A/N: A little vignette in the life of Ishida Uryu, responding to prompts thrown at me in a chat room of "How Ishida feels about Orihime", "Ishida knitting" and "Life is like a box of chocolates". My first submission to ^_^
The needles clacked an uptempo beat as the sweater took place under Ishida's agile fingers. He enjoyed the monotonous, repetitive action of the craft. It took no thought, it was almost instinctive - a meditation, and yet it was also creative. Making things made a change from destroying them. He hadn't really been paying attention to the television, playing an old movie like white noise in the background.
Tom Hanks's banal face swam onto the screen, and he began to first gurn, and then drawl slowly, "Laahf is laahk a bawx-a…" Uryu frowned. Light flashed across his glasses as he looked up sharply. A dark expression crossed his face. He reached with the practised swiftness of a Quincy warrior for the remote control, jamming his thumb onto the power switch with the force of absolute hatred. "Life," he growled to no-one, for he was alone, "is NOT", he stood up from his knitting, his equilibrium interrupted, needles and yarn tumbling onto the sofa cushions, "LIKE A BOX OF CHOCOLATES! GAH!" It was so unutterably trite, and unbearably untrue.
His inner pedant could never stand that ridiculous line in that banal, stupidity-glorifying movie. Firstly, life was unpredictable. It WAS. He'd give the Gump that, at least. Like a box of chocolates, though; what a terrible metaphor. All the chocolate boxes he'd ever known had been eminently predictable. 60 percent caramels and toffees (they were the cheapest to produce), then a few fruit cremes, always one which was a solid bit of chocolate occasionally with a hazelnut inside, and only one truffle or praline type thing which was inevitably the first to get eaten. Anyone who found chocolate boxes in the least bit surprising had the IQ of a five year old and the memory of a goldfish.
He found himself in the kitchen, making tea as a displacement activity, and sighed. He really shouldn't let things like that get to him, but then again, it was obvious to him that there were other annoying things on his mind, for which he was just using Tom Hanks as a convenient outlet. Inoue's sweater, he'd thought about adding an applique heart… just a small one, sewn onto the left breast. A little accent. Just a decoration, but the more he thought about it, the more he agonised. She'd take it as a sign that he liked her. A heart. Love. Uryu3Orihime. No. Even if it was true, it was cheap. Tacky. And besides, he didn't want her to know how he felt. Or did he? No. YES. Maybe! How pathetic! Maybe … maybe a flower would be better. More ambiguous, less damaging, safer. His father was right, he was a coward.
