Chapter Text
“Do the protagonists break up or stay together? In this world, what does it matter?”
Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You?
When Nemu leans over to plant a nasty kiss on Byakuya’s mouth, he feels a sense of satisfaction that he hasn’t felt anywhere else. She’s on top, and she has stopped rolling her hips into him so that she can press their sweaty bodies together and suck on his lower lip. He digs his fingers into her hips, not because he’s done but rather, to convey that he wants to bring her closer. That if he could, he’d crawl into her body and that they’d never have to be apart again.
It’s the kind of deluded thinking that accompanies especially good sexual encounters. Byakuya thought he was above cliché but apparently, not when he’s inside of Nemu. Honestly, orgasms have been entirely incidental, as in, they’re not the point, for Byakuya at least. He just wants to be with Nemu; if he comes, great, if not, it’s fine.
“Am I doing good?” Nemu asks, talking right into his mouth. She likes being affirmed by him.
“Yes,” he says, refusing to cave and call her a good girl. He’s afraid that if he does, he’ll really like doing it, and if he starts really liking it, then he won’t want to stop. And if he doesn’t stop, he and Hisana are going to have a real awkward conversation about how he really enjoys the nonmonogamy she imposed when she said that they should have a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy while she was away for the summer.
Nemu kisses him again, cradling his jaw before sitting up and moving again. Each roll of her hips makes him feel like he’s getting deeper and deeper, like he’s going to eventually hit some truth between them that he won’t necessarily like but one he wants to know anyway.
“Byakuya,” she says, voice getting higher as her orgasm looms, “how much do you like me?” Nemu doesn’t really have a reason for why she says this. It might be the heat in her little apartment or the breeze through her window or the way Byakuya looks up at her like he wants to be a part of her body. He’s a cold motherfucker which means that he doesn’t have sex if his heart isn’t in it, not anymore, at least.
He frowns at the question. “Does it matter?” he sighs, feeling the familiar pull in his stomach.
“Yes,” she replies, without hesitation. If he didn’t love her, he would have said it outright.
“A lot,” he admits, ashamed of himself. He’s seeing Hisana in a week, flying to spend two weeks with her. He never thought that he’d actually love Nemu after fucking for two months. It’s humiliating, in a way. He thought the universe was done teaching him lessons, but apparently, he still needs to be humbled.
Nemu smiles big, in that way that makes him feel lighter. She doesn’t have to say it. Nemu loves him too.
**
So, how did it all start?
Byakuya looks over his shoulder, changing lanes to avoid hitting a cardboard box left on the highway. He took a few days off to pick Rukia up from college and bring her back to Karakura. It’s only a two-day drive, if you take the most direct route. Byakuya didn’t bother to sight see on his way there, and Rukia said that she didn’t want to stop at any museums on the way home. Byakuya has spent most of the day listening to public radio while Rukia is listening to music on her phone, probably texting Ichigo too.
They’re so close to Karakura that only the country music station is working. Byakuya tried to listen for two minutes before turning the radio off.
They don’t talk to each other very much. There’s not much to say, and the truth is that it’s always a little awkward when they talk. Eleven years is a big age gap, and Byakuya’s millennial nihilism doesn’t mesh well with Rukia’s cautious optimism about the world. The only reason he bothers to recycle properly is because she made such a big deal about it. Otherwise, he’d happily do his part to bring about a cataclysmic event generous enough to annihilate his existence.
“So,” Rukia says, “have you been watching anything lately?” Byakuya doesn’t know why she insists on asking questions she knows the answer to, but he’s a good person now so he plays ball.
“I just watch The Simpsons,” he replies, not mentioning the fact that he usually gets high out of his mind to do it, and that it’s usually the background music to whatever it is he’s actually trying to do, nor does he add that he has recently been revisiting the Jackass franchise.
