AN: Wow! Thank you everyone for reading. I'm so glad to see so many of you enjoying this – there's no better motivation to write more. Thanks especially to Haddrell, Gemini24, and ReadReedRed for their reviews, I always appreciate seeing your thoughts.
A couple readers have mentioned increasing the spacing to make this more readable, but I'm having trouble getting that to translate through the uploading system. Anyone who's worked with this before, advice?
He is sprawled out in the dirt, shoveling spoonfuls of... well, he was trying not to think about what the glop actually consisted of, but it seemed like it was at least intended to be food, into his mouth.
As he slurps up another spoonful loudly he notices Ishida's eye twitch.
He takes an even bigger spoonful and smacks it loudly, mouth open.
Ishida closes his eyes, turning his head away slightly and pushing up the bridge of his glasses.
Ichigo chomps on a third spoonful, a smirk lurking in his eyes, and Ishida sighs. "Would it kill you to eat more quietly?"
And he doesn't know if it's his tone or the disdain in his expression or the fact that he is exhausted and he's been eating this tasteless glop and putting up with Ishida's goddamn prissy attitude for - but something flips a switch in Ichigo's brain that says fight.
He can feel his muscles tensing, ready to yell, to shove Ishida's bowl out of his hands, to -
And Uryu looks up at him, fingers brushing over the stitches on his sleeve.
- and he forces his way against the tide to breathe. "Yeah, whatever. Not all of us can be as dainty as you."
"What?" And he can see Ishida's face go red, and he feels his muscles relax even as the Quincy splutters out a retort. All systems normal.
So he understands when Uryu sighs heavily some evenings, and folds in on himself, like a collapsing tent, focused entirely on his sewing. He doesn't try to talk to him, doesn't tease him, because Uryu is fighting against the tide as well.
And if Ichigo slams his blade into the arrancar more forcefully that morning - well, at least he still remembers who the enemy is.
He has to.
Uryu leaves the thread dangling and the spool clatters to the floor. Ichigo barely has time to turn around and see the other boy staring at the loose string with a loathing that is startling, before Uryu swears loudly and jerks upright. He walks over to the wall and slams his fists against it, bowing his head until it rests against the wall, and muttering all the time.
Ichigo stands up cautiously - he has never before seen a truly enraged Uryu. Angry? Occasionally. Annoyed? Constantly. Pissed? Frequently. But not enraged. Uryu had seemed to define control by his very essence. This was unnatural, an explosive to be handled with extreme caution. He treads quietly, afraid that any sound might set of an explosion of this foreign Uryu, and listens.
"Fuckin stupid thread screwing me the fuck over."
One step.
"Fuckin blasted Ryuken only having fucking surgical thread in his fucking cabinets."
And another,
"Fuckinasshole Urahara saying we were in a fucking hurry and then making me wait for half a fucking hour,"
Careful now.
"And I could have been packing my belt but we didn't have enough fucking time."
Right behind him.
"Fuckin" A breath "Cheapskate manufacturers shortchanging us on thread all the fucking time."
He raises his hand, puts it carefully on Uryu's shoulder. He turns around.
"When we get back," Ichigo says deliberately. "We'll find the manufacturing factory, and we'll trash the place."
A deep breath, two, and Ishida's face reconstructs itself. He nods, but without mirth.
Turning back to the floor, Uryu picks up the needle and empty spool and tucks them back in his belt. He walks back towards Ichigo, turning so that he is behind him. "Hold still. I need to tie this off."
And Ichigo can breathe.
He stares up from the lab cot at the golden shield in the air above him. His eyes flicker to the other cot where Uryu is laying, breathing evenly face contorted blue eyes blazing.
So what. It wasn't as if he was responsible for the idiot's mental stability. If he was so thrown out of whack by running out of stupid thread, that was his problem. Crazy as fuck, running his mouth off about dresses and shit all the time. Dumbass.
Aw, Hell.
"Orihime," he mutters faintly, so the arrancar behind her won't hear. She shifts around the table, kneeling down by one of her fairies as though she is consulting with him. The arrancar barely spares her a glance.
"Kurosaki-kun," She whispers. "What is it?"
"It's," His eyes flicker back to Uryu and he can feel his face flush. "It's nothing important, really, I just," He checks that the arrancar is still talking with its comrade. "Just wondered if you might be able to - to find a spool of thread around here somewhere, or something. Without," He adds "Getting in trouble, of course."
