Chapter Eight
Feinting from exhaustion wasn't something on Ichigo's daily agenda, and he could only remember one other time that it had ever even happened to him. His eyes were blinking slowly as he noticed the circle of bodies around him, and he scrunched his face up as someone shifted and the bright light came into his sights. Heavy lids drooped again, and that small moment of his eyes being closed made Ichigo feel mighty content. He hadn't been this tired in ages.
"Ichi?" Ichigo's fogged mind recognized the small voice and he instinctively turned to it with a scowl.
"Wh-what the hell are you doing out of bed?" he had meant for his voice to come out more scornful, but it was weak and small. Ichigo cleared his throat and sat up, his eyes never leaving J's.
J stood next to his brother with a crooked smile, although a little slumped over. The white bandages around his otherwise naked torso were showing the signs of re-opening, with little stains of red marking the trouble areas. Ichigo blushed when he noticed that J was, in fact, wearing only a pair of tight gray sweatpants hanging low on his chiseled hip bones.
"Are you okay?" Ishida suddenly appeared and pressed his hand against Ichigo's forehead. "You don't have a temperature. How do you feel?"
Ichigo attempted to laugh, but it caught in his throat. Suddenly, he felt like a fish out of water and his mouth seemed impossibly dry. "Water first?" he asked Ishida who nodded and stalked off, quickly returning with a glass of ice water.
After a few gulps of the precious liquid, Ichigo sat the glass cup down and rubbed his eyes to try and wake himself up. He felt uncomfortable being the object of everyone's stares, and a light blush flew up his neck and spread across his nose.
"Um..."
Shiro was looking at Ichigo with hawk eyes, and at that moment Ichigo wanted nothing more than to be swallowed up by the floor to escape it. He shrunk a little, and bit his lip.
"Here." J reached out with his hand to help the scared doctor up. After a moments pause, Ichigo took the hand and helped J hoist his body up. J's body obviously couldn't handle the weight, and as Ichigo finally stood J fell into him. Everyone flinched as the watched the expected fall of one of the two young adults, but the fall never came. Shiro held onto the both of them, his left arm around Ichigo's back and his right hand grappling onto J's own arm.
"Good God, will someone please get the both of them into a bed before someone gets hurt again!" Ishida ran over to Ichigo's side like a mother hen and then turned to J who was wobbling on his feet.
"Someone escort Dr. Kurosaki to his room, please." Ichigo watched as J was promptly laid back into the nearest hospital bed and Ishida hovered over him with concern on his face. J looked annoyed, and when he looked away from the nurse he noticed Ichigo who blushed as J's dark eyes locked with his own.
Shiro suddenly threw his arm around Ichigo's torso to hold his weight. "C'mon Ichi."
It was awkward, to say the least, to be leaning so heavily on his long term crush while walking to his room. Ichigo felt as if something intense was going to happen just by the pretense of the scene so far. He was half expecting sudden waves of cherry blossom petals to be swirling around the two or something strange like that. It was too freakin' quiet, Ichigo concluded, as the only sound heard were the soft creaks in the floorboards.
The orangette cleared his throat as the distance between him and his room lessened considerably. Shiro didn't make any sudden movement to start a conversation, and Ichigo was internally debating with himself if he should say anything or leave things be as they were. The lesser voice won, and Ichigo held his tongue; a difficult task for him at the moment. Everything in his vision was starting to blur as Ichigo felt his body almost give in to its desire for sleep, but Shiro shook his shoulder.
In front of the two was Ichigo's clearly marked door. The t-shirt Ichigo was wearing was crumpled with all the activities of the day, and his khaki pants were starting to slip down his hips. The cold metal had barely caressed Ichigo's hand when Shiro turned Ichigo around and pulled him into a sloppy embrace.
"Wha-!" Ichigo almost struggled because of the suddenness of the act, but as soon as he felt Shiro's warm body press against his all rational thoughts fled his mind. It was like a door had opened and his brain just oozed out. Ichigo wouldn't have even been able to string together a coherent sentence at this point.
The older man's arms were lazily draped across Ichigo's stiff back, and the taunt muscles of both men rubbed against each other in an unnoticeable way. With a little encouragement from Ichigo's inner voice, the orange-headed man lifted his arms to finally return to small, but unexpected gesture.
What do you do in this kind of situation?
Scream,
Cry,
Laugh,
Smile,
Freak out?
Ichigo did not know! So, with the voice in his head protesting heavily, Ichigo pulled away from Shiro and backed up three steps to get a better look at his master. When you find yourself in this kind of situation; lack of sleep, your long time crush hugging you, and being stressed, you never really know what's going to pour out of your mouth. Ichigo said the first thing that came to his mind, and instantly regretted it.
