-topic, but I need to know: did you actually stab the fish? I do not think I could successfully stab a fish with a stick.”

“I was really good at it.”

“Really?”

“No, I was balls at it. It’s almost impossible to stab a fish with a stick, but if you keep trying, you get one eventually and we were really hungry.”

“Okay. Sorry for the interruption. Go on.”

“Right. Well, I guess the real ‘love’ realization happened the first time I kissed her.”

“Ah. Love at first kiss. That’s pretty good.”

“It wasn’t our first kiss. It was the first time I kissed her. She’d already kissed me…” he did a little mental arithmetic, “four times at that point. Rukia’s kind of… aggressive, y’know?”

“I want to be surprised, but somehow, I am not.”

“And the thing is, the realizations happened at the big events, but the falling in love happened sometime in between, maybe when we were dragging each other and laughing at it, or when I was trying to stab a fish and failing, or when we just weren’t paying attention. And I think you had a bunch of big events with Rukia and none of the small in-betweens. Maybe you’d feel that way about any of your friends who were in mortal danger. Or maybe you’d really fall in love with Rukia if you had the time and space to do it. I don’t think there’s one right way for these things to happen.”

“You are very understanding, considering you are Rukia’s actual boyfriend.”

“Kurosaki, I honestly don’t understand why everyone in Soul Society isn’t in love with Kuchiki Rukia. It’s kinda nice to have someone who understands for once, instead of just yelling ‘Shut up and go to sleep, Abarai!’”

“Well, the good news is, I’m pretty sure I’m not actually in love with her. I’ve spent the last couple of days hanging out with you two and wondering what it would be like to be with her, and honestly, I don’t know how you do it. I’m tired just watching you.”

“I am the happiest I have ever been, to be honest.”

“I believe that and it horrifies me.”

“Well, how does the idea of being with Orihime make you feel?”

There was a long pause. A very long pause. And finally, “It seems so nice.”

“Mm,” Renji agreed.

“But what do I know? Maybe I’m wrong about that, too!”

“Maybe you are. Only one way to find out, really.”

Another long pause. Renji got the feeling this one wasn’t going to resolve itself.

“Hey,” he piped up again. “Tell me an Orihime story.”

“Er, what?”

“Look, if you’re really into someone, you got at least one story about them. Do you have an Orihime story?”

“I can’t tell an Orihime story!”

“Why not? You told me a Chad story the other day.”

“That’s different!”

“How?”

“Well… er… well, because I like Orihime too much. If I start talking about her, I’ll start gushing and it will be embarrassing.”

“We established up front that this whole conversation is embarrassing. I tell you, this is good for your soul. Anything. How did you meet?”

“That’s not a good story. Look, she’s really just someone I know from school. I don’t have any good stories about her.”

“That’s horseshit. I have at least ten good stories about Rukia from school and we weren’t even in the same classes.”

Ichigo made an irritated sound from across the room. “What, you want me to tell you about the time we had to do a group project on Beowulf and she wrote this one-man stage play where she played all the parts and me and Tatsuki and Chad had to build a bunch of scenery and make sound effects?”

“I don’t even know what Beowulf is and I want to hear this story desperately.”

“So first off, Beowulf slaps, you should get on that. It’s an Old English poem about a guy who fights monsters, except that in Orihime’s version, it took place in the 1970’s, and most of the action occurs in a bowling alley instead of a mead hall. I just realized that you have absolutely no cultural context for any of this.”

“I don’t care, keep going.”

“Let me start from the beginning. I always try to do group projects with Chad, because he’s quiet, but he is secretly a group project MVP. Usually, we do our group projects with our other friends Keigo and Mizuiro, but in this case, Orihime tricked me into being in her group by coming up and asking me to be in her group and being very cute.”

“What could you do?” Renji lamented.

“What could I do??” Renji couldn’t see Ichigo throwing his hands to the sky, but he could picture it clearly. “It turned out that she needed someone to carry lumber for her, so I guess maybe Chad was the real target there, I was just collateral damage. By the way, Tatsuki is Orihime’s best friend, I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned her yet. She’s terrible to work with in a group project because she’ll punch you in the arm if you don’t do everything Orihime tells you to do and she is very strong and it hurts.”

Renji closed his eyes and stretched his legs and got comfortable in his bed as he listened to someone else hold forth with great enthusiasm on the topic of a person who was, in their estimation, perfect. How many times over the years had he subjected Kira to this, and later Iba? They were both whiners, in Renji’s opinion. This was actually quite pleasant.

Once the story about the group project (which was very entertaining, even missing the context) got going, it took only the lightest of coaxing to get Ichigo to describe Orihime’s role in The Great Storming of Soul Society, which rolled into a detailed explanation of Orihime’s powers without any prompting at all.

Renji’s body was tired and he was comfortable and it was so peaceful to listen to Ichigo talk about-- was he talking about Orihime’s hands now? Hands. Damn. Kid had it real bad.

In any case, falling asleep ought to have been the easiest thing in three worlds, but there was a not-unpleasant feeling weighing on his own heart.

He loved Rukia.

This was in no way surprising to him. Just as he’d told Ichigo, he’d known this since Adolescent Renji had leaned down and pressed his wind-chapped lips to Adolescent Rukia’s, and his young, unbroken heart sang I’m yours, I’m yours. But it had been an impossibility then. A secret to keep deep within himself, never to be spoken aloud. Then they had been at the Academy, and for a few, brief, shining months, his chances had gone from none to slim. He’d been utterly blinded by that tiny chance, had chased after it with all he had, and the next thing he knew, she had slipped right through his fingers. An impossibility once again.

He trained. He drank. He fought. He kissed other people. He gave up drinking. He trained more. He told stories in the dark to roommates who wanted to strangle him. He told stories in bars to friends who loved him anyway. He kept training. Someone gave him a badge. The chance clicked back to slim. He very nearly blew everything again but all that training came in handy and here he was now, his chances sitting at hey-this-could-actually-work.

It seemed ridiculous to tell her at this point. It had been, what, three weeks since Lady Hisana made him come over for dinner? It was only the night before that Rukia had agreed to the idea of officially seeing each other… at some nebulous point in the hopefully near future.

Ichigo began relating the gripping tale of the day Orihime had come to school with her hair in braids. At this point, the kid seemed completely oblivious to whether or not his audience was still awake or not.

The thing was, Renji had never been sure whether Rukia knew how he felt about her and was polite enough not to mention it, or if she was truly in the dark. In his youth, this had worked to his advantage, in the sense that it avoided a lot of embarrassment for him. But now, it seemed like the reverse might be true. If she did know, it might be good to have it out in the open. And if she didn’t know… well, that might be the source of the hang-up. That night by the lake, under the stars, he’d been more open with her than he ever had before, and he felt like maybe her shell had cracked open, just a hair, in return.

What he’d told Rukia was true-- what they called their relationship didn’t mean half a shit to him, and he wasn’t particularly concerned about what her family called it either, as long as they didn’t forbid her from seeing him. But if Rukia was tying herself up in knots because she was unsure of his position? Unacceptable.

