Summary: There's him and there's her, and nothing else in between. Seventeen months, and everything has changed, and yet, somehow nothing has changed.

Theme: There's a confession (or two) in there somewhere...

A/N: Happy Valentine's day. For BA's IR FC. Enjoy~!

Timeline: Off-panel imaginings! Spoilers for 477.

Warnings: This is an M! I've warned you twice now, so proceed at your own discretion.

Standard Disclaimer: Bleach is solely the property of Kubo Tite, and I am merely borrowing his playground.

The world grinds to a halt as he catches Rukia in his arms.

He doesn't know how Riruka appeared out of Rukia or why she took the blow from Tsukishima and at the moment, he doesn't really care, because Rukia is in his arms and she is laying altogether too still.

Finally, her eyelids flutter open, and he feels like he can breathe at last. Her hand pats her chest, as she looks up at him, eyes that distinct shade of unforgettable blue. "Hi," she says. They are masters at understated greetings. It's the goodbyes they're bad at.

"You moron!" he says, scowling fiercely, body curled over her. "You could have gotten yourself killed. What were you thinking!" Worry makes his tone harsh.

"Why are you complaining?" she asks, levering herself up into a sitting position. "I'm alive, and you're alive, so just shut up and enjoy it." Her eyes are soft as she reaches a glowing hand up, and drags it across his temple. "I'll be more careful next time." There's a conciliatory look on her face.

"Like there'll be a next time!" he says, running a hand through his hair in frustration. "You're way too reckless."

"Thank you," she says demurely. Ichigo can feel the slowly congealing cut on his temple knitting under her cool fingers.

"That's not a compliment!" he yells, torn between the urge to shake her and to hold her close.

Rukia laughs warmly, "It should be, coming from the king of all that's stupid and reckless..." There's a pause. "There's always a next time," she says, giving him a significant look, dark, warm, and measuring. And it's true, they bleed and fight and put their lives on the line for each other. They always have.

For one long moment, they lean towards each other, like magnets, or unescapable gravity. Ichigo would like nothing more than to pull her against him, breathe her in, hold her close, and not let go, but he remembers that it's the aftermath of a battle. There's the cleanup to do, and there's an audience. He doesn't like to share; what they have is between the two of them only. The muscles in his arms tighten, and he clenches his fists, keeps them at his sides. Rukia takes two steps away as Urahara appears.

Urahara has a knack for healing, and Rukia helps him stabilize Riruka until they can move her. After checking Rukia thoroughly for injuries, and placing Riruka in the care of Urahara, Ichigo is exhausted. Between gaining his powers back to fight Ginjou, and Rukia jumping out in front of a sword meant for him, he's drained. Renji takes Ginjou's corpse through the gate and before he leaves, he gives Ichigo a significant glance, and then his eyes dart over to Rukia. The rest of them who had come to fight and to watch him fight take their leave, including Byakuya who doesn't even turn around once to see if his sister is following.

Things are a mess, and now that the adrenalin rush is gone, Ichigo is crashing, too tired to make heads or tails of it, just yet. When he leaves Urahara's, Rukia wordlessly follows. Just like old times, but not.

oOoOoOo

The tension is thick between them, it hangs in the air, vibrates with a frequency that's just north of hearing distance, but he feels it in his bones, as they make their way home. It feels like inevitability.

She sits on his bed, looking like she did over a year and a half ago- eternally young, with eyes that betray the depth of her experience. There are little details he now notices as he drinks in the sight of her. Her hair, it's shorter, skims the delicate angle of her jawline, leaves the nape of her neck bare, and then there's those gloves, and that badge, and those eyes that gleam, knowing and luminous, watching him. Watching him watch her as she swings her legs nonchalantly over the side of his bed, stockinged feet barely skimming the hardwood floor.

She's waiting for him to say something, possibly to tell her to get off his bed, like old times, except it's not something he'll say because they're past that these days. He's just waiting, arms crossed, and he can see her. Now that there's time to consider it, that's the thought that's first and foremost in his mind. He can see her and feel her reiatsu. There's something soothing and aching at the same time and he doesn't want to blink. Just in case.

