How Many Years?

This will be, I think, a short two or three chapter story, depending on how it pans out as I write.

~ * ~

One

Arisawa Tatsuki was a determined sort of woman, a strong one, who valued control as something highly important. She was a protector, of sorts, for everything she held dear. Currently, however, she held very little control over anything, her body least of all. The man pressed against her appeared to be in a similar situation, but that did not detract from the somewhat worrying free-fall of feeling they seemed to be lost in.

Her attempt at coherent thought was distracted as her lover tried to stammer something that maybe in some part of history might have been considered speech, but quickly gave up and pressed his lips to hers. His hands were everywhere, as were hers, and unnecessary clothing was shed with haste. Their panting breaths filled the room, and it was as Tatsuki was left in only her unbuttoned shirt that she whispered,

“Ichigo.”

He answered her with another kiss, filled with yet more passion, more heat, more blind fervour as he pushed her carefully to the floor and her arms found his muscular shoulders. His hand followed the subtle curves of her waist and hips and slid between her thighs, his fingers as rough and demanding as his lips. She pulled his chest to hers, her shortened nails making crescent-shaped indents on his skin. Their kiss broke as Tatsuki gasped and bit down onto the sensitive skin of his neck, and he drew a mirroring gasp against her cheek.

She felt him, hard, against her hip as she bucked into his hand. She reached to touch him, but he pinned her hands above her head and continued sending sparks of harsh bliss shooting right down to her toes. She bit into his shoulder, with much more force this time, just to make it clear that she wasn’t happy with him having so much control over her. Ichigo groaned beside her cheek in response and her arms were free again. Both of his hands now fell to her hips, holding them tight.

“I…” she began, with some indignation.

All sense was lost as he pressed inside her. It hurt. Gods. It hurt. She hissed and her hands found his biceps, holding tight to ground herself more than anything. His lips were on her neck then, gasping and whispering and mumbling nonsense into her flushed skin. He moved slowly, and she was thankful for it as the pain began to ease slightly. She allowed her hands to slide around his shoulders again and a soft sigh fell from her mouth as pleasure began to wash the discomfort away. She heard her name in Ichigo’s unbridled murmurs and nudged him to look at her.

He managed to give her a lop-sided smile through his half-lidded panting before he kissed her again, and she let herself melt into his hold, his kiss, and the pleasure that was now coursing through her. She felt her back arc into him of its own accord and she rocked her hips up to meet his quickening thrusts. She could feel his breath heavy against her neck now, one hand lost in his hair. The other skittered over the floor beside them, in search of something to hold. She bit at his lower lip, and his gasps became gravelly almost-growls in his throat.

“I- Ichigo,” she breathed, trying to drag more air into her lungs.

He didn’t answer, not audibly at least, before everything seemed to be too much for her. Her arms straightened out to her sides, palms pressed hard against the floor as her back arced higher. Her fingers clawed at the bare wood boards, head falling back, and waves washed over her, still tainted with pain but at that moment it didn’t seem to matter. She was moaning, and then gasping, and almost coughing as she lost the ability to catch her breath.

His body was tense; she could feel his taut muscles pressing down over her torso. She pulled her legs up, wrapping them around him. He pushed into her harder now. Deeper. Shocks flitted across her sweat-slicked skin, still reeling. The world seemed dizzy and she closed her eyes. He gasped, and she held him tight to her, almost painfully so, and moved with him as he let out a guttural moan against her neck.

~ * ~

How many years, she wondered, had it been since that night. That night where their passion had boiled on his old bedroom floor and she’d thought of nothing but him. She supposed she still didn’t think of much else, but the time had worn on her, and she wasn’t so blissfully distracted as she had once been.

She now sat at the table in the Kurosaki family’s kitchen, half-watching Yuzu cut vegetables for dinner. She had said that Tatsuki looked tired and thin, so she must rest and then eat, rather than helping as she usually did when she turned up unexpected.