Anyway, it’s not like he’d just met her three weeks ago. While he was absolutely delighted every time he found about some new skill she had cultivated or heard some new tale of her accomplishments in the Thirteenth, mostly the last three weeks had been a process of remembering, of shaking out a favorite summer yukata that had been packed away so long that you’d forgotten how comfortable it was. Most importantly, if he, Abarai Renji, proclaimed his love for a girl after an embarrassingly short period, so fucking what? Rukia knew how he was. It wouldn’t even be in the top five boneheaded things he’d done in the course of their acquaintance. In all likelihood, she’d probably find it charmingly in-character, and take great joy in dragging him over it.

“--she always turns me down, but then she makes this face, and I wonder if I should insist? That seems pretty pushy, and I really don’t want to be that guy. Then, I get wondering if I should stop offering to walk her home altogether? I just don’t know!”

“Ask twice,” Renji said around a big yawn. “Ask, she declines, say ‘are you sure, it’s really no trouble?’ and if she says no again, drop it. But I bet she doesn’t.”

And then he promptly fell asleep.

Chapter Text

The messenger arrived on Wednesday.

He bore a large, official looking missive, stamped with the Central 46 seal, which Isshin accepted with the facial expression of a man being offered a tadpole smoothie. There were a handful of other letters, too, on fancy, expensive-looking stationery. Rukia noticed the Tsunayashiro mon on the top one, but she didn’t catch any of the others.

Rukia let Byakuya criticize her sword form for an hour while Isshin and Kuukaku went to argue with each other in the fireworks shed.

Then the argument got moved to Kuukaku’s sitting room, and Byakuya’s presence was requested.

Rukia let Yuzu braid her hair while Renji and Ichigo kicked a football around with Karin. Then they swapped and Rukia kicked the soccer ball while Renji got his hair braided. Eventually, Yuzu decided she needed an extra hand and Karin ran to help.

“Do you know what’s going on?” Rukia asked Ichigo softly. “Was your dad’s visa denied? He looked pissed before he even opened it.”

“I dunno,” Ichigo replied, trying to do a trick with the soccer ball and failing. “He didn’t say. I think Yoruichi gave him some kinda head’s up, but he hasn’t said anything to us yet.”

Rukia wanted to be sympathetic, but she had no idea where to start. “Well, you were wanting to get home anyway, right?” she tried. “So maybe it’s good news for you after all.”

Ichigo opened his mouth and then closed it again. “Er. Well. Yeah. I guess. I mean, I definitely do want to get home, but, uh. Well, the trip has gotten a lot more fun since you and Renji showed up. It’d kinda be nice to hang out a little more. Renji said he’d take me to go say hi to Ikkaku and that he’d even keep Kenpachi from beating me up.”

“He’s lying to you, he can’t do that.”

“I figured, but I thought it might be fun to see him try.”

Rukia twisted her fingers together. “I, er. I wasn’t trying to get rid of you or anything! I do hope things work out!”

“No, I understood what you meant!”

They both fell silent for a moment, not quite knowing what to say. Rukia wished she could say something like “I’m sure Brother will help,” except that she wasn’t. “I’m sure Brother would like to help,” she said instead, “but he doesn’t make decisions for himself, he’s always considering what’s best for the clan and the costs and the side effects and a dozen other things. I know he seems mean sometimes, but it’s only because he has to compartmentalize his brain like that.”

Ichigo made a face. “If you say so.”

“He’s very grateful to you,” Rukia replied. “For. You know.”

The awkward silence descended again.

Suddenly, Isshin appeared in the doorway. “Kurosaki family, assemble!” he hollered. “Important meeting time!”

Rukia gave Ichigo a reassuring punch on the shoulder. “Good luck,” she said softly.

“I need it to get through one of this clown’s family meetings,” Ichigo grumbled, passing the ball to Rukia with a gentle kick. “I just hope he makes it quick.”

The Kurosaki kids stampeded up the porch and into the house (Kurosaki, just like Shiba, had a tendency to travel in herds). Rukia futzed with the ball for a few minutes, flipping it into the air with her toe and trying to catch it on her knee. She and Hisana used to enjoy horrifying the servants by kicking a ball around the courtyard, but they hadn’t done it much since Touma became a concern.

Rukia noticed that Renji was watching her appreciatively. “Probably about time to teach Touma how to kick the old ball around, don’t you think?” she declared.

“I don’t know much about kids, but it seems like if he’s old enough for a practice sword, he’s old enough to learn how to dribble,” Renji agreed.

“That’s what I’m gonna tell Byakuya after Touma sends a ball through the window of his study,” Rukia declared, catching the ball in her hands, and then ambling over to plop down in the spot on the engawa next to him.

“You think we’ll be headed home early?” Renji asked idly.

“Hard to say,” Rukia replied.

Renji wrinkled his nose. “I kinda hope not. It’s nice being out here. Not looking forward to expense reports and whiny babies who think they’re too good to do push-ups.”

Rukia nodded. “I didn’t even want to come on this trip, but you’re right. It has been nice.” Rukia put her hand down on the engawa next to Renji’s, close enough for their hands to touch, pinky to pinky.

A smile crept onto Renji’s face, although he didn’t look down.

“Also, y’know, I hope things work out for Ichigo’s family,” Rukia added. “And it would be awful fun to hang out with Ichigo in town again. What’s this I hear? You offered to take him over to the Eleventh? I thought we were supposed to be trying to convince him to stay.” She bumped her shoulder into his playfully.

“Oh, that’s just my secret scheme to sell him on the Sixth. A trip to the Eleventh pretty much makes every other squad look good in comparison.”

Rukia chuckled. “You can’t have him in the Sixth-- between the two of you and Brother, you’d never get anything done again.” An odd thought struck Rukia suddenly. “Unless you’re planning to foist him off on Brother and go get your own squad, Mr. Bankai Haver.”

Renji’s eyes went wide. “Wha--? Er, well, that’d be a pretty funny trick for sure! I was just jokin’, though. I mean, I’d love the kid to hang around for the rest of his visit, but at the end of the day it seems like he’s got some stuff back in the Living World he’s hoping to go back to.”

“Mmm,” Rukia agreed. “True.”

Renji was uncharacteristically quiet for nearly a minute. No, “uncharacteristic” wasn’t the right word. Renji had been a thoughtful kid, way back when. He’d grown into a shouty, bellicose teen, because that’s what Inuzuri tended to produce, and stayed that way because that’s how the Gotei liked its recruits from the Outer Rukon. It touched Rukia’s heart a little, that there was still something of the quiet, introspective boy down in there somewhere. “Hey, Ru,” he said suddenly. “There’s, uh, something I wanted to tell you. It doesn’t have anything to do with Ichigo. This… probably isn’t the best time for it, but if we do end up going home early, I’m not sure when we might get to talk like this again.”

“I think we’re up to about eighteen dates that I owe you.”

“I know, and I’m gonna hold you to every one of them. But we never know if the captain’s gonna make me work late or Shuuhei tries to make a scoop out of us or we run into one of your cousins or who knows what. The sun’s shining and the birds are singing and you’re here and I’m here, so I feel like I should just say it.” He moved his hand so that it was on top of hers, and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Ru. Rukia. I was doing some thinking and--”

There was suddenly the sound of very loud footsteps, and the shoji slammed open. “I need to talk to you!” Ichigo said very loudly without making any sort of eye contact, walked straight off the engawa and down the path that led to the woods, without even slowing down.