Silence doesn't unnerve her. That he watches her intently, doesn't make her self-conscious. She moves like a warrior, all smooth deadly grace and elegant efficiency, no movement wasted.

She flashes him a grin, sly and mischievous, and so at home on her delicate elfin features, so utterly her that it hurts, it wrenches his heart in a way he didn't think possible. She looks around and says, "Nothing has changed."

"Lots of things have changed," he scoffs, tossing his head. He crosses his arms and slouches back against the door, closing it softly.

Her eyes linger at his collar, his wrists, his chest, at the new swaths of fabric that criss-cross there, and the ragged cloak of power he now wears. It's not Shinigami standard anymore.

"You're still you," she says affectionately, giving him a half-shuttered side-long glance.

"More or less," he retorts. How much more or less, he doesn't know. The new power thrums through him, heady and rich like dark red wine.

She ignores him in typical Rukia fashion. And then she begins poking through his things.

She opens the closet door, pats the shelf there lovingly and peers around. The used bedding he never bothered to wash is shoved into the very back. She raises her eyebrow as she looks at him over her shoulder. That same enigmatic alluring gaze that had haunted him these seventeen months, makes his blood pump faster, sets a low fire burning in his veins.

"What?" he asks, voice low.

"You're a slob," she states, nose crinkling in distaste.

He laughs, and there is an edge of sadness to it. "Didn't expect visitors, Rukia." He hadn't in a while now.

There's a mirroring sadness in her eyes, and then she averts her face with a haughty sniff. She goes over to his chair, sits down, and then she reacquaints herself with his desk.

"You're fidgety," he remarks.

"Ichigo," she begins absently, scattering his pens all over his desk and looking through his notebooks. She never had much sense of boundaries in his room and that hasn't changed. His room, his closet, his life, somehow when he wasn't paying attention, she had made them all her own. "Shouldn't you offer me a drink?"

"You know where the drinks are. Get it yourself," he tosses at her. This push and pull is familiar, at least.

"You're a horrible host," she murmurs, glancing over at him.

"Like you should talk. Not like you're a guest." he drawls. Her reiatsu brushes against him, almost unbearably feather light and mingles and weaves into his own, cool against hot like the updrafts and precursors to lighting storms and hurricanes. Her reiatsu draws him in with unseen hands from across the room.

"It's bad manners to be nosy," he informs from behind her, hands on her narrow shoulders, lips skimming the soft bare nape of her neck. That otherworldly scent of rue and rare lilies underneath the cold snap of icy winter air and the metallic tang of blood and steel clings to her hair and her skin.

"I'm not a guest," she says, tilting her head back, tossing his words back at him as she reaches down to the bottom drawer.

"Stop," he says voice thick in his throat, fingers curling around the slender birdlike bones of her wrist.

Her hand drops from the drawer as she looks up at him, and then down again, eyes half-shuttered, the sweep of her long sooty eyelashes cast inky shadows against her cheeks.

He has known her long enough that he can almost read her mind, knows what she wants to say to him. Knows that between them, words aren't enough. There's a low ache, like yearning long denied, and it hums in his blood, in his bones, in his heart.

"We...should talk," she murmurs softly.

"We should," he agrees, as he pulls her flush against him. But they don't. They never do. Because words are never enough.

oOoOoOo

She tilts her head up as his lips slant over hers. He kisses her wholeheartedly, and she responds, reads his heart with the press of her lips, the touch of her tongue. He can feel the ache of separation, the desperation of loneliness in her and the intensity of it matches his own. His arms tighten around her, hands fisted in the thick black fabric of her uniform. They kiss with unrelenting tenderness until the warmth unfurling between them becomes unbearable heat, until the need for breath makes them pull away.

Her arms come around him, hands on Zangetsu's wrappings. Ichigo slides Zangetsu off his back and lays him on the desk, spilling cups of pens, and piles of school books. He then wraps his hand around Rukia's sword, and her grip tightens on his arms, breath hitching in her throat. Achingly slow, he pulls Shirayuki out of Rukia's obi sash, thumb brushing lightly against her hilt and lays her reverently against the flat of Zangetsu's blade. His sword shivers and yearns, just as Ichigo shivers and yearns, and through steel, Zangetsu reaches out for his partner sword, just as Ichigo reaches out for Rukia- full of love and longing and deep, heady desire.