“My roommate’s boyfriend loves that show,” Rukia says, since she has only ever watched The Simpsons when Byakuya had the remote and refused to change the channel, which happened a lot when they were growing up. “Says it’s cutting edge.”
“Only the first ten seasons,” Byakuya says, “everything after is middling, at best.”
They fall back into an awkward silence, so much so that Byakuya decides to be the nicer sibling for once.
“Have you thought about a job?” he asks, changing back into the collector lane.
“Not yet,” she sighs, “I don’t really have a plan.”
When they were younger, their summers were defined by tennis and horses, thanks to their parents. Byakuya was a good tennis player until he decided to quit so he could play football with Renji and Kaien and Rukia always had fun with her pony, until Yuki dropped dead in front of both of them (until then, he had always been a little jealous of Yuki, because her parents, being ponies, didn’t bring her into the world to grow up and pretend to like people—all she had to do was eat grass and carry Rukia places. Understandably, that seemed like an easy life to miserable teenage Byakuya). Byakuya personally hated going to camp because he didn’t like having to make friends, and his parents always seemed a little surprised when they’d show up after a week and Byakuya had no one he wanted to say goodbye to or keep in touch with. It’s not like any of the other kids liked him either. He always got the sense that his parents were disappointed that he was always friendless.
Which is to say, he’s never really liked summer. He’s hot, grumpy, and sweaty, and has no patience to be fucked with. It’s for the best that being a teacher means that he gets to spend the worst two months of the year free of Karakura High.
Rukia too, was perpetually friendless at horse camp, and all the other kids looked at her funny because she brought her own pony. Needless to say, Rukia spent a lot of time looking for reasons to be with Yuki, who more often than not, just wanted to graze. She would swing her tail in Rukia’s face whenever she was picking her back feet to keep the flies away, and depressingly, is the best friendship Rukia ever had at camp.
This is, of course, a very long-winded way of getting to the essential point about summers for the Kuchiki siblings: neither of them likes to make plans, because planned summers never go well for either of them.
“You didn’t have to come back to Karakura for the summer,” Byakuya says, “you could’ve stayed out there.” He’s not saying it to be a dick; he just knows that Karakura sucks and that it’d be way more fun to live in an actual city in the summer. That’s why he never came back after second year.
Rukia frowns to herself, twisting a lock of hair around her finger. She thought about it, but she decided that she loves Ichigo more than she hates Karakura.
“Ichigo is here,” she sighs, leaning against the door. “I want to be with him.” She says it in a resigned way, like this is just how she has decided her life will be.
“Fair,” Byakuya says, careful not to sound judgmental. It’s none of his business how Rukia decides to live her life, as long as she doesn’t get arrested, catch a disease, destroy any property, or get pregnant.
It’s too early to call it, but he just knows that this summer is going to suck. If he asked Rukia, she’d agree.
**
After getting all her things upstairs, Rukia decided to have a nap. Her nap ended up taking eight hours. When she woke up, there were three missed calls, all from Ichigo. She listened to his voicemails. His first one is ornery, like he had just got off work and was a little hungry. The second, he’s a little impatient, probably because his dad was working him up. His third voicemail is her favorite. His voice is slow and soft, the way it is when he’s in bed. Hey Rukia. Sorry for those two other calls. I just missed you a lot. Call me when you’re free. He never has to say ‘I love you’ because it’s always in his voice.
Rukia smiles as she hangs up without erasing his last message. She sets her phone down on the bedside table, before getting up. It’s the middle of the night, and she decides to find the galaxy lamp Byakuya bought her for Christmas (he said that Orihime told him that she’d like it, before saying that it was the least annoying of all the gift guides for Gen Z he had seen online).
Truth be told, she isn’t excited to be back here for the summer. Don’t get it wrong, she wants to see Ichigo—but she didn’t necessarily want to do it Karakura. She asked him if he’d consider living with her in the city she moved to, but he said that he had already gotten a job in Karakura. Shuunsei is relying on me. She wants to tell him that there are plenty of other people in Karakura who can haul soil for little old ladies and help them pick flowers for their gardens. But Ichigo was adamant, and because Rukia loves him, she came back.