Rukia and Renji looked at each other in alarm.

“Renji…” Rukia said helplessly.

“It’ll keep,” Renji promised. “Let’s go.”

They caught up with Ichigo at the edge of the woods and followed him as he stomped on for a ways further, walked in a circle for a minute, and then crammed the heel of his hand into his eye socket. “I don’t know how to tell you guys this, but I think I have fucked things up big time.”

“What have you done?” Rukia demanded.

“I don’t… I don’t even know!” Ichigo threw up his hands.

“This is not helpful, Ichigo!” Rukia yelled.

“What happened?” Renji asked quietly.

The only reason he could possibly be so calm, Rukia thought, is because he doesn’t know the level to which Ichigo is capable of fucking a thing up.

“Well, Dad said he wanted to talk to us,” Ichigo frowned, pacing back and forth as though he was trying to make sense of it himself. “He was being manic, cheerful Dad, which generally has absolutely no correlation to the seriousness of any news he is delivering.” Ichigo shook his head, like he was trying to clear cobwebs. “He said, ‘good news, kids, my visa was approved, we’re going to the Seireitei next week!’”

“Well, that’s great!” Renji said cheerfully.

“You would think,” Ichigo replied, his eyes narrowed. “But then Karin said, ‘then why were you confabbing with Byakuya all morning?’ and my dad says, ‘oh, I had to cut a deal with him’ and then starts going on like he does about what a good dealmaker he is and how he got the better end of it and stuff. I kinda was just assuming it was all bullshit, you know what an ass he is, but then after we left, my sisters pulled me aside, and they said…” Ichigo squeezed his eyes closed and drew in a deep breath through his nose. “They said ‘Don’t worry, Ichigo! We told Dad all about how you’re in love with Rukia!’”

There was a long silence.

“How you’re WHAT?” Rukia demanded at the top of her lungs.

“I’m not!” Ichigo protested. “And this is a thing I have given careful consideration to and I am just very much not! And obviously, you’re in love with another person, but you had to be cagey about it, and I think they’re gonna make us get arranged married and I’d honestly rather you just stabbed me again!”

“Why would they think that?” Rukia asked, grabbing at her hair desperately.

Ichigo’s shoulders slumped. “Mostly just wishful thinking. You really could have tried to be less cool, Rukia.”

“Impossible,” Rukia replied.

“Aaaaand they may have snooped through my stuff and found those hair combs I bought for Orihime and also a significant amount of poetry I wrote with her in mind.”

“Oh ho HO!” Rukia laughed mirthlessly. “Now who’s the one whose caginess got us into this?”

“Fine! We’re both guilty! Now please reassure me that your family loves you and would never arranged-marry you off against your will.”

“They wouldn’t,” Rukia said, mentally replaying every conversation she’d had with Hisana this week, and rapidly coming to a very bad conclusion. “Except that, in my attempts to misdirect my sister’s attention, I may have… let her come to some incorrect conclusions regarding my feelings for you.”

“Rukia!” Ichigo howled.

“I didn’t do it on purpose! I just… didn’t correct her. It’s her own fault for presuming!”

“I assume you two would come to this conclusion on your own eventually,” Renji, a disgusting voice of reason, pointed out, “but you’re just going to have to own up.”

Ichigo made a face. “I dunno. I tried to set my sisters straight and I do not think I convinced them of anything. They think I’m just being stubborn and denying it. My dad is kinda the same way-- once an idea gets through his thick skull, it’s hard to dislodge it.”

Rukia tugged at her hair. “Not only that, but we could risk insulting each other’s houses, if they’ve gone to all the trouble of hammering out some sort of deal and then we ruin it. They have been remarkably nice to each other this week, but Byakuya and Kuukaku have not historically gotten along very well. I can see this degrading into ‘What do you mean my nephew isn’t good enough for your sister?!’ and vice versa in about two seconds flat.”

“We just have to be very careful, I guess…” Ichigo scratched his head.

“--to say nothing of the position it puts Brother in,” Rukia felt herself start to spiral. “He can’t just help out another house, a fallen house, without getting a good deal out of it. The Clan Elders will shit a brick. ‘You could have gotten that stupidly powerful Kurosaki boy into our line,’ they’ll say. ‘Who cares what your wife’s useless sister wants?’”

“So, what? You’re suggesting we just… go through with it?” Ichigo yelped.

“No, I’m not saying that at all! I’m saying we need to figure out some gesture that definitively says ‘we are not into one another, ha ha, why would you have thought that?’ without us actually having to say out loud that it’ll be a rainy day in Hueco Mundo before we marry each other.” Gears were turning in Rukia’s head. She could do this. It was just another grift, a matter of planting an idea in someone’s head and then convincing them it was their own idea. Hisana was a difficult mark, far more difficult than Byakuya, anyway, but tricking her wasn’t impossible. Rukia glanced up at Renji. She didn’t want to ask for his help, but he’d always had an incredible insight into people, and their two-man grifts had been second-to-none.

“I do kinda wanna clarify that if you were, say, being executed and the only way to save you was to marry you, I would do it. I’m not disgusted by the idea, I just think that there’s probably a better--”

“You’re not helping, Ichigo!” Rukia barked. Except that Ichigo had just knocked loose something Hisana had said to her just a few hours before Renji showed up to her house for dinner wearing his New Year’s haori with his heart pinned to its sleeve. The best way to avoid getting married off is to marry yourself off first.

“You know,” Renji was saying, “you don’t even know for sure that anyone’s arranging marriages at all. I still think clearing the air is the right way to go, but at this point, you two are the ones jumping to conclusions.”

Rukia wasn’t really paying attention. “Renji,” she said. “How would you feel about doing me a really big favor?”

Chapter Text

“I want to tell everyone we got engaged,” Rukia said, crossing her arms over her chest. “I want to tell them that you, Abarai Renji, were overcome by the beauty of nature and your feelings for me and you forgot propriety and proposed to me and I said yes and now we’re getting married.”

Ichigo’s face was absolutely aghast. She hadn’t seen him so horrified since that time Kon took over his body and kissed Orihime.

Renji’s face was inscrutable.

“Noble engagements can last for years,” Rukia went on. “We can always call it off once Ichigo’s family has taken care of… whatever the Hell you’re doing here, anyway. We should have plenty of time. The chance that Hisana loses her mind and tries to rush us off into matrimony is acceptably small, I would say.”

“Rukia, that plan is bad,” Ichigo sputtered.

“It’s not, it’s good, actually,” Rukia shot back. “It takes a Kuchiki-Kurosaki marriage off the table without either of us having to openly reject the other. I’ll tell Hisana that I’ve been sneaking around with Renji, which explains all my weird behavior, primarily because it’s the truth.”

“It’s a bold play,” Renji said, his voice sounding strangely flat. “When you make a bold play, it raises the stakes, makes it harder for the other party to call your bluff. You’re giving your sister exactly what she’s been asking for, and if she tries to turn around and calls you a liar, she’s gonna feel like a huge heel.”