She nods, and there is a trace of something hard in her face he has never seen there before. "Of course. But...?"
"It's," He closes his eyes. "For Uryu."
When he looks back up, there is a edge of a smile at the corner of her mouth. "For Ishida-kun. Of course. That's very sweet of you, Kurosaki-kun."
"Yeah, yeah," He says, looking away and trying not to blush. "Thank you, Orihime."
She smiles and steps away, looking at the Arrancar behind her.
It's two days later when she palms the spool of thread and tucks it under the sleeve of his shihakuso. He breathes a "Thanks," and smiles at her, ignoring his faintly churning stomach, before they are escorted out along the corridor to their cell. He waits until they have already started on their meal before he pulls it out of his sleeve, as though it was something he had forgotten. "Ah," He says, making Uryu look up from his meal. Ichigo looks at a point two feet to the right of the other boy's head "Oh yeah, Orihime got you some more thread. Thought you might like it."
He expects Uryu to respond with some snark about how he didn't need to be taken care of, thankyouverymuch, but when he can bring himself to look at the other boy's face it is to find him staring at the spool as though it is the strangest thing he has ever seen. When finally he reaches out to take it, it is slowly and deliberately, as though he is afraid it will vanish like the mirages that can't happen in Hueco Mundo.
Uryu tucks the spool into his palm, continuing to examine it as though trying to memorize every detail, and then slips it into the pouch on his belt. Still looking down, he says. "Thank you, Kurosaki."
When he thinks about it, trying to sleep later that night, it makes him feel warm in spite of himself.
It is dark, and he is lying awake, listening to the sound of Ichigo shifting back and forth, shihakusho scuffing the dirt. The shinigami is in pain, but neither of them say anything.
He could see shadows under Orihime's eyes today. She always stands up straighter and smiles more for them on days like this, but her golden shield shatters more quickly. They'd never complain, always grinning at her when she bites her lip and starts to apologize, Ichigo insisting that she had done a perfect job, and Uryu telling her that it didn't matter, Kurosaki's head was so full of rocks that he was practically made of them too. She always smiles at this, faintly, but a real smile at least, and they'd take that as a victory here.
He hears a pause in the scuffling on the floor, and wonders if Ichigo has finally succumbed to exhaustion. He has only a moment's warning as the scuffling moves closer to him and he hears Ichigo's breathing before a round, hairy weight drops onto his stomach.
There are a few seconds before he can breathe again, and he is glad it is dark so the shinigami cannot see his face. Finally he asks, sardonically; "Better?"
Kurosaki grunts and shifts his head slightly. "Not really. You're all bones - what the heck do you eat?"
He snorts in response. "As long as you quit making a racket and let me get some sleep."
"Please. Don't think I don't hear you when you're up half the night pacing."
"Shut up, Kurosaki."
It is more comfortable than he would have thought. Listening to Ichigo's sarcastic voice helps unstick the lump in his chest, and lower the flush from his cheeks. He lets himself relax again, careful to tuck his hands behind his head so that he doesn't reach out by accident, and listens to Ichigo's steady breathing. He smiles.
The warmth is comfortable, and it is nice, and he would be quite happy to stay here with this fuzzy lump on his stomach. He can hear the lump breathing and slowly realizes, just as he characterizes the other thing on his shoulder as a hand, that the lump is a person. When he hears a snore he has heard many times before, he realizes the lump is Ichigo, and relaxes. Just Ichigo. That's good.
Shit.
He yanks his arms back from where they had wandered around Kurosaki, trying to steady his breathing so he doesn't wake him. Thank god he was asleep. He looks down at the shinigami's relaxed face. Ichigo had twisted slightly in his sleep to face him, his hands had migrated, one resting under his orange hair and the other on Ishida's shoulder. Ishida doesn't let himself smile, but there is a lump in his throat.
Calm down, you idiot. He tells himself firmly. He was just trying to get comfortable. You're just a big pillow to him. A scrawny, bony pillow. He thinks, with a half smirk.
He sees Ichigo twitch, and closes his eyes, trying to relax his face. He can feel the weight lift off his chest abruptly, the frantic tensing and removal of the fingers on his shoulder, and tries not to let it bother him. He waits a minute before he opens his own eyes, and acts like he doesn't notice the red in Ichigo's cheeks.