Written for a tumblr prompt + pairing meme. The prompt was "Don't trust me". Not technically adultery, but it's 686 compliant and Ichiruki. You have been warned.

Trust Me

by hashtagartistlife

"Don't trust me."

Three words in a frantic voice as his reiatsu flickers around the edges like static through an old TV, as his eyes blur over sulphurous yellow and gold. The grip of his fingers in her shoulders are tight enough to bruise. "Don't trust me, don't trust anything I say to you in the next however long it takes me to get back control, don't—"

He cuts off, clutching at his head, and Rukia falls to her knees with him. "Ichigo, fight it, fight it, you beat him once, you can beat him a—"

Her encouragements are interrupted by a chokehold to her throat. "Hello, your highness," Ichigo hisses, only it's not him anymore; his skin and hair bleeds through with bone white and the sinister grin that curls his lips is a dark slash of blue. "Miss me?"

"Hollow," Rukia gasps, then chokes as the hand around her neck tightens.

"Zangetsu," he snarls, pressing her into the wall. "Or Ichigo, really, because the blade is me and all that crap. He tell you not to trust me? The King, see, he lies, he can lie. But me? I couldn't lie to you even if I wanted to. What sort of horse lies to the Queen?"

"Stop calling me that," she snaps, trying to put heat behind her words, but it's hard when she can't get enough air into her lungs. "I'm not your Queen. I've never been your—"

"Wrong." the pressure against her throat disappears, but before she can regain her legs, he's caging her in with his body. "You've always been the Queen. Add that to the list of things the King never saw fit to tell you—"

"Ichigo's married—"

"So are you. Marriage does not royalty make, Rukia. Would you like me to tell you some other things he's never said? I miss you. I want you. I dream about fucking you into the mattress at night when I'm lying awake next to my wife—"

"Stop—"

"—I wish things didn't have to be this way. I want to throttle Renji every time he so much as lays a finger on you. I lov—"

"Stop!"

Two voices shouting in unison, one rough and cracked, the other thinner and higher and almost hysteric; Rukia cracks an eye open to see Ichigo's face inches from hers, distorted with pain but back to its usual colouring. Distantly, she registers there are tears on her cheeks.

"I— Ichigo?" she asks, and he drops her like she's hot coals; she leans against the wall for support and manages to stay standing. "Ichi—"

"Told you not to trust me," he says, and when he smiles at her, the expression is indescribably bitter. "What I said just then— what he said just then— he lies, Rukia. None of it's true. Don't believe a word of it."

It takes her a while to find her voice again. "Of— of course," she replies, trying to inject some of her old bravado into her words. "As— as if I would have—"

"Good," he says, and turns his back on her without a second glance; Rukia's left staring at his retreating figure, hearing the echo of his words in her head.

Don't trust me, Rukia. Don't believe a word he says.

I miss you. I want you. I lov—

"Too late," she breathes, into the silence that he leaves behind. "Too late."