“Exactly!” Rukia agreed.

“Dude, you cannot be considering this! This isn’t even your problem!”

Renji regarded Ichigo out of the corner of his eye. “Believe it or not, I would be kinda upset if Rukia got engaged to someone else.”

Ichigo shrugged. “Even if she married me, I’d still let you kiss her. I wouldn’t mind.”

“That is really not the point, Ichigo.”

“You’re sure this is what you want to do?” Renji asked, and his somber tone drew Rukia’s attention back to him. “I know that three seconds is two more seconds than you usually like to take to make a decision, but just for me, can you give it another think-through?”

Rukia nodded and began to review the idea in her head once again. It involved admitting that she had lied to her sister, which she did not care for. On the other hand, Hisana was going to have to simmer in a stew of her own nosiness, so maybe all that was a wash.

And she could be with Renji. Openly. She realized it was that awful, interminable courting phase that she was dreading so much-- aunts offering their thoughts on him and their unwanted advice. Elders talking over whether or not they were a good match, as if those old goats deserved any sort of opinion on the matter. No, Rukia would just declare I have chosen this man, and the Kuchiki could just deal with it.

Renji was a good man. He was the best. Some poor noble girls never even got to meet their husbands before they were stuck with them. Even though they were still in the process of getting to know each other again, she knew, had known almost immediately, that at his core, he was the same person she had loved and trusted for so long. She liked him and she liked being with him, and every day that passed made her more confident of those feelings. The idea of being engaged to Ichigo, who was a friend and also a very good person, had made her body flood with panic. The idea of being engaged to Renji, even just for the purposes of a grift, felt sort of… nice. Fun. Exciting.

“I’m sure,” she declared.

“That was seven seconds,” Ichigo deadpanned. “I counted.”

Renji nodded curtly. “Okay. I’m in.”

Ichigo's eyes threatened to bug out of his face. “Renji, don’t let her bully you like this!”

“You think that’s bullying?” Rukia wound up. “I will show you bullying--”

“Asking a person for help with a con is serious business,” Renji defended. “Rukia and I were partners before anything else, maybe even before we were friends. I don’t have any better ideas and she seems pretty confident about this one--”

“‘She sEems pRetTY coNFidEnt!’” Ichigo warbled in a devastating sarcastic singsong that only a teenager could pull off.

“--and I trust her,” Renji finished, ignoring him.

“You’re only acting like this because you’ve never pulled a grift with me,” Rukia sniffed. “I am very good at it actually.”

“I’ve never pulled a grift with you? What do you call doing your soul reaper duties for you while you called in phony reports?” Ichigo accused.

“That was not my best work,” Rukia sniffed. “Also, we got away with it for a pretty significant amount of time, you have to admit.”

“Look,” Renji butted in. “We all know how much you two love to do this and you don’t get to see each other very often, but can we get down to business? Ichigo, I understand that you don’t like this, and I’m sorry about that, but we are going to need you to play along or it won’t work.”

Ichigo’s mouth opened and then fell shut again. “What do I need to do?” he mumbled.

“It’s always easiest to stick close to the truth,” Renji suggested. “You’ve known we’re together from day one and you’ve been helping us sneak around. You don’t need to volunteer any of this, but keep that idea in your mind and react accordingly. You’re not surprised by any of this and you’re not upset, either. That will go a long way in making this believable. On the other hand, Rukia’s trying to do her thing, and you’re making that dumb face in the background, it’ll throw the whole game.”

Ichigo made a grouchy face, but said nothing.

“You might also consider telling your sisters that they were wrong and you’ve got a crush on someone else, but that’s up to you.”

Ichigo made a horrible face. Rukia agreed with him there, she would never volunteer that sort of information.

“Can you do that?”

Ichigo gave a grumpy sigh. “I can do the playing along. I will consider the part where I tell my sisters.”

“You’re a good friend. This means a lot to us.” It was amazing really, how sincere Renji sounded when he said things like that. Rukia knew if she had said it, she’d just come off as an asshole.

“Yeah,” she added, trying to throw in her support as well.

If Ichigo seemed reassured by any of this, it didn’t show.

“Next order of business: I ask Rukia to marry me.”

Ichigo’s horrible face reappeared. “I’m, uh, gonna give you two some privacy,” he announced.

“Don’t leave!” Rukia shouted. “He’s not actually going to ask me!”

“I’m not?” Renji’s eyes went wide.

“No, of course not!” Rukia waved her hand dismissively at him.

“I could.”

“You don’t need to.”

“I feel like I do!” Renji protested. “If I have to tell people I proposed to you, at least let me propose to you!”

Rukia grimaced. Why was he always like this? Did he not already realize what a huge favor he was doing for her? “It’s really not necessary, I promise you.”

Renji’s face scrunched up, but he didn’t say anything.

Good, Rukia thought. Good. Because if Renji really did propose, no matter how shitty a job he did with two minutes notice, it would make her feel like a real heel for taking advantage of his good nature like this.

“You do realize people are going to ask you how it went,” Ichigo pointed out dryly. “You might as well let him do it so you can get your stories straight.”

“No one’s going to ask,” Rukia argued. “And if they do, I’ll just tell them it was very personal.”

“Are you crazy?” Ichigo scoffed. “My sisters and my dad will sob all over your shoes until you tell them.” He paused. “I imagine your own sister will also… do something? What does your sister do when she gets desperate for hot goss?”

Rukia’s eye twitched.

“Rangiku will ask,” Renji murmured. “Momo, too. Izuru won’t ask, but he’ll make sure to be there when Momo asks. Shuuhei…” he trailed off.

“No!” Rukia replied, jabbing a finger in his direction. “I’m not letting your friend write a dumb puff piece about us! Who would want to read that, anyway?” As soon as she said it, she remembered that “Rich People Getting Engaged to Other Rich People” was an actual feature, which Hisana liked to read out loud over breakfast, with commentary. “Fuck.”

“Maybe faking an engagement to get out of another engagement isn’t such a good idea, upon further reflection,” Ichigo postulated. “Just spitballin’ here.”

“You! Shut up!” Rukia barked, before swinging back to Renji. “You! Fine! Do whatever you’re going to do! If you make it heartfelt, I’ll punch you in the stomach!”

Renji made a face like she just had punched him in the gut. “I can’t make it heartfelt?”

“I am definitely leaving now,” Ichigo announced.

“No!” Rukia and Renji shouted together.

“Look, if it was gonna be heartfelt, I might stick around, but--”

“C’mon, man, help me think!” Renji begged, squeezing his eyes shut and rubbing his temples.

Ichigo made the same face he made whenever Uryuu came up with a plan. “No.” He swung back to Rukia. “Look what you’re doing to this poor man! He’s gonna hurt himself, and then Byakuya will make me be his lieutenant, and no one will be happy. I will just tell my dad that… I’m already engaged. That should work just as well, right?”

Rukia glared at him. “I bet you’ve never even given Orihime one of those sappy love poems you wrote for her, and now you’re secretly engaged?”

Ichigo’s face went bright scarlet. “I wasn’t gonna say it was to Orihime! Maybe… um… Chad?”

“Chad’s too good for you.”

