Orihime Gives Chad A Manicure To See If It Powers His Arm Up And Also Because She Thinks It Would Be

Orihime gives Chad a manicure to see if it powers his arm up and also because she thinks it would be a nice thing to do for a friend. Chad is always doing things for other people without a second thought and I think Orihime would pick up on that.

I was rolling this around in my head, trying to decide when I wanted to set it and who else I wanted to be in it, when I got punched in the face with this mildly angsty idea, which ended up twisting the prompt around a little bit. (I feel like I always do this to you 😂. Maybe I do this to everyone.) Anyway, I hope you like it! I love them so much!!!

Takes place in the early Blood War, around the time when Ichigo goes to the Royal Realm, shortly after the first set of battles, while Orihime and Chad are still in Hueco Mundo.

(read on ao3)

💅 💅 💅

Orihime didn't know what she was thinking when she grabbed the nail polish off the shelf in her bathroom. It was a 16-in-1 gel palette set (with 4 metallics!) that she had won last fall as a fifth-place prize in a contest they were holding down at the shopping district last fall. She hadn't yet taken the plastic wrapping off. She had been saving them for a special occasion.

A war was not a special occasion.

Orihime had to admit that she probably panicked a little. Mr. Urahara was opening Garganta back to the Living World twice a day so that Mr. Tessai could bring various supplies that he needed to Hueco Mundo. Orihime had been shooed through so she could pack some clothes and whatever else she needed, and to let Tatsuki know that she wasn't going to be around for a bit. It had made sense at the time, but once she was actually in her apartment, her vision narrowed down to a dark tunnel and she had to gulp big deep breaths of air because it was all too much like the time Ulquiorra had given her twelve hours to say good-bye to just one person.

She got it together eventually and did manage to find Tatsuki and Keigo and Mizuiro, too. (Ishida wasn't around, but he had known where they were going.) Still, though, she wondered what she had been thinking when she got back to Hueco Mundo and found her bag packed with every pair of underwear she owned, her winter coat, a jumbo-sized box of Hello Panda that she must have stopped somewhere to buy, and the nail polish.

There had been a lot of waiting around, once she had finished healing everyone who needed healing, so maybe she had been thinking it would be a nice way to pass the time. Maybe she had thought the Tres Bestia would like it. They probably would have, but Urahara had already sent time off on some errand. Nel wasn't interested, although she was very interested in the Hello Panda.

So Orihime painted her own nails. She painted her pinkies and her thumbs with the metallic silver, and then drew on the six-petaled flower of her hairpins on top in teal. She painted the rest of her nails in teal. She had planned to paint a flower for each of her Shun Shun Rikka on each of the remaining six nails. The left hand actually came out pretty good! The right…

"Is something the matter, Inoue?"

Orihime blinked rapidly and looked up. She'd been staring so hard at her own efforts that her eyes had gone dry.

Sado had been sitting nearby, reading a book, with a massive set of headphones over his ears, things he had brought back from his own whirlwind trip home. Sado hadn't had much to say since Ichigo left, but Orihime had noticed that he preferred to stay within eyeshot of her. Tatsuki's cat did that with Tatsuki's mom, who had rescued her from a sewer grate as a kitten. Now, Sado was peering down at her, the headphones slung loosely around his neck.

"Ohhhh, I was just wishing I had put the camellia on my left hand," Orihime sighed. "Ayame and Hinagiku will understand if their flowers are a little shaky, but Tsubaki is going to be so mad."

Sado frowned thoughtfully. "Would you like me to help?"

Orihime's mouth dropped into a soft 'o'. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. She'd seen the doodles Sado did in the margins of his schoolwork. It was usually graffiti-style Spanish words, but sometimes (usually when class was particularly boring) he'd draw out an entire lion, all rippling muscles and fangs, or a sleek motorcycle with highlights and shading that made it look like it made of chrome and leather and rubber, even though it was really all just pencil.

"The brush is very small," she said stupidly.

"It's fine," said Sado.

Barely a minute later, a miniscule camellia graced her right index finger, perfect right down to the lacy stamen.

"How did you do that?" Orihime gasped.

"I don't know a lot of flowers," Sado admitted, "but I know how to draw camellias. Abarai and I used to have a lot of time to kill while we were recovering from throwing boulders at each other. He can only draw about three things, but one of them is camellias."

