Orihime kisses the bite mark she left and looks up, chin planted on his thigh, eyes deceptively innocent. “Mm?”

“I’m not food, you know.”

Orihime laughs and pushes herself off her elbows to sit up, her hair still mussed as she leans in to bite his cheek lightly. “What if I ate you, though?”

Ichigo snorts. “I’d probably be the most normal thing in your stomach.”

Orihime huffs, indignant.

Ichigo tugs her cheek between his thumb and forefinger, smiling. “What if I ate you?”

Orihime thrusts her chin out with an air of dignity. “You couldn’t handle a flavour like me.”

Ichigo laughs, tugging her into a gentle headlock until she’s safe within his embrace. When she looks up at him, he pinches her nose with his thumb. “Are you supposed to say things like that to the person you like?”

"What sort of things should I say?” She tilts her head up teasingly. “Should I only start conversations with you with...erm. Darling and pudding and stuff?"

“No pudding,” he tells her.

Her smile gets wider. “But darling is okay?”

Ichigo tears his gaze away from her, a hot blush rising to his cheeks, well-aware he walked right into that one. “You tease me too much.”

Orihime laughs out loud, delighted and gleeful.

Then, she bites his wrist in apology.

+

They never do it at Ichigo’s for obvious reasons—namely his nosy father and his equally annoying sisters. But doing it at Orihime’s means she’ll step out after they’re done sometimes—and come back in with her plushies.

(He’s banned her from keeping them in bed when they’re doing things. The last thing he wants is Kon flashbacks).

“Enraku! Did you miss Papa?” She gently tucks Enraku into Ichigo’s arm, while the other one (Ichigo’s forgotten his name), sits in hers.

“I thought we were training them to sleep in their own beds.”

Orihime gives him a distinctly unimpressed look, then settles the octopus next to him as well. His name tag says ‘Uomaro.’ Ichigo breathes a sigh of relief. “I get lonely without them,” she defends.

Ichigo frowns. “What are you lonely for when I’m here?”

Orihime flushes, but he can tell by her shy smile that she’s pleased. Years and years of sleeping in an empty apartment means that some habits are still hard for her to kick. Ichigo sighs. He’s drawn a hard line at eating food in bed—another beloved habit of hers—but he’ll let up on this. Besides, banning food from bed in the past has meant waking up to an empty bed in the middle of the night, panicking that something’s happened to her, rushing out to the living room, badge in hand—only to catch her in the kitchen, a deer in the headlights with crumbs speckled all over her face. That, if anything, just makes him feel like a jackass, so maybe he’ll lift the food ban one day too.

I’m going soft, he thinks, watching Orihime gently tuck the covers around her plushies before climbing into the other side. Her bed is nowhere near big enough for all of them, but she makes do with a brutish determination.

“They missed you,” she sighs, setting her cheek on her joined hands over the pillow. “You've been so busy at the factory lately.”

Ichigo rolls his eyes, playing along. “Someone’s got to keep food on the table.”

Orihime rolls her eyes right back. “A likely story. I know you’ve been visiting your second family in the city, you two-timer.”

“Two-timer?” he repeats, unable to stop his lips from twitching into a smile.

“I watched a skit like that on Laugh Hour once,” she admits. “This guy—he has so many families with so many different women, right? So, one day, he walks into his apartment and just starts washing up and sitting down for dinner, business as usual, but his wife starts to look really confused by his presence. So he asks her what’s up.”

Ichigo patiently waits for the punchline.

“Turns out he walked into a random woman’s apartment because he finally lost track of all his families,” she says, laughing. Then, “It was really funny.”

“Mm-hmm.” He strokes the top of her head fondly. She takes his hand and kisses it, not deterred in the slightest by his apparent apathy. “So you wanted to try it out with me?”

