Pairings: GrimmIchi, past ShiroIchi, RenRukia, others

Warnings: Swearing, violence, non-con in later chapters

Disclaimers: I do not own Bleach or any of its characters. Everything belongs to Tite Kubo.

Valentine's Day: (noun) - A day when lovers have a legitimate excuse to shower the one they loved with tokens of affections in public. In other words, a day dedicated to lovers looking for a happily ever after.

Ichigo absolutely despised it.

For him, the stupid day was just a way for some cruel higher being to rub in his face that he would never experience that sweet ending so many blind romantics believed they would have, not that he really believed in that sappy crap anyway.

His pace increased as he walked down the hallway of the college building, pointedly ignoring the couples loitering around that were blushing and giggling as if they had reverted back to being awkward teens in high school.

He breathed a small sigh of relief when he finally reached the door to his next class and one of his favorites, painting.

In addition to being far more expressive than a card decorated with frills and a box of store-bought chocolate, it was also an outlet for him.

Cliché as it sounded, painting had been one of the things that saved him from the dark, suffocating memories of his past that made death's promises of painless oblivion seem all the more tempting.

When he had felt like he'd reached the limit of his endurance and had been about to put an end to everything, he had remembered the precious words someone had once told him a few years back.

"Ya've got such great artistic ability Ichi! Why don't ya try takin' an art class with me?"

"What's so great about art? Lots of things! It'll let ya say what ya want an' no one will be able ta really understand yer message unless they know ya. Art could be our little secret way of communicatin' instead of usin' those stupid texts and junk."

That person had been right.

While he couldn't share it with a special person, art allowed him to express what he couldn't say in words and made it so that the only thing strangers could see was a beautiful mesh of colors that created almost painfully sad but undeniably gorgeous masterpieces.

Even better, it usually made them wary of approaching someone with such an intense but rather angsty art style. Ichigo didn't really care about what others thought of him but he preferred that they kept their distance; he was afraid one of them would try to get too close and then there would be a repeat of the painful endings he'd already put himself through.

The only exception was his small group of friends he had somehow generated despite his anti-social personality. They helped him when things got difficult and although the details of his past were murky to most of them, they never pried for more information and for that, he was extremely grateful.

Speaking of which…

"Itsugo!"

"There you are! What took you so long you slowpoke?"

He rolled his eyes slightly and wondered how two women could be such polar opposites yet the best of friends.

Neliel Tu Oderschvank more commonly referred to as Nel was a tall, very well-developed woman with long flowing sea-green hair and she had a charming albeit slightly childish personality.

Kuchiki Rukia on the other hand, was a petite raven-haired woman with a more reserved demeanor unless she got mad and had a tongue that could be sharper than a knife which she used mostly whenever someone said something degrading about her friends.

The only similarities they had were their obsession with an odd bunny plushie called Chappy and their fierceness when they got angry.

Although he hadn't met either until he came here and thus they knew nothing about him, they had had their own fair share of difficulties and understood his need for privacy, letting him tell them things when he was ready. He appreciated that and now here they were, somehow friends and colleagues in the art department.

"I had to stay back and talk to my literature teacher about something and then dodge the couples making out in the hallways so chill midget. And get your stuff off my seat."

Rukia huffed but only in playful indignation as she moved her backpack off the chair she had been saving him, allowing him to sit down and start setting up.

"What's the assignment today?" he asked idly as he arranged a palette of different colors of paint and various paint brushes on a stand near his easel.

Nel tapped her chin with a delicate finger thoughtfully before replying, "I think Kuni-sensei said the theme was 'Memories'… Oh and he told us to tell you to try to paint something a bit more light. He's impressed by all your work so far but he feels that it might do you some good to express happier emotions."

When a small uncomfortable look flashed in his eyes, she quickly added, "But he also said that if you like making pieces the way you've been doing them, then that's fine too!" Her own expression drooped a bit as she mumbled apologetically, "Sorry Itsugo I didn't mean to upset you."

Shaking his head a bit, Ichigo replied, "No it's alright Nel, it's just that… I can't make anything happy anymore even if I wanted to." A distant look came over his face and a flicker of understanding passed through Nel and Rukia as the latter lightly punched his shoulder and said, "Then do what you usually do you emo."

He retaliated by ruffling her hair and messing it up much to her annoyance and to his and Nel's amusement, silently thanking the diminutive woman for lifting the gloomy mood.

They quickly started working when they noticed they had wasted fifteen minutes of class time, and easily fell into the familiar routine of focus and paint. For now, it was just them and their work and everything else faded into the background.

An hour later, a break was called so that students could rest their cramping hands and critique others' works. Rukia dropped her brush with a sigh as she stretched her limbs and heard a satisfying crack.

"Man, one of these days we're going to be permanently stuck in a slouched position with our hands hovering over paper."

Nel giggled before noticing Ichigo still hadn't stopped. That wasn't unusual but she was always curious about what he painted since his paintings were always on a whole other level than everyone else's.

When she and Rukia peeked over, they were surprised since it was a little different than what he normally did.

There was a black vase sitting on a table covered with an equally black, lacy tablecloth reminiscent of something one would see at a funeral. Inside the vase was a bouquet of red roses, one of them a pure white color that clearly stood out amongst the rest with a few of its petals falling off and floating down to rest on the table. The final touch that Ichigo was currently adding was a single white lily resting at the base of the vase near the edge of the table, a small drop of red hanging off the edge of one of its petals.

