AN -

Dreams-AU - Alice-in-wonderland-esque dream world. It's hard to explain in one word.
Pairings - Yumichika/Ikkaku, side hints of Kira/Hisagi, Ichimaru/Matsumoto, and Ichigo/Renji
Setting - After Aizen's war, in Seireitei.
Rating - T (For language and sexual dialougue) may change to M.
Genre - Romance/Humor/Horror/'crackfic?'

Dreams 101 - Chapter 1: How not to ask someone on a date

It all started with those stupid dreams. They were driving him absolutely crazy; Crazy enough that he was thinking about cracking his head open on the cement like an egg just so he didn't have to be so fucking confused anymore.

Of course, Madarame Ikkaku of the legendary tsuki-tsuki dance was far too lucky to have an accidental fall and an open-head injury that didn't involve a fight. So if he didn't purposefully do it, it just wasn't gonna' happen. Story of his life.

These were dumb confusing dreams, vivid lucid ones that he'd never seen the likes of before, dreams that made him question his own strength and intelligence when he woke up. They were slowly driving him nuts, and soon he was sure that he would get into a serious fix in one of them, and he would no longer be able to wake up to escape it. They were starting to interfere with his work – he was losing his focus and was constantly sleepy. What's more was that his heart was starting to cause him problems again. No, not his physical heart. His feelings.

He'd tried to ask Yumichika out but had fucked it all up when he'd changed his mind at the last second and ended up saying something dumb. They'd gotten into a fight, and that was around the time the dreams had started. That had been almost a year ago.

At the present moment, Ikkaku wasn't irritated or confused by any of these events, because he was dreaming right then – again.

Just like in every other dream, it began with a sense of normalcy. It was these usual surroundings and situations that kept Ikkaku from realizing he was asleep right away. As things got stranger and as Yumichika appeared (and he always did), Ikkaku would, of course, come upon the revelation that he was dreaming and that he could not wake up.

However, at the moment, he still didn't know it, and was wiping his eyes as he got up from his bed. He grumbled and scratched his stomach just like always, and just like always he yawned and stretched his arms. Just like always he'd turn around to see if Yumichika was awake, and then-

Ikkaku blinked. Yumichika wasn't in his bed. Yumichika's futon was empty, and it looked like it hadn't been slept in at all last night. For some reason, he had the automatic knowledge that Yumichika was up and about looking for his lost hairbrush.

It didn't occur to him why he knew this fact; he just did, and that was fine with him. He washed his face in the bathroom sink, did some stretches and a few push-ups, but suddenly his morning routine was interrupted by a shriek and a horrible rattling noise. He rushed back into the bedroom, looking for the source.

This was where things began to get out of the ordinary. Still, it didn't quite register to his dream-mind that this shouldn't be happening.

Hozukimaru was shuddering on its sword stand, rattling itself out of its sheath, screaming and crying. Ikkaku went over and grabbed it, put it back in its sheath, and told it to go to sleep. Hozukimaru often had nightmares, ones that Ikkaku had shared in the past – horrible, ridiculously gory, disturbing dreams of battle and villages being ransacked and torched.

Yumichika's sword was missing from its rung underneath his. What was strange about it was that the sheath was still there, but the sword was gone. Perhaps Yumichika had already gone to work. That didn't sit too well with Ikkaku for some reason, because it really seemed as though Yumichika hadn't even come home last night. Besides, he had no idea why Yumichika would decide to leave his sword's scabbard behind.

Ikkaku briefly wondered where Yumichika was and whether he'd made progress on his hair-brush hunt, when he heard a noise somewhere inside the house. Maybe Yumichika had already found it and was making breakfast for them.

After milling around for a few minutes, Ikkaku decided he would go to the kitchen to ask about the sword sheath, but as he left his bedroom, he was suddenly in the Captain's office. This, in his dream-state, did not seem out of the ordinary and didn't cause him alarm or even amazement.

What was out of the ordinary to him, was that the Captain wasn't in the office; Someone else was. Standing in the center of the room – though he hadn't the slightest idea why – was Hisagi Shuuhei, holding some bright purple underpants to his face and smelling them with a perverted look on his face. Again, Ikkaku came upon a sudden piece of knowledge that he wouldn't normally be privy to: those were Yumichika's underwear.

All of a sudden, he got really inexplicably angry, so mad that he couldn't even freaking see straight, which was strange, because if he were awake in this situation, he'd probably just raise an eyebrow at the display and then leave the room. That was another awful side-effect of these stupid dreams. He was starting to reawaken his long-buried feelings for a certain someone, and he was afraid that lack of peaceful sleep was going to cause him to let something slip during the day.