"What are the other two?" Orihime asked shyly. The idea of big, tough Abarai drawing anything was very cute to her. She wondered if one of them was bunny-people.

"Skulls," said Sado. "And Zabimarus."

The last they had heard, Abarai had been very badly injured and so had Rukia, but both were expected to make it. Orihime pressed her lips together. Of course they were going to make it. They were both very, very tough. Next time she saw Abarai, she would ask him to draw a Zabimaru for her.

"Do you want me to do the other two?" Sado asked.

"It's a daisy and a hibiscus," Orihime said. "Do you know how to draw those?"

"I can manage a daisy," Sado agreed. "I am actually pretty good at hibiscus." That made sense, of course, given Sado's collection of tropical shirts.

"Thank you, Sado," she said, watching him work. He was very good at using pressure on the brush to get little petal-shaped blobs of paint. She wondered if he ever painted, in addition to drawing.

Sado sucked in a breath. "Do you think…" he started, and then started again. "Do you think we could do mine next?"

"What? Yes! Of course!" For a moment, Orihime was so excited to have finally found a taker that it took her a moment to be surprised. "I didn't know you liked to paint your nails, Sado-kun!"

Sado finished the hibiscus before speaking. "I don't. I mean. I haven't ever. Before."

"It'll be your first time, you mean?"

"Yes." Sado paused. "But I've wanted to. Ichigo and I went to a punk show once. A band he liked. He painted his nails black. I was…I mean, it looked…well. It's Ichigo. You know. He's braver than me."

Orihime started to argue with that, then stopped herself. "Not many people are braver than Ichigo," she said instead.

Sado gave a curt nod. "That's why I want to do it."

They did his left hand in white and red and black, with bold stripes and zigzags and a slightly melty-looking skull on his ring finger.

"Should we do the right in black and bright pink?" Orihime asked, eying the same beautiful fuschia Sado had painted her hibiscus with.

"No," said Sado. "My right hand is the one that protects. I want to paint it with the things I want to protect. So for the first one, I want you to paint it silver, with a teal flower, just like yours."

For a second, Orihime couldn't breathe. "Sado-kun," she finally said, "shouldn't Ichigo be the first one?"

"Ichigo is the first person I want to protect," Sado agreed. "But you were the first person I trained with. You're the person I've always trained with. So you should be first."

She couldn't argue with that, so Sado's thumb got painted to match hers. Orihime wasn't very confident in her ability to draw Ichigo's substitute badge, but Sado believed in her, and they both agreed that Ichigo wouldn't mind if it was a little wobbly. They did the background in sparkly gold, which they also both agreed that Ichigo would approve of.

They were going to be fighting Quincy--they had already been fighting Quincy--but they decided to paint the middle finger white with a blue cross anyway, because Ishida had it first. Just because the rest of the Quincy were turning out to be jerks didn't change how they felt about him. The middle finger felt somehow appropriate for that.

There was some debate over disrespectfulness, but they couldn't bring themselves to do it the other way around, so the ring finger was for Abarai (a black lightning bolt on a red ground) and the pinkie for Rukia (a silver snowflake on purple).

Orihime looked down at Sado's hands resting on the table. They were wide and powerful, with thick, knobbly boxer's knuckles and traced with silvery scars. His fingers were long and elegant, though, slightly tapered with square, even nails, now covered in bright colors and sparkles.

Orihime placed her own hands on the table, spreading her fingers wide to mirror his.

"I'm glad I brought the nail polish," she declared, to herself more than anyone else. "They don't have enough color in Hueco Mundo."

"Mm," Sado agreed.

It occurred to Orihime that both the shinigami and their enemies favored black and white, at least officially. But when she thought of her friends, she could only think of splashes of color--the wrap of a sword hilt, the flutter of a scarf. Eyeshadow and bright hair and the lining of a haori.

"Do you like it?" Orihime asked.

"I do," said Sado.

"It might chip," she warned. "Just let me know. I'll fix it if it does."

Sado smiled down softly at their colorful, sparkly, not-quite-matching fingertips, nearly touching. "I know you will."

