Title: Once Burned

Disclaimer: I don't own Bleach.

Warnings: Light and fluffy to the extreme.

()()()

Orihime is like the sun.

That's what Ichigo thinks.

Like the sun at the precise instant of dawn, when light breaks free over the horizon, bathing the world in honeyed warmth. Orihime is the place where hope solidifies into courage. The moment of change.

He lets his eyes flick toward where she sits, lunch half-eaten, dazed and quiet, in a dream, in another world.

He wonders what she sees.

And around her, the world continues to drone, but it's muted and indiscriminant, dull against the radiance of her. It bustles. She glows. Luminous and pure, impossibly brilliant.

Untouchable.

Even just watching her makes him tired, exhausted down to his bones. But he can't stop. Always glancing, peeking from beneath heavy lashes, and even when she's so bright it hurts, he can't look away.

Tatsuki pokes her with a long finger, but she's gone, watching the sky or the tree line, no one can tell. Maybe this time, her thoughts have carried her so far away she's forgotten the way back.

Above them, tree branches sway, weaving tiny ripples of light down her undisturbed back, but they're gone as soon as he spies them.

He thinks she's just as brief as that. That she would be impossible to catch if he tried. And it's so difficult just to hold on to the idea of her. She slips from his mind like the tide pulls away from the beach, like the sun hides behind the earth, impossible to hold, yet always returning.

She always returns to him.

The concept sends a rush of relief through him, like stepping into a familiar place. As if his world hinged on that one indomitable fact, as if the act of thinking it true could carry any more weight than the heaviness of a breath. But he believes it. So maybe it does. And once thought, it cannot be un-thought again.

Then he blinks, because he's been staring. He's always so careful not to stare and now she's looking right at him.

Then she moves.

She moves so fluidly that Ichigo wonders if he imagined the world before she began. The advance is overwhelming, as if she cannot help but rearrange the world into something different, better, more beautiful. He can't resist it, not if he wanted to, and he does. He desperately wants to run, because she's just too much.

She's too full and he's too empty. And if he let her, she would turn his very being upside down. Every careful image that he's worked so hard to build would fall apart. He would be totally consumed.

She moves forward and he leans back, and her eyes are so clear it's like falling into the sky.

Orihime smiles and inside him something snaps and is repaired so fast it feels exactly like it's breaking again. Her mouth moves and it doesn't matter what she says, because he agrees, nodding along even though he can't breathe.

He can't move and he can't look away, because now she's beaming at him, and he thinks if she keeps on smiling that smile, he might just forget that you should never look directly at the sun.

()()()

A/N

So, I sat down to write chapter 21 for TTRR and found this on my laptop. Although it's not anything like what usually write (which is probably why I never did anything with it), I thought I'd go ahead and publish it. And sometimes new things are fun, too :)

Anyways, let me know what you think!

-Child of the Ashes