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“Hey… Did you see Inoue with her boyfriend yesterday?”
“Yeah… That guy’s pretty weird, isn’t he? I wonder why someone like her ius dating a guy like that…”
“I heard he’s friends with a lot of delinquents… Maybe she’s into bad boys?”
“Wow… They do say good girls are like that…”
The three girls who are stage whispering to each other and staring at Orihime as everyone sits around waiting for class to start probably think they’re being subtle.
Tatsuki glares at them so they know that they’re really, really not.
When the three of them see her, they immediately look away and try to pretend that they’re all innocent, but also have the decency to look at least a little ashamed of themselves.
Good.
Of course, Orihime doesn’t notice them at all. She’s too busy being off in her own little world, as always…
She’s always been like that, but she’s been especially bad about it ever since she started dating Ulquiorra.
That’s pretty normal, right? When someone falls in love for the first time they start spacing out and getting all mushy over their new partner and stuff like that, and Orihime’s never exactly been the most tuned in person Tatsuki knows to begin with. Considering what her imagination is like, and the fact that she’s always getting herself into trouble…
But that’s why she worries about her so much. And even though she won’t tolerate their classmates sitting around gossiping about her and her new boyfriend, Tatsuki isn’t about to say they’re wrong, either.
That Ulquiorra guy— who recently transferred from a school that has a bit of a reputation, and who is in the other class— definitely creeps her out. He never seems to smile and always talks with the same tone of voice. Whenever he looks at her, it feels more like he’s looking through her.
And yet Orihime doesn’t seem to notice any of that stuff.
Or maybe she does notice and just doesn’t care— but considering what Orihime is like, Tatsuki isn’t going to be placing any bets on how observant she is.
No, as far as Orihime is concerned, Ulquiorra is pretty much perfect— or at the very least, she’s very much in love with him.
Considering the only other person she’s ever seen Orihime get a crush on is Ichigo, it’s… Worrying, to say the least.
Tatsuki knows she should be happy for her friend, but she also has made protecting Orihime pretty much her job, and that applies to this situation too.
Still, she doesn’t want to make Orihime feel… Self-conscious or anything, which means she needs to approach the situation carefully.
Orihime is humming to herself, staring off at nothing, just being a space case as usual, although from the dopey look on her face Tatsuki knows she’s not just daydreaming about weird food combinations and alien robots. It’s Ulquiorra that’s on her mind, which at least fits right in with what she wants to talk to her about.
“So, uh… How are things with Cifer-san?”
Tatsuki doesn’t like formalities but it feels way too weird calling Orihime’s boyfriend by his first name out loud. Especially since the two of them don’t get along at all.
“Huh?” Orihime blinks as she snaps out of her daze. “Oh! Things are going really great! He and I went to go see this really funny movie on the weekend and he walked me home and everything!”
Orihime is absolutely beaming. And Tatsuki is… Happy that she’s happy.
But picturing a guy like Ulquiorra going to see a comedy or being chivalrous enough to walk Orihime home is pretty tough.
Still, it’s not like Orihime would lie to her— it just makes her wonder what the guy’s angle is.
Of course, when it comes to someone as pretty as Orihime, someone who has… A body like she does, it’s pretty easy to imagine what someone’s angle might be in doing all kinds of nice things for her just to make her like them.
Considering how cold he is, Ulquiorra doesn’t seem like that kind of guy, but… He is a guy, and Tatsuki knows better than to trust guys their age to be anything like they act, or think that they’re not out to get something from a girl.
She wants to ask more— she’s been trying to figure this out for a while now and it feels like every time she gets closer to an answer something manages to get in the way— but before she can start to ask Orihime for more details about her date (totally a normal thing for a best friend to do, she figures, so not something that’s going to upset her), Ms. Ochi enters the classroom, and everyone stands to greet her as class starts.
Oh well. She’s going to get to the bottom of this mystery one way or another.
As soon as the bell goes to signal the start of lunch, Orihime immediately springs out of her seat.
“Huh? Where are you off to in such a hurry?”
Normally the two of them and Chizuru each lunch together, but unlike Chizuru, Tatsuki isn’t that surprised when Orihime almost takes off without saying anything to them. After all, ever since she got herself a boyfriend, her brain’s been completely off in another world.
