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There was a damp stillness choking out the town when Orihime woke up. It was warm. It was July. The grey windless anticipation of storm felt to her like a taut bowstring. She knew, even without touching her forehead, that she was running a fever.
Orihime’s powers had ridiculous, arbitrary limits sometimes—there was nothing to be done for the flu. She could spend hours under the sunny awning of her own rejection, like tanning on a fake beach, and come out of it still sneezing. It was things like these that she had to go rifling through her old medicine cabinet for. It smelled like old antiseptic and dilapidating gauze in there. A vengeful medicine cabinet that was mad about not being needed anymore, like a very lonely person.
The very lonely medicine cabinet was all out of ibuprofen.
And Orihime felt that she would rather throw up in the kitchen sink than drag herself across the block for a refill, so she did the only thing for it— she took the butter out of her fridge, stuck a bowl of instant noodles in the microwave, and fell asleep on the sofa having forgotten about both of them.
She was having a ridiculous dream about a glassy castle and man-eating cellophane flowers when the clock started chiming somewhere—ding, ding, ding. A great grandfather clock chasing Alice through Wonderland. Ding, ding, ding. A pond that turned out to be a mirror and a great fire-breathing animatronic dragon-creature and it was all so very fantastic—only the clock seemed to be right outside the door.
“Are you the NHK bill person?” Orihime groaned. “Come next week, please!”
“It’s only me.” Said a quiet voice from the other side.
Orihime sprang up so quickly that the sofa gave an undignified creak of protest— like a scandalised chaperone it seemed to say, have some decorum, young lady, except decorum would mean going inside to find a robe or something and so waste another precious five minutes of leaving him waiting outside, and that would probably be worse, right? Times like these she wanted a sister.
She flung open the door to the smell of miso soup and oncoming rain.
“I brought you lunch.” Uryuu looked worried. “I had a feeling you’re not eating well.”
Lunch was boring but delicious— which was how it tended to be when Uryuu fussed about in the kitchen. Hot rice from the cooker and grilled salmon with lemon and salt, no condiments even if she was being the most agreeable patient in the world. In a bowl with soup ladled over the top. Chopped up sheets of seaweed. He had the culinary sensibilities of a Japanese septuagenarian.
“How’d you know I was sick?”
As he did her dishes and scrubbed the sink, Uryuu said it was her reiatsu that gave it away— a faint flickering of the pressure, a fluttering, a volatile ebb of the warm tide. “You’re a healer.” He chided. “Illnesses affect you more deeply than the rest of us. Healer, heal thyself— don’t you know how it goes?”
Maybe it was the dull migraine but she wasn’t listening to him. Uryuu’s boyish, white-clad back, strapped over with the lacing of apron—she made it herself with optimus prime printed linen ages ago, and he’d been there when she’d brought it to crafts club, had called it novel and exciting—all of it seemed to blur together into the soft light of her matchbox kitchen. Last month they’d gone to an exhibit about that school of French painters. The Impressionists. A painting not of a thing but the impression of a thing.
“I missed you.” She blurted out, interrupting him. “I haven’t seen you in days. I missed you.”
His face had a stunning capacity for softening. His expression melted with apology. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just been so busy—even if that’s no excuse. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Uryuu.” Orihime sighed into the warm cup he’d handed her earlier—more tea, with ginger for throat-acheyness, and honey for heart-acheyness; that’s what Sora used to tell her. “You make it sound like I’m mad at you. I’m never mad at you.”
“You’re never mad at anyone, Orihime.” He said, with an edge of frustration that was still characteristically well-meaning like he was worried about her glossing over a great injustice of some sort. “Even when you really should be.”
“Are you mad that I’m not mad at you? Silly.”
“No, I just.” He sighed. He took off his glasses and stared off into the small square of grey sky in the kitchen window. Orihime’s most favourite painting in the world. “I wish you’d yell at me, because I feel terrible about the whole thing.”
“I don’t want you to come over just because you’re feeling guilty about it.”
Uryuu spluttered at that. “Orihime.” He looked like he was going to keel over, ladle still in his hand. “I—is that what you think I’m doing here?”
“See?” She stirred her tea some more, not because the honey was settling down the bottom but because she couldn’t stop smiling. “I think you’d die if I actually yelled at you. Kaput. Gone. Bye-bye, Ishida-kun.”