A small smile breaks out on Orihime’s face. “It’s great when you play along. Tatsuki-chan always thinks you’re bo—well, she never believes me when I tell her you’re super funny, but you are!” Something about her smile suddenly turns mischievous. “Maybe you and your dad are more alike than you think.”

“You know what?” Ichigo declares, pushing the covers aside to stand up. “I think I am gonna go spend the night with my other family.”

“Noooo,” Orihime laughs, reaching out to grab onto his arm. “No, stop. I’m sorry, I’m sorry!” She puts a little weight into it, tugging him back into bed. “I’m sorry.” She laughs again when Ichigo falls back on top of her. “Ichigo-kun!”

“Say sorry.”

“I already said—” She squeals loudly when his fingers dig into her sides, his weight pressing her down until she’s trapped under him with nowhere to go, breathless, completely at his mercy. He tickles her again and she yelps, thrashing her legs until they get tangled in the blankets. “I’m sorry! Ichigo-kun…”

Ichigo all but drops his weight on her until they’re eye to eye, balancing himself on forearms. “I didn’t hear you,” he growls, biting the side of her jaw where she’s ticklish. She giggles again, and he dips his head to kiss the spot, sucking and biting until her breaths start coming out in pants.

Orihime tucks her hand against the back of Ichigo’s head but makes no move to really stop him. “Ichigo-kun, the children…” she protests halfheartedly, unable to keep up the bit when his mouth is doing all that to her jaw.

Ichigo picks up both plushies with his hand and throws them over his shoulder. They land somewhere in a distant corner of the room.

Orihime makes a mental note to apologize to them later.

+

In the summer months, it’s way too hot to do anything remotely close-bodied, but he struggles to keep himself from touching her anyway. He’s not fully used to this—these casual glimpses of her naked back while she’s changing, the soft curves of her body, mildly damp with sweat. He always draws her a cool bath after—to apologize, maybe, for the way he’d surged in and drawn her away from whatever post-work ritual she’d been thinking of doing. She doesn’t exactly mind. She likes the water, and even though their knees bump when they’re getting settled in her creaky tub, he does too.

“I’ve always liked baths over showers,” Orihime states, hugging her knees to her chest. It’s the kind of conversation you make when you’ve got nothing left to say—when all the important things have already been said in some distant past. It reminds him of summers in his bedroom, of ranking their favorite Pokemon and noting the subtle changes in the weather.

(“I don’t know that one,” he’d replied, dumbfounded, when she said her favorite Pokemon was Tinkaton)

(“Spring!” she’d declared, when he tentatively asked her which season made her happy)

He’d been terrified that she’d find him boring in some way, back when he was still caught up in a neverending see-saw of whether or not to confess to her. Back at home, he was no poet, no flirt. No cool guy with a sword on his back and the weight of the world on his shoulders. The ordinariness of his own world had always infuriated him when he was younger, but Orihime is the kind of girl who asks things like baths or showers?, so he suspects they won’t be running out of things to say to each other any time soon.

“Don’t let the foam spill out,” he warns, eyeing the tip of their tub warily.

Orihime quickly swoops in and cups the heaps of foam into her palms. When her eyes flick to his, they glow with warmth, and then she’s leaning forward, gentle fingers painting his face with the soapy residue.

Ichigo closes his eyes and lets it happen. There’s a meditative almost-silence in the bathroom, the only sound being Orihime’s soft humming as she gives him a rich beard and a moustache to match. She stops humming and pulls away.

“You look great,” she laughs. When he opens his eyes, he notices curiosity seep into her features. She gives him a long, considering look. Then, “Have you ever considered growing a beard?”

“I can’t,” he grumbles, shy. “Most I get are these weird little wisps on my chin every now and then.”

“Oh!” Her brows furrow cutely. “But your dad is so hairy! Ganju-san and Kukaku-san too!”

“I'm probably more like my mother,” he replies after a beat.

He doesn’t mean to make it sound awkward. It’s just that they don’t talk about his mother a lot. Orihime has never asked, even if she’s probably curious. The weight hangs in the air for a brief moment.