OMG!  I’ve been thinking about this for a while.   Probably because I was tagged in this a while ago XD. (Thank you, @bleachbleachbleach!)  However, I did not ignore the tag game.  It’s just… what’s the meme?... “The horrors persist but so do I.”  Yes.  That! 

The Horrors got me.

But, I do, indeed, persist.  For now.

Digressing…. 

High concept, I, too, am struggling with what it means to have a “comfort character.”  If it is in terms of writing, then occupying the heads of any of the lunatics who are frequently my POV characters has never been “comfortable” or “comforting.”  Because… well… no one’s head is that comfortable to be in.  In my opinion.  According to me.  (Starting to see how the Horrors found me as I read that paragraph back.) 

BUT IN MY DEFENSE… I think it’s really the structure of fiction to blame for that view.  While I like to write fluffy things occasionally, fluffy things aren’t a story.  They won’t keep me coming back to tweak and poke at as an idea to be developed.  I need CONFLICT!  The characters need to struggle!  I need to feel their struggle and struggle with them!  Investment!  None of that, however, is comforting.  And, well, it probably shouldn’t be.  At least for my “process” (HA! let’s be real, I have no process), I generally need to feel the character’s confusion, anger, rage, pain, outrage, indignation, humor, joy, excitement, etc. to write it.  Otherwise, what am I even doing?  If I can’t get excitement or feeling from writing, then I’m pretty sure no one else will, either.  And, fanfic is really something I do primarily for my enjoyment and experience since I’ll never truly know how many of the random numbers on the page are people versus bots or how many of those people immediately noped out of the story or got sucked in and walked away feeling something.

If, perhaps, “comfort character” is a character who I feel the most at home writing about (or from the perspective of), then… well… that’s less “comfort” and more like “I spent 10+ years writing these five characters over and over and over so there is comfort in that I have a good sense of who these characters are, what makes them tick generally speaking, and their general background.”  And, that answer is pretty easy, but it isn’t the full breadth/scope/meat of what drives me to write, draw, or read about these characters, which is why I hesitate to full-throatedly give that list because… well… what interests me about these characters is less them in a silo and more them in context (*cue the ‘You Think You Just Fell Out of a Coconut Tree?’ sound*) and what that context means for the past and what it means going forward for these characters.   

Ultimately, Bleach, like many stories, has a lot of relationships that affect the storyline.  And, it’s those relationships that I wonder about.  Specifically, the arithmetic of those relationships is what grips me the most and makes me wonder and “what if” until I lose track of time.  To that end, those relationships are, in no particular order:

Rukia – Byakuya (platonic)

Rukia – Byakuya – Renji (platonic)

Byakuya – Hisana (platonic and romantic)

Byakuya – Hisana – Rukia (platonic)

Renji – Rukia (platonic and romantic)

I could spend all my days in fiction writing pondering those relationship dynamics, and I think the reason for it is because there is so much delicious gray space.  I’ve probably mentioned this already on this blog, but in case not:  While I am a fan of many fandoms, I rarely feel the urge to create anything in those fandoms because I feel the storylines and character arcs that I liked got perfectly wrapped up.  What more can I, a peon, add?  Bleach, however, did not do that for all its characters, nor could it have given the vastness of the cast.  So, the urge to “what if” is so itchy that I have to scratch it, and that itch, for me specifically, is Rukia’s backstory.  Part of me wants so badly to know everything, but the other part of me is happy not to know so I can “what if” until the cows come home.  Stay out in the field, cows!

This is all a very long way to say that much of my ByaHisa fixation is truly a way to solve for “X,” with “X” being Rukia’s backstory.  How can you write a prequel and foreshadow the events to come?  What kind of similarities to Rukia might have her sister had?  What about Rukia might remind her brother-in-law of his beloved late wife, and what parts of Rukia felt like a cold bucket of water being dropped over his head to witness due to how different the sisters are?  Is there more to Rukia’s history?  If so, does Byakuya know and is tiptoeing around the truth even now, or was Byakuya lied to as well?  Were they all lied to? 

And trying to think of various creative ways to solve for “X” does, in fact, bring me comfort!  Endless possibilities are oddly comforting and exciting all at once.  Which, sadly, feels like a non-answer, but there it is. 

