Another piece gnawed off by the plot bunny...

Continued from piece #1

Ishida thought that getting wasted out of his mind was really one of the brighter ideas Ichigo had ever had, and saw no problem with relying on the bottom of his sake cup to make it all better.

Ichigo was firmly in agreement with him on this point by the time the bartender shoveled them out the door.

Ichigo, Ishida had decided, wasn't really such a bad guy after all. He even sang things. Loudly. In something that might have been a key. Ishida wasn't quite sure about the last point, but it was the thought that counted, right?

He tried to comment to that effect, and Ichigo gave him a rib-cracking hug and scruffled his hair and patted him on the head like an overgrown Lab puppy, mumbling something incoherent about street lights.

Rukia was swaying on her feet, or else the ground was swaying, which might have been possible too, but she looked quite a bit more cranky than Ichigo did. Ishida decided he didn't like drunk Rukia very much. She looked like she'd been deciding things. All that really needed deciding, Ishida thought, was where the next bottle of sake was coming from, because he could still remember Orihime's bright offhand smile when she told him that they were modern and didn't need to get married, and he needed to drink until that was gone.

He tried to find his lungs again. "...sake...?"

"Yeah!" Ichigo proclaimed, with enthusiasm. "Sake! Sake is good!"

"Where...?"

"Huh...?"

This was rapidly getting too complicated for Ishida to process. "More sake," he said, concentrating hard. "Where...?"

"Uh..." Ichigo slid down the side of the building and put his head in his hands. That looked comfortable.

Ishida tried for sliding down the building and missed, but it didn't really matter in the end since he ended up flat on the sidewalk too. At least he hadn't messed up his life so much that he could fall over and manage to miss the sidewalk. Sidewalks were almost as good as sake, only not quite as much, except that they were better because sidewalks were always there for you, and sake wasn't.

There was something profound about this. He tried to explain it, but first he had to remember what a verb was, and how you used them.

...Maybe the sidewalk wasn't as good as sake after all. It hurt.

No, that would be drunk Rukia kicking him in the head, except for when she was kicking Ichigo in the head. He definitely didn't like drunk Rukia. Sidewalks were much better.

Ichigo didn't like drunk Rukia either. "Go 'way," Ichigo said to Rukia, and Ishida could have kissed him, because he remembered how verbs worked.

The problem with shinigami was that they were stronger than they looked. Rukia grabbed both of them by the shirts and started dragging them somewhere.

Sidewalks were really good. Even when they hurt, they kept being there, and they let you know about it every so often just to make sure. Not like sake at all. Sidewalks -- they never abandoned you.

Apparently he didn't need to remember how verbs worked, because Ichigo agreed with him when he was only half done trying to explain. He liked drunk Ichigo much better than drunk Rukia. Ichigo understood about the important things.

---

When Rukia kicked on Orihime's door at three in the morning, a sleepy-eyed Tatsuki came to answer it.

"...Whaaaaa...?!"

A barefoot, bib-overall-wearing Rukia with a guitar case strapped to her back was standing on the doorstep with a grip on Ishida on one side and Ichigo on the other. As Tatsuki stared, Rukia picked up Ishida by the collar and flung him inside like a soggy newspaper. He bounced a little, but didn't protest.

"He is moving in with her," Rukia said flatly, still vaguely swaying on her feet. "Because he tried to become employed as a stripper at the bar when the other idiot told him that strippers made a great deal of money, and that they will need money for the baby. So since I would rather gouge out my own eyes than see him naked, and I rather enjoyed the ability to visit that bar, he is moving in so that he will not need to pay for an apartment in addition to the baby, and there will be NO stripping involved." She sounded a little desperate about that last point.

"...Huh?" Tatsuki asked, still staring at the overalls.

"Do you understand me?"

"Kuchiki-san, it's three in the morning..."

"Dost thou comprehend, mortal?" Rukia asked in a much older dialect, clearly impatient.

"...Huh?"

Rukia gave her a distinctly displeased look, picked up Ichigo by the scruff of the neck, and deposited him in Tatsuki's arms as though she were supposed to be able to support the weight of someone half a foot taller than herself and snoring.

"I shall make all clear unto thee," Rukia said, enunciating far too much, while Tatsuki was trying to get herself out from under nearly two hundred pounds of six-foot-tall orange-headed snoring teenage boy; but when she looked at the door again, Rukia was gone.

Tatsuki looked back and forth between Ishida, Ichigo, and the empty doorway, blinking.

