#tastefullyichihime

[liquorisce]

Prompt : Regrets for @tastefullyichihime ‘s erotic prompts writing challenge Jan 2016.

Pairing : Ichihime

Rating : M (mature themes)

Word Count : Approx 1300

A/N : This will be getting a companion piece really soon, half of which is already written. I just couldn't post it because of the word limit.

A big shout out to the lovely admins of this blog who give me a reason to write for this ship at least once a month. <3

It seemed the more things changed, the more they stayed the same.

It was the same scene as three years ago, only this time the guilt has compounded within him, pooling in his gut.

Her eyes are as lovely as ever though, and it hurts him, pale grey luminous behind her tears, heavy, settling on the bay of her lashes, just like it was that first time he had set eyes on her, when they were ten years old and Orihime had to bear the cruel brunt of tragedy.

He hadn't known it then, but it was obvious now… He was ruined for her.

What pains him is that now, when he is so acutely aware of feelings that he had mashed up for way longer that he can possibly remember, that finally when he's pulled his head out of his ass, and the truth that has been gnawing at his insides since forever, the ring that rests on her finger was not his.

No, it doesn't hurt, it fucking kills.

“I'm sorry,” she whispers, eyes quite unable to meet his, but nevertheless looking at him, because even she is afraid. Afraid that after this there's no going back to pretending everything was normal. There would be no way to look at him and behave as if everything were still under control, like the pieces of her heart which she had spent so long gluing together, hadn't scattered to the winds by a simple wave of his hand.

Her lips trembled as she spoke and he was an utter asshole, but all he could think of was how amazing they had felt on his mouth… And certain other parts of him that remembered her even more keenly.

“It's my fault… If only I hadn't... forced myself onto you, then we wouldn't be in this mess.” She looked completely stricken. “You wouldn't have to feel so guilty.”

Anger bubbled up within him, misplaced, half directed at her being so goddamn blind and the rest directed solely towards himself for letting her believe that she had ever forced him into anything. “... Is that what you think?”

Had she forgotten everything? Had she conveniently deleted from her mind the part where he shamelessly, hungrily - with his hands threading into her hair, pulling her flush to him - kissed her back? Had it completely escaped her memory that he had literally begged for her, for her to open for him, and let him kiss her everywhere?

“... I thought I had finally told you how I felt about you,” because he had, he had told her… Something, not exactly the most romantic of words, but told her, in not so many words that she had always, always been on his mind, like a thorn at his side, “I thought I showed you how I felt,” -

“... Enough, Kurosaki-kun!” her voice had begun to grow more hysterical, a note that he had never heard from her before, not from shy, sweet Inoue, “you're doing it again.”

She offers a shaky, watery smile. “Even now, all you're doing is protecting me. Saying things you don't mean just so that I don't get hurt.”

He looks at her stunned, wondering how in bloody hell she arrived at that conclusion.

“I'm done being selfish, Kurosaki-kun,” she murmurs, and he wants to laugh, loudly, at just how cruel the world could be, because it wasn't her at all, it was him, selfish all the way through, running away from hints that had glared at him his whole life, always afraid that somehow it would only end up with him getting hurt. That someday Inoue would see him for just how useless he really was, and realize she deserved better.

But when it came right down to it, when it was far too late, and they were far too drunk, the truth poured out of him like the sake they had poured into themselves. And he had said it, told her, that she had no business dating his friend, and how could she, how could she even think about it, when he was right there, when he had known her even before Ishida, had wiped her tears even before Ishida even knew of her existence.

“... I'm really the worst, aren't I? Uryu-kun, he,” and it burns how she's comfortable with him, how she takes his first name so easily, “he loves me and here I am… Throwing myself on someone else. His friend, of all people…”

“Inoue…”, he places a hand on her shoulder, and he can tell that she is shaking like a leaf, sobbing into her knees, curled up into herself. “Please don't start doubting yourself like this…” He curses inwardly because this is all he could manage, and even though he wants to tell her that Ishida isn't the only one who loves her, he does too, even more, more than she could possibly take, but it gets shelved away, along with the millions of other things that remained unsaid between the two of them, growing and growing till the tension is too much and it just snaps, just like four nights ago, when it became too much to bear, and they had no choice, no other way to tame it, than to give in to the demands of their own bodies.

“You said it yourself,” she says softly, lifting her eyes, rimmed red and puffed, to look up at him, “That it felt dirty.”

And he flinches, caught by the harshness of his own words. “It's not,” - his voice cracks because he does remember saying it, - “That's not what I meant. I was just… Guilty... He's my friend, Inoue,”-

“... And my fiance,” she whispers, anguished, broken.

He doesn't understand why, he's known this fact long enough, was well aware even that night, when they both had tried their hardest to forget, but when she said it out loud, something within him snapped.

The cement parapet is prickly and uncomfortable, but he pushes her back into it anyway, catching her hands and pinning them onto it, scraping her knuckles raw but not really caring because he wants her to know how much it hurts, wants her to feel it.

And there are tears streaming down her cheeks and into his mouth, but she kisses him back anyway, and he licks them away, down her chin, to her neck, to the nape where he has an uncharitable wish to leave marks just so that Ishida would find them.

She moans, despite the guilt, and arches beneath him, and even though she knows she will despise herself for it later, when his fingers beg entrance under the hem of her skirt and between her thighs, she only leads him further.

“I can't… Stop…” he mumbles, in between kisses, frenzied because the guilt is still fresh, alive in his mind, but desire is a creature that has long since consumed him.

Because even if they were both bad people, even if this was wrong, nothing in the world had ever felt so right.

…

In the end, no amount of kisses could make parting easier. Because just like their love, the end was also an inevitability.

Guilt, it seemed, was a persistent enemy, and both of them had spent so large a portion of their lives in denial of these feelings, that it was too easy to give in.

“The only thing I regret,” she says quietly, as she lingers one step out the door and he stands watching, a safe, controllable distance away, brown eyes already bereft, “is that I don't regret anything.”

A/N : I can't even handle this angst, I don't know why I dump it on you guys...

[liquorisce]

My prize for winning @tastefullyichihime‘s erotic prompts writing challenge for the month of September/October, for my entry “Bound”. ^_^

... The blindfold was new, though.

It almost continually had her on edge, the smallest brushes of his skin against hers making her tremble in anticipation.