Disclaimer: If it's from the manga or anime, I don't own it. I'm not making any money off of this either.
Summary: This one is meant to be a little lighter and there isn't really a metaphor here. Ichigo is plagued by iambic pentameter.
A/N: In order to understand this little fic, you're going to need to know what iambic pentameter is (didn't know you were going to get an English lesson today, did you?). Iambic pentameter is a form of verse with a ten syllable line structure. Both Shakespeare and Chaucer used it. Here are the basic rules for writing in iambic pentameter (rule two and three are kinda the same):
1) Each line must be ten syllables long.
3) Each line is really five sets of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable.
2) The syllables must alternate unstressed with stressed. The first syllable is unstressed and the last should be stressed. It ends up sounding like this:
da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM-da-DUM
Really simple iambic pentameter ends up sounding very sing-song like.
To fully enjoy this fic, read every iambic pentameter line (they're all in italics throughout this story) in an annoying sing-song voice.
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Iambic Pentameter
He's thinking in iambic pentameter and he can't stop.
It started sometime in the middle of his literature class while discussing Chaucer. One moment he was reading about the massive gap in the Wife of Bath's teeth and then suddenly, everything was in five-meter lines. He couldn't even sit outside and eat his lunch in peace.
My apple looks so red and juicy good!
He glares down at the fruit in his hand and growls under his breath. What kind of dumb sentence was that? Not only is he thinking in iambic pentameter, but he's thinking in bad iambic pentameter.
Sighing, he leans back on the park bench, taking a bite of his fruit and munching it with an angry scowl scrolled across his lips. It's the very beginning of fall and the first of the leaves are starting to drift off the trees. He's facing the North Campus building, a huge structure of gray granite that makes him think of a fat, squat dwarf. It's hideous.
The architect who made that was on crack!
Shut up! he thinks angrily at the voice in his head.
They say only the crazed talk to themselves.
He's about to break something. Trying to drown out the sound of his thinking, he takes another bite out of his apple and chews very loudly. Maybe he should blame this on his literature teacher for the verse-writing assignment he had to do last week. It's a little known secret, but he's actually very good at poetry. Of course, he picked a college on the other side of the country so that he could continue to keep that secret. Back home, his reputation as the tough, strong, moody, and silent Kurosaki Ichigo is well-maintained. The only one who might even have a chance of finding out otherwise is Rukia. He pictures her sitting on his floor, eyes bulging and mouth drooling as she reads his manga. Yeah, his secret is safe.
Here at school, people think of him as a romantic, and he likes this double life—or triple if you count his nighttime Shinigami escapades. When he gets tired of one, he can always retreat to another. Or maybe it's not boredom that drives him to create these multiple facades…
You hide behind these many masks you wear.
He sighs again, thinks, Quiet, you, and takes another noisy bite of his apple.
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"Oh Iiiichigooooooo!"
Ichigo cringes as he crests the last step of the staircase to the second floor humanities department. Backpack slung casually over one shoulder, he shoves his hands in his pockets and ignores the high-pitched voice and the frenzied shuffling coming toward him from behind him.
"Ichigo, my love, wait!"
A brunette head bobs up next to him, attached to the tall and attractive body of Jennine Kenjikun. She grins and his brain describes it as "smiling brightly" because her lipstick is such an obnoxious shade of fire-red. Of course, he knows it's a trap and he glances quickly away, before he can be hypnotized into staring at that crazily conspicuous color.
She falls into step beside him and he sighs, saying, "What do you want Jennine?" with the same casual air he uses in his long, ambling strides.
"You."
He almost chokes and tries not to let any reaction show on his face. A slut that does not like to be denied! his iambic pentameter obsessed inner-voice shouts. "I don't like forward girls," he responds. He still won't look at her, eyes focused on the classroom down the hall that he is going to.
Jennine giggles seductively. "That's such a lie. Of course you do. I know your type."
Does she? Well, considering the amount of guys she's dated, she might… But then, how many of those guys run around carrying huge Zanpakuto at night? No clue has she that you're a death god freak!
Why did every one of those lines need to end with a damn explanation point?
"I'm not interested, Jennine. Look, there are plenty of guys who want you. Why don't you got after one of them?"
"Because they're all too easy. But you," he glances at her in time to see her wink a sparkling green eye, "You play hard to get."
