Title: Sisterly Duty
Author: Celeste
Feedback: (yes!)
Universe: Bleach
Pairing: light IchigoxIshida (More crack. aheh)
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1,836
Time: 48 mins without edits (that I should have used to do homework…ah well. )
Spoilers: Not especially.
Summary: Rukia, like the good sisterly figure she is, takes it upon herself to help Ichigo and Ishida be less stupid.
Dedication: Kelly, cuz… I WIN! Mwahahahahahaha!
A/N: Yes, because my Gravitation kick left me feeling kind of angsty and I don't like it when it lasts. So I made myself write crack fic. And Bleach just lends itself to that. I need to sleep. O.o
Disclaimer: Not mine. Otherwise I wouldn't have such a hard time trying to get the merchandise, dammit! (I would love anyone who would love me enough to get me the Ichigo DX plush, I would. whistles innocently)
Distribution: Just lemme know.

---

Rukia blinked at Ichigo dully. "That's it?" she asked derisively. "That's your big confession?"

He gaped at her. "What the hell do you mean 'that's it'!"

She crossed her arms and regarded him like he was dumb and five. Or maybe just dumb, because she'd known five-year-olds that were smarter. "With the way you were acting all week, I thought you were dying of some sort of horrible human disease or something. I was almost actually concerned. I looked things up in the library. There was a book that told me you might begin to bleed your organs out of the orifices in your body after they'd liquefied. I was going to ask you if you'd been exposed to any sort of monkey lately."

He tilted his head as she went on and on about how she thought she was going to have to burn his clothes and his everything he'd touched and quarantine him to the house until he died, after which the whole building would have to be disinfected and razed to the ground.

When he'd had enough, "This is how you react!"

She paused mid-eulogy. "What do you want me to say?"

"Right now? I kind of want you to shut up. So try not saying anything."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "There is no need to get snappy."

"Snappy?"

"Irritable."

"I know what it means."

"Then don't ask stupid questions."

"Don't use stupid words," he shot back lamely.

"Don't be stupid in the first place."

He snarled at her, tempted to just smother her with his pillow. Instead, he plopped down on the bed next to her, sitting cross-legged and glaring at her. "You tell no one."

"Why did you tell me in the first place then?"

Ichigo ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know. It's not like I do this sort of thing everyday, ya know! I thought you'd have advice or something. Che, should've known better."

Rukia speculated that he was right and she might be the world's worst confidante, but in her defense, stating what was obvious to her and for some reason wasn't to him felt like some sort of sisterly duty or something. "You want advice? I think you should let him know."

"Oh yes. It's always that easy. Thank you Rukia."

"You're wel…"

"Thanks for nothing! I can't just say something like that to the guy. Especially to that guy."

Unperturbed by his interruption, she pushed on. "You have to tell him. Especially since you already told me, and didn't take the time beforehand to guarantee my confidentiality. So you've obviously trapped yourself into finding him and telling him tomorrow. Before I do."

He sputtered indignantly. "You wouldn't! That's not…"

She regarded him calmly.

She would.

"You would!" he accused aloud, eyes widening. He pointed at her, glowering. "You suck at this," he growled somewhat petulantly.

She picked at her ear with her pinky. "If you don't like my advice, don't bother me with your problems."

He decided his first instinct had been right after all and grabbed the pillow.

She easily snatched it out of his unsuspecting hands and beaned him on the head with it. "Don't be juvenile," she stated, knowing exactly what he'd been planning.

"You suck at this," he growled again, rubbing at his head.

She shrugged and set the pillow down on his bed. "That fails to concern me much more than you think." She poked him. "Now, are you going to tell him?"

"Hell no!"

"That's as good an admission as telling me directly that you want me to do it for you."

"Where the hell do you get this! That doesn't make sense!"

She looked thoughtfully at him. "It makes perfect sense. You're just being unusually slow today."

"And you're being your usual, bitchy self," he muttered, flopping on his back to stare at the ceiling.

Silence for a while.

Then an arch, "Oh dear, could it possibly be… are you afraid of him, Kurosaki-kun?"

He jolted upright, looking at her incredulously. "What the hell are you talking about!" he exclaimed, face flaming. "Of course I'm not afraid of that idiot!"

"My, my, such an unnecessarily noisy reaction…" she laughed behind her hand immodestly.

He flopped onto his back and made a frustrated noise in the back of his throat. "I knew it. This whole thing would have been more productive if I'd told my dad."

Unaffected by the insult, she simply tucked her legs under her on the bed and looked at him. "So…" she posited casually after a while, "what are you going to do about it?"

He rolled onto his stomach and buried his face into his comforter. "I'm going to sleep. Shut up and get in the closet."

She frowned at his bad attitude. "I thought love was supposed to make you more pleasant to be around."

"Go!"

She rolled her eyes and slipped into the closet.

---

The next day at school, Ichigo was insisting on staying idiotic, and Rukia, being the good friend that she was, decided to take things into her own hands because nothing would get done otherwise. She hated that.

