NOTES: This was written for IchiRuki month! It's very late, since it was supposed to be for day 4: a straight ticket to the doghouse (it's only very loosely based on the prompt, haha)… but I don't do deadlines. Also it was exam week. This didn't turn out exactly how I imagined, but I think I pulled it together alright. Much less angsty than my usual writing.

The only time he's ever seen her cry is when they're having sex.

The first time it happened, he'd been an awkward and unsure virgin. Everything had been fine as he pressed into her, reveling in the sensation of it all—the warmth and tightness of her, the prick of her nails in his back, the slide of her silky hair between his fingers—everything had been fine until he felt the warm trickle of tears where she pressed her face into his collarbone, smelled the faint tang of clean salt under slick, sour sweat. He'd panicked, of course, certain he was hurting her, but she pushed him deeper, heels hard into his lower back, and whispered roughly to keep going. Her arms locked like a vice around his neck and her legs around his waist, stopping him from pulling back, pulling away to see what was wrong, to check to make sure she was alright and he wasn't hurting her and goddamnit Rukia, would you just—but then she twisted her hips in such a way that made any thought of stopping vanish for the rest of the night.

So it isn't until later, when he's turning over the memory in his mind, that he realizes he's never seen her cry before.

They've never been the sort for tearful goodbyes. And even with half her abdomen ripped clean through (blood spilling out across the ground, still and pale as death), the most she does is grimace.

So what was it that made her cry?

It turns out she doesn't do it every time they, well, do it (and Christ, what a blow to the ego that'd be), but he starts to learn the pattern of it.

When they're at it hot and heavy, tearing at each other like animals—the sort of sex that ends with ripped clothes, broken furniture, and bruises—she's all wild-eyed and bright, all passion and fire and searing heat, so whatever tears there might have been must evaporate as soon as they form. Then, of course, there's the quickies—on the roof between classes, in the alley around the corner from where their friends are waiting, against a tree after a Hollow kill, under the bridge on the way home from school—and they're neat. Economical. They end with their clothes barely askew, hair only slightly rumpled, and there's not any time for tears. The flush on their faces lasts for only as long as it takes to catch their breath (though the stupid smiles tend to linger for an hour or so). Then there's those days when she comes on to him like he's some school girl on the train and she's a perverted old man, but fuck if she isn't an enormous tease—eyes dancing, lips curved in that way that makes him squirm in public, touching him just lightly enough raise goosebumps—and in those times he thinks she must be having too much fun to cry.

Yet whenever they're having what he can only think of as, well, normal sex—in the bed, naked, slow, sweet, and gentle, just him and her in the dark—somehow that makes her cry.

He isn't sure what to say when it happens, so he doesn't say anything at all, and Rukia doesn't mention it either. It tears come inevitably each time, and he grows accustomed to the salty-sweet taste of her lips, the watery softness of her gaze.

But it's a Saturday night and they're alone when something—something in the way she looks at him, breathless and languid, tears slipping from the corners of her eyes—makes him break the unspoken agreement between them to ignore the droplets clinging to her lashes, gossamer beads that could almost pass as sweat . After kissing his way up her neck, he licks the salt lines from her cheeks and kisses the tears from her lashes, and when he's done, she glares and hisses, "Don't do that."

"Don't do what?" he asks innocently, then catches a drop along her other cheek with his tongue.

"That." She repeats and drags him closer, so they're chest to chest, his face buried into the side of her neck where he can't see her face, her hair tickling his nose. "Don't lick me like a dog. It's disgusting."

"You seemed to enjoy it when I was licking your earlier," he mumbles against her skin, a smirk curling his lips.

She shoves him abruptly away, glaring—angry and beautiful, eyes shining. "Shut up."

He sighs and rolls off of her, flopping back on the bed and running a hand through his hair. "So are we ever gonna talk about it?"

"About what?" she replies mulishly, sitting up and crossing her arms, stealing his blanket to cover her nakedness.

"You know what."

Her eyes slide off to the side. "I don't know," she mumbles.

"Rukia—"

"No, I mean, I don't know why it happens," she interrupts, fingers curling in the sheets.

He gapes at her, propping himself up on his elbows. "You don't know?"

"That's what I said," she snaps, and wipes away the last remnants of tears. The soft, pliable girl with watery eyes is gone. "It—it just happens. I don't know why." She's defensive now, hands balled into tight little fists, ready to uppercut him if he doesn't choose his words carefully.

"Is it—" he hesitates, uncertain. He's pretty sure she'd tell him if he was hurting her—she's always quick to complain when something is digging into her back, or he's being too rough, or when he hasn't got the right angle—but he's almost afraid to bring it up in case he's wrong. Or maybe there's a bad memory mixed up in there somewhere, because even if she was his first, he knows he wasn't hers. His face twists in to a scowl, and he's still trying to find the words that will hurt her the least when she sighs.

"It's not your fault," she says softly, pressing a fingertip to the crease between his furrowed brows. "I think I just… I feel so relaxed and happy and they just sort of—leak out."

"You're—happy?" he repeats incredulously. "That's—you're crying because you're happy?"

"Don't sound so surprised. What, did you think was unhappy whenever we made love?"

"No! I… maybe?" He stumbles, flustered. Love isn't a word that passes between them very often. But making love is the sort of soppy, romantic sentiment that they don't usually talk about (even if, now in retrospect, it seems to be an apt name for those long slow nights). And it's not that he doesn't do romantic gestures—he's brought her flowers, kissed her at the top of a Ferris wheel, held her hand during a movie, taken her to see the sunset on a mountain—but he's never been very good with words and they've never really needed them. They've always been so good at understanding one another—at reading each other's moods—that he's only said the word once or twice aloud.

"Are you really embarrassed just because I said we were making love?" she asks archly, reading him now as easily as always.

"No."

"You're such a typical boy," she sighs. "Always getting flustered as soon as we start to talk about our feelings."

"You're the one who refused to talk about the whole crying thing!"

This earns him a swift elbow in the stomach as she rolls over and curls up into a ball, snatching all the blankets for herself.

"That's because there was nothing to talk about," she says from inside her cocoon.

"Rukia—"

"Does it bother you?" she interrupts, her voice small. "The tears?"

"I…" In truth, it doesn't. There's something sort of appealing to the way she looks at him with when her eyes are shiny with tears—something soft and gentle and vulnerable that he's never had a chance to see before. It stirs up some kind of protective instinct that makes him want to hold her tighter, to never let her go, to tear the world down just to make her smile. And she does smile at these times, even when her face is wet with tears. A sweet, unguarded smile that says nothing more complicated than thank you.

He clears his throat.

"I mean, it doesn't bother me as long as it's not because you're upset or anything. As long as… you're happy."

There's a long silence, then Rukia sits up slowly, letting the blanket slide down. Despite himself, he can't keep his eyes from following its progress as it reveals more and more naked flesh, until she leans forward and kisses him. A sweet, caste kiss—feather-light, but lingering. She looks into his eyes and he stares back into hers, sinking into the endless night inside them.

"I love you," she whispers, and he can feel her breath caress his lips. Their hearts beat loud in the quiet house and his chest constricts. In this moment, he almost feels as if she's stuck her hand through his ribcage and caught his heart in her hands.

"I love you, too," he murmurs back, remembering to breathe at last, and watching the teardrops gather on her lashes.