#maybe after Masaki says something cheesy about hissing and or needing her

[cricketmilk]

They actually got me super hyped for the finale of Mayonaka Punch

[woodrokiro]

Do It For the Band, Part Four

Fandom: Bleach

Pairing: IchiRuki

Summary: When Tatsuki said she wanted their sophomore album to be the next Rumours, this is NOT what she meant. Band AU. Read Part One, Two, and Three. 

Rukia’s sure they’re not crossing any lines.

… Pretty sure.

She’s never been in a band like this before--or, well. A band, period. And from the movies she’s watched, the musician biographies she’s read and the behind-the-album documentaries she’s seen she imagines her group’s closeness is normal. Grabbing a tea and writing in a coffee shop with Chad, meeting up with Tatsuki at bars and picking out cute girls the drummer might like--these sort of things are normal. They’re her friends, after all. 

And she doesn’t do much different with Ichigo. It just… Feels different.

Especially when they start spending time together after recording sessions.  

They don’t even do anything, really. Mostly just put on a record at Ichigo’s place and talk about their favorite albums. Sometimes they’ll watch a movie together: Rukia on one far end of his tattered, second-hand couch, curled into the arm while Ichigo tries to scrounge something up for dinner in the kitchen behind her. 

And… Okay, she’s fallen asleep there. A couple times. But in a completely platonic way. She’ll wake up on his couch with a blanket over her, and Ichigo will walk in and nag at her for sinking the cushions of his couch and she’ll groggily snap back that maybe he should get a new couch then--

She’s stayed late there so often that Ichigo bought her a toothbrush to keep in the bathroom (“I can smell your morning breath all the way from the bedroom”), but it’s fine because it is! So! Platonic!!!

They’re friends. They’re friends. 

She’s (pretty) sure of it. 

It’s the end of the recording sessions when they go to her place because she had forgotten the champagne she meant to bring for celebrating their last day. The recording studio happened to be only a few blocks away, but he insisted on walking back with her to grab them. 

(“Shut up and let me be a gentleman” he had grumbled, and Rukia tries to ignore Tatsuki’s stare piercing them both). 

They had just finished climbing the six stories in her apartment building when she spies the roses at her door. 

He scoffs. “Who are those from? Yourself?” 

She rolls her eyes, picking up the flowers to read the card attached. “Good one, idiot. No. My brother.” 

“Byakuya? What the hell does he want?” 

She’s surprised he remembers his name; then again, she supposes she’s mentioned him in passing enough times. 

It’s funny: the little details they know about each other by now. 

“Don’t talk about him so crudely. I told him about the album awhile ago.”

“Yeah, and you said he never responded.” He waits respectfully in the hallway as she unlocks her door. She immediately starts shuffling through her studio in an attempt to find a vase. “I don’t get why you still talk to him. The guy kicks you out of the house, takes away your allowance you depend on--just because he doesn’t want you to do music? The thing he arranged for you to have lessons for in the first place?”

“You’re oversimplifying it.” She rummages through her cupboards. “He wanted me to go to college for a career--I told him I didn’t want to. I said I wanted to be a musician. He said that was fine, I was a young woman who could make her own decisions… And as such, I’d need to do it on my own. I agreed. I don’t want anybody’s money, and he’s helped me enough as it is.”

“... He should still support you--”

“He does. In his own way.” Her eyes light up at what she’s been looking for: the glass beaker for a French press that broke on her a couple weeks ago. She lifts it with one hand and the roses in the other, a silent question toward him. At Ichigo’s shrug/nod combo, she starts filling the beaker with tap water. “Maybe he doesn’t vocally support it. The creative life is scary. You know that. Technically you wouldn’t want your sisters as starving musicians either, right? But a couple months before I met up with you guys, I was behind on my rent. One day, right before I was sure I was going to get kicked out: my landlord says it was all paid for. Just like that. And I’ve sworn every day, up and down, that my brother’s never going to need to do that for me ever again.”

“He should want to do that for you.”

“I think he does. But I want to make my own way, and he knows that. These flowers are more than kind.” She steps back and assesses her flower arrangement in the beaker, nodding once. Good enough. 

He’s uncharacteristically quiet as she grabs the two bottles from her fridge and returns back to the hallway. She’s attempting to lock her front door with the bottles in one arm and keys in the other when he snorts, tapping her wine-carrying arm.

“Here, I’ll take ‘em.” Begrudgingly, she hands them over. “You try to do too much by yourself.” 

“Yes, because I have to.” She focuses her attention back on the lock (the door could be rather tricky) when she feels him nudge her arm again. 

“No. You really don’t.” She looks back and up at him and suddenly for the first time they feel very, very close. “Look I don’t--the fact that your brother doesn’t know what a fucking phenominal talent you have astounds me. But you have people now. You have me.”

Time completely stops as they stare at each other. Rukia feels frozen in place--but Ichigo is… Well. He looks like he’s only sort of embarrassed at own sentiment, judging from the faint blush on his cheeks--but mostly he seems sure of himself, confident and fearless and golden.

That is Ichigo, she realizes. She’s really never met anyone like him. 

She’ll never know what either of them were about to do when suddenly her neighbor’s door swings open behind him. 

The sound jolts them both, and her elderly neighbor smiles apologetically. She waves, and when she looks back at him Ichigo is looking down at his shoes, clearing his throat. 

“Hurry up ‘n lock the door. The others are waiting for us--especially Tatsuki. You know how stoked she was when you told her about the champagne.” 

