Music to my Heart (A Bleach/Ulquihime fic)

Chapter 18

This story belongs to Cerice Belle at FanFiction.net. I am only publishing it in order to share it with more people. All credits go to her.
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Ulquiorra raised his eyebrows at the large house in front of him. It was two stories of clean white brick and blue shuttered windows with columns situated in front of the blue door. The bubbling fountain surrounded by many neatly clipped hedges and colourful flowers completed the picture of a well-to-do upper town family. The roof of the house had been adorned with lit, prancing reindeer and the fountain was decorated with matching lit icicles. The wrought iron fence was spangled with multi-coloured lights and the gate had a small sign with "Santa is Coming to Town" written on it. Through the brightly gleaming windows of the house he could see people dancing and he could blatantly hear raucous party music. Clearly the Matsumoto's knew how to celebrate Christmas in style.

Wondering why the heck he had gotten himself into this, he made his way up the elf-lit path to the door and rang the doorbell. A few seconds later it was answered by Rangiku in a very revealing strapless black lace dress.

"Oh hey there Ulquiorra!" she exclaimed. "I didn't expect to see you here."

"Well I am." He said bluntly.

She grinned, "Fair enough, come on in," she closed the door behind Ulquiorra as he walked in, "Everyone's out the back, oh and Grimmjow, Nnoitra and Szayel are already here." He nodded to her as she bounced off holding a glass of what looked suspiciously like wine.

Ulquiorra rolled his eyes and looked around the entrance hall filled with people from his grade laughing and talking. He made his way through the lounge-room and onto a balcony with a staircase which led to a large grassy backyard filled with paper lanterns and fairy lights as well as a big DJ booth, which was pumping out a loud song. On the other side was a sizeable pool in which quite a few people were swimming or dangling their legs in. The Facebook invite had mentioned a pool but he honestly did not fancy getting wet and flaunting his body in front of a bunch of crazy girls, no matter how warm the evening was. He made his way down the staircase with his hands in his pockets and surveyed the area looking for someone he could bear to talk to, which was pretty much no one except Orihime. Speaking of which where was she? Suddenly he spotted her over by some trees with Ichigo, Rukia, Uryu, Renji, Tatsuki, Chizuru and a few people from the other class.

Orihime looked over at him and her face burst into a wide grin, she quickly whispered something to Tatsuki and bounded over to see him.

"Hey there!" she called happily over the loud pumping of the music. "I'm glad you came; did Aizen give you any trouble?"

He shook his head, "Surprisingly no, he actually seemed fine with it."

She smiled, "Well that's good isn't it?"

He shrugged; he had a few theories as to why Aizen was letting him off so easily, the first being in relation to Grimmjow. Wanting to change the subject, he took a closer look at her. She was wearing a floaty strapless dress of intersecting colours of blue and green and spangled with glitter.

"You look...nice," he said gruffly, raising his voice to be heard over Nicki Minaj's explicit singing.

She blushed and gave a small curtsey, "Why thank you, you do too." He raised his eyebrow at her and looked down at his black jeans, converse and shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She cocked her head at him, "Aren't you feeling hot in those, it's a pretty warm night?"