She looks over at her window, thinking about how wild it is that she came back here, that while this place is her home it no longer feels like the place where she belongs. Unlike Byakuya, she was born in Karakura, but it never felt like home, even when she got to high school and finally made friends.
And are they really my friends if it took so long for them to like me? Ichigo is the one who gave her clout. Orihime always liked her, but no one else noticed her until he did. In addition to loving him, she feels like she owes him. Like, he’s the person who made living in this hell town bearable and helped her realize that, while life is full of bad things, there are also good things too. And you don’t say no to a good thing, so it’s why Rukia sucked it up and came back, to be with the one person who chooses to love her unconditionally (Ichigo would say that it wasn’t a choice, that it was fate, but that’s just because he’s soft—he could’ve had Orihime and chose Rukia instead). Rukia thinks about the line of his jaw, before going back to bed, falling asleep when she starts to think about his neck.
**
Byakuya frowns to himself, sitting in a big faculty meeting. It’s May, which in of itself isn’t a bad month, but it’s a time when everyone couples up, and since Hisana is in Berlin for a four-month residency, he’s constantly reminded of her absence. They send emails and talk on the phone, but it’s not the same. It doesn’t help that they’re doing the whole nonmonogamy thing. He’ll just sit and brood in his office, thinking about how unfair it is that Hisana is in a big city full of people she’ll never see again, while he’s stuck in Karakura, with people who have known him forever and who would definitely talk if they suspected him of any bad behavior. Renji told him to try an app and Kaien reminds him that he doesn’t have to act on it, but Byakuya is a petty creature at heart and even though he only really likes having sex with girls he likes and feels emotionally connected to, he does want to get his dick wet at least once this summer just to say that he did it.
But that requires effort to meet someone, and that’s where his revenge fantasy falls apart. There’s little else Byakuya hates more than meeting new people. He’s hot and that’s about all he has going for him. He’s not dumb—his personality leaves a lot to be desired and he’s bad at small talk.
As usual, Nemu is right beside Byakuya. She sits next to him, even after he punched Grimmjow in the face. Hisana believed him when he said that Grimmjow earned it, and Byakuya imagines that Grimmjow isn’t particularly difficult to win back. Besides, he’s punching above his weight with Nemu and say what you want, Grimmjow isn’t a total idiot.
This is all to say, Nemu and Byakuya are still ‘friends,’ even though he can tell that neither Kaien nor Gin quite believe him when he says it. Gin seems to find all of this amusing, calling him a cold fish. Kaien just always looks nervous whenever Byakuya mentions Nemu. He doesn’t have to say it—he thinks that Byakuya and Nemu are a ticking time bomb, to what disaster, he knows not. All that matters is that Kaien doesn’t like whatever Byakuya is doing when he’s in Nemu’s orbit.
Mayuri is at the podium, lecturing on the importance of maintaining high standards and academic rigor and how crucial it is to maintain high test scores if they want to continue to get good funding from the school district. People aren’t paying attention, but Mayuri doesn’t care. It’s his world, they all just live in it.
Byakuya keeps his eyes forward, looking straight ahead, trying to find the middle distance, when he feels Nemu nudge him. He ignores it, figuring that it isn’t on purpose, until he feels her elbow again, how it bumps into his upper arm. She does this three times before he turns to look at her. She doesn’t look at him—she just holds a folded piece of paper, pinched between her pointer and middle fingers. Byakuya thinks about ignoring her, before he holds his hand up. Nemu drops it into his palm, not even looking at him. He unfolds the paper, not know what to expect.
I wish I had a gun.
Byakuya leans over to speak into her ear. “He’s not worth it.” Nemu tilts her head, and Byakuya sees her ear, as if for the first time. It’s delicate arch, a perfect shell. The last time he noticed it, he must’ve been eighteen. It’s like all those feelings come back, angrier than before.
