100 Themes Hitsugaya Chapter 38: Close, a bleach fanfic

A/N – More shorts, rejoice! Pairings are to be determined, depends on how I feel as they go. Also, Hitsugaya will be a constant throughout; other characters will come and go – that's more as a challenge to myself – keeping him involved.

I own nothing, blahblah. Prompts come from SilverEmerald-DAS on DA.

This and the following 3 chapters are closely related. Just an FYI. Set sometime during the beginning of the Arrancar threat, sometime between Orihime's rescue from Hueco Mundo and the introduction of Amagai Shusuke. I'd put time as somewhere between the end of August and the beginning of September. The events of Chapter 34 happened roughly a week prior. This is also slightly more serious than the past few prompts.

Also – spewing out as many words as I can for NaNoWriMo.

He was stuck in the World of the Living. Again. Swell. Just swell. Damned Kurotsuchi and all his detectors.

Something big might be happening soon, he had said.

Something potentially big, he added, with assorted finger wiggles. Toshiro suspected that the man made such creepy gestures, not to punctuate his words, but to further creep people around him out.

So Captain Yamamoto told him to pack for a few weeks and see what was going on. He apparently had forgotten that Kurotsuchi had a terrible track record for predicting the occurrence of rain, let alone anything of great importance.

Assuming something was actually going to happen, he had been sent out. With minimal backup. Fantastic. And Matsumoto was still back home, technically running the Tenth in his absence. He was dreading going back, and he had only been gone... two hours. If his hair wasn't already white, he'd have suspected Yamamoto was toying with him.

He made a quick pit-stop at Urahara's stop to pick up his gigai. He would have preferred to just leave it at the Kurosaki household, but with Rukia and Renji already storing theirs in Ichigo's closet, there just wasn't space.

He gave Urahara and Tessai a quick heads up, summarizing the information he had, and set off for the Kurosaki Clinic. He made decent time, and actually ran into Ichigo on his way from school.

The teenager looked fairly-well strung out, bags prominent under his eyes. "Yo, Toshiro. Coming to visit?" He coughed into his fist.

"It's Captain Hitsugaya, Kurosaki." Old habits would die hard, adopted into the family or no. "And yes, for a week or two. Captain Kurotsuchi seems to think there might be something coming, and I've been ordered to keep an eye out."

Ichigo coughed again as he nodded, scuffing his sneaker along the sidewalk. "There's been an increase in Hollow activity lately, it seems. Or maybe, with Rukia back in the Soul Society, I'm just noticing it more."

"You look like crap." Not pulling any punches, he gave his counterpart a pointed look.

He looked chagrined. "Tell me about it. Haven't slept a full night in weeks, and I think I picked up something from Keigo in school." He pushed open the gate to the sidewalk and motioned Toshiro to precede him. "Dad is out of town on a business trip for a few days, and the girls are over at some friend's house for the weekend. Hope you don't mind sandwiches for dinner."

Peanut butter was a new and amazing experience. Ichigo had tossed him some bread, a knife, and a jar and told him to go for it. It didn't take much to figure out how to smear it across the bread, though he gave it a cautious sniff. It's consistency was unlike anything he could put his finger on, regardless of how much Ichigo assured him that it was quite edible.

He was converted after his first bite.

Ichigo didn't eat, blanching when Toshiro offered to make him a sandwich. "Probably not a good idea," he grumbled, trying not to look at the food on the table, as he made his way towards the stairs. "I'm going to go lay down for a bit."

By the time Toshiro made it upstairs, Ichigo was snoring softly, congested judging from the amount of noise he was making. He was sprawled haphazardly on top of his blankets, fully dressed. Kon was sitting on his nightstand. If a stuffed animal could look agitated, he would have been the poster child for it.

Beady eyes peered up at him. "What's wrong with him?" his normal bluster was gone, concern replacing it.

He shrugged. "He said he might have picked something up from someone in school."

The stuffed lion began pacing the length of the nightstand. "He hasn't been sleeping. Nightmares, and Hollow attacks. Every night."

Toshiro shrugged, uncomfortable. This was way out of his normal experience; maybe if he didn't poke at it, it would go away.

Ichigo chose that moment to groan, curling into a fetal ball and draping an arm over his head, presumably to blot out any light. Kon jumped from the nightstand to the bed, perching above him on the pillow.

"He seems really hot."

Toshiro glared at the Mod Soul and obediently stepped closer, waving his hand in the general direction of Ichigo's forehead. It does seem kind of hot, he considered. Then again, he had no real experience with sickness. His frown deepened as the substitute tried to scrunch himself into a smaller ball.

"Kon, can you go to Urahara's and see if he can help with this at all?"

The Mod Soul looked at him like he had three heads. "It's going to take forever to get there like this," he griped, jumping off the bed regardless.

He sighed and grabbed for the stuffed animal. Cramming his hand down Kon's throat, just like he'd seen Ichigo do countless times before, he found what he was looking for. Green ball in hand, the stuffed animal went limp. He suppressed a shudder as he popped the ball down.