Suddenly the cloudy light on her was gone and he was hovering over her, wearing her sunny wash gloves, smelling of lemon dish soap. “I am going to get yelled at if that makes it any better.” His eyes were bright on her even through his thin-rimmed glasses. “My supervisor is going to chew my head off.”
“What happened to the Hippocratic oath?” Orihime bit her lip, and it was a bad idea because the fever had nearly cracked it earlier. “You’d make a lousy doctor if you didn’t come to check on me.”
Uryuu took the gloves off. He had lovely hands; she’d always thought so. Pale, long-fingered, without blemish. There was a nearly aristocratic quality to them. The kind of hands you’d expect to see playing a grand piano, or on the cover of a magazine, modeling cufflinks or an expensive watch—though he’d been wearing the same watch since his first year of university. A thin affair in black leather. He was wearing it right now. Waterproof, and only eight hundred yen. Thrifting was an art.
His cool fingers landed on her damp forehead.
“I think you’ll be fine by the end of the day, all things considered,” Uryuu mumbled. “I think you’re just stressed… burnout, I mean, it’s textbook. You’ve been working so hard.”
Orihime sighed. “This whole postgrad thing was a bad idea.”
“I think it was unavoidable.” He pushed her hair out of her face— a profoundly ordinary act of tenderness, one he’d done to her a hundred times before, but it made Orihime’s throat close up with longing. “Of course, they’d want more from you. You’re so smart.”
“Flatterer.” She blushed. “You’re trying to talk me out of taking a leave of absence. I know it.”
“Is that the plan?”
“No plan. I just feel like going to bed for three months.” Orihime deadpanned. “I want to never read another paper on the redshift doppler effect.”
“I could write you a letter.” He sounded serious. “We’ll say you have a deadly endocrine illness that requires three naps a day.”
“How unethical, Dr. Ishida!”
“Three naps a day, and breakfast in bed every time.”
Orihime laughed; high and clear, ginger and honey. She brought his smooth face closer with a hand that felt slow and heavy but not unpleasant— the feverish dreaminess had begun to feel like something else. A languidness. The impression of a wanting that was not desperate but inevitable.
“And you’ll come over more?”
Uryuu slid his hand over hers— his blue eyes were deep and dark and fixed with affection. “Either way, I’ll come over a lot more.”
“Then I won’t have to take leave.” She rubbed his cheek with her thumb. He flushed so easily— her hand was a paintbrush splotching pink all over a pale canvas. “Because you’ll be here, making me boring lunch and boring dinner.”
“Don’t tease, miss buttered noodles.”
Orihime felt a vulnerable and ridiculous realisation flower in her head; she wasn’t burnt out as much as she was stupidly lovesick. Her thesis was already a constant headache but loneliness was further conducive to migraines. The stillness of the morning must’ve reminded her of how it’d been nearly ten days since they’d seen each other— how quiet it’d been in her apartment without him around. Ten days of going without—no touching, no kissing, no fucking— like a fast she had been forced into by circumstance; and she was demanding that way, too. She had an appetite.
She’d been working up an appetite.
Orihime curved her hand into the black silk of his hair. It was like hooking a fish— she grabbed. She yanked. When she pulled him down to the water, their mouths were already open, and there was an impatient wind whipping against the window.
He had to help her out of the couch because the fever and the rice and the tea all had certain sedative qualities. Not sedative in the way of ten milligrams of melatonin; a dreamless night packaged into an unromantic moon-pill. Rather, sedative like a sunbeam, with its yolky capacity for lulling little creatures to sleep. Contentedness—that was the word. The body as a sigh.
Orihime stepped over the sofa and let herself be held in place. His sleeves were rolled up from the dishes—his hands were on the small of her back, a cautious placement that nevertheless betrayed eagerness, even if Uryuu was the kind of person who seemed incapable of human urges sometimes. Old-world chivalry was funny that way, but she doubted he could’ve ever been someone who voiced these things out loud, quincy ethics or not.