These dreams were a slow-boiling torture, and they had been going on every night without fail for almost a year now.

But Ikkaku still wasn't aware of that at the moment – he didn't even know he was asleep yet. It didn't occur to him that being angry was strange, or even that the surroundings were illogical given that he'd just been in his house.

On top of that, it wasn't like he'd seen Yumichika's underpants enough times to be able to identify them. He didn't study their laundry enough to know that they were his – he just knew that they were Yumichika's, that Hisagi was holding them, and that he was probably fixing to steal them once he was done smelling the detergent like some pervert.

"Gimme that!" he shouted. Hisagi's eyes popped open in shock at his sudden fury.

"No!" Hisagi shouted back. Hisagi's personality was always seriously warped in his dreams. He either acted like some overgrown-six year old, was overly dramatic or serious, starry-eyed over Muguruma Kensei, or was extremely stressed out and in a hurry to get to somewhere.

When Ikkaku was awake, trying to dissect these weird dreams, he figured it was because he couldn't take Hisagi seriously in real life, so he definitely wouldn't be able to in dreams.

"No!" Hisagi yelled again, stomping his feet and holding the underpants out of Ikkaku's reach even though Ikkaku hadn't tried to grab them yet. "No, they're mine!"

"There's no way those are yours! They're too small for you!" Ikkaku said this, feeling that it was a good argument at the time, but thought better of it once he'd said it aloud. His hands were in fists ready to wring Hisagi's neck and swipe the flamboyant piece of clothing back.

"Yumichika would kill you if he knew you'd snooped in his laundry!" He paused, frowning to himself. He had a feeling that Yumichika should be here, and the fact that he wasn't was bothering him all of a sudden. "Where is he, come to think of it?"

All of a sudden, there came a sudden puff of glitter from his left shoulder.

He looked over, and that was when it hit him that he was dreaming this again, because he'd been having creepy recurring dreams like this every single night. They always included Yumichika, cute, little, doll-sized Yumichika, who was his voice of reason and wisdom when it came to telling him how to escape his dream prison.

However, Yumichika in his dreams was just as sassy and bratty as he was in real life - Ikkaku found it endearing when he was awake, because he enjoyed bickering, but it was downright frustrating when he was here in his dream world. Yumichika was often too stuck-up to tell him how to get out most of the time.

More often, Yumichika told him how to deal with the other delusional people milling around in his dream-scape. Even more often than that, Yumichika was usually preoccupied with finding something or someone, or doing some task that was impossible given his small size, something that made him too busy to tell Ikkaku how to get out of there.

When Ikkaku was awake - and brave enough to think about all this-, he figured that Yumichika was his guide because - as much as he tried to deny it - Yumichika was the brains of their partnership. Yumichika was the one with restraint, caution, and common-sense. However, this didn't give him any hints as to why Yumichika was always so little.

He had no idea why, and it bothered him, because it was probably something important and colossal that dominated his actual life, something he couldn't identify that was right under his nose. It upset him, because he didn't like to think that he was that slow that he couldn't recognize something that obvious.

It was driving him nuts, because it appeared in every dream without exception. Yumichika was always small, and was always privy to some sort of information that he needed. Yumichika was the only remotely-rational person in his strange dreams, and when he - if ever - started acting weird, Ikkaku was sure that he only did it to mess with him.

But full lucidity hadn't rushed back to him yet; he was too busy coughing, because some glitter had gotten stuck in his throat.

"-Fuckin' fairy," he hacked. "What's wrong with you?"

There was little Yumichika on his shoulder, posing with two little fingers behind his head, pretending to be a devil. "Are you sure you want to choke Hisagi? It'd be a lot better if you'd kick him where it hurts," little Yumichika said, suddenly pointing an accusing finger at Hisagi's crotch. "He told me there was a snake in his pants yesterday! You should kill it!"

Ikkaku vaguely remembered Yumichika telling him something about Hisagi making advances towards him with lewd descriptions of his 'snake' the day before, but it didn't fully dawn on him that what doll-Yumichika was talking about now wasn't an actual snake.

He just looked at Hisagi like a crazy person – Who on earth would willingly put a snake near their goods? This warped mindset that Ikkaku had while dreaming was exactly the reason he needed Yumichika for advice. Everyone in his dreams were loopy in some way or another, and Ikkaku wasn't good with public relations and often needed help dealing with them.

"Hey." Ikkaku frowned in confusion, looking at his other shoulder. "Isn't there supposed to be an angel guy on this side?"