“That makes sense,” she says eventually, her tone mild.

He takes a breath. “She liked baths, too. We used to do that together, the whole family, I mean. Yuzu used to love it.”

Orihime smiles. “Yuzu-chan does seem like the type to enjoy that. Has she ever been to an onsen?”

“Probably not. We did go to the beach, though, a couple of times,” Ichigo says, pulling himself out of the water to reach for the towel on the rail. “We should get out, I’m all soggy.”

“Okay.”

Ichigo pulls the towel off the rail and wipes himself down while Orihime rests a cheek on her knee and watches him. When he’s done, he glances back at her, holding a second towel out, the softer one.

She smiles when she accepts it.

+

The part he loves most about sex is just being with her, no distractions. That’s not to say there hasn’t been the random Hollow interrupting them or anything. But they make do. It’s not supposed to feel normal, Ichigo thinks, but somewhere over the years, his two lives have blended into one. This is just who he is—there’s no mask he can wear and take off when it's convenient.

Orihime doesn’t have to bear it, but she does. It helps, maybe, that even the most abnormal is normal with a girl like her. She makes do. She rolls with the punches.

“What’s the best cake you’ve ever eaten?” she asks him, laid up in his arms with nothing on, her body bare and freckle-stained and familiar.

He opts for honesty instead. “You remember that time I went to train with those crazy folks up in the Soul King Palace?”

Ichigo figures the right answer would be, “Your cakes, of course.” Or at least, that’s what Dad says you should say to a girl. Yoruichi would probably recommend an innuendo about a different kind of cake. It’s not comforting to think about how inexperienced he is in the romance department, but it is a comfort to know that everyone has been encouraging him to say flirty things to Orihime for a while now. Somewhere along the way, he’s picked up a few hints, but he knows better than to flatter someone as perceptive as her without actually meaning it.

Orihime blinks obliviously. “During the war?”

Ichigo nods. “One of them, uh. Hikifune. The purple-haired one. She fed us with a ton of food—like, days worth of food. And then, at the end of it, she gave us some cake.”

“What type of cake?”

“I don’t know.” Ichigo shrugs.

“What did it taste like?”

“Like…just regular cake, I think. It was fluffy and creamy, but not too sweet. It was a bit sour, I don’t know,” he explains. “It was white.”

“Maybe it was a vanilla cake with lemon butter frosting,” she says dreamily, her eyes faraway and glinting. Then, she turns and prods his arm with a finger. “You should’ve brought some back for me. You know I love tasting new cakes.”

Ichigo almost bonks her in the head. Of course Orihime would whine about missing out on food. “We were in the middle of a war,” he reminds her.

Orihime frowns. “All I had to eat back then were the protein bars Urahara-san brought with him. I had sand in my mouth for weeks. But I guess I shouldn’t complain. You were getting stronger for all of us, right?” She kisses his cheek. “Thank you, Ichigo-kun.”

Ichigo can’t help but laugh inwardly at her complete inability to stay mad at him.

“I had help,” he tells her softly, running a finger along the creases on her arm, the places where the bedsheets had left their marks on her. He's so stupid fond of this girl that he feels a little helpless sometimes, but it's the right kind of helpless—the one without the tremors or the fear or the despair. The kind of helpless where you know help is coming. That she's been right by your side all along.

“I want to bake a vanilla cake with lemon butter frosting tomorrow,” she declares, touching his arm with intent. “Maybe you can tell me if it tastes like the one you had at the palace.”

Life with Orihime is like this, beginning and ending in unexpected locations. Ichigo figures he's taken her to enough places in their lifetime, brought enough battles to the doorstep of their life together. He's more than happy to let her take the reigns every once in a while—dragging him towards beds and unfunny variety shows and kitchens with something potent baking in the oven.

“I'll look forward to it,” he replies obediently, knowing she knows he means it.