“You’re tired.” The frayed velvet of his voice buried itself in her hair. “You should get some sleep. I’ll leave dinner on the table for when you wake up—”
At that, she loosened in his grip. She pressed her warm mouth against the perfect sliver of skin that peeked from his unbuttoned collar. His pulse rose and fell under her tongue. His whole life was here, flush against her. Sometimes she felt so hungry for touch that she was afraid she could bite right through him—Orihime knew that she was a wanting person. When they fucked, she felt like she was a great ravine in the shape of a girl, if only because Uryuu always let her have it her way and responded so deliciously to being eaten up.
She was already sucking hard. Her teeth were pressing into him.
“There’ll be time for… that.” Uryuu shivered. His voice, always so smooth and articulate, was threatening to waver and crack. “Later. When you’re feeling a little better.”
“You’re always saying things you don’t mean.” She pulled away and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I love that about you, but not when it’s with me.”
“I’m not… lying.” He squeezed his eyes shut. He was helpless with her—it was terrible. It was the worst power trip in the world. “I’m just worried about you not feeling well, ‘Hime.”
“Do you know what’d make me feel better?”
“Rest.” He looked away, hand over his mouth. Uryuu was like a foreign person’s caricature of a modest oriental woman sometimes. “A good night’s sleep—”
“You are mean, Ishida Uryuu.” She cut him off, sliding her palm down to the front of his narrow black trousers. A pet. A squeeze. Orihime couldn’t be ambiguous if she tried. “Always making me ask for things. I thought you came over to take care of me.”
Even the clouds were giving in to each other. She hadn’t counted on the theatrical assistance, but when Uryuu finally slotted his mouth over hers—deliberately, promisingly, pushing up against all of her haziness— there was a flash of lightning through the window. It came in and shattered on the tiled floor and the wall and the bed.
When they’d kissed enough to make her feel like her mouth was on fire—only then did Uryuu make his way downwards. The swift unbuttoning of a pyjama top, the clever unclasping of a bra; but he never looked away from her face. His eyes were steady on hers, and sharp and clear, and Orihime felt the beginnings of that familiar ache between her legs. A swelling that hurt somewhere deep inside—a pang of absence.
“I’m going to take these off now.” His voice was low and breathy. “Come up a bit, please.”
And then the shirt was gone and so was the bra— and in the cool air her body broke out in a rash of goosebumps. Her mouth made a soft noise. Ah. Surprise. A wonderful feeling of surprise. His mouth slid down her sternum and paused at the dovetail beginning of her breasts. He looked up at her. He was saying things without saying them. He was asking her— please? Orihime felt her toes curl. Her nipples were beginning to hurt with coldness and arousal. She took his glasses off.
And then his lips were hot on her.
Shy Uryuu—proper, chivalrous Uryuu who folded her clothes after taking them off—took the whole of her stiff areola into his mouth. The pinched brown peak of sensitive skin against the flat of his tongue. The hard line of his bottom teeth grazing against the swell downwards. Orihime could hear herself sigh but her head was elsewhere; this wasn’t thrashing, scratching, eating each other. The usual theatrics. The clambering on top and rocking mercilessly. His mouth was full of slow heat, sending waves of a liquid good feeling down to the tips of her fingers, sucking in time to something. The rain? Her heart? She was going to spill.
Ah. Ah. Ah—
“Hime.” An obscene releasing sound like a—pop. “Hime.” A delirious feverish feeling was climbing up her throat and turning into a hundred affirmations. Right there. Keep doing that. Her arms moved around him sleepily.
“Orihime.”
Uryuu always said her name like he wanted to keep saying it— he brought his face close to hers and pressed his mouth against her cheek.
“Orihime.”
She wanted to come like this—held flush against, radiating against each other. A sleepy movement downwards. Uryuu’s left hand—her hand. He’d lost it for her once. She’d knit it back out of nothingness again. How much did you have to love someone to turn the clock back on them? — His hand-her hand teased her legs apart and held, in its graceful long-fingered radius, the innermost curve of her thigh. A sharp-knuckled thumb brushed against the hard nub of her clit.
Orihime grabbed his wrist.
In the beginning this would’ve surprised him, but their faces were only inches from each other’s and there was a shine of amusement in his eyes. That was what Uryuu did instead of laughing; he sat there beaming, imperceptibly.
“You’re still wearing all your clothes.” Orihime pouted. “Don’t you think that’s unfair?”
