Eyyyyy, what's up? It's been like five years since I've written fanfiction and this is my first Bleach-themed story! So,,, lemme know if this sucks ass.

Anyway, this was written for ChadIchi day (January 10), which was voted for by fellow ChadIchi lovers on the discord (I think? Idk man). I feel super empowered after just sitting down for a while and writing whatever the hell I want about one of my favorite ships, so… I hope you enjoy!

Brown.

Dirt on his uniform, his face, in his mouth and infecting the lacerations all over his body.
The first three are unpleasant, but the last observation is a bit harrowing to realize.

Ichigo was pulled up by the hair from his prone position on the ground.

"This's the las' time ya make fun o' me an' my boys, yeah?" Rancid breath ghosts over the teen's face, and he can't hold back a grimace. His retort soon follows; unable to be held back, either.

"Sure, just brush your teeth sometime this year, yeah?" Ichigo cracks open his eyes and sneers at the man before him: Just another faceless thug thinking he'd been personally offended by Ichigo's natural hair color. Pathetic.

At least, it would've been pathetic if Ichigo hadn't been a pretty sorry sight, himself. He didn't know how these simple idiots had gotten the drop on him. Even if it was the 4-year anniversary soon, there was no reason to be distracted—especially not because today was July 15. Was he expecting the universe to be a bit nicer today? Maybe. Did this make the current situation that much worse? Absolutely.

"Wha'd you say, ya lil' shit!" The teen came back to reality to see the thug's face darkening, and two people grabbed his arms from behind. Eight more men came into the orange-haired teen's hazy focus.

Wait, hazy? Did I get hit in the head?

Now that he was thinking about it, that was probably how these guys had managed to overpower him: He had been walking home from school, and just happened to pass a shadowed alley while taking the scenic route. There had been a shuffling noise from further in and all Ichigo had been able to do was turn his head before sharp pain exploded from the back of his skull. After that was when everything had become kind of fuzzy, Bingo.

Brown.

The color of dried blood—his blood—sticking to his hair and the back of his uniform collar.

"I said—Guh!" Ichigo opened his mouth to politely tell the man about his declining dental health, only to be hit in the abdomen with something that made a clanging noise on impact with his ribs. Did they just hit me with a goddamn metal pipe? What do they think this is, a rumble? The teen doubled over as much as he could whilst being restrained and tried to remember how to breathe. Of course, his bruising stomach protested the movement, and Ichigo couldn't hold back a groan.

"Tha's wha' I though', brat." The man in front of Ichigo, seeming to be the thugs' leader, had released his grip on the teen's hair when Ichigo had curled up defensively. Now, a smug grin crept across the man's face, and he reached down to grab the teen's chin—pulling him up again to meet his eyes, "Looks like ya just needed a bi' of extra encouragemen' tah use tha' pretty voice of yers."

Brown.

The tangled, mud-colored hair of the thug who now held his face in one grimy hand, still breathing his rancid breath right in my personal space.

Ichigo was now mildly confused, and it wasn't just because of his probable concussion.

"What?" The orange-haired teen asked blankly.

"Ya heard me—sing," The man demanded, making a gesture to the lackeys holding Ichigo's arms. He let go of the teen's chin, and the two men grabbing Ichigo forced him to his knees and twisted his arms in their sockets.

Ichigo's shoulders felt like they were on fire. A sound welled up in his throat, but he cut it off before it could get past his lips.

Like hell I'm gonna give them the satisfaction! Ichigo thought , he was low on energy, and all his injuries were catching up to him—adrenaline be damned. His chances of getting out of this relatively unscathed were becoming slimmer by the moment.

Again, Ichigo cursed his pathetic state. He could blame it on being distracted, or perhaps on the fact that Goat-face had crept into his room at 4:00 this morning—and he did it quietly, which is the most terrifying thing in Isshin's arsenal because that man is anything but quiet—andkicked him awake, deciding that then would be a perfect time for father-son bonding. Unfortunately, bonding has a different meaning to the burly man, and so Ichigo spent the next 3 hours going 13 rounds against Isshin to commemorate reaching his 13th year of life, today. Then, of course, he suffered through the next 7 hours of school with multiple bruises, sore muscles, and a great amount of mental fatigue; Isshin couldn't just shut up when they sparred.

