Disclaimer: I own very little.

A/N: Dedicated to doumeki at LiveJournal, whose Bleachverse crossovers spawned this plot bunny (and who got me hooked on Prince of Tennis, besides. As though I didn't have enough fandoms as it is).

At the moment, I don't have a spell-checking word processor or a Bleach beta, and it's also been ages since I last read Bleach. I did try my best to keep the fic IC and the spelling/grammar adequate, but I apologize in advance for all kind of mistakes.

Friendship and Jealousy

Watanuki turned around the corner, looking back over his shoulder as he did so. The spirit was still chasing him. It was even uglier than the ones that usually tried to take his life, not that that meant much. And just why did it have that freaky hole on its chest? It was just disgusting!

Of course, Doumeki just had to have extra long practice. Was it really too much to ask to be able to go home safely without having to wait for somebody else's club activities to end? Was it really a coincidence that the biggest spirit in ages decided to target him the one day he didn't have Doumeki with him?

Right now, he really wished he had waited. However much he hated the idiot, he did admit he hated dying even more.

The worrying thing was, the spirit seemed to be catching up to him. And Yuuko's shop was still a long way ahead. Somehow, he was getting the feeling he wouldn't survive this.

Suddenly, somebody fired an arrow. A spiritual one. Watanuki didn't see it, and he doubted he could actually hear it, either, but he… felt it. No matter how absurd it may have seemed, he somehow sensed somebody had fired a spiritual arrow nearby.

Doumeki was still in practice, though… wasn't he?

The spirit screeched behind him and he dared a glance backwards. Dissolving before his eyes, the spirit seemed to indeed have been dealt a deadly blow. However, Doumeki was nowhere to be seen.

Then who had fired the arrow?

Suddenly he saw somebody nearby – somebody who was definitely not Doumeki. The blazing bow was something of a clue, as were the strange white clothes the likes of which he had never seen the idiot wearing. (Under other circumstances Watanuki might have denied the fact that he actually knew most of the idiot's wardrobe, but now he was not in the mood to argue with himself.) Also, as far as he could recall, when he had seen Doumeki not so long ago the other boy hadn't been wearing glasses.

"Um… thank you," he managed to say at his unknown saviour. "Thanks to you I didn't get eaten!"

"Hmph." The other boy frowned as he walked closer to Watanuki. "What exactly are you, seeing Hollows but not having any means of defence?"

"Hollows?" Watanuki blinked. "I don't know… Isn't it just a usual spirit? I've been able to see them for as long as I can remember."

The other didn't show any reaction, just looked at him. Then, suddenly, the other boy said, "Your sleeve is torn."

Watanuki glanced to the direction of the other's gaze and then sighed. Oh, great. He'd indeed managed to tear his sleeve, and of course he didn't have his sewing kit with him. As though his life didn't suck badly enough already.

"Take it off."

It took Watanuki a moment to realize that he had, after the stress of being chased by a spirit and saved by a stranger, he had gone into a fit over his torn sleeve. It took another to realize that the said stranger had somehow managed to misplace his bow somewhere, now standing next to him – with a needle and thread in hand. "…Huh?"

"Take that jacket off," the other boy said. "I'll sew it."

"Whuh? Oh, no!" Watanuki jumped backwards. "I can sew it just fine myself! I'll just go home and fix it right away!"

"I see." The other boy nodded. "It's rare to see a boy of my age nowadays who can actually sew." The needle and thread went away. "I am Ishida Uryuu."

"Watanuki Kimihiro," Watanuki replied before he had the time to remember Yuuko's warnings. Then he decided that it didn't matter anyway. Somehow, he couldn't imagine Ishida-san using them for malevolent purposes. "Um… how exactly did you shoot that, what, 'Hollow?'" It wasn't like he hadn't seen such a thing done before, but Doumeki at least had the decency to have pity on his brain and use an actual bow.

"It's.. a special power." Ishida looked around, then said, "Look, can we discuss this somewhere else than the middle of the street? I especially wouldn't want that Hollow's companions to find us just yet."

Watanuki heartily agreed.

Ishida Uryuu, it turned out, was quite an interesting fellow. His story was quite different from that of Watanuki – for one thing, he was the one doing the chasing, while Watanuki himself was always being chased – but they had a lot in common as well. They both liked cooking and sewing, for example – something Watanuki had never expected to find in another boy. He was particularly interested in a design for turning stuffed toys into backbags Ishida told him about. Himawari-chan would definitely adore one of those!

Watanuki soon realized, however, that he had to leave and soon before Yuuko got very, very mad at him for being late. He bade goodbye to his new friend – well, at least he liked to think of Ishida as a friend, although he wasn't exactly sure what the other boy felt about him – and made his leave, the other boy looking after him.

For some reason, Watanuki felt this wasn't the last time they met.

Watanuki's feeling was correct. In the following days he met Ishida often. Soon he was spending most of his spare time with the other boy, cooking and sewing and talking and doing other things that interested him both. Most boys would have simply looked at him strangely if he had told them about this great knitting pattern he had found; Ishida merely nodded and asked to see it. It didn't even matter that Doumeki was having a lot of practices since Ishida could easily repel any spirits – Hollow or otherwise – that came after him.

Of course, it was too good to be true. He should have known the world wouldn't let him have a friend without doing something nasty.