Rukia nods and tries to shake the odd feeling that an opportunity was just missed. 

---

They’re getting a tour.

Tatsuki is in euphorics. They’re getting a fucking tour. 

Urahara says they’re starting small--mostly because the label wants to test the waters on them. Just four cities, fronting for a rock band called Espada. They’re all kind of douchey assholes but it doesn’t even matter. She knows her band is better, and in just a few years they’ll be begging to front for Karakura Soul Society. 

 Still, even though it’s a small tour Tatsuki manages to sweet talk Urahara into hiring her good friend as their stage manager. “We need somebody to keep us organized back there. Help us sound check and everything, you know? And frankly, Urahara… You’re a mess.”

… It becomes clear to the team within the first ten minutes of her employment that Orihime Inoue is also, as it happens, a disaster--but she’s bubbly and ambitious and works hard and Tatsuki may be not-so-secretly in love with her so of course everyone loves her immediately, too.

Once they’re on the road, the whole tour itself is kind of a blur. Their first city is… Decent. They sound great, but there’s some tech issues that Orihime apologizes profusely for. Grimmjow, the lead singer of Espada says something snide about ���fucking yuppies” and Ichigo and Tatsuki both have to be held back from absolutely pulvarizing the cocky motherfucker--but yeah it’s decent.

 At least, Urahara points out, it adds a bit of a competitive edge between the two bands. 

He’s right. The next couple cities they absolutely kill it.

With Chad’s shredding it on his base and Tatsuki  feeling like a God at her drums--the two of them alone would be something to contend with. 

But combined with Ichigo and Rukia…

Tatsuki doesn’t know what’s going on between them, and frankly: she doesn’t care anymore. She’s decided it’s none of her business whether her best friend is getting his brains screwed out or if they really are “just friends,” as Rukia insists. 

What matters is what’s going right here, right in the performance.

As usual, they are so in sync with each other it’s scary--but now, there’s emotion too. There’s an electric energy when they sing the chorus to Fullbringer, a deep melancholy when they harmonize on Masaki. The band is only able to perform about five of their songs, but they’ve arranged the order so the audience gets to go through a journey--and it all ends on Sun and Moon.

It’s easily their best crowd pleaser, and for good reason. 

It sounds cheesy, but there is such an upbeat joy to the song that even scowl-loving Ichigo grins during its entirety, and Rukia--always so poised--bounces at her keyboard, bopping her head to the beat. The bridge is absolutely wild, and the whole thing moves so fast that Tatsuki is going harder at her drums than she ever has. It was a bitch to practice, but man. Man does it it fucking end a show. 

At the end of Espada’s last show, the crowd demands an encore… From their front band. 

“Eat shit,” Grimmjow hisses as they unexpectedly make their way back to the stage, and Tatsuki knows for an asshole like him to be this pissed: it’s a compliment.

---

They’re feeling so pumped about the whole tour that at the end of that encore, even Chad agrees to go out to a nearby pub to celebrate.

The group is on Cloud 9 as they float into the semi-crowded bar, and Tatsuki feels even more of a high when some of the patrons--fresh from the show--cheer as they enter. A guy orders the band shots, and from that point on things get… Uh. Kind of blurry.

Chad does manage to escape early, but not before she challenges him to a game of who can drink a pint faster. Orihime glows next to her as she sips her own fruity cocktail, cheering Tatsuki on in a way that makes her feel powerful even when she loses. Occasionally she catches her friend glancing over at Ichigo with a soft smile that Tatsuki… Doesn’t really want to notice right now. She’s having such a good time, so for what?

 Urahara floats, chuckling behind his fan about this and that--leading to a brief debate between Ichigo and Tatsuki whether he’s high, drunk, or both. Rukia pops up out of nowhere, offering a convincing argument of: neither. Urahara is just fucking batshit. 

Ichigo and Tatsuki stare at the unexpected profanity.

“What?” Rukia’s face is flushed, and she tries (unsuccessfully) to look like she has the decency to be embarrassed. Suddenly, she grins toothily, grabbing Ichigo’s hand and dragging him to the bar corner’s jukebox. “C’mon, idiot. You’re helping me pick out a song.” 

Tatsuki doesn’t pay much more attention to the two after that--she’s too busy getting another drink, getting Orihime another drink, seeing if she can get Urahara to confess he’s committed at least one felony in his lifetime, and if so which one--but she happens to overhear their conversation at one point when they’re getting drinks.

“... Swift is a stellar songwriter, Kurosaki. I’m telling you--”

“Come oooooon--”

“No, you--you come on, Ichigo. Ichigo Kurosaki.” Rukia pokes her finger at Ichigo’s chest, and Tatsuki sees him failing to hide a smile. “She had a… Taylor has iffy periods, of course she does. But have you… Have you even listened to the lyrics of Blank Space?

“Whassat?” 

“You’ve heard that song, don’t you--don’t you even start--”

Tatsuki rolls her eyes and takes her leave. Listening to drunk straight people flirt is excruciating. 

Still: whether it’s from the warm buzz of alcohol or the general high of the good night or her just loving her friends… She’s happy for them. 

When she leaves, Blank Space is blaring from the jukebox. She looks back to see Rukia and Ichigo intimately close. Rukia is beaming up at him, shouting over the music that she can only imagine is the song lyrics. Ichigo’s body is curved toward her, watching and bobbing his head with a soft smile. 

Good for them, Tatsuki thinks dreamily before immediately finding a dumpster to throw up in.