~The Devil you Know~
His mother wasn't a Godless woman. He knew she believed like most, of the providence of the Gods and the fickleness in which fate sometimes dealt to ordinary human lives.
But, this...this wasn't fair.
He watched his mother's physical weakening as the disease took a hold of her fragile frame. When his sisters-one dark-haired like their father and the other fair like Masaki, drew near; it broke his heart to see her gentle smile hide the pain.
Ichigo was fourteen and couldn't understand how any God benevolent or otherwise could take such a lovely and kind person away from her family. It just wasn't fair.
Blinking back the tears, he fled the arms of his father whom had come upon the same scene Ichigo was witnessing and tried to give consolation to his only son.
But, Ichigo wouldn't have it. Was this really the will of the Gods-? He ran down the streets of Karakura, trying to escape the pain in his chest and heart. Could they accept that? He was insensible to the calls of some of his friends whom he had gone by.
Could he accept that the prayers he had desperately whispered to the merciful Buddha and once even to the Christian God, were for naught? Running until he couldn't anymore, Ichigo fell to his knees; a slender boy of past medium height with a shock of unruly bright orange hair that crowned his head in spikes.
His mother was dying...and no one and nothing could stop it.
"I-I'll do anything." The tears leaked thickly from his amber-colored eyes. Ichigo's breath was harsher with each intake, his lungs scored from the distance he had run. "Someone-anyone-! I don't CARE! Just please-please-!" There was a sound then. Soft, like someone had cleared their throat. Hastily Ichigo rubbed the back of his sweaty hand across his face, smearing the tears across his cheeks. His gaze fell immediately upon the figure coming toward him.
Strolling.
The man wore a dark gray-pinstriped suit with an old fashioned high collar. On his wavy dark brown hair a hat was perched. The man also carried a silver-topped cane carved with intricate detail. "You called?" The man's liquid coffee brown eyes glittered with a strange light. Ichigo made no move to reply or to even move away for that matter. His father had always warned him and the girls about talking to strangers, however there was something-something...
Ichigo flushed a little to even think about it in his thoughts.
Something pleasing in the man's face and form.
The sensual lips slipped into a slight smile, the chin tilting slightly at an angle to better observe him.
"I-I don't know who-who.." Ichigo stumbled over his words, becoming redder by the minute.
"Oh, I think you do. Young Ichigo Kurosaki." The man's voice was quiet, soft even yet not in a feminine way. Secretly something within the teenager thrilled at the articulation of his name. Then a heart beat later, Ichigo was puzzled with himself as to the reason for it.
"..how d-do you-"
"Know your name?" The man finished for him with another fuller smile. "That I cannot say, at least until we have understood one another and the terms to be offered."
"Terms?" Ichigo found himself scowling.
The handsome stranger trilled a quiet tinkling laugh. "Terms, my boy! For every service given, a price always has to be paid. Now, I believe it is your mother- Masaki Kurosaki dying in the advanced stages of some human disease?"
Ichigo nodded mutely. How could- but some part of him knew.
Knew and understood that the man before him was not a man but something else.
"Full health restored and a long life with her family-correct?"
Finding it difficult to get the agreement past the lump rising his throat, Ichigo nodded again.
The man tapped his long fingers on the silver top of the cane, "is there nothing else?"
"What?" Rationality demanded that he had to be dreaming. Imagining the stranger with curling dark brown hair and almost black eyes staring into his.
"Is this all you wish for?"
The devil, Ichigo dreamily thought. This man..he's the devil. But I...I don't care.
"Yes." Even if it was all just a dream and when he awoke reality would come crashing down, he didn't care at all. Even if in his dreams he was selling his soul-for wasn't that what the devil always took as payment? As long as his mother lived...that would be enough.
"Sign then," from thin air the man had materialized a thick curling parchment sheet covered halfway down with thick black script. Numbly, Ichigo took the coarse crow feather quill from him, the brush of their hands sending an electrical thrill through his veins. "On the dotted line."
The smile in the man's voice didn't escape Ichigo's notice.
Without reservation and still possessing some curiosity despite his maintaining that it was all just a dream. He asked plainly, "what am I signing away?"
The smile didn't waver. Rather it took on a soft, seductive hint.
"Your soul..."
That was to be expected. Ichigo wrote his name with the quill that never dripped ink yet the kanji appeared on the yellowed paper as if by magic.
The man hadn't finished. "..and everything that you are." Smiling down at the fresh signature on the line, he snapped the cylinder shut and made it vanish into thin air. "Now then, our covenant must be sealed...but first, my dear boy, I must ask. No one has ever kissed your lips, correct?"
Ichigo didn't understand what he was asking for. "Um y-yeah..I mean-"
"I thought so." The man's thumb rubbed circles on the side of Ichigo's face. The teen flushed and tried to twist away, however the man was swifter and soon their faces were only inches apart. "Remember, Ichigo." The man's breath was warm. Ichigo felt like he was melting within the dark pools of chocolate staring so heatedly into his.
Soft lips touched his and the honeyed voice echoed within Ichigo's mind as a warning and a promise.
"You have one year before I come for you."
-To be continued-
Disclaimer: don't own Bleach.
AN: ...thanks for reading!
No flames-yaoi haters-stupid comments!
Reviews appreciated! CX