"Of course not, stupid, I was just making a joke," tiny Yumichika said, taking his devil-horn fingers away from his head, crossing his arms. Ikkaku scowled and without any forethought, he snatched the little person off of him, holding him in his fist, intending to bring him up to his face so he could yell at him for giving Hisagi his underwear.

He gasped, opening his palm, because Yumichika wasn't in his hand anymore, suddenly. Had he crushed him? Had he been too rough and flung him to the ground? Where did he go?

That was another thing that disturbed him when he thought about it awake. In almost a third of the dreams, he ended up killing poor Yumichika in sudden fits of rage or pique. Of course, he'd feel guilty the moment after it happened, realizing that their petty arguments had resulted in the little doll's death.

"Oh fuck, where'd he go?" Ikkaku yelled in panic, looking down at the floor and under each of his feet, trying to see if he'd dropped him on accident or stepped on him.

"Ha-hah," Hisagi gloated, smiling smugly.

Ikkaku looked up, realizing that Hisagi was still in front of him. The underwear were gone, and in their place was Yumichika. He was wearing little clothes that looked just like his work uniform, and he was holding a pink-plastic hairbrush that was obviously for a doll.

"Ikkaku, have you seen my sword?" little Yumichika asked in dismay. "I found my hairbrush, but I can't find my sword. Do you know where it is?"

Hisagi didn't seem to hear Yumichika, or perhaps he was just ignoring him. Ikkaku thought back to Yumichika's missing sword and the sheath just lying there. If Yumichika had lost it, it would've been both the sword and sheath missing, so it had probably been taken by someone.

"Ikkaku, look what I got," Hisagi exclaimed excitedly, shaking the tiny person in his grip. Yumichika moaned, dropping his brush onto the ground as he clutched his head and begging to be treated gently. The clatter of the little pink plastic comb grabbed Ikkaku's attention, and he bent down to pick it up, looking at it. It was smooth tortoise-shell with soft red prickles on it, just like Yumichika's real hairbrush, only miniature.

'That's weird,' he thought, 'I could've sworn it was pink plastic, like a little girl's toy... like just a second ago...'

Ikkaku came a little closer to scrutinize what exactly Hisagi had, even though he knew it was his Yumichika-jiminy-cricket-type-thingie. "What have ya' got?" Hisagi held Yumichika up to show him off. There was Yumichika squeezed in his hands, the same size as one of those plastic living-world dolls, with a scowl on his face.

Yumichika made a gesture for Ikkaku to come closer, cupping his little hands around his mouth to tell him a secret. When Ikkaku moved his ear close to him, Yumichika glared up at Hisagi. "I think Hisagi took my sword."

Ikkaku frowned. It was strange how Yumichika was really the only person in his dreams who talked actual sense and acted somewhat rationally. If only it weren't so frustrating to deal with him. For some reason, Ikkaku always got into arguments with Yumichika, the same kind they had in real life - but they always resulted in disaster here. It was a shame, because Yumichika was pretty cute all tiny like that.

"Isn't it cute? I got it for two hundred-yen." The Yumichika-doll gave an indignant shriek, saying something about never being that cheap. Hisagi began humming and playing with the doll like a small child would, taking off its little clothes.

"You have a date soon, Yumichika," Hisagi said to his toy. "We have to get you in your party clothes!" Yumichika didn't seem upset anymore and sat down on Hisagi's palms, starting to take off his sandals and tabi. Hisagi picked at the little sash around his middle, undoing his hakama.

Yumichika always acted rationally in his dreams, even though he sometimes enjoyed interacting with the loopy idiots wandering around, especially Hisagi. But this did not occur to Ikkaku right then, and he had no earthly idea why Yumichika would allow Hisagi to strip him down.

Well of course there was the fact that sometimes Yumichika would actually call himself a doll and would act like one too; liking to play, and liking to have his hair brushed, and things like that.

So in the midst of this, Ikkaku did what he always did in sticky situations: He shouted.

"What the- Hey!" Ikkaku yelled, banging on a pane of glass that was suddenly in front of him. "Give him back, you pervert! What are you doing?!"

"I'm playing with him," Hisagi said, grinning widely.

"This is a sign, you big dummy," the Yumichika-doll said with dignity, even though the tiny orange collar of his uniform was being pulled over his head, along with his outer yukata. "So pay attention to it."

"You crazy dick-hole, give him back to me, he's mine! That's my toy!" Ikkaku shouted, like he was a little kid who'd had his favorite dump-truck stolen on the playground.

