Title: Pick 'Til It Bleeds (Bookmark)
Author: Lys
Characters/Pairing: Kurosaki Ichigo/Ishida Uryuu, Kon
Rating/Warnings: R for violence, language and themes.
Status: Bookmark 8/20, 1790 words.

a/n: so. yeah. this chapter was immensely hard to just figure out and get down on theoretical word processor paper. I tried to make the reactions as canonical as possible, but still send the story the way I wanted it to go. I also used it to do a little exploration of Ishida through Ichigo. I was going to go straight into the next chapter with Ichigo going home for the night, but Kon was underused in this chapter, so I think the next will be in Kon or Ishida POV instead.

01: Bookmark
02: I Tell Ya What, Man
03: Low-Down Dirty Thief
04: They Also Mourn, Who Don't Wear Black
05: And Take It All Off
06: No Heart-Warming Stories
07: Let The Idiot Speak



Ichigo tossed his fist forward forcefully, colliding with Ishida’s boney chest, spewing a spray of white reiki and sending the other boy tumbling backward across the flat ground at an alarming, unexpected speed. Before Ichigo was even fully aware of what happened, Kon was beneath Ishida, catching the other boy up with a scoop, like a large and ungainly softball. Dust and woodchips settled around Kon’s feet as he glared over at Ichigo, who was clutching his fist to his chest in confusion.

“What—“

“Let go of me,” Ishida snapped. Kon shook his head violently. Ichigo dropped his hand to his side limply, staring at Ishida as he squirmed against Kon, coughing and wheezing, one hand clutching his ribs.

“Uh,” said Ichigo. Kon wrapped his arms under Ishida’s shoulders, cowed, looking between the Quincy and Ichigo with eyes so wide as to be comical in any other other situation. Punching boys across playgrounds was not one of these. He stared over at Ichigo, who had the presence of mind to look at least slightly surprised by his own actions.

“I told you not to!” Kon shouted shrilly, sounding every bit the part of the schoolboy watching his best friends fight in public.

“Let go of me! Let go of me so I can kill him!”

“No,” Kon said emphatically, apparently quite concerned that Ishida really would kill Ichigo most dead.

“I didn’t mean to do that, Ishida,” Ichigo said, trying to sound at least mildly more confident about this than he actually felt, still having not a clue about what in the hell was going on. Even if he had let loose more than a little, Ishida shouldn’t have… he wasn’t some sort of pushover.

“The hell you didn’t! I think you broke a rib, you great idiot! I should do us all a favor and skewer you now!”

“You don’t mean that,” Kon said seriously. Ichigo wasn’t nearly so convinced.

“No,” Ishida muttered, finally calming against Kon’s heaving chest, wet hair sticking to his face and shirt riding up under his armpits. Ichigo could already see the sickly outline of his knuckles on the Quincy’s abdomen, skin moving over his ribs as Ishida gasped, sound hitching in his throat whenever he breathed in too hard. “I don’t mean that. But at least leave me to my imagination.”

Kon moved away, walking slowly and carefully over to Ichigo. Ishida stood, scraping the hair out of his face, adjusting his shirt and dusting the seat of his pants off. After a moment, he aligned his crooked glasses and glowered over at Ichigo.

“At least you didn’t punch me in the face,” Ishida muttered dryly, without a hint of actual humor.

“Tt.” Ichigo clicked his tongue at the dark-haired boy, nose wrinkled and lip curled. He glanced over at Kon, who was slowly gathering himself five feet away. His own body appeared to be uninjured, no doubt because of the mod-soul’s special talents.

Speaking of special talents.

“Why didn’t you dodge?”

“I don’t know, maybe I like having the snot beat out of me by shinigami?”

“Asshole. Why didn’t you dodge it? I asked you a fucking question, Ishida. Answer the fucking question.”

“Maybe if you could make a point without using some form of profanity right now, I’d favor you with an answer, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo took a deep breath, his eyes threatening to cross involuntarily from emotional stress. Ishida had sex with Kon-in-Ichigo’s-body, that much was clear by now. This was no longer the issue at hand, although Ichigo was nowhere near done discussing this bullshit with the other two. His attention was just momentarily diverted by a large, glaring hole in the picture, shaped like cross. Ishida could easily have dodged that punch—Ichigo wasn’t anywhere near as fast as the other boy concerning hand-to-hand, and Ishida had shiny-dodgem-Quincy-magic or some crap. Furthermore, he could have just absorbed Ichigo’s reiki, transforming it into something harmless. An arrow, maybe.