During lunch, she approached Ishida, tapping him solidly on the shoulder.

The Quincy made a small inquisitive noise at the intrusion, looking up from the plush-making magazine he'd been reading as he methodically sipped tea. "Can I help you, Kuchiki-san?"

"Ichigo is being idiotic," she told him matter-of-factly.

He blinked, set his magazine down. Adjusted his glasses, looking faintly puzzled. "I'm sorry for the position that obviously puts you in. But…I fail to see what that has to do with me."

"It's because of you."

He blinked again, more bewildered now than puzzled. "Kurosaki-san's stupidity is somehow my…fault?"

She nodded emphatically. "You should talk to him about it. He keeps yelling at me and ignoring the advice I give him. I would usually kick him in the head for it, but as this is a matter of the heart I'm willing to let it go as long as the situation resolves itself quickly and efficiently and with no more trouble on my part." She smiled in what was her most patient manner.

Ishida's brow furrowed. "Matter of the…" He looked at her, openly confused.

They looked at each other for a moment.

After said moment, the Quincy still appeared lost. Rukia was convinced high school boys in the human world all had some genetic retardation when it came to what should be a relatively simple issue.

"Ichigo likes you. And he's being stupid about it."

"Oh, I se…" pause, blink once, twice. Stare.

Blink. Blink.

Rukia sighed. "I said, he likes you," she repeated, slowly and with more pronounced enunciation. "And that he's being stupid about it," she added, not wanting him to miss the most important part of her declaration.

Ishida pushed his glasses up, swallowed, furrowed his brow thoughtfully, and finally opened his mouth to respond. "Uh…"

She began to grow a little frustrated.

"Well, that's... um… I…" He flushed a very vivid shade of pink across the bridge of his nose and fiddled idly with the corners of his magazine.

"Oh for the love of… go and tell him you like him back!" she demanded, pointing at the archer like she'd caught him in the midst of committing some sort of heinous violent crime. Wasting her time blushing and stammering like some lovesick school girl was ranked similarly in Rukia's book anyway.

"I… uh…I can't just… I mean…"

She jabbed him in the shoulder to dispel his flustered babbling. "Ishida…"

"I…see," he finally managed to stammer, face almost as red as Ichigo's had been the night before. He stared at her face, but avoided looking her in the eye.

She kind of wished the two boys were spewing liquefied organs out of their orifices like she'd first feared with Kurosaki. That might have made them move faster, as it seemed only the direst of situations could garner any sort of effective action from Ichigo and Ishida both.

"Well… uh, th-thank you for letting me know, Kuchiki-san. I uh…"

She glared at him fiercely.

He fiddled with his glasses some more. "How uh, how may I ask, did you come by this information?"

She sighed, crossed her arms impatiently. "He told me," she stated flatly. "I wouldn't come to you about something like this on mere speculation."

"Ah… of course not, I apologize for insinuating but uh…"

Growing bored with talk, Rukia grabbed him by the shoulders, hauled him out of his chair with surprising strength, and began pushing him towards the stairwell that would take him to the roof.

"K-kuchiki-san?"

"I'm tired of listening to you. Please go talk to Ichigo now."

"I…but, I Kuchiki-san er, this isn't…"

She stopped shoving him once they'd reached the stairs. He turned around, looking relieved as she did.

She regarded him thoughtfully, noting dully that he was still pink around the ears.

He twitched under her scrutiny.

She made a thoughtful noise.

He sweatdropped.

She shook her head. Jabbed a finger at him, wielding it like a sharp pointy thing. "You do like him, don't you? I mean, it's very obvious."

He flushed. "Well, I er… that's a complicated…"

Her eyes bored into his, daring him to waste any more of her time.

He sighed, looked away. "Yes."

The expression on her face became extremely self-satisfied. "Well that makes things very easy then. You know that he likes you now and you should go upstairs and talk to him before lunch is over so that Idon't have to deal with this idiocy any longer." She punctuated her words with a gleam in her eye that could cause civilizations to burn.

He studied her dubiously for a moment longer there at the base of the stairwell, wondering if he could outrun her. His legs were longer, and he knew the school better and…

He glanced down at her.

Her knowing look threw off any plans of escape he'd begun to devise by the sheer intensity of her resolve. The petite shinigami stared back at him evenly, seeming to anticipate and thwart all of the thoughts rushing through his mind the moment he thought them. He took an involuntary step backwards.

In the meantime, Rukia decided that human boys were very stupid and resolved that the only way to get them to behave as she wanted was to appeal to their base survival instincts rather than any logical presentation of argument. "Ishida-san," she prompted with a smile that was more a threat than entreaty.

It was under this level glare-but-not-glare that the last of the Quincy's decided that he should do his level best to keep the last of his bloodline within this realm of existence. With as much dignity as could be mustered under Kuchiki Rukia's menacing battle-aura, he cleared his throat, adjusted his glasses, stood up straight. "Right. I'll uh… I'll go up right now."

Her eyes brightened considerably. "Good. Go."

He scurried up the stairs.

END