"Put me down, you behemoth, you're being too rough," Yumichika said, biting Hisagi's thumb.

"Ouch!" Hisagi said in surprise, bopping Yumichika on the head. Yumichika looked woozy, standing unsteadily and almost falling off Hisagi's hand. Ikkaku howled in rage, saying that Hisagi might break his little neck if he wasn't careful. "Ikkaku, I'm gonna' punish him for biting me. How old is Yumichika? I have to spank him for every year he's lived-"

"It's not my birthday," Yumichika replied sassily, sounding a little delirious still, inaccurately punching at Hisagi's fingers, which were wrapping around him.

"C'mon, you're gonna' hurt him, Hisagi. Just give him back to me," Ikkaku said, suddenly able to get through the glass and grab Yumichika by his little arm.

"Help, help me! You need me to get out of here," peeped the little doll. Ikkaku pulled on his arm to try to get Hisagi to let go of his other arm. "Ow," Yumichika cried, little tears getting his finger wet. Ikkaku didn't want to rip Yumichika in half, so he slapped Hisagi's face and pried the doll out of his hand, running away like a crazy person. He just avoided banging into Kenpachi at the door.

"Sorry, Taichou, I gotta' get out of here!" Ikkaku shouted, suddenly aware again that this was a dream and that he had to find out how to get out. Talking to the people in his dreams – besides Yumichika – slowly made him forget that he was asleep, so it was best to avoid interacting with them. Usually only Hisagi did that, but it was safer not to talk to anyone for too long. It was like Alice in fucking Wonderland, surrounded by loopy idiots.

"Woah, Madarame, what happened to your toy just now?" Zaraki asked with a curious tone that would never pass his Captain's lips in real life.

"Uhh, Gotta' go, Captain. Hisagi stole his clothes – I'm not a pervert, I swear," Ikkaku said awkwardly, pushing past his captain into the next room, which was a long twisting corridor, one of Seireitei's streets. This was good, he'd gotten outside at least. There seemed to be something wrong with the sky, like the space up there wasn't actually real.

"Geez, can't you be a little gentler, you oaf," Yumichika complained in his grip, hair rustling in the wind from the speed Ikkaku was running.

"Aren't you glad that I saved you from Hisagi?"

"No, he was playing with me," Yumichika whined. "Now I'm going to be ugly for my date!"

"It's called a blind date, anyway," Ikkaku grumbled, feeling jealous for a reason he didn't understand. When he was awake later, he would wonder what Yumichika had meant by 'date', even if his dream self wasn't actually real.

"That doesn't mean my date's blind, you big idiot!" Yumichika shrieked at him. Ikkaku held him up to his face, and now he could see that Yumichika was wearing the same kimono he'd had on when they'd met.

"Oh," Ikkaku said, holding him closer to his eyes, really scrutinizing Yumichika. Every detail was perfect, just like always. "You look beautiful," he said, forgetting about what he was doing. Yumichika leaned in and touched his cheek with his little hand.

"Thank you," Yumichika said, not sounding angry anymore. "I can't wait to go on my date with you!" Yumichika leaned forward and kissed just below his eye with his little lips. This didn't bother Ikkaku for some reason, and a sudden unrelated thought occurred to him.

"Hey, I never asked you before, but I think I should before I wake up." Instantly, the surroundings started to blur and shake. "Why are you so small all the time?"

Yumichika had been just about to answer him, when the walls started crumbling, and a big rock fell on Ikkaku's foot.

"Ikkaku!"

"Huh?" Ikkaku grunted, wiping his eyes.

"Get up, you're late for your date." Yumichika shook his shoulder again, leaving to go to the bathroom and put on his feathers. Ikkaku lay back, staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, feeling drowsy and confused. His heart was aching a little.

"My date?"

"Your date with the Captain, remember?"

"What?!" Ikkaku shouted, getting out of bed, grabbing his sword. Fuck if he had to fight the Captain in his pajamas. It was no wonder that Renji had started looking at him with that concerned expression. He really was falling apart lately.

People had thought he was crazy since he'd first arrived in Seireitei, but now he was finally beginning his actual descent into madness.

He was getting haunted by dreams, filled with dolls and mini-Yumichikas that he often killed in fits of rage. Aside from that, there were kid Hisagi's, crying Kiras, violent Yachirus, mute Renjis, and a whole bunch of inappropriate conversations.

Not to mention his again building feelings for Yumichika - which were catalyzed and made worse by the little clone he saw at night.

It was official: He was going fucking insane.