Hey everyone! I got all of your PMs, I saw your comments! Trust me, I want you guys to be able to see the new chapters too, but ff. net seems to be having a bug/issue that's sending out broken links or not showing the latest chapters. I'm sorry about that, but it's more of a website thing, considering I am updating regularly.
If you have the mobile app for ff. net, I've heard the latest chapters are showing up there so maybe you can try using that? If not, this story can also be found under my AO3 account under the same username+title. If either of the above two methods don't work, you might have to wait until ff . net fixes the issue. Apologies !
Until then, if you can see this chapter, would you leave a review/let me know in the comments? I'm super disheartened that not all of you can see this :(
Clean-up was always a sluggish and out-of-sorts ballgame. Orihime's muscles felt watery, eyes tired as she watched Ichigo amble around the bed heavily to reach the waste basket. She should have been tugging her own clothes back on, but she just watched him, enjoying the gleaming lines of sweat on his body, where her hands had been.
When he shifted in place to come back to her, he kissed her forehead. "Sorry," he said, brushing her hair out of her face. "It's been awhile."
Orihime smiled and shook her head. "For me too."
He nodded, then settled on his elbow to watch her. "You okay? I didn't take advantage of you, did I?"
She shook her head, reaching out to hold his hand. He readily gave it to her, squeezing her fingers when they joined. She felt a sudden surge of emotion for some reason, both too much and not enough. She's exhausted and overwhelmed, but also at peace with where she is, the moment stretching on for several moments before she realized he'd asked her a question.
"No," she murmured in reply, tucking her head under his chin so he couldn't see her. "I wanted it, too."
She felt him taking a deep breath, her head going up and down with his ribs. "Do you wanna talk about it?" he asked gently, running his finger down her spine.
She flushed scarlet, shaking her head. "I don't know what to say," she admitted. "We just violated three imperative codes of the Prison Manual of Conduct."
Ichigo chuckled, bringing his hand back up to rub her shoulders and her back. "Is that what the kids are calling it these days?"
Orihime swatted him, unable to stop a small laugh of her own. "Stop, I was trying to be serious," she whined, frowning when he grinned some more.
He sobered up, tracing her lower lip with one finger. "Sorry," he said genuinely. "Do you, uh, regret it, then?" He tried to sound casual about it, not too bitter, because this was her job on the line after all and she was allowed to have mixed feelings about it.
"Of course not," she replied, but didn't add anything else. He tightened his hold on her, settling back against the bed with relief. In this half-slumber state, he knew all the sharpness of his guilt and hurt had softened into something floating vaguely at the back of his mind.
Ichigo had resorted himself to her silence after that, just listening to the quiet sounds of her breathing as he held her. Dawn was drawing closer, so he knew it was risky for one of them to fall asleep and have a guard walk in on them like this. He stroked her back, walking his fingers over every dip and groove of her skin that the morning light touched.
Then, he reluctantly let her go in favor of putting his clothes back on. She stirred once, but only to hug the pillow in his wake.
Ichigo walked over to the window, staring out at the misty courtyard. He washed his face and his hands at the sink, the grease long washed away by sweat, but still grainy on his body. The cool jet of water was relieving on his tired eyes. He wiped himself down, avoided looking at himself in the mirror because he knew his hair would be messier than usual and that, while he knew he wasn't particularly ugly, he didn't hold himself in as high a regard as Orihime did.
When he returned, he was surprised to see Orihime blinking her eyes open slowly. She had already slipped her pants back on, but seemed to be looking for her shirt.
"Ichigo?" she called softly, her head lifting with the rest of her body as she began sitting up. She yawned cutely, then blinked the sleep out of her eyes to look at him. "Can I ask you a question?"
Ichigo paused from where he was picking her shirt up, a dull white noise starting to build in his ears. His heart seemed to pick up pace, rattling shakily against his chest. 'Boom, boom, boom' it puffed faintly, letting him know the moment had arrived and not a minute too soon.