But just because she had a pretty good guess about where Orihime was going based on the fact that she’s holding two boxed lunches, that doesn’t mean she’s any happier when Orihime turns and says,
“Oh, I promised Ulquiorra we’d have lunch together today! I even made a lunch box for him, so I don’t want to keep him waiting… See you guys later!”
Orihime runs off out of the classroom like something is on fire— even nearly bumping right into someone on the way out who has to jump out of the way to keep from being plowed directly into, and Tatsuki just lets out a frustrated sigh.
Chizuru makes a similar noise— although Tatsuki knows she has a very different reason for being annoyed by the whole situation.
Still, enemy of my enemy and all that… She won’t turn her nose up at someone else who isn’t the biggest fan of Orihime’s love life. Or, at least, someone who isn’t the biggest fan of Orihime’s love life but is the biggest fan of Orihime.
“What does a goddess like her even see in a guy like that anyway?” Chizuru asks as she rests her chin in her hands and glares in the direction of the door.
“Who knows? You know how weird she is,” Tatsuki replies, folding her arms behind her head and leaning back in her seat.
“Have you ever actually seen the two of them together?”
“Maybe for a couple of minutes?” Tatsuki doesn’t really like hanging around when Orihime is hanging out with Ulquiorra, even though normally she would be happy to stick around and make sure any guy who is interested in her isn’t going to do something creepy. She just… Doesn’t like the guy.
“Then how do you know they aren’t just spending all of their time making out or something?”
Tatsuki immediately glares at Chizuru because she knows Chizuru is only saying something like that because she’s jealous that she’s not the one making out with Orihime.
But even though she knows she’s just being bitter and pissy about something she never had a chance at in the first place, as soon as she says it, suddenly it’s all Tatsuki can think about.
Which was probably exactly what Chizuru was planning in the first place. Fuck.
Tatsuki always thinks of Orihime as being super innocent and pure, but she’s a high school girl just like the rest of them. And that means she’s probably interested in stuff like that just like everyone else.
Most of the time Tatsuki chases off guys who are clearly only after Orihime because she has huge tits and is way too nice to say no to a lot of things she definitely should say no to, but Ulquiorra’s managed to make his way past her defenses— probably because it was Orihime who went after him first, wanting to make friends with the cool loner who didn’t seem to like anyone. So Tatsuki didn’t think much of it at first, and then all of a sudden the two of them were dating and Orihime was acting like…
Well, like this.
But she doesn’t need to give Chizuru the satisfaction of knowing she’s gotten her thinking about her stupid suggestion, so she just snorts and says,
“So what if they are? That’s probably what most couples would be doing if they snuck away to have lunch together, right?”
It feels weird to think about Orihime that way, especially when so many people really do just want to take advantage of her, but… Tatsuki isn’t her mother, and she’s not going to be around to protect her forever. She can do what— and who— she wants.
And yet.
Chizuru isn’t staring at the door now, she’s staring at her.
And she has this stupid… Look on her face.
Tatsuki glares at her, but if anything, that just makes it worse.
“What are you looking at?”
“You know… We could go and see for ourselves. What the two of them are up to, I mean. You know you want to.”
Chizuru waggles her eyebrows at her, and Tatsuki wants to just smack her in her smug face.
But knowing what Chizuru is like, she knows that would only egg her on even more.
And…
Well, Tatsuki can’t say she’s… Wrong.
It’s not like Chizuru, who obviously wants to know that sort of thing because she’s obsessed with Orihime and her love life because she wants to be a part of it— but no matter how much Tatsuki tells herself it’s not her job to watch over Orihime every minute of every day, she still can’t quite manage to convince herself.
Besides, if she really can figure out whether this guy is serious about her or not, maybe she can save her best friend from some serious heartache.
She doesn’t want to give Chizuru the satisfaction of admitting that she’s right, but…
“...Ugh, fine.”
“Wahoo!”
When Orihime goes to meet Ulquiorra for lunch, the two eat on the roof.
They’re hardly the only students who go up there to have lunch, so it’s not like she has to worry about the two of them being completely alone.
Not that that would stop a lot of people… But she hopes it would stop someone like Orihime.
(She doesn’t want to hold her breath on that, though— it’s not like Orihime’s ever had a boyfriend before, so she really has no idea what the two would be like alone together.)
They follow her there, staying far back enough that she won’t notice them, but Tatsuki already knows it’s not necessary. As soon as the lunch bell rang, Orihime was back off in her own little world— the little world that only ever thought about Ulquiorra.
