Title: Chocolate Kiss

Characters/Pairing: Ichigo/Rukia

Rating: T

Genre: Romance

Summary: It's Valentine's Day and Rukia's by herself on school grounds, until Ichigo finds her and gives her gift she won't ever forget.

A/N: In celebration of Valentine's Day.

Ichigo had been looking at her strange all day. He would give her sidelong, once-over glances out of the corner of the corner of his eye and would promptly commence to do...whatever it is he'd been doing.

For the past half hour, it was calculus, which beggared belief in its perplexity and confounded knack for putting her brain in a muddle. There were so many textbooks and stray papers on her desk now that it ceased to look like a writing table and more like a landfill of mathematical related paraphernalia.

Suffice to say, she was one step away from a psychological meltdown, a microcosmic minute away from a migraine, and a single breath from just giving up. This kind of answer to her predicament wasn't an answer but a very un-Kuchiki-like surrender.

But however much it may have infuriated her, and however unacceptable, all she could think about...was Ichigo.

He'd been acting extremely out of character since dawn when the Kurosaki household had begun its ritual stirrings. Instead of traditionally sleeping in to await the impending tune of Isshin breaking down the door to administer fractures and damage of severe magnitude, Ichigo woke up just as the sun was encroaching on nightfall. Rukia heard him bustling downstairs just as she was hobbling to the bathroom with her knees clamped together to postpone the dying urge to relieve her bladder.

Fed up with shuffling like a cripple elder, she clenched her jaw and proceed to hop, all the while cursing herself for drinking an entire juice box just before retiring to bed.

Ichigo had told her not to, but did she listen? No.

She just got a kick out of defying him knowing that he was usually right...on occasion. Rukia would never debase her pride and dignity by acknowledging that maybe sometimes the orange-haired substitute got the best of her.

A sliver of light from downstairs that was bathing the next floor of the household caught her attention as she passed through it on her perilous journey to the toilet.

Tottering precariously to the side towards the flight of stairs, Rukia watched as the source of light was turned off with an indistinct click and Ichigo passed by the steps in silhouette.

"Ichigo!" she hissed.

Whether he heard her or not, he failed to respond and continued to the fore of the house, where she heard him close the front door behind him. Intrigued as ever but far concerned with an increasingly pressing matter-on her bladder, that is-she rushed to the lavitory.

After a few hours, Rukia had walked to school as was routine everyday, without Ichigo.

She had entered the classroom contemplating what godforsaken force could have compelled him to skip school, only to find him sitting at his desk.

He was indolently lounging back in his chair with his hands clasped together behind his head. His bright spiky locks were as unruly as ever. Nothing was out of place, as far as she could tell.

After the bell had rung signaling first period, Ichigo had taken on a more lax position and was leaning up against his desk with a rather bored expression.

Rukia rolled her eyes. He looked to be just scribbling away and not working in general.

She shook her head and directed her focus to math.

She cursed herself again when the alarm went off and she couldn't find Ichigo amongst the crowd of students that were filing towards the door. Rukia had been so immersed in her studies that the bell had made her jump clear out of her seat.

Was it really lunch already? Ah, what the hell. She needed a breather anyway.

Rukia stacked her books in an orderly fashion and shoved them into her satchel before skipping out of the classroom in as much an enthusiastic a manner that the situation called for.

Regrettably, it was harder to locate Ichigo then previously thought. He must have been single-minded in his need to make haste, or elude Keigo, because his friends were still at their lockers chatting.

And there were no freakishly orange-haired teenagers with perma-frowns plastered to their faces as far as she could see.

Rukia decided to get out of way of the student body before she was trampled and weaved her way in and around the throng of energetic humans.

When she was finally outside away from the suffocating gossip-mongers and hormonal adolescent girls, she inhaled. Letting out a loose, heavy breath, she meandered around the grounds until the grass began thinning and the ground turned to dusty gravel.

She was behind the school just where the track field and storage sheds were. Rukia scuffed her shoes against the ground and leaned up against the wall of the school building. A looming shadow of a figure blotted out the sun that was awashing her smooth porcelain skin with its warm rays.

"Hey!" she cried out in complaint.

"Hey yourself," Ichigo said. Squinting, Rukia lifted her hand up to make better view of him just as he grabbed her wrist and yanked her over closer to him.

"The hell?" she exclaimed, startled. She aimed to strike him for his incompetence, but he just snatched that hand up, too, and crossed it over her her captive left one.

"Wh...What are you doing?" Rukia stammered, uncertain. Ichigo pushed against her, forcing her to step back once, twice, until she was pinned up against the wall she'd formerly rested against.

Vivid crimson flooded into her cheeks as she glanced up to acknowledge him, and was merely startled speechless by the hard, resolved look he wore.

"Ichi-!" He shut her up by pressing something between her parted lips. Rukia's responding squeak was followed by an expression of utter cuteness as she gazed up at him with eyes as round as saucers. In the lighting, her irises were a clash of brilliant violent with nightly indigo. Her tongue flicked out slowly to identity the round object, and she was rewarded with the delightful savor of milk chocolate. Candy.

Ichigo guided his calloused fingers under her chin then, and lifted her head up so that he could see her.