"Heh, ya look good kneelin' there a' my feet, brat. Where's ya fightin' spirit, now?" Ichigo craned his neck to look up at the thug's face, and saw a leer further contorting the man's features.

God, I forgot he was even still there. Why can't he just get on with it, already? I've spaced out for, like, 80% of this encounter and nothing's happened. Suddenly, the leer melted off the man's face. Instead, anger burned in his black eyes. "Wha' was tha'?"

Oops, did he say that out loud? His concussion must be worse than he thought.

"Ya bitch! How dare yah act like this doesn' affect ya!" The men behind Ichigo let go of his arms, and he had one moment of joy, thinking that freedom was just around the corner. However, before he could even attempt to get up, his neck was grabbed, and his head slammed into the ground.

Ow, dammit, I'm seriously going to have to get my brain checked after this, the teen griped leader's hand tightened, and the man leaned over him, "I'm gonna make ya regre' bein' so snarky with the lieutenan' of the Branch o' Snakes!"

Yakuza?

Ichigo was surprised. He had realized that this group had a teensy bit of method to their madness (at least, more than the usual street thugs), but for them to be Yakuza—even if only a small branch—was unexpected. However, before the teen could think further of the repercussions of tussling with such an organization, a deep and calm voice sliced through the tension like a hot knife through butter.

"Hey," A deep baritone resonated off the walls of the alley, and a large shadow fell over the group. Ichigo's eyes widened as he took in the dark figure over the Yakuza's shoulder. Curious, the man pinning Ichigo down also turned to look at the new arrival. The hand around Ichigo's neck loosened and then was gone as the Snakes' leader slowly got to his feet and turned around to face the interruption. Ichigo knew this was his chance and tried to recover from his second major head-thrashing in under 15 minutes and mild asphyxiation, but it was slow-going, and he couldn't muster up the energy to move.

The Yakuza boss made another gesture to his men, and they all subsequently blocked off the entrance to the alley to keep the large figure from getting away.

"An' who migh' you be, hah? I'm a lil' busy righ' now, so make i' quick!" The leader of the Snakes grumbled irritably and got into the other's personal space. Ichigo was sure that move was intimidating to most people, but most people weren't 6 feet tall like this random guy was. Instead, it merely looked comical to his jostled brain. Like a house cat trying to raise its hackles at a lion.

He was hard-pressed to keep a hysterical bark of laughter from coming out of his sore throat.

The Yakuza leader grew increasingly angry as more and more time passed by with no answer coming from the tall youth in front of him. Finally, he sneered and pulled a pair of brass knuckles out of his back pocket, "Heh, yah migh' wanna back away righ' now, kid. This's gonna hurt."

Ichigo watched in growing horror as the Yakuza swung back his arm, and yet the other guy didn't move—didn't even brace himself for the metal-enforced right hook that hit him in the jaw. Surely it must've been incredibly painful, but you wouldn't know that from the lack of noise or reaction that the strike garnered. Even the 'Almighty Leader of the Branch of Snakes' couldn't manage to keep the apprehension from his face, "Wha'… Wha's wrong with yah? Was tha' no' enough?" The man scoffed, bringing his arm back once more.

Adrenaline surged through Ichigo's body at the sight. Something in him knew that this was going to go on for too long if he didn't act right now. All the pain in his body faded to a dull roar as he shot to his feet and drop-kicked the man in front of him, his mind screaming for him to protect protect protect—

The stranger's eyes widened, and their hulking figure moved with a surprising amount of speed to get out of the way of Ichigo's fiendish second-wind. Instead, the 10 Yakuza members that had bunched up at the mouth of the alley to keep the new arrival from leaving then became collateral. Their leader crashed into them at full speed, and they all tumbled back onto the sidewalk outside of the narrow pathway.