Orihime had fallen asleep in front of the television at some point during the fourth romantic-comedy chick flick she'd rented on the way back from the ice cream shop, and after all the ruckus, she was blinking sleepily too. "Tatsuki-chan? Was I dreaming? There was something about ice-cream scoops and Ishida-kun naked and I got a little fuzzy after that part..."

"Er," Tatsuki managed, intelligently, before Rukia walked back in from the kitchen with a streak of dust on her face. The girl surveyed the room like a displeased magistrate before focusing on Orihime.

"Thou," she said, swaying on her feet slightly. "Thou art the mother of his unborn child?"

"Um," Orihime said, blinking. "Kuchiki-chan? Are you drunk?"

She considered that for a moment. "Yes," she decided. "Irrelevant, but yes. In any case. Thou art commanded to give unto him shelter and succor, as shalt he for thee, until such time as is necessary for the parturition of the child. When thou hast brought forth the Quincy's firstborn, at such time shalt the pact be accomplished and, an thou should then so wish, then shalt regain that which is thine own. Dost thou comprehend, mortal?"

Sometimes, Orihime was smarter than the rest of them put together. "Yes," she said brightly.

Rukia nodded briskly, picked up Ichigo by a handful of shirt, threw him over her shoulder -- his feet dragged the ground behind her -- and walked out.

Tatsuki stared at the door, her jaw hanging open. "...'Hime? What was that?"

"I think it was Kuchiki-chan drunk," Orihime said thoughtfully. "In bib overalls." She turned Ishida gently onto his side, so that he wouldn't be face down on the rug and trying to breathe the carpet shag.

"No, I mean... what was that? With the thees and thous and stuff?"

"I'm not sure, really," she said. "It sounded safer to agree. I mean, there was something about me taking care of Ishida-kun, and he seems to need it at the moment, so that's all right then..." She turned toward the kitchen, opened the door, and made a small squeak of surprise.

"Hime?"

The entire kitchen was stacked with boxes, all labeled in swift and fluent grass-hand... of approximately the thirteenth century. But the ink was still drying on a couple of them. There were embroidery projects sticking out of the nearest one, and several of Ishida's schoolbooks in another, and Tatsuki had a sudden sinking suspicion that a drunk Rukia was a lot more direct about problem-solving than she'd expected.

---

Ishida hated hangovers.

He was fairly sure it was the hangover's fault that all his personal belongings were in boxes in Orihime's kitchen. That and Rukia's fault. The hangover was Rukia's fault too. He remembered being kicked in the head, which certainly wouldn't help.

Everything was Rukia's fault. This was one more reason why he hated shinigami. Everything was their fault. Particularly Rukia's.

With that firmly decided, Ishida crawled across the living room floor, shoved his head under Orihime's sofa, and closed his eyes in the blessed darkness that was not full of dangerous stabby things like sunlight and bright pink curtains and, most importantly of all, not a drunk Rukia with shotgun and bib overalls in sight. Nothing was in sight, in fact. That was how it should be.

Orihime nearly tripped over his feet in the morning, and blinked a couple of times at the fact that Ishida had managed to wedge his head under her sofa and was apparently contentedly snoring. She carefully tiptoed around him.

On her way to pick up the videos to return to the store, Tatsuki did trip over his feet. Apparently he didn't even notice.

---

It took a while for Ishida to settle down and accept that Orihime really didn't mind that he'd been transplanted into her house by an intoxicated shinigami. After all, he thought, since she so clearly didn't want to marry him, it was unlikely that she would voluntarily want to live with him either, wasn't it?

"You keep forgetting that I love you," Orihime said, a little pink around the cheeks, and kissed him.

"Then will you marry me?" he asked, and his voice cracked despite his best intentions, because the hope and the confusion and the hurt were all tearing around inside and ripping at places in his chest that he hadn't realized could be torn.

"No, silly," Orihime said too brightly, and kissed his cheek again. "I want to be modern for you! I mean, it's the twenty-first century and everything. --Would you possibly bring me some more kimchee? The cheesecake is nice, but everything seems a little bland now; I've read that your tastes change in pregnancy, isn't that odd? I mean, I never would have thought of tempura-fried marshmallows filled with bean paste before, pancakes with bean paste and natto seemed a lot more natural, but lately I seem to enjoy the most interesting things..."

Ishida put on the elbow-high chemical-spill gloves he kept in the kitchen for Orihime's cooking experiments, and extracted the half-empty bottle of kimchee from the depths of the refrigerator to deliver it to her, and he hastily turned away before he had to watch Orihime put the kimchee-covered cheesecake into her mouth.