Considering they’ve only been dating for a couple weeks, Tatsuki is sure that it’ll wear off eventually. If they stay together, Orihime will stop living with her head in the clouds— at least, any more than Orihime usually lives with her head in the clouds.
But in the meantime, it works to their advantage.
If they go charging out onto the roof after her, even if she is in her own little world, there’s no way she won’t notice them— so instead they wait a few seconds, peeking out the tiniest crack in the door to make sure she’s not just standing right there, and then follow after.
When they sneakily follow her around the corner and poke their heads around the corner, they see her immediately.
Ulquiorra is already waiting there for her, sitting by the fence and scrolling through his phone. When Orihime comes to stand in front of him, smiling brightly and holding the lunch box behind her back like she’s trying to keep it a secret even though Tatsuki knows Orihime can’t keep a secret to save her life and was probably asking Ulquiorra questions all weekend about what kind of food he likes and telling him not to buy lunch, he at least has the courtesy to stop what he’s doing and look up at her— even if from the look on his face you couldn’t tell whether he was happy to see her or not.
That’s probably what pisses her off the most. A girl like Orihime— any guy would be lucky to have her. Pretty much every guy in the school (and if Chizuru is any indication, some of the girls, too) is head over heels for her, whether that’s because of her natural beauty and killer body, her cheerful attitude and helpfulness, or some mix of the two.
And here’s Ulquiorra— a guy who Orihime is obviously crazy about who doesn’t even act like he enjoys having her around.
Even if he is just playing it cool because he doesn’t want Tatsuki to beat the snot out of him for only being after Orihime for her body, he’s doing a crappy job of it, because now she just wants to beat the snot out of him for not appreciating her enough.
But if Orihime has a problem with it, she definitely doesn’t act like it, or even act like she notices it. In fact, she almost seems like she’s glowing.
“Ulquiorra, I made you something special!” She whips out the extra lunch box from behind her back and presents it to him. “Tadaa! I made you lunch!”
She’s still beaming as she hands him the lunch box and then sits down beside him to pull out her own.
It’s at this point that Tatsuki realizes another potential problem— and one she wouldn’t even necessarily say is Ulquiorra’s fault, unlike everything else.
Orihime has weird tastes in food. Some might even say she has a bad taste in food. It’s not like she’s a bad cook in terms of her actual skills— Tatsuki has seen her in action, and unlike her she can actually boil water without burning it— but the things she likes to eat are weird, and Tatsuki wouldn’t blame anyone for turning their nose up at it.
But Orihime is obviously excited about giving Ulquiorra her handmade lunch box, and if Ulquiorra takes one bite and hates it, it’s going to upset her a lot even if she doesn’t show it.
“Uh oh…” Chizuru says softly, just loud enough for Tatsuki to hear her, which is exactly what she’s thinking.
Ulquiorra is looking at the lunch box with a casual sort of disinterest, the same way he looks at basically everything. He hasn’t said a single word so far, not even a hello or anything, but Orihime is sitting there with her own lunch box in her lap not even open even though she’s always incredibly excited about food because she obviously is that excited to know what he thinks about it.
Tatsuki doesn’t want to attract anyone’s attention (because then everyone would know what a weird creep she was being, even if it was Chizuru’s idea in the first place), but she stares hard at Ulquiorra and thinks,
Even if this is disgusting and you hate it, you had better pretend that you love every single bite…!
Maybe if she thinks it hard enough in his general direction, some of his creepiness will turn into telepathy and he’ll be able to hear her and take her ‘advice’ to heart.
But if he is secretly psychic or something like that (which honestly wouldn’t surprise her— although that might just be Orihime’s weirdness starting to rub off on her), he doesn’t show any sign of having heard her as he looks down at the lunch box Orihime probably spent a lot of time and effort making for him as he opens it.
Tatsuki can barely see what’s in it, never mind smell it, but what she does see from this far away definitely doesn’t make it seem at all appetizing. Which is a bad sign.
But Ulquiorra just looks at it for a few moments without making a single comment before he takes the chopsticks that Orihime’s packed with the lunch box and takes his first bite.
There’s no hesitation on his part, which she has to admit, no matter how little she might think of him otherwise, is pretty brave.