"…Strike," Ichigo laughed weakly as he straightened from the crouch he had landed in. Immediately, he had to groan as the movement jarred the numerous wounds that he had received throughout the day. The tall figure slowly made its way over, and Ichigo straightened as much as he could without it becoming too painful. Who knew whether this guy was a threat or not?

"Are you alright?" Came the same rumbling voice as before.

Ichigo found it oddly soothing, and his suspicions eased without his consent.

"Ngh… Yeah," The orange-haired teen answered through gritted teeth, leaning against the nearby brick wall of the alley. He finally focused on the person in front of him and managed to decipher the features that he hadn't been able to study before now.

Brown…?

Umber, curly hair and bronze skin. A pair of calm, hazel eyes stared back at him from underneath the other's fringe.

It must've been Ichigo's concussion, because staring into those unfathomable pools of color scattered his thoughts to the wind. Quickly, the orange-haired teen glanced away from the other's face and cleared his aching throat; searching for a topic to latch onto. Noticing the familiar uniform stretched over the teen's hulking frame, Ichigo brightened a bit.

"Ah, thanks for the help. It looks like we're going to the same school, uh…?" Ichigo trailed off, prompting the large teen to answer the unspoken question.

"Yasutora Sado," The newly-named Sado answered in a familiar tone. Ichigo grinned and nodded but inside worried for his brain (and not just because Sado's voice was turning his knees to jelly); he couldn't quite hear what the other teen had said over the ringing in his ears.

He decided to just wing it.

"Chad, huh? That's a cool name. It suits you—'big macho man' and all. You're pretty awesome for taking that punch with no problem," Ichigo rambled, holding himself up and starting to trudge to the mouth of the alley through sheer willpower and wall-power, alone. The brick was rough on his bruised hands.

Sado walked next to Ichigo and looked to be watching for signs that the slighter teen needed assistance. They made it out onto the sidewalk and took a breath of fresh air.

Chad suddenly looked at something off to the side and began walking away, so Ichigo figured that was his cue to get home and headed off to the right.

"Thanks again for the help, Chad. You're a real cool dude; I'll see you at school!" Ichigo stumbled down the street and sent a lazy wave back to Chad from over a bloody and dirt-covered shoulder, not thinking to look back and see the other teen's head snap up in mild alarm.

Brown.

The color of his hair, and of his skin.

Sado was not interested in alley dealings, and yet something had inexplicably drawn him to the shuffling shadows and eerie echoes coming from further down the narrow pathway. At first, he couldn't see anything due to the stark contrast from the light of the sun to the darkness of the alley, but as he inched forward into the darkness he could make out about 10 men (with one seeming to be holding a pipe) standing around another man in a cheap suit. However, the man in the cheap suit was…. On the ground?

Despite being one of the tallest people in town and an obvious foreigner, Sado had the ability to remain mildly inconspicuous and undetected until he was right behind someone: due to this, Sado was able to stalk a bit closer to the group, and now he could finally fit together the last piece of the puzzle.

Before, he hadn't quite known what was going on or why some man in a suit was kneeling on the ground, but now he could make out the slim body being held underneath him. Uh oh, Sado thought. Now that he knew of the problem at hand, he couldn't just walk away. He would just have to draw the group's attention away from the person underneath the man, and hopefully they would be able to escape while everyone was focused on him. Sado took a quiet breath in and set his hasty plan into motion.

"Hey," The large teen mumbled, stepping into the middle of the entrance to the alleyway and then walking closer. This caused his shadow to block out the light that had previously filtered into the backstreet entrance. All eyes were on him in an instant, and he subtly prepared himself for confrontation.

The suited man on the ground stood and confidently turned to face him; his features twisted into a sneer. Sado glanced at the lithe body that had been revealed now that the man's bulk wasn't covering it from sight. It was a boy his age—that much he could tell by the familiar uniform and the lanky build that it covered. The boy didn't seem to be moving very much, and that was a bit worrisome. Unfortunately, he didn't have time to examine the fallen teen's condition any further before the man in the suit was stepping up to him.

