Carefree

Blurb: Ichigo Kurosaki is your average 20-year-old suffering from bipolar disorder. He sees "ghosts." After meeting a friendly, blue-haired schizophrenic during his third stay at the local mental hospital, he's eager to get out and get back to his normal life.

A/N: Hi, I hope you enjoy :) I'm going to be exaggerating parts of the canon personalities, so they won't be perfectly IC. Not sure how long this will be.

The clock read 1:34 in the afternoon on a summer's day in mid-August; it was hung on the left side of the western wall in a square room. It was black, with the time electronically presented in green.

The rest of the room was equally plain - the walls a pale cream, a Disney painting of Mickey sweeping Minnie up into a big hug stuck on the northern wall, and a white comforter spread over a twin-sized bed on a metal frame. Off to the eastern corner there was a door that led to a small bathroom, filled with odorless hand-soap and with no shower or bath.

The room was devoid of much else, not cluttered with the usual decorations and small touches that people added to make a room look nice. The hospital designers were concerned more with functionality than presentability - the function of these rooms being that anyone put in them would have an incredibly hard time injuring themselves unless they took to bashing their head into the drywall.

"Will I have access to my laptop to work on my studies?" Ichigo asked quietly, brown eyes looking tired. He tucked an idle hand into his hoodie as he turned away from the woman, observing the room again.

"Yes, of course. What are you studying now? Going back to school must be exciting," Dr. Unohana replied kindly as she made her way over to the bed, propping up the pillows slightly and smoothing out a wrinkle on the duvet.

"Literature," Ichigo replied, dropping his bag of belongings on to the bed. "Can I eat my dinner in here?" he asked as the woman moved away from the bed again, heading back toward the heavy wooden door.

"Do you think you'd like to be a professor? I think you'd be a wonderful teacher. And no, Mr. Kurosaki I'm sorry, you'll have to eat out with the rest of us at least for tonight."

Ichigo repressed a sigh, nodding disinterestedly as he reached inside his bag, pulling out his laptop and placing it on to the nightstand with padded corners. He crouched down, peering around for an electrical socket. "No, I don't like teaching really."

There was a beat of silence before Unohana gave a soft "oh" and frowned slightly. Ichigo began plugging in his laptop, and tried to beat down the rising anger he felt as the memories of why he was there resurfaced. He didn't want to be angry right now, so he would choose not to be. They were his emotions after all.

"Do you like writing?" the doctor asked conversationally as she leaned back against the wall.

"It's all right," Ichigo replied, already getting a rising feeling of suspicion. Almost all the questions in this place had some deeper meaning that he never failed to miss. He preferred a more outright approach to conversation, and all the double-ended questions made him distrustful and a little anxious.

"I'll make sure to get you in for writing therapy then. I'll have your schedule here for you tonight to go over, and one of the nurses can discuss it with you if there's anything on it you'd like to change. All right?"

"Thank you, Dr. Unohana," the redhead said quietly, empty gaze flicking past her as he forced a smile.

She smiled back and reached forward, giving his shoulder a slight squeeze. "I hope I don't see you here again," she said sympathetically, her voice sincere.

Ichigo cringed, and swallowed hard. "Me too."

By 6 p.m. Ichigo had a bandage strapped to his forearm from where they'd run some blood tests. All the medications in his bag had been confiscated, except for a couple of Tylenol. He'd had an overall checkup and peed in a cup, and after they were sure he wasn't on any illegal drugs they'd sent him off to dinner.

Feeling anything but hungry, he took his time moving toward the cafeteria. When he got inside, a couple of eyes flicked up to him and then back down to their plates, and a few of the patients didn't even seem to register him being there at all, and were staring at the wall with a stoned expression. Ichigo cringed sympathetically, remembering the times he had probably looked like that, and felt a knot of dread tighten in his stomach as he thought of what could happen tomorrow.

The events leading to him being placed in the hospital were far less extreme than the situations that had lead to his prior stays, so he hoped that he wouldn't be sedated like that again. However, it was an involuntary stay in an unlocked ward, so they probably would just for the sake of keeping him in.

He made his way over to the hot bar and grabbed a plate, knowing that if he didn't pick something to eat the nurses would be up in arms. He piled some mashed potatoes on to the bottom left corner of his plate, and some baked macaroni and cheese on to the other side. Then he trailed over to an empty table and sat down, beginning to eat.

"Hey," a deep voice said casually, a sudden weight slamming on to the table to the right of him.

Ichigo jumped, eyes widening as he looked up, coming face-to-face with a man with wild, electric-blue hair and matching eyes. He blinked several times, and moved over as he registered the uncomfortable proximity.

"New here?" the guy asked, gesturing to the band-aid on Ichigo's arm.

In response, the redheaded twenty-year-old pulled down the sleeve of his grey hoodie hastily. "No."

"Ah, not your first time being admitted then," the blue-haired man said with a knowing, full-teeth smile that ended up looking more predatory than friendly. "Not my first time either," he said, pulling up the sleeve on his silver-grey button-down shirt, and revealing a matching band-aid. "My name's Grimmjow, nice to meet you."

Review please if you think it's worth continuing!