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It was strange how big a difference Ichigo’s presence made in her quaint apartment, the initial months into dating. Orihime had more than once thrown her head over her shoulder to talk to Enraku, only to find him sitting there, looking stern and focused over a book, the flat line of his mouth pulled into a contemplative frown. She could call his name, and he’d “hmm?” distractedly first, then catch her gaze with a small, sheepish smile as though embarrassed at being caught off guard.
Orihime knew all his quirks by now, the precise curves of his fingers, the tanned column of his neck, the care with which he handled her things when he came over. It filled her with a fierce longing that frankly embarrassed her; Orihime was a physical person, but she knew Ichigo was not. Their first kiss had been on the third date after Orihime had put her foot in her mouth and wondered out loud if he would kiss her goodnight. When she was seventeen, she’d dreamed that he would pull her close, that he would hold her gaze with that inscrutable look he gave her sometimes when they met after battle and scanned each other for injuries, and then he would pour a heated kiss right into her mouth, with little regard for who was watching.
When he stumbled on her porch that night, he was remarkably shy. His eyes — his biggest giveaway, she’d always privately thought — had widened, a deer in the headlights, before he brushed the corner of her mouth with a chaste kiss and stammered, “Goodnight!”
He’d stumbled once on the last step down, too.
Orihime didn’t think she’d ever loved someone the way she loved him, and she didn’t know what to do when it spilled out of her — choking, desperate and begging to be known. They hadn’t gone past kissing, though sometimes Ichigo would let his hand slide down her neck, down her side, and stop at her waist.
There was once, when she’d invited him in after Tatsuki’s birthday, that he’d pushed her against the wall and just held her, his hands gripping her arms a lot tighter than he usually allowed himself, eyes dark. When her nose brushed against his throat, she could feel the way his pulse swam against his skin, thready and nervous.
“You looked beautiful tonight,” he told her quietly, his hand skimming her cheek, and Orihime parted her lips so he could lift her chin and press his mouth to hers. She remembered curling her fingers over his shoulder, the way they tightened when his mouth raced along the line of her neck, the way she stood on tiptoes and gasped when he reached her collarbone, his breath warm and teasing goosebumps on every inch of her skin. She’d chosen a v-neck, and the feeling of his lips on her skin, on skin he’d never kissed before drew out a little whimper despite herself.
He pulled away, drawing a few strands of her hair with him on his mouth. “Sorry,” he muttered, gently peeling them away and tucking them back against her ear.
“Don’t be,” she breathed back, heart pounding in her chest when he shook his head.
“Sorry,” he said again, with a small, vulnerable smile. “I’m not ready yet.”
She knew he often wrestled with himself when he was like this, that he only ever wanted to touch her with the care she deserved, that he was nervous, and the same part that softened at his awkward intimacy burned at his aborted movements. Imagination often took a life of its own when they parted ways, Orihime filling in the blanks for hours on end about what he might have done, where he might have let his fingers go if he’d pushed past his reservations. It was intoxicating, and endlessly, endlessly frustrating.
“You’re so much grumpier these days,” Tatsuki would laugh at her, whenever they met up at the dojo. “Ichigo’s been rubbing off on you.”
It was comments like those that reeled her in, that made her scold herself. Slow. They would have to take these things slow, at Ichigo’s pace. Leaving yourself naked, vulnerable, open to intimacy — these were not flippant things, and she understood how much more gravity they carried for Ichigo, who was new to expressing himself like this, no holds barred.
She was careful from then on in how she reached for him, always letting him lead, letting him set the boundaries. He was always more confident then, when he was allowed to control the situation — a natural extension to how he fought, how he lived.
Besides, she enjoyed when he rolled her over onto her back, letting him take his time to explore her — a hesitant hand skimming over her thigh, or a curious thumb skirting the outlines of her bra, or even his dark eyes watching her for a reaction when his mouth trailed over her stomach. In times like that, even though he pulled back frequently or needed a lot of pauses and restarts, she would feel the press of him on her inner thigh and grow secretly pleased; they were learning. They were building something sacred that was worth waiting for. One thing she knew about Ichigo: although he took his time with matters of the heart, he never left her unreciprocated, always meeting her in the middle.
One afternoon, when they were reading Tail of the Moon together, his head in her lap, the words came. “Do you know what I said to you the night before I left?”
Ichigo stiffened, carefully setting the book down to prop himself up on elbows, ever the attentive, kind soul he had always been when it came to these things. His eyes encouraged her to go on, round around the corners in curiosity and concern when he shook his head.
She pressed a kiss to his temple, slowly enough so he could pull back, but he stayed still — stayed still even when she held his chin, pulled his ear to her mouth and repeated the words from that night, a teenager’s confession, true, but no other refined words would be able to paraphrase the raw sentiment, and for that she thought he deserved to hear it, word-for-word, every bit as still as true as the night she had said it.
When he pushed her onto her back that afternoon, they peeled off each other's clothes unhurriedly, Ichigo’s mouth clumsy and hot when it chased the shivers down her body. At his fingertips, she felt his desperation, his need to return the sentiment, and it was then, she thought, that he was learning to express himself with touch, his voice turning hoarse and husky in her ear as he sank into her over and over.
Later, when they returned to themselves — slightly embarrassed — he looked at her, ears pink, with that inscrutable look she now knew to read as devotion. The corners of his mouth were soft, and when she traced one with her thumb, he held it to his lips and kissed it.
“Thank you,” he said quietly, and she knew what for, so she simply hugged herself to him. For what seemed like hours, he smoothed her hair down again and again, until, when she was finally starting to drift off, he said, “There was something my dad said once, about my mom.”
A confession of his own, it seemed, and Orihime lifted her head from his chest to watch him. “Mm-hmm?”
“They watched a movie once,” Ichigo parroted, thumbing her cheek and holding her rapt attention as he narrated the rest of the story to her growing, fond smile. “He said my mother was like the sun,” he concluded, before telling Orihime what he thought she needed to hear the most, the way she had told him.
It was like this, that they were learning how to love each other — through touch, and borrowed language, the spoken and the unspoken.
All five of me could fall in love with the same person.
You are like the sun to me.
I love you, I love you, I love you.