He swallows, and Nemu turns to look up at him. In her face, he sees what became of the girl he refused to acknowledge. The urge to kiss her rises up in him, making his top lip twitch. Nemu blinks, like she knows and feels the same. He can tell by the way she looked at his mouth before looking into his eyes.
**
Whenever Ichigo does the thing where he makes Rukia feel like a raw nerve ending, she sends a silent prayer to God, thanking him for making Ichigo. Rukia doesn’t even know if she believes in God, but she feels like a woman of faith whenever Ichigo is inside of her. He’ll say that it feels like they were always supposed to know each other, that he can’t imagine his life without her, and Rukia has to keep herself from melting and telling him that she feels the same way.
They’re lying beside each other in her bed. She’s all pressed up to him, looking at him right in the eyes because he’s one of the most emotionally honest people she has ever met.
“I’m glad that you came back,” he says, “I missed you.”
“I missed you too,” she replies. “We’re going to have a good summer, right?” She certainly hopes so. She removed all the body hair that she had grown out while away just for him. Not that he vocalized a preference, she just wanted to be ready for him.
“I don’t see why not,” he says, smiling lazily. He squeezes her upper arm, and she presses herself even closer to him.
Rukia, who feels so good that it’s like she’s floating but not, chooses to believe Ichigo.
**
Pressing herself up into Grimmjow, Nemu moves her hand to the back of his head and digs her fingernails into his scalp. He grunts in response, holding her with the kind of intensity that would scare a lot of girls off. But Nemu loves it — the way he bites into her lower lip, how he just takes hold of her body, that he somehow has sex with her like she’s both a person and a thing at the same time. How does he do this? Nemu can’t really talk when he’s so deep inside of her that she sees stars, so she just sighs.
“I don’t entirely like that noise,” Grimmjow says, bumping her with his hips. Nemu, who is past the point of being able to talk, just moans under him. “That’s better.” He says this quietly, before kissing her throat. He doesn’t usually like missionary—says it’s for losers—but today is an exception.
Grimmjow is, objectively, the first honest-to-God loser that Nemu has ever dated. He does odd jobs around town to pay his cellphone bill and put gas in his car, but that’s about it. People ask her what she sees in him, and Nemu so badly wishes that she could just show them the things that Grimmjow does to her during their free time. There’s no tasteful way to say because the dick is crazy.
Grimmjow says that he’s never been with a girl who is so quick to come before, and it makes Nemu feel special. He’ll grin when he’s inside of her too, then tell her how wet she is and how much it turns him on.
Grimmjow pulls away from her, looking Nemu right in the eye as he places his hand at the bottom of her throat, pressing down a little, playing at choking her. This just makes Nemu happier, and he laughs at the way that she starts moving against him.
“You’re crazy, you know that, right?” he asks, before giving in and slamming into her so hard that her second orgasm is torn right out of her guts. Nemu can’t talk, so she makes a bunch of happy noises, which could be laughter or moans, depending on who is listening. Grimmjow just laughs in his cruel way, and Nemu wants to both weld herself to him and choke on his dick.
“I want to be on my stomach,” she says, squirming away. He frowns, watching her take the position on all fours. “You feel closer.”
“What if I wanted to see your face?” he asks, “I’m not some caveman.” Despite appearances, Grimmjow is sensitive about being considered a slut. Says it makes him feel cheap and inconsequential (his words: I have feelings!)
Nonetheless, he penetrates her in one decisive thrust, and they both moan when he bottoms out. He leans forward and wraps his hand around her throat, before moving into her with the single-minded focus of making a mess inside of her. Unlike him, Nemu has no problem being used. She knows that she’s hot, and for a long time, she has just let men do what they want to her. What’s the point in having a nice waist-to-hip ratio if she isn’t getting some?