"What? I'm not playing!"
Again she's laughing. She skips ahead of him, shrugging, long brown hair shimmering down her back, and spins around suddenly to face him. He's forced to stop, shoes squeaking against the floor. He blinks down at her sweet and poison smile.
"We'll see," she says.
And his mind responds with: Her bouncy bosom is a fruitful tree!
That's sick. He sounds like Kon. He wonders for a moment if maybe Kon has been in his head all along, if maybe he's the one causing him to think of all these stupid lines. Is that possible? Can a modified soul and a real soul share a body at the same time—
"Ichigo."
He blinks suddenly. Jennine's eyes are sparkling with mirth.
"You're staring."
His eyes narrow angrily, trying to play off the blush. "I'm not that kind of guy!" Then he roughly walks around her, determined to get to his next class without anymore dialogue.
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Halfway through math class and what is he thinking?
The integral of two-squared-why is four!
And to return to where you were, derive!
du-DUM-du-DUM-du-DUM-duh, wow, you're DUM!
Somebody, please, help!
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Oh look! In five more minutes class will end!
Our calculators we will put to bed!
Ichigo slams his head against his desk.
"Kurosaki-kun, are you alright?" his teacher asks.
He growls.
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When he finally gets home in the evening after a long day of classes, he is going out of his iambic-obsessed mind. He stands in his dorm room, staring at his bookcase with a maniacal rage lighting his amber eyes. Several of the books laugh at him.
"Now Shakespeare! For your mocking you shall die!" He reaches for A Midsummer Night's Dream. That book would be the first to go, in all it's ten-syllable verse glory.
"Ichigo… what are you doing? And why are you speaking like that?"
Ichigo spins around, book forgotten. His eyes widen. Rukia is standing in the middle of his room in her Shinigami robes, hands on her hips and a suspicious look on her face. "What do you want?" he says carefully. Very good, just keep it less than ten syllables.
"There's a hollow," she says, as if he should already know.
"Cannot you by yourself dispatch this foe?" He slaps both hands over his mouth as soon as the words escape. He said that out loud? He feels himself blushing and wants to slam his head against the wall.
"You are speaking funny again. Why?"
"I'm speaking funny? You sound like you came out of the Edo era."
"Are you insulting the way I talk?"
He throws up his hands and rolls his eyes, but doesn't answer. Instead he grumbles, "It's iambic pentameter."
"Eh?"
He looks at her and shakes his head. "Verse—poetry—ah, don't worry about it."
"Ichigo, I know what verse is. We do have literature in Soul Society."
"You do?"
She looks at him like he must be stupid. (Her looks are scathing like a witch's glare). "Of course. We are more advanced than humans," she says.
He gives her a skeptical look.
"I'll prove it to you, idiot."
I'm sure that what she says must be a lie. "Whatever."
She smirks then, and the expression changes the shape of her eyes. It makes her look more sinister, but also more enticing. "You'll see," she says in words of thick honey. Then she tosses her sleek black hair over a thin shoulder and spins gracefully on her heel. "Let's go. There is Hollow activity at the river." Jumping onto the windowsill, she pauses halfway in shadow, and glances at him over her shoulder.
He waits, wondering why she has stopped, her features drawn in gothic contrast under the wan lighting.
"Ichigo, you're staring."
It's the second time he's heard that today, but this time it feels completely different. Since coming to college, they have passed the stage of 'awkward relationship' that they spent so many years immersed in. These days, there is simply unspoken understanding of what they are to each other. It's an understanding built on life or death battles, on the swing of a sword, on the celebration of battle victory and the self-revealing of loss. He catches the glint of the moonlight on the hilt of her sword at her waist and he doesn't blush like he did with Jennine, doesn't get angry or defensive. He simply smirks and slips his Shinigami Substitute badge out of his desk drawer.
Her eyes glitter with a premonition of that turquoise color only he knows. "I'll race you," she says with red-lined upturned lips.
And as she turns, jumping out the window in a flash of pale skin and black fabric, he finds himself without any way to describe her, an English major without the right words.
Damn, she's broken my iambic.
He's not sure if he's relieved that the sing-song voice in his head is gone, or angry that it's only her that can rid him of it.
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A/N: Well, that was fun, though a tad strange. Thanks for the reviews!