Ichigo's attention was solely focused on what he was doing, not even hearing the compliments other people were giving him. They thought he was being rude, Rukia and Nel knew otherwise.

This piece was extremely important to Ichigo and once it was graded, it would probably be locked away in a cabinet he used to store his other pieces that had him as attentive when he was painting as he was now.

When the stem of the lily was finally finished, a semi-long strip of green elegantly curling and draping over the edge of the table, Ichigo snapped out of his reverie and examined what he'd painted.

His expression was curiously blank, only a hint of an unidentifiable emotion showing through when he abruptly covered the painting with a cloth.

Standing up and grabbing his things, he quietly asked Rukia and Nel to bring the painting to his dorm once it dried before quickly leaving the room, not even registering Kuni-sensei's demands to know where he was going and the bewildered stares of his peers.

He bolted down the hallways and out of the building, refusing to slow down his pace until he was a good distance away from the school grounds. He was vaguely aware of being nearly run over a few times but his sense of safety was mostly drowned out by his desperate need to flee.

He finally stopped at the corner of a building and leaned against a wall, trying to regain his breath and a hold over his rampant emotions as the image he had painted kept flashing in his mind.

That painting had been far too revealing and it was way too soon for him to be able look at it without breaking down. It had depicted the story of his first love and how it ended and it hurt. He reached his hand up and curled it around a small white crescent moon dangling from a chain around his neck.

It wasn't fair that the one he had promised to spend forever with had to be killed in cold-blooded murder by members of the gang he had been a part of.

"I won't ever forgive the bastard that put a bullet through his head. I want them to give me back the one person who meant more to me than even my mom."

'I want them to give me back Shiro."

Ichigo closed his eyes and allowed the memories of Shiro's arms wrapping around him to calm his throbbing chest and it worked, to a marginal degree. At least he wasn't on the verge of hysterics anymore.

As he got a firmer hold over himself, he became aware of his surroundings and now noticed the sounds of pained breathing coming from the alleyway between the building he was leaning on and the one next to it and he wondered if he should go see what was wrong.

He really didn't think he was qualified to try to help someone when he had some serious issues of his own but curiosity and his natural doctor instinct got the better of him and forced him to go check it out.

Warily entering the alley, he glanced around hoping that his eyes would quickly adjust to the dim lighting in the surprisingly dark area. The first thing that got his attention was the color blue, a vivid electric color that seemed to glow in the shadows. Creeping a little closer, Ichigo was surprised by how well built the arms of the owner of the bizarre hair looked. For someone who didn't seem like any push over, it was strange that he had been on the losing end of a fight.

It was only after he nearly tripped over the prone body of someone else that he realized it must have been a tie or something close to that. Now that he could see a bit better, he could tell that the fight must have been pretty big. There were bodies all over the place and he would have been very disturbed if they'd all been dead.

Thankfully, it just looked like they were all unconscious but the one with blue hair had some pretty serious wounds. Seeing how the vast majority had a weapon near their body that had been dropped most likely from when they were knocked out, Ichigo put two and two together and figured that it had been a crowd versus one match, something he hadn't had to deal to with since his high school years.

Sighing a bit, he pulled out his cell phone and called another one of his strange yet close friends Ishida Uryuu, requesting him to ask his dad to send multiple ambulances to the street he was at. The perk of being friends with the son of a talented doctor was that he wasn't questioned for the reasons of needing so many ambulances.

That settled, he debated on his next course of action. The blue-haired guy needed medical attention immediately and it would be risky to wait for the ambulances but Ichigo was reluctant to get involved with another person who was most likely tied to gang-related things.

But that reluctance crumbled when he saw some nasty bruises and gashes littering the guy's arms alone so giving in to his inability to leave someone in need, he carefully grabbed the less injured arm and pulled it over his shoulder before standing up.

'Holy cow, this guy was heavy!'

Heavy was an understatement but Ichigo luckily hadn't been a master in multiple martial arts for nothing and he had managed to stay in shape for the most part. With a bit of struggling, he shifted the body to a more comfortable position before he started heading back to campus.

Silently thanking the absence of students because they were still in class and the lack of teacher patrols since most were really lax about security, he lugged the dead weight to his dorm without any confrontations.

After somehow heaving the heavy body up a couple flights of stairs and into his room, he took a moment to catch his breath before kicking the blankets off his bed and carefully setting the body onto the sheets. He made a mental note to wash everything before his roommate and friend Hirako Shinji returned and freaked out at all the blood stains.

Grabbing a few first-aid things from the small bathroom, he settled into the task of bandaging the wounds. To his credit, when he peeled off the blood-soaked top and got a close-up of the injuries, he barely flinched and instead, focused on cleaning them and wrapping them up neatly. Checking for broken limbs, he was surprised that there weren't any but then concluded that the guy had been smart and had avoided taking the brunt of any powerful hits.

As he worked, he failed to notice intense cyan eyes watching him under hooded eyelids.

A/N: The first chapter of one of 3 possible future stories! I'm currently working on two stories and I was thinking of starting a third but I'm having difficulties choosing what to write T_T It'd be nice if people checked out the ideas I have and then voted which one they want to be worked on~