“Fuck,” Grimmjow mutters, more to himself than Nemu, and he gets more aggressive, her pleasure taking a backseat. It actually hurts a little bit, but Nemu doesn’t mind when he finishes inside of her, not even pulling out before he grabs her chin and kisses her over her shoulder.
They’re on the pull-out bed in Isshin’s basement, and more than once, Isshin or Ichigo have walked in on them - the former clearly sometimes on purpose, the latter always by accident. Uzu and Karin know to stay out. Grimmjow has now gotten in the habit of making sure that he’s the one that is most visible from the stairs (this is about as gentlemanly as he gets), but nonetheless, sometimes, most times really, Nemu wishes that they were in the privacy of her own apartment. She can be as nasty as she’d like.
“I want to suck your dick,” she mumbles as soon as he pulls away. Grimmjow just laughs in her face, like he always does when she’s this horny.
“I bet you do,” he says, pulling out and looking for a blanket to cover them with. Nemu just slumps onto her stomach, lying there while Grimmjow covers them. He is more or less over Byakuya. He tells Nemu that Byakuya clearly likes her, but then he adds that he can’t blame him. When he’s inside of her, sometimes he’ll ask if Byakuya knows how cock hungry she is, like they’re in a porno or something. Sometimes he won’t even wait to hear her answer, he’ll just say that it’s in her walk or the way she smiles. That Grimmjow knew, as soon as he saw her, that Nemu likes to give head and be violated and take it up the ass (it really depends on what they’re doing at the moment).
The idea that Byakuya knows how horny Nemu probably isn’t far from the truth. He’d never use the phrase cock hungry but sometimes, when Grimmjow says it, Nemu wonders what it’d be like to know Byakuya like that again. It’s just a thought though. She’d never act on it.
“You’re the nastiest girl I’ve ever been with,” Grimmjow says, “I don’t know how the fuck you were ever single.” He lies down beside her, moving her so that he can hold her.
He’s said all of this before, of course. But he’s never said what she wants to hear the most - that she’s the best he’s ever had.
**
When Byakuya got home, he immediately knew that Ichigo was here. The house just feels different when he’s around. Byakuya doesn’t much care for it, not one bit. He doesn’t like it when his private space is invaded, especially when he’s in a bad mood. It started when the secret of Nemu’s left ear revealed itself earlier today. Needless to say, dealing with Ichigo and Rukia breathing on each other is just not something Byakuya can do right now.
He takes off his shoes and walks towards the kitchen. He ends up in front of the oven, reaching up to the cupboard where he keeps a tin with a joint and a lighter, for his convenience, of course. He picks it up and walks towards the back door, putting on the slippers he keeps there before stepping out onto the porch. He sits down, opening the tin, picking up the joint and the lighter and finding a comfortable position.
Byakuya sticks the joint between his lips, before sparking the lighter. He inhales, deep, pulling the smoke all the way into his lungs, enjoying how it feels for it to bottom out inside of him. He closes his eyes, thinking about nothing, nothing at all.
Nemu’s face pops up behind his eyelids, and he’s so surprised that if he weren’t a stoner he would’ve started coughing. Byakuya opens his mouth, and the smoke leaves his body.
To be clear, this isn’t the first time that this has happened. Byakuya spends a lot of his time not thinking about his feelings for Nemu, mostly because he doesn’t understand them. For a very long time, he regarded their adolescent fumbling as embarrassing but inconsequential. With maturity and hindsight, he can now admit that his embarrassment and subsequent dickish behavior towards Nemu was because he liked her a lot more than he thought was acceptable. He figures that his feelings for her, whatever they may be, are the result of spending time with her, and that they’ll fade eventually.
Hisana’s absence and subsequent dry spell are probably the reason he’s been thinking about Nemu so much. He’s just used to being physically and emotionally present with someone, and all he has to do is ride out these feelings until September, when Hisana will come back to him. Byakuya inhales again—he’d like to get laid, and Hisana gave him a free pass, so he should figure something out. It’d be nice, to be close to someone again.
