Title: Tell Him You Aren't Interested
Author: subdivided

Disclaimer: Bleach doesn't belong to me

Notes: Originally written for the chainoffics livejournal community (imagine there are underscores between those words). Little Ishida!

"I don't think you know what you're getting into, Uryuu," his father told him. "What your grandfather does isn't a a game. I don't want you seeing him anymore- tell him you aren't interested." The lines around his father's eyes deepened when he frowned. He looked stern and distant and only a little undignified, slouched over the table eating lo mein directly out of the carton.

"Yes, father, I know," Ishida replied. He stabbed at his own take-out dinner with family-heirloom ivory chopsticks, carefully avoiding his father's eyes. "I know that, because stupid kids' games aren't anywhere near as fun," is what he thought but didn't say. They passed the rest of the meal in silence.

The next day found Ishida sitting in a tree, swinging his legs and trying not to whistle. It was recess and he could hear the uneven noise of the rest of his class through the trees, so faint it was almost indistiguishable. His classmates were confined to the playground; Ishida was above monkey bars and beyond asphalt hopscotch.

An old man dressed all in white sat in the tree across from him, squinting into the distance. "Wouldn't you rather join your friends, Uryuu?" he asked, after a while.

"No," Ishida told him. He swung his legs a little higher. "Tell me a story, Grandpa? The one about the Hollow with the jelly-fish eyes."

His grandfather smiled. "When I was about your age," he said, "I was already in training to become a Quincy. There were quite a few of us in those days, and we often worked in pairs. One day, when I was walking with my grandfather, I thought I heard someone screaming. My grandfather was going a little deaf, you see, and so…"

"You just ran off alone to fight the Hollow?" Ishida asked, even though he already knew the answer by heart. "That was really dumb, grandpa."

"Yes, I suppose it was," he grandfather said, eyes laughing. "I got there just in time see a God of Death fall before it…"

This was one of his favorite stories. Ishida sat quietly in his ash tree, trying his best to be nonchalant. Occasionally he'd interrupt, acerbic comments to let his grandfather know he was listening.

'Tell him you aren't interested.'

Which was fine, Ishida thought, except he was. Kickball had nothing on this.