“I can make you feel good even without—” He kissed her softly. “Taking my clothes off.”
“I want to see you.” She tugged at his collar. Stiff white linen that smelled of antiseptic. Everything about him was clean and good and she wanted to just—take him apart—but the feeling was different today. Orihime felt that she was on the backfoot. She was being pushed up against the proverbial wall. This was new. The look on Uryuu’s face that said—you impatient girl, what am I going to do with you? There was a glint in his soft blue eyes. A hardness to the jaw. Delicious newness. She felt heat whip between her legs.
He wasn’t going to oblige her.
Uryuu kissed her again—tongue sweeping against the white contours of her teeth. Deeper, this time. Dizzying. And then he made no more stops; he was kneeling over her with all of his measured gracefulness, pulling her down to the edge of the bed by the hipbones. Even when he was in charge, he couldn’t stop being reverent— his palms swept across; thighs, knees, the full lengths of her legs. His fingers hooked onto the wide elastic band of her panties.
“Orihime.” It was a whisper; something that would’ve been inaudible to lovers who couldn’t sense each other’s spirits as they could. Pinpricks of pressure. Anomalies in the fabric of space-time, the two of them. “All I want is to take good care of you.”
And then he was peeling twin hoops of blue down her legs and kneeling on the ground and his mouth was—oh, oh, Uryuu— and his warm wonderful relentless mouth was firmly on her cunt.
He always ate her like it felt good for him.
They held hands through it almost every time; her left, his right. The anchor. The firm grounding of her body, usually writhing, usually arching, to what he was doing to her. Sucking, licking, fucking her, with his clever tongue and his clever fingers. The first time they’d done it, there had been hesitations about going too fast, and Orihime had reassured him— we don’t need to have real sex just yet. Hours later, she was falling asleep under him, boneless and happy. It was real. Mouths and hands and teeth. That was real sex.
Orihime felt herself arch off the mattress as his lips fixed over the critical point, but this time was an altogether more… consuming feeling. She felt suspended against him. She felt the aching heat fill her like a saltwater tide. The hand holding his opened and closed slowly—like a flowering, like all of the good feeling was being funnelled into this expression.
“Oh…” She mumbled. “You always know what I need, don’t you?”
Suddenly, he was licking her in long, shameless turns. His nose bumped against her clit. She felt herself swell, she felt herself slicken against the heated lingering of his mouth. His long fingers teased along her creases, and she throbbed against them. He’d taken her thighs up, one on each of his shoulders; those bird-boned parts of him that were sharp and delicate and still ridiculously strong. They tightened there, around his face. They shook. Orihime sighed against the half-opening of her own mouth. She grasped the fullness of her breast as he kissed and tongued—the soft hill and the wetness and the pink heat inside, and then, oh, his fingers were in her. Snugly. Down to the second knuckle. Oh, God.
Uryuu moved his face and dragged his sticky, open mouth against her thigh. “Do you like that?”
“Yes.”
“Do you want more?”
“Yes.”
His fingers slid deeper. His mouth was a hard line on her skin. Orihime’s hand squeezed his—hissing an intake of breath as his thumb found her clit and began to rub slow, deliberate circles. “Just like that?”
“Don’t stop.” She swallowed. Her throat was thick with pleasure. “You’re so good. Don’t stop.”
He didn’t stop— he sped up. Fingers and thumb and mouth, working in delirious tandem. The pooling liquid heat in her stomach had begun to coil tighter. He was lapping at her, keeping a steady rhythm with his hand; pressing, rubbing, pumping his fingers in and out as Orihime pushed herself up on one arm, shaking the long hair out of her face, trembling with the steep, steady climb of her orgasm.
“Uryuu.”
His name was an exhale. A shudder that made a rash of goosebumps go up her arms, and when he looked up at her from between her thighs; eyes glazed over, fingers still buried to the last knuckle inside her cunt, Orihime felt a sudden bout of breathlessness.
“I’m gonna—” Ah. Uryuu hadn’t stopped, even if he was looking right at her. “I’m gonna come really soon—”
Somehow, he’d perfected the timing; because the first wave of sweet relief hit her just then— the coil snapping, sending her stumbling back, mouth open. Out of nowhere, spasm after spasm of resounding delight. Everything was ringing with that feeling; the loose, hot pleasure of climax. Her head spun. She fell back on the pillow. A perfect little death.