“Orihime is also too good for me! And what were you doing, reading my love poetry?”

“Retching, mostly!”

“Shut up, shut up, both of you!” Renji shouted. “You’re ruining the mood.”

“What mood?” Ichigo exclaimed. “Is there a special candle you burn for making bad decisions in the middle of the woods while forcing your good pal Ichigo to look on? You got a mixtape for that?”

“Lady Kuchiki Rukia!” Renji barked in his best Early Morning Drills voice. Rukia and Ichigo both involuntarily shut their mouths and stood up straighter. Renji cleared his throat. “You are the finest woman in Soul Society! Your sword is unyielding! Your courage is indefatigable! You are brilliant and witty and beautiful!”

Rukia had no idea that it was possible to melt a person’s heart by shouting at them, and yet, there seemed to be a warm and gooey feeling gathering behind her rib cage.

“I cannot offer you wealth or power or fame, because you already have all of those things,” Renji plowed on. “But when we had nothing, I found a roof to put over your head and waded in the river until I found a fish for you to eat. It is my greatest pleasure to be by your side.” He dropped to one knee, a position that looked a lot more like a soldier bowing to his commander than a man proposing. “My sword is yours, as is my soul. If I had it on me, I’d offer it to you right now. I would fight an army for you, or with you, as the case may be. If you are lost, I will find you. If some idiot throws you from a great height, I will catch you.”

“Hey!” Ichigo protested.

Renji ignored him. “I will carry your shamisen case across the entire Seireitei. I will always let you have the spicy curry rice. You may have admirers that are stronger, or richer, or more handsome than me, but there is no one who loves you more. Kuchiki Rukia, I am begging you, will you have me as your husband?”

Rukia’s tongue seemed to have grown three sizes in her mouth. The corners of her eyes burned. This isn’t real, she reminded herself. If you cry, you will look a fool.

Renji was looking up at her, his eyes as patient and earnest as always. If he felt a fool as well, it certainly didn’t show.

“Rukia, you made him do this, if you don’t say ‘yes’, I am gonna punch you in the stomach,” Ichigo grumbled.

“Shut up!” Rukia snapped at him, which seemed to break the clog in her throat. She turned back to Renji, and smiled at him as gently as she could. “Abarai Renji. I don’t want your sword. How are we supposed to fight side-by-side if I have to carry both our swords, you silly man? Give me your hands instead, I want to hold them while I accept the rest of your proposal.”

Renji made a very serious face and held out his hands. She nestled hers in his palms, his thick, leathery skin warm and rough against her own calloused fingertips. “I would be honored to be your wife,” she replied softly, and leaned forward to brush his lips with her own.

After a few moments, a throat was cleared rather angrily, and Rukia straightened up, her face beet red.

“Ever since I met you, I keep seeing things I wish I could unsee,” Ichigo scowled. “If you two want to fake make-out after your fake proposal, that’s fine, but can I leave now, please?”

Renji’s hands tightened on hers, and at first, Rukia thought he was going to tell Ichigo to go ahead and bug off, but, instead, he was just using her to haul himself to his feet.

“It was a real proposal, and she real-accepted and we’re real-engaged now until one of us breaks it off or Byakuya finds out and puts all my insides on the outside,” Renji corrected sternly. “It’s like you’ve never run a grift in your life, aside from the one Rukia involved you in against your will.”

“I haven’t! Because I’m normal!”

“That’s not even debatable,” Rukia replied dryly. “But Renji is correct. Keeping track of things you are really doing versus things you are pretending to do is critical to the success of a grift. Although, you had it a little backwards, there, champ. We’re not actually engaged until Brother approves it.”

“What, you wouldn’t forsake your family and your title for him?” Ichigo grumbled, crossing his arms over his chest.

Rukia’s chest went tight. Renji’s grip on her hand suddenly tightened.

“Hey, do us a favor and don’t joke about that, okay?” Renji said gruffly.

Ichigo’s face dropped. Rukia suddenly realized she had no idea how much of their history Renji had actually told him.

“Uh, um, sorry. But, seriously, have you considered what happens if Byakuya says no? What if you’re forcing his hand and he comes back with ‘no, you can’t marry Abarai because I was thinking about marrying you off to Kurosaki and now I’m definitely gonna’?”

“He won’t do that,” Rukia replied. “He might reject the proposal, but he wouldn’t turn around and make me marry you instead. Hisana wouldn’t let him. That’s the whole point.” She frowned. “And even if he did, then you could turn around and say you don’t want to marry a girl who’s in love with someone else. Hisana says that Shiba don’t force marriages.”

“What if he gets mad and fires Renji?”

Oh. Rukia hadn’t actually considered that. Her eyes darted to Renji. His shoulders were stiff and his face was serious.

“Then I ask Kira if I can stay at his place and I start training for the Captains’ Exam,” Renji shrugged. “I hear there’s some positions open.”

He had thought about it. He’d probably considered what would happen to him if all this went south from the very beginning. Rukia felt like she’d swallowed an entire jar of pickle juice. As usual, she’d been too wrapped up in her own petty concerns to appreciate how much higher the stakes were for him.

“Renji…” she said softly.

Renji gave her hand a softer, more reassuring squeeze. “Seems unlikely. If he were that against it, I’d think he would have warned me off earlier. My bet’s on ‘Come back later, when you’ve made something of yourself.’” He paused. “Which also involves training for the Captains’ Exam, but at least Kira doesn’t have to put up with my snoring.”

Somehow, that didn’t calm the churning in Rukia’s gut. This had seemed like such a good idea ten minutes ago, when she had thought it up. It had seemed like an amazing idea five minutes ago, when he was pledging his undying loyalty and kissing her.

“But like you said, it still accomplishes the plan, right?” Renji tugged at her hand. “Hey, Ichigo, on the off-chance that we actually get the ol’ stamp of approval, do you think your sister would make us another cake?”

Ichigo gave a deep, resigned sigh. “The Kenpachi himself couldn’t stop her.”

Chapter Text

“Hello, dears!” Hisana called over the wails of the toddler on her hip. “Have either of you seen my sister or Lieutenant Abarai?”

“No, ma’am!” Shiroganehiko replied. He was wearing an apron and making onigiri with one of Ganju’s oddly dressed friends, presumably for lunch. “I’m not sure the kitchen is the best place to be looking for either one of them, if you don’t mind my saying.”

“Lady Rukia is a fan of the baby boars,” the delinquent offered helpfully. “Might check out near the pen?”

“I already tried there, but thanks,” Hisana sighed, jostling Touma on her hip.

She’d tried everywhere, and couldn’t find either of them or Ichigo. Somewhat hopelessly, she wandered back into the sunroom where Isshin had managed to talk his daughters into a game of cards. “I don’t suppose in the last five minutes--”

Suddenly, the outer shoji slid open and Ichigo’s disheveled head poked inside.

“There you are!” Hisana exclaimed.

“Me?” Ichigo replied, looking horrified.

“Have you seen Rukia or Renji?”

Ichigo’s head was suddenly jerked backwards, and replaced by Rukia’s roughly a foot lower. “I’m right here!”

Renji’s head popped in, too, a foot and a half higher. “Me, too!”