When he doesn’t immediately spit it out, she’s honestly impressed. Maybe she really did underestimate him, and he is willing to go the extra mile to spare Orihime’s feelings. He doesn’t seem like the caring type, but maybe she’s judging a book by its cover too much— just because he has a permanent sort of frown and never has anything nice to say about anyone and… Well, a whole bunch of other reasons just from the few times she’s talked to him and the many more times she’s heard people whispering about him when they think he won’t be able to hear them.
And then he takes another bite. And another bite. And doesn’t even seem to be choking it down or even making any kind of funny faces. He’s not wolfing it down by any stretch, but he could be eating any convenience store meal and not… Whatever Orihime’s managed to whip up this time.
Tatsuki almost wonders if maybe she made more normal food for once so she could give it to him, but she’s pretty sure Orihime doesn’t actually know that the food she makes isn’t normal… Given how many times she’s tried to convince everyone else around her to try some and hasn’t understood why no one ever wants to.
Maybe he just… Doesn’t have a sense of taste or something like that…?
“So? What do you think?”
Orihime is actually not smiling anymore. Instead, she looks… Almost shy?
She’s watching Ulquiorra like a hawk, though, like she’s trying to gauge his reaction. And Ulquiorra finishes chewing his bite, then waits a few seconds longer before he says…
“...It’s good.”
It’s two simple words that don’t even really have that much weight to them, but the way Orihime goes from looking worried to looking like someone just handed her a winning lottery ticket is a sight to see, and Tatsuki can’t help but sigh when she sees the way Orihime lights up.
If she’s really that easy to impress, well… It’s not Tatsuki’s problem. At least she knows Ulquiorra isn’t being nasty to her, even if he has all of the emotion of a brick wall.
“Really? I’m so glad you like it! I can make it for you any time you want… All you have to do is ask!”
Ulquiorra nods, and even though he doesn’t say anything, Orihime giggles as she opens up her own lunch box and finally starts to eat.
With a sigh, Tatsuki grabs Chizuru by the back of her shirt and pulls her back towards the stairs.
“Awww, Tatsuki, don’t you want to stick around and see if they end up doing anything… Naughty?”
“Get your mind out of the gutter, and let’s get back to the classroom before we don’t have any time to eat our lunches,” she says, practically dragging Chizuru along behind her.
She might not like Ulquiorra any more than she did before, but… At least today, she’s come to understand why he and Orihime clicked as fast as they did.
Apparently, even if she’s all sunshine and rainbows and he looks like his face would crack if he actually smiled for once in his life, the two are cut from the same kind of weirdo cloth.
Ever since Ulquiorra has started at this new school, he’s been… Confused.
Not by the curriculum (laughably easy) or by the language (even if it is his second language, he speaks it like a native speaker and has already been in a Japanese school for years), but by the other students.
At his former school, friendships were transactional. Most people gathered together purely because others were less likely to mess with larger groups, and only the toughest people could handle themselves on their own. He was one of those people, and much preferred a solitary lifestyle to having to make room in his life for other people, especially when they were more than likely just using him.
It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to being alone. He had been alone for as long as he could remember. He didn’t need to surround himself with other people to feel complete, like so many others seemed to.
But then Orihime came into his life whether he liked it or not.
She came to him because he seemed lonely to her— because he had no friends, because he had no interested and still has no interest in making any. At first he had just found her irritating, and had wondered what her angle was— did she want something from him, or did she simply pity him? Either way, he had no time or patience for her, and had tried to ignore her and brush her off as much as possible in hopes she would get the message and give up.
That plan, obviously, didn’t work. And Ulquiorra is surprisingly glad that it didn’t.
He’s never been interested in someone before the way he’s interested in Orihime, so when she worked up the courage to confess her feelings to him and ask him to go out with her, he found himself unable to say no.
He’s still not certain if what he feels is love, necessarily. He had agreed to go out with her only because he was intrigued by the whole situation. After all, why would someone like her be interested ins someone like him, especially when he had done nothing to even remotely encourage her attentions— even as he was slowly starting to get more and more used to her presence?
And yet the more time he spends with her, he finds himself growing… Fond.
When Orihime asks him to spend time with her, he finds himself looking forward to it. When his day is as bland and monotonous as any other, seeing her for at least some small part of it makes it feel less dreary and boring.
Maybe some day he’ll grow bored of this, too. Or maybe Orihime will decide that she doesn’t have the patience to try and put up with him for any longer. He can’t imagine there’s a single person alive who can be that optimistic all the time without fail, after all…
But for right now, he’s… Enjoying himself.