"Are you drunk?"
The sound caught both men off guard, and Ichigo lifted his hand to cover his mouth. The damage had already been done though, and Shiro's eyes met his. Embarrassment literally rolled off of his pale body in large waves, and Ichigo was stunned. A light color of pink was painted across the bridge of Shiro's nose, but was hid with a hand as Shiro covered his face.
Shiro was embarrassed? Ichigo almost giggled like a girl with delight.
"Shiro-" Ichigo started, he paused however, as he tried to find the right words to say. Right as the words were about to roll off his tongue, a shadow appeared in the corner of Ichigo's vision, looming over the both of them.
"What's taking so long?" A gruff voice appeared behind Shiro, and both men jumped at the sudden intrusion. Nnoitra's lithe body stood menacingly behind Shiro's shorter body, and the white haired man seemed to snap out of whatever daze that had been over him.
"Get tha fuck in yer room and go to bed." Shiro demanded, and Ichigo's heart sank a bit knowing that whatever moment the two men had finally been having had completely disappeared with the appearance of another person.
"Yes sir." Ichigo turned slowly and moved to go into his room, but just for laughs, he gave one last look over Shiro's face. Now the face was turned away from him and facing Nnoitra, who was giving Ichigo the smirk of a lifetime. A hungry grin spread over the taller man's scary features, and he grasped Shiro's loose flannel shirt by a finger and drug the smaller man behind him as he walked back to his own room.
Ichigo's heart stopped. There was no way that...Shiro...and that guy...were together?
The next morning was much more unpleasant than Ichigo had figured it would have been. He had expected some toast from Renji that morning, and maybe a friendly 'hello' from Shiro considering they had had a moment yesterday, but none of that happened. Renji had told Ichigo that the cooks were out of sliced bread, and it would be awhile before their lackey got back from the store, and when Ichigo passed his master on his way to the infirmary, he noticed the man was limping slightly. Bad day his ass, this was horrible. Torture.
Ichigo couldn't see straight. He quickly dashed to his office as soon as Shiro was out of his sight. Ishida was currently out, but J was sitting quietly on the bed reading a book titled, 'Eragon'. It looked familiar, in fact, Ichigo swore that was the exact book from his shelf in his room. J looked up to greet Ichigo, but the door to his office closed behind him before any words could be exchanged.
Ichigo's anger continued to spike, and as he grabbed a glass to make himself a drink, his right hand closed painfully tight around the cool glass and the thin material gave way under his strength in no time. Shards of glass went into his hand, and the rest fell loudly to the ground. Now he was even more pissed, so with an angry growl Ichigo threw the remaining part of the glass against the wall and watched with satisfaction as it crashed into hundreds of slivers. The pale walls of his office were now ripped in some places where the glass had actually went through.
"Shit." now Ichigo's hands were shaking as he came down from his anger high. The adrenaline that was flowing through his veins had suddenly halted as a tap sounded on the window of his office door.
"Traffic Cone? You alive?" shit, it was J coming to see what all the racket was about. What would he tell him?
Oh hey J, I was just pissed 'cause your one and only brother is sleeping with the love of my life and I want to kill him. Care to help me?
He didn't fucking think so.
"Yeah J, I'm fine. You can go back to reading, sorry to disturb you." Ichigo wobbled over to the nearby counter and opened to cabinet hanging over the small table. Inside was a collection of pill bottles; all sizes, colors, and affect all varying wherever you looked. A small familiar bottle stuck out to Ichigo and he reached up to grab it.
"Are you sure you're all right? I heard a pretty big crash, sounded like glass. Are you hurt? Can I come in?"
Ichigo's breath halted as he looked from the door to the bottle in his hands.
"NO! I mean, don't worry! I'm just...just studying! Studying some medical terms, and uh...i dropped one of the beakers that were on my desk! Everything's fine!" He ran some water in the sink and dipped his head down to get a mouthful, quickly coming back up and dropping two small tablets of xanax into his mouth and swallowing quickly.
"Traffic Cone, something's up. I swear, if you don't open this door right now I'll call Shiro and my brother to come get you out on their-!" The door flung open, like J had figured it would. Ichigo looked completely ravished, and J's mouth almost started watering.
"You look...out of it, to say the least. It's not a bad look on you though." Ichigo smiled at this. That's exactly what he needed to hear right now, sweet compliments to boost his self-consciousness that was hurting pretty badly right now.
"I guess." He stepped into the patient room and closed the door behind him so J wouldn't get a peek of the destruction he had caused only moments ago.