It must’ve been a dramatic show, because Uryuu was off the floor nearly immediately—wiping his mouth with the back of his hand and coming up to sit next to her, look of concern transparent on his hazy face.
“Orihime?” He pushed the hair out her face. “Sorry, was that too much?”
“I think.” She was still out of breath. “I think you just fucked the flu out of me.”
Eating her out hadn’t made him flush as much as hearing that did, and he’s back to strait-laced, squarish Uryuu again; looking away with his hand over his mouth, muttering something about how she’s completely scandalous and who says things like that out loud, oh my god— but she’s not quite done with him yet, so when he asks, where did you put my glasses? Orihime grabs him by the collar and says— take your stupid pants off first, doctor.
The rain was coming down in glittering sheets outside. Fooled by the downcast face of the sky, the streetlights were early to flicker on. Neon downpour, melting down the drains—light, in fact, everywhere. Blinking headlights on the long way home. Squares of yellow along apartment buildings.
Orihime had forgotten all about turning the lights on.
She had an excuse; she had better things to be occupied with. Buttons on a shirt. The buckle of a belt. Getting Uryuu flat on his back, the way she liked him best.
“I don’t want you exerting yourself.” He was trying to sound like he didn’t care about her straddling him, but his voice was deep and fraying around the edges. “I don’t want you tiring yourself out, Hime.”
“Mm.” She pressed against him sleepily, nakedness against the hard heat of his clothed arousal. “I’m not tired. I’m just really happy.”
“You’re sweet.” He laid his open palms on the spills of her hips. “But like this, it might be—”
“Shh.” Orihime put her hands on his shoulders and pushed down. “Stop worrying so much. I want you like this.”
“So bossy.” Uryuu smiled in spite of himself, and the warm luminous blush on his face made her bite her cheek. From this vantage point, he was just lovely; swept dark hair, foggy eyes, pale skin that begged for bruising. Pretty boy. Uryuu looked pretty even when he was dying— her guiltiest secret had been that once, on a stuffy, lonely summer night, she’d summoned behind her eyelids the image of him wincing breathlessly under her shield, and rocked herself to an angry, incomprehensible climax. There had been hot tears of shame afterwards, a lot of worry about whether it made her a bad person— of course, she didn’t know, back then, that Uryuu liked it when things hurt.
Or, at least, liked it when she was doing the hurting.
(Someday, she would try him out for size—see just how far she could take it.)
Orihime leant forward. “I am bossy.” Her hair slipped from her shoulders and fell in a damp curtain around them. She rocked her hips and watched his brows knit together in focus. “But you like it, don’t you?”
“I do.” He confessed plainly. She saw his throat move as he swallowed. “I like… everything you do.”
“Everything?”
“There’s nothing about you that I don’t like.” Uryuu’s eyes, heavy-lidded with want, shone with affection. “Not one thing.”
Orihime touched his face. “I should be the one saying that to you. Silly.”
His hands grabbed and loosened at her hips, down to her thighs, up to the cinch of her waist. She could feel him twitch under her as she rocked, slowly back and forth, the two of them separated only by thin white linen. Orihime sighed— sex like this was indulgent. Like licking out the filling of a cream horn with no worries about what to do with the pastry, because someone would eat it for you.
“Ah—”
He palmed the damp swells of her breasts and pressed his fingers into her soft stomach. “Orihime, Orihime—” He was mumbling her name again, like a litany against having to go back to their lives again for the week, until they saw each other again. “You always like things your way.”
The rocking was starting to get her worked up again. Orihime lifted herself up on her knees, and with her arms behind her, pulled off the rest of his clothes. The undone belt made a jangling sound. The elastic snapped in place. The head sprung against her—thick heat against wetness, and he gasped, throwing his head back.
“Oh—!”
“You’re so hard.” She shuddered, holding herself above him, teasing the tip with her cunt. “You’re so, oh, oh.”
Distractedly, impatiently, she’d slipped him in and the hot, delicious stretch of him had knocked the wind of out her. Orihime leant forward, mouth open, breathing hard on his warm face with its helpless expression— “Oh, that’s, that’s so good.”