With a subtle hand gesture, he was blocked off from the street he had just come from.

"An' who migh' you be, hah? I'm a lil' busy righ' now, so make i' quick!" Were the garbled words that came out of his mouth. Sado had no idea how to answer that. The teen couldn't even tell what the man said; he was so utterly unprepared for the thick accent. It was almost impossible to understand with Sado just now getting used to speaking Japanese again, and so the bulky teen decided to save himself the effort and not answer, altogether. However, this didn't make the man very happy. As the silence stretched on, he could see multiple veins popping out of the guy's neck and forehead. Finally, the Yakuza reached behind him and pulled out a pair of brass knuckles from his pocket, "Heh, yah migh' wanna back away righ' now, kid. This's gonna hurt."

Sado understood that last part quite clearly but didn't particularly care about it. All he did was subtly brace himself as he saw the right hook swinging towards his face.

As pain throbbed through his skull from the left side of his jaw, he realized that if the boy laying nearly comatose on the ground couldn't get up and run away, then Sado's ramshackle plan would all go to hell, and he'd be here for a heck of a lot longer than he first expected.

Sado shook off the pain and, understandably, the man in front of him looked vaguely unsettled that he had taken the punch without any visible difficulty.

"Wha'… Wha's wrong with yah? Was tha' no' enough?" The suited man trembled faintly, most likely intimidated by his display. This didn't seem to stop him from continuing, however. Ridding himself of any noticeable weakness, the man once more reared back an arm with an angered look on his face.

Time slowed.

As Sado braced himself for another hit, a flash of burnt orange distracted him. To his astonishment, the boy that had been on the ground nearly unconscious just a moment ago was suddenly flying at the suited man's unprotected back. The large teen gawked for only a brief second before immediately evacuating the man's predicted flight path. Mere milliseconds after that, the smaller teen went feet-first into the older man's back and launched him right into his awaiting cronies at the mouth of the alley.

After causing a massive amount of mayhem in what must've amounted to about a net time of 3 seconds, the other teen casually arose from the crouch that he had landed in and chuckled darkly.

"…Strike," Came the raspy tenor of the teen before him. Then he groaned and hunched over a bit, grasping his upper abdomen and swallowing thickly. Sado took this moment to observe the teen before him.

A nearly burnt-orange color attracted his attention first, and the large teen realized that he had seen the boy's hair when he had rushed to attack the man. It was quite unusual to see a hair color so outrageous in this area, but Sado knew that he looked quite a bit out of place, himself, so he couldn't really judge. Moving on, the teen once again noticed that the other boy was wearing the uniform of the school he had transferred to recently and had hope that he would find a friend in this strange boy. However, in noticing the uniform itself, Sado also took in the damage that had been done to it. The orange-haired teen obviously had a wound that was hurting his ribs, and his throat seemed to be bruised slightly. Beyond that was also a plethora of lacerations that cut through the black shirt underneath the boy's uniform: they were still bleeding sluggishly. Most worryingly, though, was the large amount of dried blood that ran down the back of the teen's head and under his collar. The larger teen winced, knowing that with such an injury to the back of the head, the other boy must be concussed badly.

Sado scooted closer to the other and watched as the smaller teen straightened (as much as he could, in such a condition), watching him warily.

Then, they locked eyes. Sado had only meant to check for dilated pupils—you know, concussions and all that—but then he got lost in warm, milk chocolate irises flecked with gold. The teen simply couldn't look away. However, the other boy soon broke the eye contact and stiffly moved to lean against the brick wall of the alley; he looked to be struggling quite a bit, but grinned (more feral and tired than amused) and seemed to lighten up when he turned to Sado and noticed that they were wearing the same uniform.

"Ah, thanks for the help. It looks like we're going to the same school, uh…?" The other boy brought up a hand to rub the back of his head, it clearly being a nervous habit, before flinching in pain and bringing it back down when he felt the large bump and the flakes of blood falling from his scalp. The orange-haired teen absent-mindedly wiped his hand on his pants, waiting for Sado answer the unasked question.

