#i almost never describe how people smell or what people's reiatsu feels like and now you know why

[recurring-polynya]

Renruki for the OTP!

4, 9 , 22, 31, 35, 44,

4. When they can’t sleep, what do they do?

When she’s still living at Kuchiki Manor, Rukia likes to walk around the gardens in her pajamas in the middle of the night and talk to the koi. Byakuya does this, too, and they have passed many an insomnia night together. Once she’s married, if she can’t sleep, Rukia will get up and go do something-- make a cup of tea or draw or catch up on paperwork, and she’ll almost always wonder if Byakuya’s out talking to the fishes.

Prior to their marriage, when Renji can’t sleep, he likes to stare at the ceiling and stew in his past failures. Once they’re together, he almost never has trouble sleeping, but if he does, he’ll just snuggle Rukia until he drifts off again.

9. Who accidentally pushes a door instead of pulling?

Rukia has never, in her entire existence, pushed a door that said “PULL” on it. How could you even think this? How dare you think this.

Renji pushed on a pull-door one time 45 years ago and Rukia has never let him live it down for even a second.

22. Who texts more often?

They text each other in roughly equal measures, but Renji texts more, overall.

Renji is friends with a good 90%+ of the Seireitei, and even though he’s not really a gossip, he is sort of a nexus of gossip. He is on 16 different group chats and his DMs are the true forbidden archives of everything that happens in Soul Society. Aizen may have tracked the growth of Ichigo’s potential for 15 years, but he doesn’t know the full details of the time Shinji may or may not have caught Yoruichi hooking up with Soi Fon at one of Byakuya’s flower-viewing parties (an incident which had to be pieced together in postmortem by at least seven different lieutenants)

Also, Renji tries to use some semblance of grammar when he texts, but Rukia is absolutely feral in terms of sending things like “y u do this 2 me?”

Both of them are embarrassingly heavy emoji users.

31. Who has bigger cravings? What are they?

They both grew up in food insecurity, but have sort of come out of it with opposite outlooks. Renji eats on opportunity. He doesn’t really get cravings for particular things, but he’ll eat almost anything, including horrifying combinations of things. If a diner has a menu item called Garbage (anything), he will order it immediately. He is absolutely a pineapple on pizza guy. He thinks Orihime is a culinary genius. He’s somewhat thrifty by nature when it comes to eating--he’ll go out to be social, but he’s more likely to eat in, or get in a good meal at the mess hall. Over the years, he has spent a lot of time at other people’s family gatherings, and grandmothers instinctively love to feed him things.

Rukia also has a very generous palate, but there are particular things she really loves, and the one nice thing about being a Kuchiki is that she’s not shy about Treating Herself when she wants something. She loves to eat out, and since Byakuya is very Judgy about food choices, she especially loves going out for greasy junk food with Renji. The primary thing she craves is atomically spicy stuff. Poor Renji doesn’t handle spice very well, but he’s always good to come along to hype her up and take pictures of her conquests and to help her get home when she overdoes it and has tears and snot running out of her face. She will also declare that she needs dessert sometimes, and they’ll go get ice cream or some other extremely indulgent sweet, which Renji loves, even if he would never do it just for himself.

35. What do they smell when they smell amortentia?

I had to look up what this was, and apparently, it’s the love potion in Harry Potter, which smells like whatever you find most attractive, according to the HP wiki.

To Renji, it would smell like the promise of snow on a winter day, pine, wintergreen, and a jasmine perfume Rukia wore exactly once to a fancy party. It smells like a Kuchiki Rukia moodboard, and absolutely nothing like the actual Kuchiki Rukia, who smells mostly like soap, pickles, Captain Ukitake’s eucalyptus cough medicine, and cherry-flavored Chappy-brand chapstick.

To Rukia, it smells like a not-as-bad-as-it-sounds blend of gym sweat, hair tonic, soy sauce, ink, and camellias. It smells exactly like Renji actually smells. 

44. What are their nicknames for each other?

A long-standing feature of my fanfic is that Renji calls Rukia “Ru”, but only when it’s just the two of them, and he’s feeling particularly mushy toward her. It was something he started doing in their latter days in Inuzuri as his way of telling her he loved her. Astute readers may have noticed that I have had her called him “Ren” exactly once, in one of the later chapters of Between Tides.

Everyone knows this already, but their texting handles for each other are 🐒🐍🕶️ and ❄️🐰

otp meme