Both men took a seat, Ichigo finding purchase in a nearby leather chair and J sitting on his hospital bed with the cover wrapped around him. They sat in an uncomfortable silence for a moment, but J broke it as he sighed loudly to gain Ichigo's attention.
"Wanna know something cool?" J watched as Ichigo gave him his full attention and Ichigo crossed his legs to get more comfortable in the rickety chair. J took Ichigo's silence as permission to continue, and he smiled at the other man.
"J's not really my name, ya know. My first name just starts with the letter 'j'. Bro told me it was safer to go by an alias, even though he doesn't do it himself."
The younger man wasn't terribly surprised by this, he had figured J hadn't been the newcomer's real name.
"Well then," Ichigo sat on the edge of his seat and gave J an alluring smile. "Do tell what your name actually is then."
J laughed. "What if I don't?"
Ichigo stood and tried to look like he wasn't that interested in finding out the name, even though it was currently eating at him. He was going through every 'j' name he knew, trying to find one that suited the other man.
J hadn't expected Ichigo to not return the flirt, and he gaped as Ichigo made his way to the door nonchalantly.
"Hey-hey! Woah, not so fast Tiger, I was just messing with you! No need to be so hasty, God." J felt relieved when Ichigo turned around with a large smile on his face and sat back down in the same position he had been in moments before.
"Jase. My real name's actually Jase." He stuck out his tongue as the name rolled out of his mouth for the first time in months. Again Jase scrunched up his face in disgust as he continued. "Jase Jasper Jiruga. My mother had fun naming me, if you couldn't tell already."
"It's cute." Jase rubbed his nose and smiled, trying to hide the fact he was very excited to be having this talk with Ichigo. Ichigo, on the other hand, was completely embarrassed. Jase was still only wearing a pair of sweatpants, and Ichigo was known to have a wandering gaze. There was no way to keep his eyes off of the gorgeous six pack just sitting in front of him, no matter how hard Ichigo tried.
"S'not cute at all. You on the other hand..." Jase trailed off and Ichigo stiffened. Beside him his hands curled into fists as the awkwardness of the new-found conversation hit. Ichigo didn't know what to say, and Jase seemed to be stumped as well.
"That wasn't supposed to come out like that...um-" The dark haired man started to nibble on his thumb as he watched Ichigo who was sporting large eyes and an open mouth.. He figured the younger man would bolt as soon as possible, but nothing happened. Nothing moved.
"Fuck it." Jase stood, a little unsteady at first, and made his way over to the still sitting man as quick as possible. Ichigo flinched as Jase's hand connected with the wall beside his head, and then dark eyes were so close he could see the flecks of green in them that were otherwise unnoticeable.
"Jase!" Jase couldn't stop his hand from winding in orange hair, and he reveled in the feeling of the silky strands between his fingers. It was as soft as he had imagined. Ichigo's voice had reached his ears, but Jase barely heard the sweet sound. He was so close to the object of his desire, there was only one thing left to do.
"Jase, what in the world do you think you're doing!" Ichigo struggled a bit, but Jase's hands pinned both on Ichigo's wrists to the wall. Ichigo gasped loudly as Jase's lips came close enough to his own so that if either of them were to say something, their lips would touch. Shiro's face briefly flashed in his mind before Jase had closed the agonizingly small distance between them.
How many emotional roller coasters was one allowed to ride in one day? Certainly not as many as Ichigo had been given the pleasure of riding. At this rate he was bound to get emotional whiplash.
Jase's lips were trying to coax some sort of response out of Ichigo, but the orangette was unsure if he wanted to do just that. The offered lips were soft and Ichigo felt lured in to the kiss just because of that fact. He hadn't been intimate with anybody in a long time...
He gave in. Shiro be damned, this was now. Jase was here, offering himself to Ichigo. The least Ichigo could do was take him up on it.
And with that decided, Ichigo finally kissed Jase back. His eyelids slid closed as he took in all the new sensations that were all categorized under Jase. The was Jase held his cheek as they kissed, and the way his other hand gently massaged his scalp just made Ichigo give in more. Ichigo parted from the kiss for two seconds at most before delving back in and deepening the kiss and turning it in to a make-out session.
The taller man hummed his approval as Ichigo's tongue slipped through his lips and tickled the roof of his mouth before retreating back into his own cavern.
"Damn Ichigo." Jase whispered against the others lips. Jase's hands were in the front pockets of the orange-headed man's jeans, and Ichigo's hands were around Jase's neck.
"Yeah, 'damn Ichigo' indeed."
Shit, Shiro.