Even if Orihime’s friends don’t seem to feel the same.
He doesn’t really interact with them much— mostly because he doesn’t want to— but he can tell from the way he gets glared at all the time that they don’t like him, have never liked him, and like him even less ever since he and Orihime got together. Which is only fair. He’s gone out of his way to make sure people have almost no reason to want to talk to him because it usually just feels like a waste of his time, but it’s impossible to avoid them completely as long as he and Orihime are together, because she’s the sort of person who people just tend to… Be drawn to.
He should be proof enough of that.
For the most part they seem to be content to leave him alone and just sort of tolerate his presence whenever he’s around because of Orihime, but there’s one exception to that.
Tatsuki.
He hasn’t done anything he knows of in particular to rankle Orihime’s best friend, but he supposes he doesn’t really have to. Dating Orihime is enough to have him on her shit list regardless of anything he actually does or says— not that he especially cares. But he has noticed.
It’s hard not to notice when he’s getting ready to leave one day and Tatsuki slams her hand against the locker next to his as he’s taking his shoes out to change.
He turns to face her, raises an eyebrow, and says nothing as he waits for whenever it is she’s planning.
“Listen here, buddy,” she says without so much as a hello, not that he would expect one from her. “At first I thought you were bad news and Orihime would get over this thing, but it seems like she really, really likes you. And I just want you to know that if you ever do anything to hurt her, I’ll knock your teeth out.”
Tatsuki is glaring at him. He’s sure that to most people it would seem pretty intimidating.
Ulquiorra isn’t most people, and he’s used to much more frightening people trying to intimidate him— and failing.
But he can’t help but admire her moxie in trying to do so, so while he could very easily just ignore her, he at least wants to give her the benefit of not letting her efforts go completely to waste.
“..Understood,” he says, because he knows even if it’s ridiculous of her to say and born out of a very foolish sort of sentimentality, it’s coming from somewhere genuine.
What does it feel like to care about someone that much, he wonders? If he were to encounter someone who was a threat to Orihime, would he find out?
Perhaps it’s for the best if they never figure that out.
Tatsuki narrows her eyes at him. Maybe she doesn’t believe him or maybe she thinks he’s not taking her seriously. And maybe he isn’t, not completely— not because he doesn’t think she would try to follow through on that threat if he did something to hurt Orihime but because he doesn’t think she would be able to accomplish much.
But either way, he just goes back to changing his shoes and, as he slings his bag over his shoulder, he says,
“Goodnight, Arisawa-san. See you tomorrow.”
He knows she’s still glaring at him as he walks away, but he pays her no mind.
It’s reassuring to know that someone as naive as Orihime has someone in her corner, at the very least. Even if she seems determined that he’s the enemy.
When he walks out of the school, he’s not surprised to see Orihime standing by the gate waiting for him, even if she didn’t say she was going to be there.
“Want to walk home together?”
Ulquiorra nods, even though he knows either one of them will have to go out of their way to walk the other home or else their paths will diverge fairly quickly.
But not only does he not mind having Orihime’s company on his walk home (even if it’s only for a short while), he can tell that she wants to ask him something— and since she’s bad at hiding it, not to mention bad at being patient when it comes to things like that, it doesn’t take long for it to come out.
“So, uh… What did Tatsuki-chan want to talk to you about?”
Ah. So that’s what this is about.
Ulquiorra closes his eyes as they continue to walk. It probably makes him look like he’s deep in thought, even though that’s not the case.
Most people would probably try to spare their girlfriend the details of the threats that her best friend had just delivered to them, but Ulquiorra isn’t that kind of person.
“She told me that if I ever did anything to hurt you she would, and I quote, ‘knock my teeth out’.”
He wonders if Tatsuki even considered that her threats would make it back to Orihime, but to his surprise, Orihime isn’t surprised or upset when she hears that— in fact, she immediately smiles.
“I’m so glad to hear she’s finally accepted you,” she says, her voice almost sing-song as she skips ahead, actually managing to overtake him by a few steps. “I was worried she might never come around!”
Part of Ulquiorra wants to ask why Orihime would think that of all things would make her think that Tatsuki has ‘accepted’ him.
But he knows that it’s not an answer he’s likely to understand regardless, and so it’s probably for the best if he just takes Orihime at her word.
After all, the fact that she’s so hard to understand…
Well, that’s just part of what makes her so interesting to him, isn’t it?