He slides his hands through Rukia's silken hair, fingertips lingering at the shorter length, slips his hands down the curve of her neck and shoulder and glides the rough pads of his thumbs across her delicate collarbones, hooking them into the edges of her kosode. His hands are clumsy, shaking as he fumbles with the knots between them until Rukia makes an impatient sound in the back of her throat, knocks his wrists away and undoes them herself. The layers of cloth fall away between them.

Rukia's lips smooth over the angle of his jaw, sucking on the soft skin of his throat, right underneath his ear, and he shivers, because it has been too long since he could see or feel her, and much too long since he could hold her. His hand spans the smooth curve of her lower back, thumb brushing the bumps of her spine.

"It's...been seventeen months," he murmurs, lips brushing hers. Unspoken- I missed you, and I've been waiting at a standstill, right where you left me.

She draws back, sending a pulse of delicious friction down his body and cocks an eyebrow at him.

"Are you telling me not to expect too much?" she asks, smirking superiorly at him, eyes dark with desire.

"God, you-," he sputters, heat flashing up his chest, flushing his face. "That's not what I meant! Rukia, I-"

"Stop talking," she commands in her low husky voice.

She pushes, he pulls and they settle in a tangle of limbs on his bed. She presses him into the mattress, all lithe lean strength, and owns him at this as well as everything else in their shared lives.

"Bossy," he murmurs, biting gently at the corners of her mouth, one hand lingering on her narrow waist, while the other skims the curve of her breast, her sternum, fingers tripping and trailing gently across the thin traceries of scars, old and new, some painfully familiar.

"You used to like it," she says, legs falling on either side of his lean hips, eyes a dark smoldering indigo, lit with unearthly fire. Her slender nimble fingers skim across his jawline, into his hair.

"Still do," he whispers roughly, leaning into her, mouth curling against her cheek, hand trailing slowly up the inside of her thigh.

Their reiatsu mingles around them, hangs hot and heavy like air laden with the ambient moisture of coming storms. There's him and there's her, and nothing else in between. When Ichigo closes his eyes he can see the threads of reiatsu, rich and red, tying them together in bonds that do not break, but shift as they shift, grow as they grow, and regardless of form, substance, or spirit, it's always him and her, and nothing in between.

Their movements are rough and jerky, unrefined, but they make do somehow. She leads, and he follows, just like old times. Everything is instinctive in a way that's like sword-fighting, like muscle memory from one sweet summer, seemingly a lifetime ago. His lips part, soft and easy over hers and he kisses the hollow of her neck, her collarbones, the pale curve of her shoulder, wherever he can reach. He brushes her nipples into hard beads with his lips and his fingers until Rukia is arching against him with shuddering breaths, until desire coils hot and tight in his stomach. Then he trails his hand slowly across her soft pale skin, goosebumps following, as he maps and memorizes. He skims his knuckles across the curve of her breast, down her waist and the crest of her hipbones to rest searching fingers between her legs.

Her nails scrape across his scalp, pulling roughly through his hair, and she's all soft wet heat and tense muscles. Ichigo moves his hand in slow and insistent circles against the slick skin between her thighs, curls his fingers inside her and coaxes her along with soft sounds, taking the cues from her flushed face. They're a contrasting mix of sharp golden lines, and soft silver curves in the sacred silence of the night. When she comes, it's with a flutter against his hand and a sigh against his mouth.

oOoOoOo

"I had no idea you could follow directions so well," Rukia murmurs as she lays in his arms, bodies cooling in the night air.

"Eh, well...positive reinforcement," he grins lazily, "it helps."

Rukia laughs, and the sound makes his heart a little lighter. He's missed this, missed her, with a fierce ache that became his constant companion in her absence.

"I'll remember," she says, voice low and throaty as she idly traces cool soothing patterns across his chest.

"Yeah. You do that," he says, pressing his hand to her sternum, pads of his fingers searching for lingering seams or scars from Riruka's possession. "You won't let me worry about you, will you?" he asks.

"I worry enough for the both of us," she replies turning her face away.