Ichigo was gone again, his human body no doubt somewhere in the depths of Urahara’s shop. Where was he, really? The gods might have known; maybe he might have had the decency to tell them, if nobody else. She hated these times, when she felt so bitter about it all., but she couldn’t help herself. She had told him, countless times:

“I don’t need anything from you, if you don’t want to give it, but your honesty.”

He always replied with the same strange smile. It was him, through and through, to take it all on his shoulders, even her anger at him, and smile blandly about it. It looked like he cared, so much, for the whole world, so why did he feel so empty? It was bringing her to the end of her tolerance.

She had always thought she would be the strong one, to hold it all together. The first one to say when something wasn’t right, and to do something about it, but even after that argument back in their teens she hadn’t been able to push him away. She’d known him for too long not to care, not to want to understand, and now he was far too close for that to change. Well, it seemed, life didn’t always go as one thought it would. Sometimes it was for the better, sometimes for the worse. And sometimes everything was so blurred that you couldn’t decide either way.

It was then that Isshin ran into the kitchen with far too much energy for somebody who had just finished a day of work, picking Yuzu up off her feet and kissing her forehead.

“We’re way too old for that now, Dad,” Karin said from opposite Tatsuki.

He smiled broadly and laughed through his reply, “So you say, so you say.”

Tatsuki met his eyes with a weak smile, and the look she caught in reply told her he knew exactly why she was here. No more was needed, he knew; it was this way every time.

~ * ~

“I’ll be back tonight,” Ichigo had said, rushing out of the door before his lover could reply. He knew she’d had her ideas about where he went these times since school when she’d first been able to see his spiritual form, and still he never spoke of it with her. She didn’t need to know, he thought, it didn’t concern her and so he wouldn’t worry her with it.

A clawed arm slashed forward, narrowly missing his face and bringing him shooting back to the present. He glanced around him.

“Hell, Ichigo, where’d ya mind go all’f a sudden?” a loud shout came from behind him, and a red blur flew past him, far too close, “Y’gonna help me out with this thing or not?”

The hollow in front of them was huge, but it was the last of many. There was sense of relief in them now, after having fought for so many hours. Their smirks were still in place, of course, though Ichigo thought that they might just be running on adrenaline.

“’Course, if you need my help that badly,” he threw back at the redhead, and they charged toward the beast, swords at the ready.

It was late in the evening when he returned home to the tiny flat he and Tatsuki now shared and flopped down on the couch. It was empty, and he assumed that she was out at his father’s house. She often went there when he had to leave all of a sudden, and Isshin, as expected, had adopted her as something of a third daughter, although he seemed to hold back on as much affection as he gave to the younger girls. Probably best, Ichigo thought with a smile.

He heard the front door close quietly and peered over the back of the sofa to see Tatsuki with an unreadable look on her face.

“Missed you,” he said, making his way over to her.

She smiled up at him weakly as he planted a kiss on her forehead, wondering just what to say to him. It was getting to this now, she thought with regret. She didn’t know what to say to him. She didn’t know what to do. She was a tolerant person, and she was an understanding person. She accepted that people had their secrets, that everybody did. She had known what she was getting herself into when it had begun.

Orihime, for so long, had felt for him, and Tatsuki had stood by observing Ichigo being as closed off as he always was. What had she thought of him then? Had she thought he would change, or had she thought that it didn’t matter? She wondered now, whether she would want him to change for her who he was. Would it be unfair for her to ask that of a person? She supposed, though, that would not be what she would be asking. What she wanted from him was honesty, like she always had done.

“Ichigo,” she began, not really knowing what she planned to say. He looked at her, straight in the eye. Her tone was one that he could not ignore. She took a deep breath.

“What happened?” she asked. It was a question to them both, and it held so much more that she expected him to read in it. She wanted to know where he had gone, and why, but in all honesty she was wondering to herself: what had happened to them both? Were the years weighing on them now? His years of war had not been light on him, she knew, even if he had never once mentioned it. She thought of her own years of knowing him, and then loving him, realising that he’d never once mention those things. It had grated on them both.

She looked up at his face. He looked somewhat confused, but thoughtful. Was now the time for things, one way or the other?

~*~