The 'nasty' came in the form of another boy about his age he felt rather confident others couldn't see. Unlike Ishida, this boy had orange hair and black clothes, and he looked rather angry. Oh, and he had a big sword. Watanuki was quite certain he couldn't have carried around such a sword if everybody had been able to see him.

A glance to his side told him that Ishida didn't seem alarmed at the sudden appearance of this clearly aggressive person. Watanuki himself, however, couldn't help but feel quite alarmed as he was held at a sword point.

The orange-haired boy glared at him. "Back off," he growled. "That archer is mine."

"Huh?" Watanuki jumped back, eyes wide. Being pointed at with a ridiculously large sword tended to have that effect on him. "Who? What? Why?"

Ishida, it seemed, was still not shocked by the new arrival's aggressive behaviour. Instead, he gave the newcomer a cold glare. "I don't recall ever saying I was yours, Kurosaki."

"You don't have to say it!" the other boy yelled, turning his attention to the Quincy. "It's a fact!"

"Maybe in your little delusional world." Ishida huffed. "You know, you don't own me just because we happen… not to hate each other."

"Oh, isn't this great." Kurosaki practically growled. "First you're the one who insists we're going out, and now you're denying it altogether."

"I'm denying nothing," came the calm response. "I just refuse to be referred to like a piece of property."

"The Hell you're talking about? That's not what I meant!" The orange-haired boy seemed furious now. He again pointed at Watanuki with his sword, and suddenly Watanuki didn't seem quite as safe anymore. Sure, Ishida could protect him against any evil spirits, but he didn't seem to be about to do anything about the sword-wielding maniac. He almost wished Doumeki was there. "You idiot, I don't know who you are, but –"

A sudden sound and the motion of something flying past his head interrupted him. The three boys all turned to look at the cause of these. Watanuki gasped as he saw it. An arrow had embedded itself deep on the wall right next to Kurosaki's head – a very familiar-looking arrow at that.

"I would appreciate," a very calm voice said, "if you backed away from him."

Watanuki turned to look and was ready to weep with relief as he saw Doumeki. Quiet, calm, reliable Doumeki had come to his rescue once again! Sure, he'd probably have to cook lunches for at least a week after this, but it didn't matter. The only thing that did matter was that Doumeki had come.

"And who're you, anyway?" Kurosaki spat. "What's it to you what I do?"

Doumeki looked at him like one would at a barking dog. "That guy makes my lunches," he said, nodding towards Watanuki. "I'd just as soon not see him die."

Now, that was it. Watanuki'd had an extremely stressful day and Doumeki wasn't helping it one bit. The idiot always chose to ignore him when he claimed he had nothing to do with the jerk, and now this? 'The guy who makes my lunches' was all he got after everything?

"Doumeki Shizuka, I'll make you regret this!" he shouted angrily. "I'll make everything you hate for tomorrow just so that you'll learn!"

Completely ignoring Watanuki's still continuing tirade and Kurosaki's obvious anger, Doumeki calmly walked forward. "Doumeki Shizuka," he introduced himself to Ishida. "I'm sorry for all the trouble Watanuki has caused you."

"Ishida Uryuu. There's been no trouble at all," Ishida replied. "I'm sorry for Kurosaki, too. His father never thought it necessary to teach him any manners."

"Like you're that much better, Quincy!" the orange-haired grumbled. "What's this, anyway? Some kind of Spiritual Archers Society meeting?"

"It's called being polite, Kurosaki. Not that I expect you to understand it."

"Well, I do understand that this guy has his very own archer and he still tries to steal other people's."

Ishida glared at him even more coldly than before. "For the last time, Kurosaki, I'm not yours," he said, Watanuki's yells of 'I've nothing to do with that idiot!' providing a fitting background for his comment.

"You only got that partly correct." Doumeki seemed unfazed as always. "He does have his own archer, but I highly doubt he was trying to seal yours."

This shocked Watanuki enough to make him silent. Wait a minute. Doumeki was referring to himself as Watanuki's archer?

"Well, he was," Kurosaki replied, his tone that of a pouting child. "Ishida's never around anymore! We came to Tokyo because of an sudden increase in the area's Hollows, and he prefers to spend his time with this – this idiot!"

"Don't call him an idiot." Doumeki's indifferent gaze had turned into a glare, his bow half drawn now. "Don't you think everybody is allowed to make friends?"

"Not when they take him away from me!"

"I have every right to have my own life, Kurosaki!" Ishida protested. "I'm not about to give it up just because you happen to be jealous! And even if I were about to cheat on you – which I'm not, thank you very much for having faith in me – I definitely wouldn't do it with somebody who's got a boyfriend of their own!"

Watanuki was about to correct him on this. Apparently even all the times he had told about Doumeki hadn't made it clear enough to his friend that he hated the idiot. However, he couldn't get a word in as the two boys now bickered, Kurosaki yelling and Ishida replying so coldly an ice spirit would have been jealous.

"OK, I've got enough of this." Doumeki sighed, turning around. "Come on, Watanuki. We're leaving."

"Whuh? Why'd I go anywhere with you?" Watanuki yelled. "Who are you to tell me what to do, anyway! I could care less what you say or think!"

Doumeki, unsurprisingly, didn't respond. In fact, he acted like he hadn't heard Watanuki's outburst at all, starting to walk away.

"I'll kill you one day, Doumeki Shizuka, just you wait!" Watanuki yelled. "And will you wait a bit, you big idiot! How am I supposed to walk with you when you go so fast?"

...Ah, well. He'd just have to correct Ishida the next time they met.