mistkitt | Break of Dawn

Originally posted 5.17.2015

Ah geez. Okay. Muse. FLUFF WARNING.

Ulquiorra was halfway through a dream about being late to a test he hadn’t studied for when a hand smacked his side and catapulted him out of slumber. “Wake up!” Ms. Inoue was bouncing up and down beside him, apparently forgetting that he’d paid for a mattress where she could do so all she wanted and he would remain undisturbed. “Wake up, wake up, wake up!”

Of a few things he became certain as he opened his eyes: it was still dark outside, his alarm hadn’t gone off, and therefore it must have been too early for his anti-morning girlfriend to be waking him. But there she was on the other side of the room, ripping open the curtains and bustling about like it wasn’t – dear God, 5AM? Was she drunk? “Is the building on fire?” he asked instead, lucid enough to remember questioning her sobriety would make her angry.

“What? No. Do you hear any fire alarms?” Orihime clicked on the beside lamp with her elbow, revealing a coffee mug in each hand. Ulquiorra stared at them blearily.

“You’ve been in the kitchen. There must be a fire,” he said, to which she rolled her eyes. She pressed a mug into his chest.

“Just take that and drink it.”

He took it, but he didn’t drink it. “Is it laced with something? Are you kidnapping me?”

“Oh my God, if you don’t shut up and drink your coffee.” She left the threat open to his imagination as she crawled over him, handling her own steaming mug carefully. Ulquiorra had several objections to consuming food stuff in his bedroom, but he figured he would need the caffeine to deal with… whatever this was. He took one sip and immediately noticed that it wasn’t his usual coffee. Orihime was watching him over the lip of her mug.

“What is this?” he asked, though her concentrated stare was enough to revive his suspicion of the drink being drugged somehow.

Orihime took a deep breath and spoke rapidly into her mug. “They were selling it at that frou frou coffee place next to Tiburon. I went there with Rukia yesterday, remember? And they had these like gumball machine lookin’ things filled with coffee beans and they weren’t all that expensive, so I got whatever this is because I couldn’t pass up a name like Billie Bean is Not My Lover, and, well, anyway, do you like it?”

Ulquiorra took another sip. Billie Bean was, in fact, much better than his usual coffee. “Yes,” he answered slowly, his eyebrows furrowing. “But did you have to wake me up at five in the morning for this?”

“No…” She looked away.

“Then why am I awake?” he asked, noticing her toes digging into the blankets. There was a stubborn little pout on her face; the kind she wore when she didn’t feel like telling him something.

“I wanted to watch the sunrise.” She mumbled it so quietly that he almost didn’t hear her. Ulquiorra blinked. She didn’t need him to watch the sunrise. There was no reason to be embarrassed about something like that, unless… unless there was an implied, silent “with you” tacked onto the end of her statement. Which certainly seemed to be the case. She chanced another look at him and immediately looked away again. “Sh-shut up!”

“I didn’t say anything.” A rosy, pleasant feeling was spreading through Ulquiorra’s chest. It was a happiness bordering on obnoxious, the kind that made people walk around half asleep with goofy grins on their faces. But Ulquiorra, being a man of little expression, could only manage the tiniest of smiles; the rest would be left to his eyes. He sat up and moved beside Orihime, reclining against the wall. “What time does the sun rise?” he asked.

She opened her mouth, then frowned. “I don’t really know.” Her cheeks were adorably pink. Ulquiorra leaned closer to her. She relaxed, shifted her legs, and leaned back.

“Then we’ll just have to find out,” he said, turning his gaze to the window.