Hisana closed her eyes in relief. “I’ve been looking for you two all over. Byakuya wants to see you.”

Rukia trotted into the room, Renji a few steps behind, and Ichigo bringing up the rear, looking as slouchy and grumpy as usual.

“Your cruel sisters are defeating me soundly, Ichigo!” Isshin bemoaned. “Come play cards with us so you can share my humiliation!”

“Yeah, sure, why not?” Ichigo shrugged. He shot a quick glance to Rukia, before turning his attention to his family.

“Oh, Touma, what’s wrong!” Rukia made a beeline for her nephew, and Hisana gladly handed over her sobbing, snot-covered offspring.

“Daaaaaa-deeeeeeee!” Touma wept.

“Did something happen to Brother?” Rukia asked as Hisana let them through the twisting corridors of the house.

“Your brother is fine,” Hisana replied coolly. “For the moment, anyway. He has deemed it necessary to return to the city.”

“We’re going home?” Rukia echoed, patting Touma’s back.

“As far as I know, the rest of us are staying here. Hence the tears.” Hisana paused. “Perhaps he wishes one or both of you to accompany him, he gave me very little detail.”

Rukia and Renji exchanged a rather intense glare, but they were promptly interrupted by Touma bawling “Daddy leave! Renji stay with Touma!” and attempting to hurl himself at Renji.

Fortunately, both Rukia and Renji had excellent reflexes, and the two of them managed to pull off an act of child-transfer that was somehow simultaneously an act of graceless floundering and the flawless execution of a perfectly synchronized maneuver.

“Hang in there, buddy.” Renji righted Touma, who had inverted himself somewhere along the line, settling the boy against his hip. “We gotta go get our orders. No point in fussin’ before you even know how it’s gonna be, right, Future Vice Captain?”

There was some unspoken tension between Rukia and Renji, Hisana could feel it in her bones, and she hated it.

“That’s a nice hairdo, Lieutenant Abarai,” Hisana said lightly, trying to loosen things up a bit. There had to be a story as to why Byakuya’s usually strapping second had his hair in a loose, unpretentious plait. It wasn’t a bad look, in Hisana’s opinion, it softened his entire rough-and-tumble aspect. She suspected that if the man were to let his hair down entirely, he might just be an irresistible dreamboat.

“Thank you, ma’am, the Kurosaki girls do nice work.”

“Mine looks nice, too, right, Sister?” Rukia perked up, tilting her head to either side, so Hisana could observe the neat little braids pinned behind her ears. A few little pale blue wildflowers were tucked amid the twists.

“Very nice,” Hisana agreed. “Renji didn’t get any flowers!”

“They ran out of time, ma’am,” Renji explained very matter-of-factly.

“Ah, such a pity!” Hisana sighed. “Do you think they would do mine later?”

“I’m sure they’d be delighted, Sister,” Rukia assured her, as Hisana slid open the door to the room that she and Byakuya were sharing.

Inside, Byakuya was already wearing his shihakushou and haori and sifting through his luggage. “Ah, Rukia, Abarai,” he said, looking up. “I must return to the city.”

“Squad business, sir?” Renji asked, somehow managing to seem very soldierly despite his pretty braid and the small child slowly dampening his side.

“Ah, if only,” Byakuya sighed. “Although I hope to stop by to ensure that Ohno and Kuchiki have not reduced the place to matchsticks in our absence.”

“Not much you can do if they have, sir.”

“Very true, Lieutenant,” Byakuya sighed. “No, there are politics afoot, and the Shiba have finally put aside their bloated sense of pride and asked for my assistance.”

“Er, do you think you’ll be able to help?” Rukia asked hesitantly.

“I am quite confident that I shall be able to apply the proper leverage to resolve the current issue,” Byakuya replied.

“How long will it take?” Rukia pressed on. “Are you… are you going to talk to the Family?”

“The solution is actually quite straightforward and can be arranged with a single meeting,” Byakuya replied. “However, you know how the family is. Everyone is always so desperate to be involved. I had a number of letters in the post from some of our more entitled relations who are deeply concerned with how I must be suffering from a deficiency of their opinions on certain matters. All else being equal, I would prefer to let them stew, but I suspect a few strategic social calls will save me a great deal of grief later on.”

“Oh, dear,” Hisana frowned. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come along?”

“In this case, I think it best to handle the busybodies myself.” Byakuya seemed to be performing a bit of mental math. “With luck, my trip should be brief. I expect to spend the night at home and be back tomorrow. If it drags on longer than that, I will send word and I will see all of you when you return home on Saturday, as planned.” Byakuya turned to regard Rukia and Renji. “I do not expect trouble, but should adverse circumstances arise, I am entrusting the safety of Hisana and Touma to the two of you.”

“Yes, sir,” Renji barked.

“Yes, Brother,” Rukia echoed, a beat behind, looking a bit flattered to be included in this responsibility, even though the odds of actually having to act as the family protection detail seemed pretty slim.

“I am also expecting you both to comport yourself as representatives of the Kuchiki. Mind Hisana. Lieutenant, stop provoking Kurosaki. I think we have a sufficient measure of his abilities and it would be best to maintain the harmony between our families in the immediate short-term.”

“Yes, sir,” Renji agreed easily.

Hisana studied Rukia’s face. It was clearly not lost on her that Byakuya had started grouping Renji in with the rest of the family. It’s possible it was just a Squad 6 verbal tic-- after all, a good half of Sixth Company was related to Byakuya in some way or another. Vice Captain Shirogane was a third-cousin, and it would have made perfect sense to address him thus. To be honest, though, Hisana knew that her husband had a tendency to group people into either those belonging to him, and everyone else, and he simply wasn’t used to having a non-Kuchiki in that first group. Rukia’s face seemed strained, though, and if Hisana didn’t know better, she’d have accused her sister of looking guilty.

“Brother!” Rukia suddenly yelped. “I have to tell you something!”

Three sets of eyes converged on her. Abarai continued to stare straight ahead at his commanding officer.

“Yes, Rukia?”

“I… we were sort of waiting until the end of the week, to tell everyone, but if there’s a chance you might not come back, and, well, I guess we really ought to tell you first anyway.”

“Ask,” Renji corrected.

“Right! Ask, not tell! Well. Ask-tell. There’s a telling part and an asking part.”

“Rukia,” Byakuya interrupted. “Please cut to the chase. I would like to get to the Seireitei before nightfall, if possible.”

Rukia squeezed her eyes shut and set her shoulders. “Two days ago, Renji asked me to marry him and I said yes!”

Hisana stared at her sister blankly, the words slowly permeating her brain. Her eyes trailed over to Abarai, whose gaze was glued to Byakuya. He looked like a man facing an execution squad. “Pending your permission, of course, sir!” he managed grimly. “That would be the askin’ part. I woulda done that first, but Rukia really wanted to do the tellin’.”

Byakuya was groping vaguely at his side for the comforting hilt of Senbonzakura, which was, fortunately, elsewhere.

Some rubber band snapped into place in Hisana’s head, and her sister-protection subroutine suddenly began churning at top speed. “Rukia, that’s wonderful!” she announced, tackling Rukia in a hug. “Oh, I’m so happy for you!”

