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Kuchiki Rukia was trouble, even before she’d become a blood sucker.
Not that Ichigo was surprised. He’d known her before she’d been turned. More importantly, he’d been there when it happened.
He was why it happened.
Given his history, people assumed they know the reason behind his volunteering to be her blood bag. In their eyes, he was a self-sacrificing dumbass for it, but it was an understandable choice. It was practically common knowledge that he’d lost his mother to a vampire when he’d been a child. It made sense that he’d want to repay the life debt he’d accrued in yet another person sparing him from the same fate.
The reality wasn’t nearly as altruistic.
Not when she’s straddling his lap, her nose pressed where his neck meets his shoulder, her teeth glimpsing his skin. In one shuddering breath, he shivers and burns at the impression of her smile.
Even with his training as a huntsman, Ichigo could’ve argued that his response -- docile, yielding -- was prey instinct.
But then, he’d be lying.
His fists flex where they sit on either side of his knees. Not touching because Rukia said so, and he’d do just about anything she wanted. Not that it means he won’t goad her. Doesn’t mean he won’t say please if he thinks it’ll get him what he wants.
(It won’t, obviously.
But his attempts at manipulation have never failed to delight her, and if nothing else, he knows he’s at least responsible for that much.)
Her laugh is a soft hummingbird thrum against his chest, her fingers turning into talons in his hair as she arches his neck back, bearing his throat.
His grunt is surprised, pained and pleased.
The weight of her shifts, brushing up against him just so. It doesn’t make his breath catch nearly as much as the look in her eye when she peers down at him from her new perch; unrepentant, hungry.
Neither would be something she’d ever let herself express, even before she’d been turned.
She had pride aplenty, even if it was never quite in the way others understood it.
They were similar, in that way.
He hadn't understood it either. The view that being a huntsman was anything at all like the pledges of justice and oaths of heroism that it was dressed up as. Perhaps it was because he didn’t grow up inside the walls of the Court of Pure Souls either, had lived far enough out of its reach not to be dazzled by their marketing where hunting was seen as an honour, a greater calling.
Huntsmen served as protectors, the only barrier against the vampires that plagued the world.
To Rukia, what she did was survival, life stripped to its bare essentials.
They both saw what they did as necessity. They didn't have the luxury of choosing the mantle when it had been thrust before them as a consequence: his, at the death of his mother, and hers, by the peaceful life she was denied over and over and over again.
They hadn't joined the Court at the same time.
He'd been sixteen when he passed the trials to join the Gotei's ranks, not quite the youngest, but close enough to be deemed a prodigy. Much as his father tried to keep him and his sisters away from the Hunt, everyone at Court knew who he was -- expected his arrival -- referred to him as a prodigal son.
In contrast, Rukia had been twenty. Orphaned for so long with no family to claim and claim her in turn, she didn't have the shame to be embarrassed about it, much as her fellow initiates tried to educate her. Not that it mattered. Where she lacked in prestige, and proper form, she excelled in brutality.
In her eyes, a fight could end well or cleanly, but not both.
Kenpachi had been pleased with her, which said enough.
But all Ichigo saw -- remembered, dreamed about -- was her snow white face splattered with blood and the depthless blue of her eyes.
The remaining participants in her trial survived, thanks to her.
Not that it really won her any friends. Court politics were a scam. But she didn’t care either way. The vampire was dead, that was as far as her interest went.
It didn’t change when she did.
It was a year after her trial when she saved him, and was turned for it. The dust hadn't even settled before she was offering herself up for execution.
The fury that arose from that discovery was incendiary. He'd been so furious -- at himself for being unable to kill the vampire before it sunk its teeth, at her for protecting him and offering up her life, at the Council of Pure Souls for even thinking they were worthy of taking the life she was giving up.
He'd known her for a precious few months before the threat of her being taken away was suddenly staring him in the face, and he couldn't let that happen. Wouldn't.
A sweep of her dark hair brushes past his ear as she leans down, a curtain to shield them both from a world beyond themselves.
Her whisper is a caress, "What are you thinking about?"
"You."
Arch, "I can tell when you lie, you know."
"And am I?" he challenges.
"No," she says, and there's something about how she says it that sounds sad. He hates it when she's sad.
Before he can interrogate it, hunt it down and kill it, Rukia sighs. Her words are faintly scolding, "I haven't even put you under a thrall. You shouldn't be this pliant."
Ichigo snorts. "Like you've ever needed to use a thrall on me anyway."
Sharp, "How do you know I haven't?"
"You think that first time you drank from me was the first time I wanted to be under you?"
"Pervert," she accuses, all talk. Like she isn't nuzzling his jaw, isn't slipping her fingers down his chest.
Moved, his breath shudders. "I thought you said you were hungry." Ichigo shifts in his position beneath her, knowing it does little to disguise how his cock fills between his thighs and the weight of her on his lap does little to soothe the ache of pressure and heat he needs -
As close as they are, when she licks her lips, his skin tingles from the flick of her tongue. "I'm starving," she admits against the column of his neck, practically purring when he swallows his groan.
Arching his neck back further, allowing her more access even as he feels her undoing the buttons of his shirt, he says, "Then, eat."
She trails a hand down his exposed chest, his abdomen, and hums against the joint between jaw and neck, lashes fluttering like butterfly wings. "I will." It sounds like a promise.
Ichigo is counting on it.