Title: Consequences of Sounds
Genre: Romance / Humor
Rating: T
Pairing: Ichigo x Zaraki
Spoilers: None
Summary: … or "The Telling of Ichigo's Mood by the Sound of Bells"
Word Count: 727
Warnings: bottom!Zaraki. Also, I'm taking liberties with the bells. I haven't seen Bleach in years, but I think not everyone can hear them? Well, forget that.
Disclaimer: Bleach is not mine. Consequences of Sounds is a Regina Spektor song.
A/N: I don't know why this pairing makes me happy. It's so crack.
Bells (noun): A hollow metal musical instrument, usually cup-shaped with a flare opening that emits a metallic tone when struck.
The Eleventh Division learned early on that one could always tell what type of mood Kurosaki Ichigo was in based on the sound of their Captain's bells.
At the beginning of their… relationship, everyone, everyone, was skeptical. After all, what kind of relationship was it when one person shouted death threats at the very sight of the other and one person fled at even the smallest glimpse of the one shouting obscenities? It took them a while to recognize their fighting for what it actually was…
Flirting.
And it made sense. No one could imagine Zaraki Kenpachi asking someone out on a date (or being asked out on a date, as the situation called for). Any attempt at imagining such a scene caused violent displays of laughter, usually accompanied by some sort of beverage spraying out of someone's nose. It was almost as hard to conceive as trying to picture Kurosaki Ichigo being in an actual relationship. It was… inconceivable. Like trying to think about a working Matsumoto or a laughing Byakuya. It was just… not believable.
So it did make some strange, twisted kind of sense that their flirting was like some violent game of tag. Though, no one was sure how their positions wound up the way they had. And no one really had the guts to ask either one of them the answer.
In the beginning, the Eleventh Division had learned to zone out the sound of bells, since it was something they heard every day, at least the higher ranked officers. It took a while for them to make the connection. That some days, the bells jingled in different patterns. And Ichigo's mood always matched the sound of those bells.
"Sounds like Ichigo's in a bad mood," Ikkaku said, glancing up at the sudden sound of bells and grinning as the sound continued in a choppy, chaotic melody, violent and sporadic.
After more time, Ichigo's more aggressive moods could be more specified. Violent clanging followed by peaceful chiming meant Ichigo had a fight with someone he was friends with. After taking out the brunt of his anger in a more animalistic fashion, he apologized to his… boyfriend?... in a kinder way for taking it out on him. A continuous stream of sharp, angry tings meant he had just come from a Captain's meeting and just could take how pissed off he was at their stupidity. While the same pattern of pissed off chimes, accompanied by some banging and crashing meant he was mad at some opponent, mad at himself for being unable to defeat them.
The Division knew Ichigo was in a good mood, when the chiming was continuous, a gentle ting-ing in a low tone, like a bell rocking on a ship. Rhythmic.
The staccato of bell jingles meant Kurosaki was excited and could keep his giddiness to himself. That he was unable to settle for just one tempo and tried to do everything at once.
And on the days when the Eleventh could feel Ichigo's massive spirit energy and the chiming of bells was notably absent, it meant he was depressed. Every year on the seventeenth of June. The Division always found something to do elsewhere on those days, to give them some time together.
The other squads might think it was odd that their division was so in-tuned to the emotions of someone who, was not only their captain, but wasn't their captain. They wanted to be on Kurosaki's bad side about as much as they wanted to be on Zaraki-taicho's bad side.
Which was why, when the first anniversary of the couple had rolled around, the Eleventh Division took great excitement in getting Kurosaki Ichigo a cool-looking black choker, complete with its own dangling, silver bell.