“Thank you, Sister,” Rukia mumbled into the silk of her kimono.

Byakuya was still regarding Renji as though he could make neither heads nor tails of the young man. “Abarai. Please give me my son.”

“Yes, sir,” Renji agreed, peeling Touma off his side and handing him over.

“Daddy mad?” Touma asked, scrutinizing his father’s face.

“No! Daddy’s just surprised!” Hisana exclaimed. “Daddy really needs to work on his surprised face!”

“Surprise?” Touma, who usually associated surprises with presents or perhaps desserts, asked hopefully. On the bright side, he seemed to have forgotten about the impending departure.

Hisana decided to do something underhanded. “Touma-baby, do you want Renji to be your uncle?”

Touma considered this. “Yes,” he decided.

“Abarai, see me in my office!” Byakuya blurted out suddenly. He seemed to have forgotten how to use his indoor voice.

Renji’s brows scrunched. “Your office... back at Squad 6? In the Seireitei?”

Byakuya contemplated this briefly. “My Rukongai office is on the rear engawa,” he declared.

Rukia tried to untangle herself from Hisana’s grip. “Can I come, too?” she asked desperately. “Please, Brother?”

Byakuya regarded her with more softness in his eyes than Hisana would ever have expected. “You needn’t worry, Rukia. We are just going to have a conversation, Clan Head to suitor.”

Abarai blew a big breath of air out through his cheeks, gave a little shrug, and followed Byakuya, who was still carrying Touma, out of the room.

“Good luck!” Rukia mouthed at him as they left.

Hisana waited until she could hear their footsteps retreating down the hallway before she grabbed Rukia by the shoulders. “Rukia!”

Rukia smiled sheepishly back at her.

“Rukia, what in the blue blazes are you doing?”

Rukia winced.

“I’d accuse you of trying to pull some sort of scam on me, except that I can’t see what you would possibly get out of it!” Hisana threw up her hands.

“Is it so hard to believe that someone would actually want to marry me?” Rukia snapped back, her voice rough.

Ice water ran through Hisana’s veins. “That’s not what I-- Rukia, of course--”

“I mean, it is,” Rukia mumbled, half to herself. “I thought he would be horrified by your dumb matchmaking scheme! I thought he would laugh his ass off if I actually tried to kiss him! I thought he would come to his damn senses, but he hasn’t and he won’t, because I forgot that he hasn’t got any.”

“Rukia,” Hisana said, putting her arm around Rukia again. “Darling, it’s obvious that Renji thinks you hung the stars in the sky. But just because he’s the first person you’ve ever met with enough sense to see how wonderful you are doesn’t mean you have to marry him just because he asked. I want you to be happy. I want you to be with...the person you love.”

Rukia stared at her, her eyes filled with horror. “You think I don’t love him back?”

Hisana rubbed her arm over Rukia’s shoulder. “You’ve hardly given him the time of day all week, sweets.”

Rukia swallowed. “Sister...um... I have not been entirely honest with you.”

Hisana’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Do tell?”

“The fact is... I like Renji a lot. I like him so much that… I’ve been pretending not to... so that you wouldn’t notice when we sneak off to fool around.”

Hisana suddenly realized that she might have been putting some puzzle pieces together incorrectly. “The night before last…?”

Rukia looked sheepish. “Among other times.”

Hisana stared at Rukia in disbelief. No, disbelief wasn’t correct. She absolutely believed this. It was the most Rukia thing she had ever heard. “What about Ichigo?!” she demanded.

“What about him?”

“I thought you liked him!”

Rukia cringed. “Ichigo and I are too much alike. We’d murder each other inside of a week. Besides, there’s a nice girl back in the World of the Living that he has a nice little crush on.”

“There is?”

“Yeah, haven’t you seen that journal he carts around? It’s full of sappy teen love poetry about her.”

“A girl from the Living World! The one who came to help save you?”

“Orihime, yes. He doesn’t want his sisters or dad to find out, so keep it quiet, okay?”

Hisana’s head was spinning. “Did he buy her a set of hair combs when you were in town the other day?”

“How did you find out about that?!” Rukia demanded.

“This isn’t about me! I want to get back to why you felt the need to sneak around! I like Renji! Byakuya likes him, too, but you know how important it is to ease your brother into these things. I told you I would help you and I don’t know why you chose to go about this in the most ham-fisted way possible, instead!”

“I told you! I thought it would go up in flames! And I knew that if I told you how much I liked him, you would get too excited about it, and then I would get too excited about it, and it would be so much worse when I eventually ruined it!”

There it was. The second most Rukia thing Hisana had ever heard. Hisana leaned her forehead against her sister’s. “You are so stupid, sometimes.”

“I know. And I know that I should have just told him to slow his roll when that dumb goon proposed, but Hisana, I couldn’t. When we were kids, we thought we had all the time in the world, right up until we didn’t. I just… I couldn’t stand it if I missed my chance with him again.”

Hisana pressed a gentle kiss into her sister’s hair. “I guess you really do like him, huh?”

Rukia’s face softened. “I really do. Have you seen him, Hisana? He’s tall and his nose is all lumpy, and he’s kind and funny and he thinks back on Inuzuri fondly just because I was there.” Her face took on a slightly guilty look. “And I’m only telling you this because you’re my sister, but he’s also a good kisser and he’s really jacked.”

Hisana raised one eyebrow and smirked.

“Anyway, you were right. You said I would like him and I do.” Rukia sucked her teeth for a moment. “Do you think there’s any chance Brother will go for this?”

Hisana opened her mouth and then closed it again. She thought for a moment. “I have no idea.”

“Abarai,” Byakuya said, trying to sound stern while his son attempted to climb him like a marsupial. “Explain.”

Renji had been preparing for this moment for forty years. Even up to a few weeks ago, the cloud of possibilities surrounding this confrontation had seemed infinite. Perhaps Byakuya would dismiss him without a second thought, not even bothering to lambast him for his audacity. Perhaps he would demand a series of trials, stables cleaned in a single night, mountains leveled to gravel, etcetera. Perhaps they would cross swords, bankai-to-bankai, Zabimaru’s snarling ferocity against Senbonzakura’s flawless elegance. The tiniest spark of hope had always lived in the back of Renji’s brain that maybe Byakuya would just say, “Well, you seem like a very hard-working fellow and Rukia seems to like you, I don’t see why not.”

Instead, it had come to this. Grifting. Well, that was fine. A strange, heady confidence had come over Renji, now that he knew the layout of the game. And while Renji had nothing but respect for his captain’s intelligence and fighting ability, Kuchiki Byakuya was also a pretty easy mark.

“Well, I didn’t exactly plan any of this,” Renji declared, trying to sound as sheepish as possible.

“That much was evident,” Byakuya replied. “Ouch, Touma, that is my hair.”

“Up, up, up!” Touma sang.

“Rukia and I were going for a walk, you see, and I got distracted by sort of a, well, a poetic thought. That must happen to you all the time, right, sir?”

“A what?” Byakuya asked, pausing in his attempts to get Touma settled on his shoulders.

“I dunno, I been havin’ ‘em lately. They sorta come on unexpectedly.”