There's uncertainty in her tone, and Ichigo is never more aware of just what is at stake. Ichigo looks at her. There are few things that in his life that feel absolute and certain, but of those few he knows he's a shinigami, and he knows where he wants to be. All the other things are extraneous details that he'll work out at a later date.

When he rises from the bed, she's watching, tangled in his sheets, all languid boneless grace, as ethereally beautiful as frost and soft shadows under moonlight, as permanent and enduring as tempered steel.

Ichigo goes to his desk, slides open the bottom-most drawer, and pulls out a stack of papers. He walks back over to the bed and sits down, springs creaking under his weight. She sits up, pulling the sheets around her modestly.

Ichigo rolls his eyes, mouth curling into an easy smile. "Really Rukia? You know I've already seen it all."

In the dark, he sees the blood rush to her pale cheeks. "Shut up, idiot," she says punctuating her words with a punch on his arm. "What do you have there," she asks, eyes sharpening curiously.

Ichigo rubs the back of his neck, sighing as he hands them to her. Elegance of expression is not his forte, so he can only hope that Rukia understands him in the way she does.

Rukia's eyes go wide as she flips through them, and then she looks up, blinks at him owlishly in the light of street lamps streaming through the windows. They were all her drawings and every single coded note she had ever left him. "You kept them."

It's not a question but Ichigo nods anyway and holds her gaze silently, honest and unabashed.

There's something tremulous in her eyes and her lips. She looks down, one hand clenching in the sheets of his bed. "Oh Ichigo..." When she looks up again, her mouth hovers between a smirk and a sad smile. "So, you've finally realized my artistic genius?"

"Like hell!" Ichigo leans over and tugs at the stubborn bang that rests across the bridge of her nose. He still thinks her drawings look like they're done by a six year old coming off a sugar high, but they're hers and that's what makes them special. His hand lingers on her face, knobby knuckles brushing gently against the soft skin of her cheek.

"I thought," he begins hesitantly, "I hoped you'd come back and get them some day." And if she hadn't, he would have waited, because he knows (only too well) that even death isn't the end. Somewhere down the line, whether 17 months or 77 years, they would have eventually met again. They're tied by strings of fate that transcend age, time, distance, and death.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh. "I meant to," she says evenly, placing her cool hand over his, "a lot sooner than this."

He hurts when she hurts, and vice-versa. They asked her to spy on him, meant to use her for that purpose, and she refused. He understands without her having to say the words that she would have never have betrayed him, no matter how much it hurt. They're both hurting and healing together at the same time.

"Doesn't matter," he murmurs, lips brushing her skin, the taste of melting ice and everything Rukia at the tip of his tongue. His hands tug at the sheets around her. "You're here now." When he reaches for her, she's there, reaching back.

oOoOoOo

The next morning she's still there, framed by the soft morning light streaming in from the windows. She kisses him on his chin, his cheek, his brows, and lightly at the corner of his lips.

"Keep doing that, and we'll never this bed," he says, voice low and husky, smiling as he cracks one eye open.

Rukia ducks her head into his chest. "Pig," he hears her mutter.

Ichigo laughs and tucks her against him, curling his lean body around her. "I like it when you're sweet to me."

She pinches him on the ribs. "Ow Rukia, I'm just sayin'!"

"Don't get used to it," she says, sniffing haughtily.

There are a thousand ways for them to say I love you, I missed you, and time seems to stop when you're not around. But they don't say such words to each other because that's not the way they do things. Besides, words will never be enough to tell what the heart knows.

Instead, they do what they've always done- speak with heavy silences and soft gazes. Rukia rests the palm of her hand in the middle of his chest, over the strong and steady beat. "Nothing has changed," she declares, lovely blue eyes gleaming with trust, faith, and profound affection.

Ichigo merely nods in quiet understanding, heart beat racing under the palm of her hand. He holds her gaze seriously, as he places his own hand over hers. She has seen him at depths of despair and heights of triumph, and accepts him for for both his strengths and his weaknesses. He will always save her and she will always save him-sometimes without even lifting a finger. For the first time in seventeen months, Ichigo feels as though he can finally keep up with the speed of the world.

He doesn't ask how long she'll stay, instead, he asks her to teach him how to open a senkaimon gate.

I think I might be a closet romantic...so sappy!