"Yasutora Sado," He answered, watching as the boy's eyes suddenly unfocused and became blurry. That's a red flag if I've ever seen one, Sado thought with trepidation. Is he even okay?

The bulky teen's silent question was answered with the first word that came out of his new acquaintance's mouth.

"Chad, huh? That's a cool name. It suits you—'big macho man' and all. You're pretty awesome for taking that punch with no problem," The orange-haired teen's eyes now seemed very far away, and though 'Chad' (there was no point in correcting the other boy when he was like this) was flattered that he was cool in the other's eyes, he was more preoccupied with the fact that the lithe teen had jerkily turned and starting walked towards the street filled with very fast cars that wouldn't see him in time-!

Sado quickly fell in step with the boy and made sure that the teen didn't walk right into oncoming traffic. It was then that the he realized the group of groaning men that lay in a heap on the sidewalk. The large teen pulled his phone out and called the police, stating that he had found some random men laying on the sidewalk and groaning in pain. The person on the other end thanked him for reporting to them, and then said goodbye. However, before the person on the other end hung up, Sado could hear a disgruntled voice in the background say something along the lines of, 'Damn drunkards! That's the third time this week-!' as the line went dead.

Sado couldn't think much about the implications of that statement before he heard a newly-familiar voice call out to him from farther away than he last remembered it being.

"…see you at school!" Came the faint call from the orange-haired boy as he carelessly waved a hand over his shoulder and disappeared around a corner.

Sado speed-walked after the teen, incredibly worried about his ability to get all the way home in that state. However, after rounding the corner onto the street that he could've sworn the other boy had just turned down, he wasn't there.

Dios mío, Chad thought, and hoped on his grandfather's coin that his new companion would make it home safely. The teen also couldn't help but wonder:

How the hell did someone with a concussion that bad move so fast?

Ichigo breathed a sigh of relief as he closed the gate behind him and turned to face the Kurosaki clinic. He had managed to make it home, even though halfway through the walk he had almost collapsed right on the side of the road. His ears hadn't stopped ringing, and now his vision was starting to blacken at the edges. However, Ichigo figured that everything would be better once he woke up from the very long nap that was next on his schedule.

That's right, today was all going (roughly) according to the yearly plan. First, Goat-face wakes him up at an ungodly hour of the morning; then, he goes to school and suffers for a while. The ideal is to be back home as soon as possible so that he can rest before he must, finally, trudge through whatever event his sisters and father have cooked up for him that year.

The house is quiet and dark when he takes off his shoes in the entryway and peers into the living area. Is no one home? Ichigo's eyebrows come together in confusion, but he continues up the stairs, making his way to his room.

Once Ichigo has closed his bedroom door behind him and put down his school bag, he unthinkingly flops down on his bed. Predictably, this does not go well, and the orange-haired teen tries not to whimper as his body and all the wounds encompassing it are jostled.

He was going to feel awful later, he just knew it, but it was too much of a hassle to change out of his uniform now; even if it was caked in dirt and bodily fluids. Gross.

Staring at the ceiling as his body finally starts to relax and recover, Ichigo plans vehemently to take a shower as soon as he wakes up. His eyes slip closed, and he drifts off to sleep wondering about the tall teen that he had encountered earlier and the instincts to protect him that had revived him from his semi-conscious state.

In his dreams he is greeted with the cold of the falling rain, screaming, and the weight of his mistakes laying over him—crushing his lungs.

Happy Birthday to me…

Oh boy this took way too long; my brain hurts.

I hope that everything makes sense, lmao. If not just lemme know and I'll try to clear it up.

There wasn't much ChadIchi in this chapter but I'm a slow-burn gal, so that's to be expected. However, I will be continuing this at some point, so maybe then I'll be able to redeem myself?

Who knows.

Anyway, did you notice that Ichigo's part of the story was not as detailed as Chad's? If you didn't then that's okay, but basically it's because his mental capacity became increasingly limited as his head wounds worsened. Poor boy, he already sucks at thinking and head wounds do not help in the slightest.

Until next time,

Ta-Ta!