He closes his eyes, and this time, isn’t quite so shocked when the arch of Nemu’s left ear appears in his mind’s eye, followed by her hair, neck, cheek, and then her pretty eyes. Imaginary Nemu smiles softly at him, and he feels his tummy prickle. Byakuya lets himself enjoy it, as the pot makes him feel warm and heavy, like nothing bad will ever happen to him again.
**
Every morning is, more or less, the same for Byakuya. He wakes up, exercises, showers, makes breakfast, and then convinces himself to get dressed for work. Feeling ashamed for not having been able to save Orihime from the curse of Karakura, he typically avoids the diner when she’s working. However, he is feeling extra tired this morning, because he stayed up smoking pot and listening to a podcast instead of going to sleep at a decent hour. So, here he is, swallowing his pride and stepping into the diner to buy coffee. Orihime stands behind the counter in a little pink uniform, like they’re on a television show about humble small-town life.
“Good morning Byakuya!” she says cheerfully, smiling. Byakuya nods in response, which she is used to. “What can I get you this morning?”
“A medium coffee please,” he says quietly, blinking to stay awake. Orihime smiles and nods. How she is in a good mood at 7:30 a.m., in Karakura no less, is beyond him. Granted, there isn’t really any time that he enjoys being in Karakura; it’s more like he’ll forget that he’s here when he’s having fun.
Byakuya reaches into his pocket, not immediately looking up when he sees a shadow on the floor behind him. He pulls out his wallet before turning around to see Nemu standing behind him, in a blue shirt dress, a big tote bag on her shoulder, crammed with paper.
“Grading?” he asks, before turning around to pay.
“It’s that time of year,” she hums in response.
They say nothing as Byakuya steps up to the counter and pays, tipping Orihime triple the cost of the coffee. Nemu steps forward and orders a tea, and for some reason, Byakuya waits for her. He’s been having intrusive thoughts about kissing her ear, and he supposes that a part of him wants to see if she’ll let him get close enough to do it. He’s still sore over her telling him that seeing her tattoo isn’t that special. Personally, he feels like that was more offensive than punching Grimmjow in the face, because he wasn’t attacking Nemu. Arguably, he was trying to protect her from a man who’s fascinated by the fact that he can’t break her.
And okay, Byakuya will also concede that he is more than a little attracted to Nemu. It’s not malignant like his teenage crush on Yoruichi or noble like his love for Hisana. If he had to put it into words, he’d say that his attraction to Nemu is floaty, like his stomach isn’t in his body. Honestly, it’s not entirely pleasant but nonetheless he likes how it feels when Nemu looks at him.
“Would you like to walk with me today?” she asks, walking over to him with her tea.
“Okay.” Byakuya doesn’t use the word ‘yes’ because he doesn’t want to seem eager. Nemu smiles at him and leads him out of the diner, even letting him hold the door for her, just to keep his pride intact.
The first thing that Byakuya sees is the ‘Life is Good’ bumper sticker that Isshin Kurosaki stuck on the back of his Dodge Charger, and Byakuya feels like God is mocking him.
“People who put bumper stickers on their cars ought to be shot,” he says, nodding at the Charger. Nemu looks over, and they both see the moment Isshin gets out of his car. He doesn’t see them, spinning the key ring around his finger and whistling, as he walks over into the drugstore.
“He’s not so bad,” Nemu says, “you shouldn’t be so judgemental. It’s the sign of a complacent mind.”
“Better complacent than stupid.”
“One could argue that it’s the same thing,” Nemu replies. Byakuya says nothing, letting her have the win.
They don’t say anything the rest of the way to school. When Nemu turns to thank him for opening the door, he nods to let her know that he doesn’t hold it against her. In a way, she’s right. Perhaps he is worse than stupid after all.