Thanks so much for tagging me, B3!!!

five comfort characters, five tags

Thank you for the tag, @fractoluminescence! I made a new post because this got long, but the original meme is at this link, and @fractoluminescence's cool responses are at this one, if you'd like to read everyone's (I recommend!).

I had a difficult time developing an answer because I got too in the weeds about what the definition of “comfort character” was, rip. It turns out there are a lot of definitions, ranging from characters you find cozy, to characters you find relatable, to characters you look up to, to more elaborate definitions that attempt to articulate those distinctions between a character you love and a character that you would sink to the bottom of the Marianas Trench with.

I’ll define “comfort character” as that thing that begins by delineating, say, a show you love so so much (Haikyuu!!—my soul for a volleyball) vs. a show you want to be fannish about (Bleach. BleachBleachBleach, even. BLEACHBLEACHBLEACH, even), and then refines further into characters you love (my eternal Soi Fon era) vs. the characters you’re in the Trench about. Because while I probably think an above average amount about Soi Fon, and love seeing her on my dash, and do want to write for her once I alight upon some idea that sufficiently connects my headcanons about her to 1) actual canon and 2) a Story, she is not who I:

think about every single ding dong day;

regularly revel in in daydreams;

both consciously and unconsciously filter my lived experiences or relationships through, such that they become doubled; they find translation, in an act of both processing (growing distance from, or increasing intimacy with) the experience and in tugging at the character themselves, growing them into something that proceeds from their canon or offers an opportunity to entertain new and additional dimensions.

I think the key elements here are:

the alwaysness of this—the readiness to be in the soup at all times;

how personal the engagements are, which I think is sometimes to do with the relatability of a character (proximity to oneself) and is sometimes personal to… the character? Like, the intimacy of wanting to both crystallize one’s understanding of a beloved character by stress-testing their concept, and to spin them out, break them from what is canonically known just to see how much depth they have beyond that and in how many ways they might be known.

…Which, now that I’ve written that, is... just my definition of “blorbo” and not “comfort character,” but maybe the terms are synonymous??? who knows—AS THOUGH BLORBO HAS A DEFINITION AND ISN’T WHOLLY MEME-DERIVED TO BEGIN WITH. AS THOUGH ANY OF THESE THINGS HAVE PRESCRIPTIVE DEFINITIONS.

Anyway, all of that is the appeal of writing fanfic, to me, so it technically extends to anyone I’ve had occasion to write. But that’s within the specific action of writing a story, or preparing to write a story, or thinking about writing a story.

If we’re talking “always” and unconsciously, readily, blorbo-ily, whether there’s a story or not, then #1-3 are and have been for the last four years:

Hitsugaya

Hinamori

Matsumoto

They are who I am most inclined to give things to, or translate things through, and am most interested in defining/destroying. <333

There are probably use-cases/concrete examples that should go here, in addition to the somewhat woowoo definition above, but part of me is shy, and another part is like, those are what the stories are, and another part is “those two parts are the same part...” and yet another is “those two parts are the exact opposite of each other..."

So instead I'll no-pressure tag @confluencechimera, @recurring-polynya, @afinepiece, @bendingwind, and @unohanadaydreams!

Below the cut because it's not Bleach-related enough: I promise I’m not trying to be evasive/coquettish on purpose, but I don’t think I can get myself to put my thoughts about my lifetime character for this on Tumblr, because according to me, organizationally, that’s not where they go. So I’ll skip him. I’m also one of those people where my idea of comfort is to lean into the negative and feel comforted by the experience of being joined in misery by others, rather than go the cozy route. In that usage my comfort “character” is Law and Order: SVU because it’s like 800 episodes of people having the worst day of their lives and/or people on absolutely depraved sprees, depending on which side of the story you focus on. But also that show is deeply unserious, pleasingly formulaic, and has infinite rewatchability. So let's say those are responses #4 and #5!!

Acrylic paint

I am helping excavate my mother’s house today (I may die; I feel like I am In the Mines) but I found another of my sister’s vintage Byakuyas!!!! And within, unimaginable wealth!!!!!

Kinda want to use this as my wallet ngl. That Kuchiki swag

Reblog for unimaginable Kuchiki wealth

★ 【ニシヅキ シノ】 「 卯ノ花八千流 」 ☆ ✔ republished w/permission ⊳ ⊳ follow me! insta • x • bsky

Rukia