He grabbed her face and kissed her— messily, full of teeth. He held her there as he snapped his hips up from below. Sharp, harsh movement. The deliciousness that was suddenly unbearable. Orihime felt her words lose their separations on the way out— yesyesagaindothatagain—
Uryuu’s fanned palms went from her face to her back and then he did a wonderful thing; still joined, still inside of her, he flipped them over. His shirt brushed her collar and chest and ribs. He pulled out of her for a moment, to kick the pooled weight of his pants off his ankles, and then he was sliding back in; aching deliciousness, slower this time, more deliberately paced than when she’d gotten tired of waiting.
His jaw went slack as he buried himself to the hilt. “You’re too tired to have it your way.” He sighed. “You’d pass out if I let you be on top.”
“No, I wouldn’t—”
“You’re so—” He snapped his hips against her again, noisily, and that meant whatever quip she had ready for him died in a moan. “You’re so hot inside. With a fever like this…” Slow, deep strokes of his cock—she felt like she was full to the tips of her fingers. “You’d have made yourself sick.”
“Go faster.”
“I have a feeling.” He whispered, as he pulled out all the way before pushing in again. “You couldn’t handle that right now.”
She couldn’t do anything at that but loop her arms around his and hold herself in place—the coquettish, sly teasing all that afternoon had been so good, where had it come from? As he pushed her legs even further apart to settle their hips together, Orihime realised— he’d been wanting it too, hadn’t he? His quiet gallantry could so often seem like disinterest, but when he was here, sighing against her neck, holding her flush against his body, who could say he didn’t want it just as badly as she did?
All of her was touching all of him within the curtain of grassy cologne that was his open shirt, and he moved inside her with purposeful deliberation; like a moment of distraction could flip the board. Orihime found herself soothing his pace, rocking back from below, cooing with contentedness. He wrapped one firm arm around her and led the other one downwards. Fingers parting soaked hairs, finding, again, that sore, sensitive spot. More slowly, this time. Gentler. Pressing in intervals as he, again and again—
“Uryuu.” She gasped at the familiar tightening. “I’m going to come again.”
He said nothing; he only kissed the underside of her jaw and opened his mouth there—his own breathing was uneven. The smooth drive of his hips was beginning to falter, growing harsh then and again, like he was trying to keep himself anchored to the plateau of feeling but couldn’t. The tide was too strong. The waves too fierce. The rain outside was merciless.
With a jerk, he tried to pull out of her.
Orihime’s eyes shot open. She grabbed his face with one hand—the nails digging into his cheek, red mouth scrunching up. “What’re you doing?”
“We shouldn’t.” He blinked, confused. “I didn’t even know we were going to, so I hadn’t—”
Orihime sighed fondly and pulled him closer, crossing her legs firmly over his back. “Just keep going, Uryuu.”
“Are you sure?”
She kissed his forehead and tasted the salt there, pushing the hair out of the way. “I want you like this.”
Through all that, his hand hadn’t stopped, but it did now. He wrapped his arms around her. She clawed at him. When they finally came in quick succession, their mouths opened against each other as he slammed into her—sharp and harsh and reckless. Again, and again, and then— and then there was only the ring of teeth marks, raw on his shoulder, and the spent comfort of bodies, and the grumbling of her stomach.
“Oh dear.” Orihime couldn’t help laughing. “We should’ve gotten a snack.”
Uryuu touched her face and smiled. “Do you want to go on a date?”
She’d been joking about fucking the flu out of me— but in a miracle that defied medical science, her temperature was gone.
“It’s not a miracle.” Uryuu said from the bathroom, fixing his tie. “It’s physical exertion. Sweat. Your body was cooling itself off.”
“You’re ruining the mood!” Orihime yelled from the other side of the apartment, brushing her wet hair in front of the only mirror that could fit all of her height. “It was love! The power of love! And come zip this dress up for me.”
He said something about how she could write her own shoujo manga if she kept coming up with dialogue like that— but he was smiling. She knew, because he left a kiss behind her ear before he rushed them out the door, umbrella and rainboots and jacket and all, talking about how they were already going to have to go to the bad ramen place with how late they were, and Orihime had felt it. The soft curve of his mouth. Like hot miso soup for the heart.