The strange disconnected feeling of his spirit form leaving the gigai always gave him a bit of a chill. Giving his gigai over to Kon's attentions made it that much worse.

The Mod Soul grinned at him, weirding the Captain out just a little. Seeing such an uninhibited expression on his own face – with him not in the body – was just beyond strange.

"Go."

Actually behaving for once, Kon was out the window half a second later.

Ichigo's fever went up not long after the Mod Soul had left. Hyorinmaru had rippled against the back of his mind, concerned. He had reassured the dragon, using just a tendril of his reiatsu to lower the temperature in the room.

The substitute was sweating profusely though, mouth slightly open, wheezing. It had taken a bit of doing, but Toshiro had managed to get his school clothes off and get him laying straight on the bed. He racked his brain for anything he could do until Urahara showed up.

He had been little, new to the Soul Society. He had been constantly hungry, and the hunger made him weak and sick.

It had snowed early that winter. He had been shuffling along a forest trail, bare feet covered by the loose powder. All he remembered was dizziness, the two of everything he saw, and the resignation that he didn't care what happened any more. He had stumbled and fallen, face-first into a deep drift. Too weak to push himself out, he had lain there, unable to care anymore.

The next thing he had known, he was on a futon, sweating and freezing at the same time. A cold washcloth had appeared on his head, and he had whimpered at the touch, his sensitive skin both protesting and welcoming the touch. It had not taken him as long time to recover as she had originally, the woman he knew as Granny had told him well after the fact. He had been lucky she had been on her way home from the market when she had seen him fall.

Kon and Urahara didn't take nearly as long to arrive as he had originally feared.

The former Captain stepped through the window gracefully, his clogs soundless. His eyes were shaded in his normal fashion, but there was definitely a smile as he took in the sight.

The Tenth's Captain was sitting, obviously agitated, besides the substitute, his chair tipped back against the wall. Ichigo was under his normal blankets, with an extra throw on top, with a damp washcloth across his forehead. He was flushed and still wheezing, just as Kon had described.

Kisuke had opened his door to see Hitsugaya's gigai standing there with Kon in it, and had known it was serious. There was no way the Captain was going to let the rambunctious Mod Soul in it unless it was. He had grabbed a few random necessities from the bathroom and rushed across town, dragging Kon along with him.

He couldn't help but to smile though. "Captain, you do realize that humans pick up illnesses like this all the time, yes?"

Toshiro glowered. "How am I suppose to know that? It might be something like… I don't know, a flesh-eating virus!"

His eyes opened in delight. "If you do happen to come across one of those, please feel free to give me a call. Those are fun. Unfortunately for me, but rather fortunately for Mr. Kurosaki here, he has something far more mundane. He has a mildly weakened immune system from the stress and lack of sleep he's been experiencing. It might be a mild case of the flu, but it's probably a simple virus."

"Meaning what?" He was not going to show relief in front of the former Captain. He was not.

At least it isn't something flesh-eating, Hyorinmaru chimed in.

It took all his effort not to face-palm. You and I will talk later, dragon.

A sign of insanity was hearing voices, at least according to Captain Unohana. What about maniacally giggling zanpakutos? That surely couldn't smack of sanity.

Urahara fumbled in his pockets and pulled out a bottle filled with a pink, syrupy solution. "Force a few tablespoons of this down his throat every few hours. He'll be fine in a day or two."

Toshiro fumbled with the bottle. Robitussin. It looked gross. He twisted the cap off and took a cautious sniff.

And gagged. It smelled worse than one of the Twelfth's labs. Or the public restroom at the sake bar Matsumoto frequented. Combined. He was suppose to pour this down Ichigo's throat?

Urahara grinned and waved, climbing over the windowsill. "Call me around noon if the fever hasn't broken!" he singsonged as he vanished.

He slumped, head in his free hand. Through a cracked eye, he read the directions on the back of the bottle. Two tablespoons every four hours. This, frankly, was going to be a shitty night. He let the chair fall back onto all four legs and stood, only to be faced with Kon, still in his bottle.

The Mod Soul offered him a medicine measuring cup, grinning ear-to-ear.

Yep. Shitty night.

He must have dozed off sometime in the early, pre-dawn hours, because the last thing he remembered after getting back into his gigai was pouring some of the foul medication down Ichigo's throat.

Bleary eyes didn't quite want to cooperate as the dawn's light crept through the window. His back protested the night in the uncomfortable chair, and he was mildly curious as to how he had ended up with a blanket draped over him.

Ichigo was still buried in his nest of blankets, only he must have gotten up while Toshiro had been passed out - his shirt was different than he last remembered.

He couldn't help a sigh of relief.

Even if whatever-it-was Ichigo had eneded up to be harmless and not life-threatening, he had lost too many friends to lesser things gone wrong. A sore back was a fair tradeoff.