Misery Loves Company
Characters/Pairing: Dark Ichigo/Ichigo
Rating: T
Genre: Humor
Summary: Shirosaki shows Ichigo's noisy upstairs neighbor who's boss.
A/N: I live in an apartment building as well and have much the same problems written here.
Judgement day had finally arrived.
When Ichigo Kurosaki bought out a place in the apartment building, he disregarded the notion of noisy neighbors. He himself was an overall solitary, unobtrusive guy who didn't cause strife unless it was outside his place of residence. The goal behind moving out of his former homestead was to get away from his chaos-stirring, fun loving, boisterous, loud-mouthed, granchild-obsessed, idiot of a father before he went completely off the deep end. Thus, at the age of eighteen, Ichigo had had enough and had moved out of his home despite all the droning on and beseeching from both Yuzu and Isshin.
The place was a one-bedroom and the walls were an eggshell color that brightened the place up in a way. There were four windows; two in his bedroom, which were conjoined and took up most of the wall; one in the foyer, and another in the kitchen. It was an overall very small space, but it was just right for Ichigo.
His first night there, he ate a T.V. dinner and crashed before he could get to explore all the nooks and crannies for best suitable places to position what scant furniture he had.
His second day there, however, he learned how paper thin the walls were. Every now and then he could hear movement, something drop, the cry of a child. He shrugged it off at first and went about unpacking his things. Rukia called his cell once, but he didn't bother to check if she left a voicemail.
The tiny spitfire hadn't been happy about his leaving and had one point wanted to come with him so she could be close at hand in case something came up. Ichigo told her the same thing over and over: he had the badge and he was old enough to know how to go about his duties on his own. He didn't need her babying him, and above all, he didn't want her to be under the same roof as him.
For once, he had something that was his own and wasn't shared. He was content and free to do as he pleased in the confines of his new home. He didn't have Isshin barging in on him anymore; he could sleep in if and when he wanted to; he could eat what he wanted without Yuzu lecturing him; he could toss his clothes on the floor without a care; he could rearrange his stuff whenever he wanted to as well. Hell, he could walk around stark naked if he wanted. Amazingly, Ichigo had a lot of free time on his hands, so before he knew it, he had the apartment swept and cleaned and set up so that it felt just like home. All of this he did in just a day.
Sunday eventually came around and that was when it happened. It was the crack of dawn and he was sprawled out across the mattress. Overhead, there could be heard footsteps, and these footsteps were if anything but quiet. These footsteps sounded like a damn sumo wrestler was stomping around in the apartment above him. Even though it did hardly any good, Ichigo pulled his pillow over his head, settling the matter.
The alarm for a Hollow went off that day and aside from some shopping, Ichigo wasn't out of the apartment for very long and got back rather quickly. The Hollow had been a small fry.
That's all they are these days, he thought, and grumbled as he tossed his groceries onto the counter in the kitchen. Above him, an incessant racket began that sounded a lot like someone was dragging chairs across the floor. Back and forth, back and forth, in one never-ending mantra. And from then on it was like that constantly. At midnight, when Ichigo finally thought it was going to end, a booming began from the apartment above him that reverberated through the walls and caused the window panes to rattle.
It seemed his neighbor had a surround sound system. Ichigo screamed in frustration and buried his face into his pillow, flopping over onto his side. He was pretty sure that the other people dwelling in the building must sleep like the dead if this didn't wake them up. That or they were dead.
The following day, Ichigo tried to call his landlord and failed. The woman who owned the building had five children and traveled a lot, so she had a handyman take care of most of the matters surrounding it. He lived in the same building as Ichigo. However, what Ichigo had was not a leaky faucet or a crack in the wall, or a bad commode. What he had was a fucking problem-his neighbor.
Shirosaki had much the same problem, but his setback was Ichigo, not the-noisy-neighbor-who-lived-upstairs. It had been a few years and Ichigo seemed to have forgotten much about his existence, which made it easy on cool evenings when he laid back to take a nap for him to just...take control. Shirosaki didn't do too much-terrified a few souls, killed some Hollows, played a prank or two. He was surprised by how abso-fuckin'-boring Ichigo's routine was. That, and the world he lived in. There wasn't anything to do anymore.
So Shirosaki just spent most of his days sitting back on the sideways buildings in Ichigo's sideways mindscape watching fuckin' sideways clouds float sideways. Nothing new there! he thought. Why couldn't they be fucking horizontal for fuck's sake? At least Zangetsu didn't seem to mind the sideways clouds. In fact, he stared at them all the damn time! Shirosaki huffed and got up off his ass. He swore to God if there was a way to demolish clouds or this world, he would be all over it like white on rice. Slipping fluidly into Ichigo's psyche, Shirosaki flicked the sheets off him just as a chorus of...blaring music shook straight through the walls and into his room.
He used that moment to get used to Ichigo's body and stretched his limbs just as someone stomped across the floor overhead him. Shirosaki's eyes narrowed, now glowing an unnatural ocher. Black crept into his sclera. The symphony of commotion continued with the sound of what could have been a rowing machine of sorts and climaxed with a guitar solo of headbanging music.
How does Ichigo stand this? Shirosaki got up and went to the kitchen, but paused on his quest to fix himself a sandwhich. He turned around, went down the hall, and opened up the small storage closet in the foyer.
He saw some tools and a broom, but his eyes flashed when one particular object roused his fascination.
Whipping out the sledgehammer, Shirosaki slung the weapon over his shoulder and waited in still silence until he heard the "sumo wrestler" moving around again. Follow the pattern of the footsteps, he stopped in the hall and swung up abruptly, his strength slamming the sledehammer straight through the ceiling and up into the next apartment.
"AAAGH!" There was a thud as someone dropped to the floor, no doubt injured. Shirosaki grinned insanely and withdrew the sledehammer. "I CAN MAKE NOISE TOO!" he declared, cackling, and hurled the sledgehammer again through the ceiling.
The following dawn, Ichigo woke up to find a dozen or so big-ass holes in his ceiling. He stared long enough to regain his composure and commenced to dash for the stairwell outside his apartment. When he made it to the apartment above his, the door was standing wide open. The man who had been wounded the evening before due to Shirosaki's antics had been delivered to the hospital by a friend. The door to his place had been torn from its hinges and was toppled haphazardly to the side. The man's surround sound system had been bashed repeatedly with some unknown object and his exercise equipment had been chucked through his window. Of course, the exercise equipment hadn't fit through the window entirely, so it was lodged half in the apartment and half outside. All in all, the place looked as if it had been bulldozed half to hell.
Ichigo was evicted from his apartment. The good side: he never had to listen to that neighbor of his again.
The bad side: he had to live with his dad again. Rukia and Isshin were happy. He was miserable. Ah, but misery loves company! Shirosaki thought, and laughed at his King's suffering.
LOL. 'Watchin' sideways clouds float sideways' made me crack up so hard.