“You have been composing poetry.” Byakuya circled a finger in the vicinity of Renji’s head. “Is this the reason for the new hairstyle?”

“Ah, no, sir, this is temporary.”

“Good. I do not care for it. Obviously, you may do what you like on your own time, but I think it provides more contrast in a professional setting for me to have the flowy hair, and you to be more… spiky.”

“Rrrrrright.” Renji blinked and tried to remember where they were. “Poetry! No! I would never write a poem! I’m not very good with words, sir. I leave that stuff to people like you and Lieutenant Kira. But, like I said, we were taking a walk, and there was this big field of blue bellflowers-- that’s one of the Big Autumn Seven, right?”

“The Seven Flowers of Autumn,” Byakuya corrected, squinting at Renji skeptically. “And it is a particular species of bellflower, Platycodon grandiflorus, also known as the balloon flower.”

“Er, right.”

“It is my favorite flower.”

“I thought your favorite flower was orchids.” This was a calculated lie. Of course Renji knew what Byakuya’s favorite flower was. As if Renji would center this bullshit story around Byakuya’s favorite flower by accident.

“I do like orchids, and cherry blossoms as well, but the balloon flower is my favorite,” Byakuya explained.

“Balloon?” Touma asked hopefully.

“Balloon flowers, Touma,” Byakuya corrected. “Please continue, Abarai. Regale me with your poetic thoughts about balloon flowers.”

“Right. Well… I mean, they’re real pretty, obviously, and they’re blue, like, um, Rukia’s eyes, and also she was wearing a kimono with bellflowers on it that night I came over for dinner that first time.”

Byakuya’s eyes narrowed, just a hair. Renji decided he had his boss lulled into a sufficient state of poetic superiority, and it wouldn’t do to lay it on too thick.

“And I was contemplating how people really associate romance with, y’know, spring and cherry blossoms and Hanami and such. By the time fall rolls around, there’s been flowers all summer, and we don’t really appreciate the last blooms, am I right?”

“Er, that’s very true,” Byakuya said, his voice laced with surprise. It was also possible he was just having trouble thinking clearly, because Touma was tapping on his kensaiken, and Renji couldn’t imagine how annoying that must be.

“And, in particular, I got to thinking about, well, the trajectory of me an’ Rukia’s relationship, and how we had sort of… it wasn’t really a romance, but I guess I always hoped it would be, y’know, in the springtime of our youth, except that it turned out to be-- what’s the word? -- ephemeral, y’know, it didn’t last. But now, here we are again, older now, like in our late summer, see? And I was thinking about how lucky I feel to have gotten another chance with her, that there’s still beauty in a second love, just like the bellflowers, see, sir?”

“I do see,” Byakuya frowned. “That is very poetic, Abarai.”

“And I was just sort of overcome with the idea that if I didn’t do something, the chance would pass me by. Like, do we even notice when the balloon flower stops blooming? No! Everyone gets caught up in gingko leaves and bonfires and it’s all a good time until suddenly it’s winter and you’re cold and alone again.”

“Bo-fire?” Touma asked hopefully.

“We already had a bonfire, Touma,” Byakuya reminded him.

“And I don’t want to be alone again! I want to be with Rukia, I’d die if I lost her again,” Renji kept rambling on, although he knew he had to get this wrapped up before Byakuya lost his patience. “So, the next thing I knew, I was tellin’ all this to Rukia, promisin’ her that if she’d have me, I’d stick by her forever and it turns out she was pretty keen on the idea. And here we are.”

“And here we are,” Byakuya echoed.

Silence fell heavily around them.

“Down, Daddy!”

“Down? You just got up.”

“Down. DOWN!”

“Oh, goodness, your little foot is stuck-- Abarai, can you--?”

Renji rushed over, and helped extract Touma, who had managed to get one leg thoroughly entangled in Byakuya’s scarf.

“I run?” Touma asked, pointing to the grass.

“Yes, fine, go run,” Byakuya agreed.

“Daddy run? Renji run?”

“Maybe in a bit, buddy,” Renji promised.

Touma took off.

“You were saying, sir?” Renji prompted.

“I was saying…? Yes! I was saying, Abarai, you have gone about this completely incorrectly!”

“I know, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

“I understand the forces that a poetic moment can impart on the soul, but I do wish you had simply come to me first.”

Renji paused, wondering if his ears had suddenly begun to malfunction. “Come again, sir?”

“As I am sure you are aware, Rukia’s social position is somewhat tenuous because we are related by adoption, rather than blood. If she were to accept a proposal simply because a man is in love with her, it would reflect very poorly on her worth, and yours, as well. You have bankai, Lieutenant, you really could have come into this negotiation much more aggressively.”

Renji was definitely done with faking stupidity. It was all genuine, now. “Eh?”

“You are an honest man, Abarai, to a fault at times, and what I am about to suggest may not sit easily with you.” Byakuya couldn’t seem to get his scarf draped correctly, he kept adjusting it. “But given that there has not yet been any public announcements-- there haven’t, have there?”

“No, sir. Ichigo knows and that’s it.”

“Ah, well, at least you had that much sense. In any case, it would benefit all involved if the official story was that I offered you my sister’s hand as a means of inducing you to join my family. In that way, it would be seen as trading one asset to gain another, rather than a pair of fools making foolish promises to one another because they got over excited about some flowers.”

Renji had to resist the urge to clean out his ear with his finger. “Wait. You want me to lie about proposing to Rukia, but you’re okay with us getting married?”

“I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“No, it’s fine! I’ll take it!” Renji had the very distinct feeling that he was the one that just got conned. He honestly didn’t care, though. He would take it. “Do I have to sign something?”

“Yes, of course, but we can wait until we are back in the city to draw up the paperwork. I am sure Hisana will want to plan a formal announcement and such.” Byakuya made a wistful face. “Perhaps it will ease my interminable visits with my nosy aunts to hold in my heart a secret that will absolutely horrify them when it comes to light.”

“This isn’t, uh, gonna mess up your trip, is it, sir?” Renji asked gingerly. It was honestly hard to make words with his mouth. Captain Kuchiki had approved his petition to marry Rukia. Captain Kuchiki wanted him to marry Rukia.

“No, why should it? I am only going on the pretense of arranging an audience between Shiba Isshin and General Yamamoto, which should be a non-issue, since that is the entire reason Yamamoto sent us out here in the first place.”

“I… I thought you were trying to get your family to help the Shiba,” Renji said uncertainly.

“Goodness, no. We wish to make the Gotei the only possible avenue of assistance. Pressure, Abarai. You have much to learn about dealmaking.” One of Byakuya’s eyebrows tipped up, and there was the tiniest hint of humor in his voice.”Or perhaps you should just leave that to your wife. My wife is a terror at it, and as she is fond of saying, Rukia could open a hot beverage establishment in Hell.”

“Yeah,” Renji echoed. “Yeah, I know.”

Renji’s entire body had gone numb. He had done it. Somehow, miraculously, after forty years, his stupid, half-baked plan had worked. He was engaged to Kuchiki Rukia. Solely for the purposes of getting her out of an engagement to someone else. An engagement that no one was planning in the first place.

It was fine, though. He would take it.

~end act iii