He wasn't frowning.

His liquid brown eyes were unreadable, his posture slack as he inclined his head, inching towards her.

Rukia jerked back and hit her head on the wall behind her. With this small distraction, Ichigo dove forward and pressed full lips to hers in a bruising kiss. His tongue flicked out to push the chocolate back into her mouth, sensually brushing up against her bottom lip in the process.

She struggled, fighting back, but he easily pinned her wrists on either side of her to the wall. Pressing against her to ensure that she was uanble to flee, he started to slowly nip and suck on the exquisitely sensitive areas around her mouth.

Her muffled protests were cut short as he moved his lips over hers and slid his tongue out to taste the milky chocolate that dappled her lower lip. The round piece of candy had melted in her warm, wet mouth and was now nothing but a mushy, tasty globule of sweetness.

Ichigo, having thoroughly abused her bottom lip and cleaned it of any traces of the confection, kissed her gently. Then, with one fluid motion, he laced his fingers in her silky tresses and speared his tongue into her mouth.

Rukia was nothing short of confused about what was going on; her limbs felt like dead weight, and all she could muster was a spasmodic twitch. She was dizzy with the foggy haze that clouded her mind as he placed his big hands on her cheeks, cupping her face. An unbearable heat centered in Rukia's belly and her legs wobbled as Ichigo's tongue tangled with hers, lapping up every bit of the melted chocolate.

She emitted a weak mewl and closed her eyes, memorizing the feeling of his moist lips on hers, the heat of his palms against her skin, the way in which he held her so close to him.

Ichigo swallowed the remains of the chocolate, his tongue brushing against her palate as he explored her. Rukia trembled, offering the tentative flick of her own tongue as reward to his efforts.

He groaned against her and pulled away, the fuzz on his cheek brushing against the velvety smooth of hers and tickling her.

"Happy Valentine's day, Rukia," he said, voice husky. Weaving his arms around her waist, Ichigo picked her up and proceeded to administer another breath-taking kiss.

"Hey... Hey!"

A moment of quiet. "OI, MIDGET!" The harsh and literal slap of reality rammed Rukia into the edge of her desk just as she was blissfully-unaware of said reality-daydreaming of Ichigo.

She snapped her head up, massaging the crick in her neck as she glowered at the root of her desires, an insanely bright-haired substitute shinigami just shy of six feet. As opposed to her fantasy, Rukia was the one who had been acting out of character all day.

She had departed the Kurosaki household before dawn to get some supplies from the Shoten and stock up for the week. When Ichigo had rendezvoused with her at class, she had been unnaturally taciturn. While he had slaved over calculus she had been dumb to the world and hovered in some sort of catatonic state.

Class had been dismissed now and the students had dispersed in all directions for lunch.

Ichigo would have preferred stuffing his face, but his concern for her had kept him rooted to the spot.

"What was that for?" she cried, a very Rukia-like response which gave him an unspoken ease that she was at least still half herself.

"It's lunch, dumbass," he informed her.

She looked up at him with glazed eyes, a vivid pink hue flooding her cheeks.

"Well, I don't recall ever recquiring your assistance," she said tersely, and crossed her arms over her almost non-existent bosom.

Ichigo eye-rolled. "I'm sure you wouldn't...otherwise you would have continued sitting here, sighing all day." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "I sighed?" she asked.

"Yeah...a lot." Ichigo noticed she didn't make direct eye-contact with him. And was it just him, or did she shift away from him when he stepped in her direction? Her posture was taut and her motions mechanical, almost insecure.

His heart went out to her for a reason he couldn't entirely comprehend.

Maybe...it had to with the fact that, including Keigo, only a couple of males in the student body had approached her to offer her gifts for Valentine's Day.

Rukia may have been milking him for weeks about this event and asking him nonsensical questions about why girls were doted on by boys for 24 hours, but he didn't really think she would get bent out of shape over it. That was who Rukia was: she didn't care about her place in the social chain and she certainly didn't let trivial issues like this get to her.

Ichigo turned fractionally to fish something out of his bag, rousing his companion's curiosity.

"Here," he said, and shoved a tiny red box into her hands that had a misshapen snow white bow stuck to the top with a mess of glue.

He looked mildly disgrunted that he'd had to carry it with him, as was shown by the flushed red in his face and ears.

"And don't complain!" he barked quickly. "I worked for hours on that with Yu-" Ichigo caught himself, face noticeably reddening darker.

"I mean, I...I-" he stammered. "Just open it!" He waved his hands at her and pivoted on his heel, turning away from her.

Rukia suppressed a girly giggle at how childish he was acting, the corners of her lips lifting in a content smile. She looked down at the box and daintily lifted the lid. There, nestled in a square slip of foil, was the round piece of chocolate that had caused her so much turmoil in her daytime reverie.

"Ichigo."

The spiky-haired man reacted to his name by spinning around. Rukia was in front of him in a couple of strides, and then she was reaching up and popping the chocolate between his parted lips.

Leaning up on the tips of her toes, she kissed him just inches from his mouth and smiled up at him.

"Thank you," she said, glided on out of the classroom in a magnificent exit, leaving behind a thoroughly flustered teenager in her wake.