He sighed and came back to sit next to her.
"I know what you want to ask," he said, voice carefully neutral. "You want to know if I did it."
At the surprised 'O' in her lips, he felt his stomach sink in confirmation.
"It's what everyone wants to know," he answered, to her surprised expression, with a shrug. He gave her the shirt.
"I'm not a nosy person by nature," she started slowly, wriggling it on. "Curious, maybe, but never nosy. I wasn't going to ask you about it at all, but there have been things I noticed, signs that tell me to reach out to you." She reached for his hand. "Call it my womanly intuition, or my expertise as a doctor, or even my status as your…," she stopped herself abruptly, hurrying on before either of them could contemplate what she was about to say. "I have this feeling that you need a listening ear. And I'm willing to be that person, if you let me."
Ichigo sighed, playing with the fray of her sheets. "I don't know."
"You're not going to be in any trouble, I promise," she replied patiently, knowing he was building up to what he actually wanted to say. She glanced at the clock. "We've got about fifteen uninterrupted minutes where you can tell me anything and I'm legally obligated to not let it leave the room!"
He scoffed, knowing there was plenty that couldn't leave this room without either of them being in deep shit. The cheer in her voice loosened him up, though. He stared at his knee. Then, he swallowed dryly and confessed,
"I didn't do it."
Orihime sucked in a breath of air, feeling it go in a swift inhale.
Ichigo looked up at her, trying to gauge whether or not she believed him. The rest of this story depended monumentally on the fact. When she didn't call bullshit or ask questions- only looked surprised- he figured she did. That she didn't mind giving the value of honesty to a con's words.
And that gave him faith to push on with his story.
"Summer of senior year, my dad wanted me to move to another city for college. Become independent, become a man - shit like that," he explained, watching his hands. "It was pretty obvious at that point that I was a big momma's boy, right from the day I was born."
They both pretended his voice didn't crack, for the sake of his modesty.
"So, naturally, when I moved to Tokyo to get my English Literature degree, I missed her. A lot," he said, watching Orihime's eyes stay curiously kind as he meandered and croaked through his story. "I missed all of my family, obviously, but I missed her the most. I lived almost twenty years with her and I'd never not had her by my side. So I got a little, ah, depressed. Moody. I picked fights a lot, went out of my way to get into trouble. I was a complete asshole."
"You missed home," Orihime said softly. "You were acting out."
"I guess," he said, rubbing his eye. "Anyway, a couple of run-ins with the law and school ended up calling my parents. My dad didn't think it was a big deal but my mom was upset that I never...told her what was going on. Said I should've called more."
"So she decided she would come down for a weekend to spend time with me. Just us. See the movies, grab dinner together." His voice suddenly became tight.
Orihime reached forward and tentatively took his hand in hers. He squeezed. She squeezed back.
"It's okay," she whispered.
He nodded, blinking back the warm tears that began to form as his head hung low.
"We were walking back from dinner together, down this alley. Mom was feeling a little woozy after the wine so I decided to take this risky, but short route that cut back to her hotel. This guy," Ichigo choked suddenly, then cleared his throat. "This guy popped out of nowhere, coming up right in front of us. I think he was under the influence, too, because he was barely able to stand on his own feet. He was screaming something incomprehensible about his ex-wife, making these weird hand gestures. My mom offered our help to him and something within him must have snapped, because he pulled out a gun."
This time, Orihime did gasp. But Ichigo was so caught up in the momentum of the story, he didn't stop.
"I was too slow, because the next thing I knew, my mom jumped in front of me, taking the bullet that was probably meant for me." He sniffed. "I lay there frozen as her dead body bled on top of me, Orihime. Paralysed."
"Ichigo," she whispered frightfully, feeling something sick gnaw its way to her gut. "Surely the murder weapon-"
"- was never found. Prosecution claimed I made the guy up. What got me convicted was a witness from one of the overhead apartments who saw me leave the scene. She changed her statement a lot, but eventually, when she said she saw me shoot the bullet, I was convicted. The fact that cops found me desperately scrubbing my mother's blood off my clothes didn't make things easier."
