Warning: Mature Content.

Disclaimer: I do not own Bleach.

Underneath their combined weight, the bed creaks and whines and squeals. The air around them is becoming stuffy and heated, the sheets sliding precariously down the slope of his back and knotting up against them. He is keenly aware, somewhere in the back of his mind, that he should probably be going a little slower, that the quick quick quick snaps of his hips should be soft and tender and rolling, but there's always something there to snatch the thought away.

Her thighs locked tight around his waist. Her hands splayed over his shoulder blades. Her breath hot against his throat. Her body arching up into his, her voice a trilling litany urging him to keep going.

His hands find purchase in the sheets, up around the edge of the mattress, her rocking hips, the gentle curves of her shoulders, her long hair—something to keep him grounded and sane. These throaty, partly embarrassing whimpers hitch the ends of his grunts when she takes his hand and presses it over her ample breast, when she pulls him down to lightly nibble his earlobe, when she whispers breathlessly how good—it feels, he feels, he is to her, this whole thing is; all good, you're so good—

And he can't exactly breathe. He is grasping uselessly with his hands, searching for something to cling onto. It feels like they're teetering on the very edge of the edge of collapse, toeing the tongue of a depthless abyss, flinging themselves into the air and trusting something to catch them. His body is singing with something like relief and bliss and anxiousness, all caused by and directed at her—only her. He pushes himself as close to her as logic will let him and then tries to push even closer than that. Every space or gap between them is filled and yet not filled; with every push there is a pull and that's just how these things work. Something like inertia or friction or something like that.

Or maybe the fact of the matter. That's how sex works, and sex with Orihime is nothing at all like he thought it would be.

His name is tangled up with these short, frantic gasps and these delicate moans he can barely even pick up. He catches it and holds it close to his heart and feels a part of him grow even warmer. Her eyes are glassy and shine with something pretty and euphoric and entirely her. Her face is flushed a red that spreads down her chest, and when he cradles a heavy breast in the palm of his hand she twists to accommodate him further.

He feels utterly welcomed by her, in her, and buries his face in her neck, her hair, her affections. Her hands touch him with a tentativeness he'll know anywhere and he thinks this is one of the best parts about the whole thing; she's always the same no matter what. And Orihime and perfection are one and the same, really; they coincide and coexist as easily as air fills the lungs.

Which he's having a hard time accomplishing at the moment.

"The movies lie, you know," he said once to his friends, all gathered to watch some game he forgot the teams of halfway through; a ritual men were supposed to fall into at some point in adulthood. They stared at him bemusedly, waiting for him to continue. "Sex, I mean—the movies make it seem all…artistic or something."

Out of the five of them, only Mizuiro seemed to know what he meant. His responding smile was fleeting and understanding, and a glint lit up behind his dark eyes. "But it's almost poetic, isn't it?" he teased, and Ichigo had a hard time not flinging a throw pillow at the man.

Sex isn't all that graceful. Her long, long hair sticks to them with their sweat; his arms or chest or neck or fingers. And there is always a quiet burn in his muscles, a slow moving frustration at the limitations their bodies set up, all the restrictions and the planning and the maneuvering it takes to fold them into this position or that. The tiles in the shower are too slippery, or the mattress pushes back too quick, or the sheets don't want to stay where he wants them to, and the condom this time is bright pink and he can't remember why he agreed to let her buy these ones, and he sometimes finishes too quick and she sometimes can't work up enough momentum for her fall and it all comes down too flat.

But there is something so utterly poetic about her, the breathless smiles she graces him with when he fumbles or messes up or curses under his breath in mortification; the glow on her skin afterward as they lay panting and boneless and sweaty; the wisps of hair clinging to her cheeks and forehead; the way she opened up, willing and inviting and sweet, underneath him; or the way her face looked, so deeply etched in concentration and nervousness, as she leaned over him.

How she said his name, all wrapped up in silk bows and honeydew.

And so the bed is creaking and whining and squealing, his hips snapping down into her hurried rocking. His hands trail, undecided, down every plane of her body they can find. They settle separately; one on her hip and one cradling the back of her head, or one curled carefully around her slender throat and one gripping her thigh. His tongue follows hers, some little dance, wet and imperfect; he laughs when her teeth catch his lower lip and her eyes flicker to his apologetically. There are rivulets of sweat, gleaming, rolling down the valley between her breasts and her soft stomach, drenched into locks of hair and painted across her cheeks just as finely as her blush. His heart is pounding and he can't catch his breath fast enough to keep up with her.

She is burning and clenching and alive. And he thinks that's the other best part about this.

Or maybe it's the whispered repetitions of — "I love you" — when he presses his cheek against hers and wraps her up in his arms.

When it's over, he's torn between staying in bed and pulling her into a hug—a well meaning, but probably entirely awkward and unfitting, "Good work," like a pat on the back of a teammate after winning a big game—and hurrying to the bathroom because he really has to go right now.

She decides for him. "The sheets are sweaty," and a laugh lightens the mood some.

"Ah, yeah—sorry," he says, sitting up and picking the covers from their legs. They rise to change the sheets, and she slips off to clean herself up in the bathroom and slide on her underwear and his shirt, picked off from the ground.

When he climbs back into bed beside her, she pinches his hip and then his stomach lightly with her fingers a few times in succession and whispers, "Mosquito kisses," softly. He coughs around another laugh and pulls her against his chest, tugs the covers up to their shoulders and presses his mouth to her hair and then her forehead. "Human kisses," she says appropriately, and offers a quick smile up at him.

He pinches her arm gently.

The absurdity of the moment hits him, and he figures this is just as well. Conventionality has never really fit her, and the longer they're together the less it fits him, too. He coils her hair in his hands and then fans it out across the pillow, swipes a thumb over her fluttering eyelid and smooths out the too-long sleeve of his shirt down her arm, all fretful and restless. She reaches up to drape her arm over his head and opens her mouth wide to yawn.

"When I…finish," she mumbles, pink coloring her cheeks with embarrassment. "I see stars, you know."

He finds this incredibly fitting, and so completely ironic. "I see you."

.x.

A.N.: Thanks for reading.