And so they settled into a sort of awkward comfortableness with each other; Ishida would ask her every night if she would marry him, and she always turned him down with a kiss and a smile and an "I love you." He never stopped asking, because even if he was going to be turned down, the "I love you" usually almost made it not hurt.

Orihime was surprised by the day that she couldn't fasten the top button of her jeans anymore; Ishida wasn't. He simply took her into his arms and held her close, his face buried in her hair, one light, cautious hand unfastening the second button as well, and then resting his trembling palm against the slight curve there. Surprised by how deeply it affected him, Orihime smiled, and tugged free of his hands just long enough to wriggle out of her clothing in order to give him a better view of the baby.

He had always been a considerate lover; but since he'd learned of her pregnancy, he treated her as though she were some impossibly rare treasure, nearly afraid to sully her with his touch. Which meant, of course, that she had to tease and tickle quite a bit in order to get him to laugh and squirm and surrender to the inherent silliness of loveplay.

"Are you sure you won't marry me?" he whispered.

"Of course not," Orihime said. "I mean, I'm getting fatter already. If I've married you and I'm fat, that's not very fair to you, is it? I mean... you're so elegant and slender and graceful, and I won't be. So it wouldn't be fair."

He looked so absolutely boggled by this statement that Orihime was puzzled too.

"...What?"

"Hime... you're carrying my child," he said, a little husky-voiced with his own emotion. "I want you to grow. I want to see you growing, to know that you love me so much your body itself is blossoming with it -- I want everyone to see that. I want to see you big and round as the moon itself, I want everyone who sees you to know that you're mine. --Even if you won't marry me." He almost managed a light voice as he said it.

"Really?" she asked, head tilted a bit to one side. "You don't mind at all that I'm getting fat?"

"You're beautiful," he said, not caring how his voice broke. "And you'll be even more beautiful as you grow. I can't think of anything in the world more beautiful than the thought of you smiling at me, happy to carry this child in your body, happy to grow big and ripe and radiant with joy..." His voice broke again, and he shook his head a little, embarrassed at himself. "...In any case. I swear to you that I certainly don't mind."

Orihime considered that. "Then I should smile for you quite a lot when I get fatter, shouldn't I?"

"Yes," he agreed. "Quite a lot."

---

In public, Ishida was even more silent than usual, even as Orihime visibly blossomed; she took a shining delight in the way her belly was growing so sweetly rounded, telling everyone she knew when she felt the baby kick, catching hands to press to the soft bulge and asking excitedly if they could feel it too.

It was some time before her friends could feel the movements from outside as clearly as Orihime felt them from within; the first time Ichigo felt the child kick under his palm, Ishida thought the big tough shinigami was going to pass out cold. He sat down rather quickly, head between his knees, trying not to faint, while Yuzu happily curved both of her hands against Orihime's newly-vacated belly and Karin teased her big brother mercilessly about being a wimp and he was too green even to reply.

Ishida would have taken the opportunity to tease his archrival, if it hadn't been for the fact that he completely understood how it could be overwhelming. He'd been afraid his heart would pound its way out of his chest, the first time, realizing that there was another life growing in Orihime's body and that it was his responsibility to care for and protect them both. Being responsible for your own life was difficult enough. Being responsible for a pregnant woman who was so overwhelmingly happy and so terrifyingly vulnerable, watching her hands touch her belly's gentle pout as though she held the world's greatest treasure -- that was, frankly, terrifying.

...Terrifying to anyone with the sense God gave little hamsters, which was likely why Orihime was smiling without a fear in the world. He loved her for it, even as she terrified him with her complete lack of fear; but in any case, he understood Ichigo's reaction far too well to have any room to mock him for it.

When Orihime cornered Chad, the gentle young giant did pass out cold. Karin stopped teasing Ichigo at that point.

---

When Ishida took her to her prenatal examinations, and they had to explain the difference in their last names, and the nurses looked at Orihime and then at him, it was all he could do to restrain himself from educating them at bowpoint exactly why it was unwise to offend a Quincy or cast aspersions on a Quincy's girlfriend.

The minute they got out of the hospital, he stopped her in the middle of the sidewalk and went down on one knee.

"Orihime," he said, shaking all over. "Please. Will you--"

"No," she said, very gently, stroking his hair. "Of course. And of course I love you."

"Why?" he whispered. "Why won't you marry me?"

"Well..." Toying with the ends of her long hair a bit shyly, Orihime thought about it, and then murmured, "if I married you, then you'd stop asking, and I love the way your voice sounds when you say such sweet things..."

"...Oh." He stood, rather stiffly, and dusted off his knees, and offered her his arm; she took it with a smile, and she chattered brightly about nothing at all as they walked home.

To the next piece