"Ichigo," Orihime cried, looping her arms around his shoulders and drawing him into a sideways hug. She held him tight, despite her own body trembling violently with tears and pain for him. For how scared he must have been when his life changed overnight. He rested his head in between her collarbones, closing his eyes. "What about the lawyer you met? Have you told her this?"
He slowly retreated from her hug, shaking his head.
Orihime's mouth fell open, clearly stunned. "I don't understand-"
"I might not have killed my mother, Orihime," Ichigo said roughly, "but I sure as hell didn't protect her either."
Orihime's hands slackened. She should have been surprised - beside herself, really - but if she was being honest with herself, she should have seen it coming. He was young when he was incarcerated, no doubt pressured and bullied by a justice system waiting to wrap things up quickly. And knowing how he was, it seemed obvious that he would burden himself with the guilt of something that wasn't even his fault.
"It should have been me," he admitted quietly, defeated.
"Don't say that," she said, wanting to reach out to him but not knowing if he would be reticent to share anything after this.
Luckily for her, he noticed; he took her hand in his, gently rubbed her knuckles with his thumb. "I don't want this to change things between us," he confessed, looking her straight in the eye. The intensity in his eyes sent a jolt down her stomach. "I didn't tell you this because I want you to help me or feel bad for me, so please, Orihime, don't try to help me."
"Ichigo, I -"
He pulled her into a hug, pushing her head against his chest. "Promise me," he muttered into her hair. "I know it was hard to hear, but I want you to promise me."
Orihime blinked back her tears. She didn't want to, it was against her very nature, but she knew it had taken a lot to get him to open up to her and she didn't want to abuse that. "Okay," she sniffled. "I promise." She looked up at him, pulling his head down so he could see her. "I won't interfere. But that doesn't mean I think you deserve what you're doing to yourself either." She kissed his jaw. "You don't deserve any of this."
He didn't say anything, pulling her back against him so he could bask in the little unsupervised time he had left with her.
x.x
It was a little while later when some guard dropped by to take Ichigo and any other stragglers back to gen-pop. He didn't seem too bothered that, apart from Ukitake, Ichigo had been the only inmate in the infirmary. Orihime had vouched for him, nonetheless, telling the guard that he had been lost and she let him stay until the riot simmered down.
All around his wing, there was a mess. Paper thrown around, mud tracked in, the unapologetic looks on the faces of the now barricaded inmates. Things seemed to have taken quite the chaotic turn in genpop, and judging by the nettled faces of the janitors and guards, he suspected the inmates would pay for this in the weeks to come with a cutdown on rec time. Kenpachi glowered at him from behind his own cell, looking woozy from the injection Orihime must have given him. On the opposite bend of the corridor, Grimmjow seemed incensed as well.
When Ichigo thanked the guard and walked into his cell, Chad and Ishida immediately stood up.
"Yo," he grumbled, plummeting straight to his bed with a groan. Never before had he been relieved to see it. In the last 24 hours, he'd gotten maybe only the 15 minutes of sleep that Orihime had wrangled him into taking on her lap, shortly before the guard arrived. He was sore all over.
"Well?" Ishida demanded, from somewhere behind him. "Is the doctor alright?"
Ichigo smiled a half-goofy smile that was covered up by his pillow. "She's perfect," he murmured, eyes heavily dragging down with sleep.
He vaguely heard Ishida 'tsk' in the background, but he didn't care. He was still blissed out, raw from the vulnerability of being seen and heard and felt by the woman he loved. If he slept right now, he knew he wouldn't wake up until Chad roused him for dinner time.
Suddenly he shot up in bed, alarming both his cellmates. They took a step back as he stood up.
"You," Ichigo growled, getting up to yank Ishida by the collar and drag him to the toilet. He rattled Ishida back and forth with one hand, used the other to point to the bowl. "Explain this."
Ishida visibly gulped.