Ishida had done none of these things. He’d taken it full-on in the ribs.

“Don’t push it, Ichigo. I don’t think Uryuu wants to ta—“

“Why’ve you been ignoring me since we came back from Soul Society?” Ichigo ignored Kon’s voice, imploring him to stop his obvious train of thought. He wanted an answer to his question, and in his current mood, Ichigo wanted it right the fuck now.

Ishida glared, pale eyes icy. Kon sighed to himself, crouching down and resting his elbows on his knees, shaking his shaggy head and staring at the ground.

“’Wanna go home, now.” Kon muttered, “Don’t see how fighting like this is going to solve much of anything.” Ichigo rolled his eyes, ready to inform Kon of the time he practically kicked Ichigo’s spleen apart.

Ishida cleared his throat, back military straight, eyes shielded by the wall of his glasses and expression full of self-disgust. Slowly he walked over to Ichigo, small heels clicking on the dry ground until they were a few feet apart. He took his glasses off with slow, deliberate grace and wiped them on the bottom of his sleeveless shirt with great care, one lens at a time.

Ichigo knew it was a nervous habit. Kon bounced on the balls of his feet, obviously having been wondering the same thing Ichigo was, but not willing to ask it. Ishida replaced his glasses and heaved a small shrug.

“In case you’ve forgotten, Kurosaki, you aren’t the only one who almost died being a big goddamn hero in Soul Society.”

“Right,” Ichigo muttered, the universal signal for ‘please, continue.’

“Some things happened that never should have happened, and I did some things that I never should have done. It’s none of your business what they were right now, because you will do what you do and complicate matters further—don’t make me use the S word. At any rate, I haven’t got—I don’t.”

“What happened, Uryuu?” Kon’s voice finally spoke up again, in the background.

“Long story short,” Ishida said, voice clipped, “I overextended myself knowingly. I paid the price.”

It wasn’t that Ishida didn’t dodge. It wasn’t that he didn’t do anything. It was that he couldn’t. The gears in Ichigo’s mind clicked home.

“You lost your…Quincy whatever, then. Ishida, you should have told me about this shit. What if something happened to you!” Ichigo’s tone was deep and fatherly, his eyebrows knit. What the hell was the Quincy thinking all this fucking time?

Ishida raised his bow-arm and slapped Ichigo again, forehanded this time and just as sharply.

“I’ve been wanting to do that for a year now,” Ishida sighed, shaking his hand off in the cool night air.

“What the hell!” Ichigo cursed a few more times under his breath, eyes openly watering now, one palm on each cheek. “What are you, a fucking girl? How am I gonna sleep now? Both sides is just fucking cruel, dude.”

“Don’t compare incomparable situations, don’t be a hypocrite and deal with your own sophisticated problems first, and find a way to stop being yourself. Then I’ll stop having the urge to mess your face up, Kurosaki.”

“I was seriously fucking worried, Ishida!” Ichigo closed the distance between them, pressing his hands flat along Ishida’s small chest to give him a point-making sort of shove. Ishida wrapped one loafered foot around the bottom of Ichigo’s leg, tangling in the thick fabric of the hakama before Ichigo lost balance, eyes shooting open in surprise.

They fell in what Ichigo could have sworn was slow motion.

Ichigo’s attention was suddenly drawn to the smooth hardness of Ishida’s thigh, pressed roughly against Ichigo’s groin, vibrating when the other boy coughed at the way the ground jarred his already injured ribcage. Ichigo’s heart complained in his chest, still excited from the fighting. He could feel the redness lighting up his face, embarrassment like a street after dusk.

Ishida did nothing. He lay on the ground below Ichigo, breathing shallow, vivid and real so close to the shinigami’s face. He could see the form of Ishida’s fine nose; Ishida’s cupid’s-bow lips. He’d never noticed before, the Quincy’s actual features. It was like a bust of something noble from out of a world cultures textbook, Alexander the Great lurking beneath almost ubiquitously Japanese eyes and hair.

He could see the dual reflection of his own pointed face in the lenses, confused and sweaty. Anxiety was slowly dawning in his own expression-- realization. He could understand why Kon would do it.

Have sex with Ishida fucking Uryuu.

“It was done for the sake of a woman,” lilted Ishida’s bell-toned voice, tearing Ichigo back to the here-and-now, “As most grand things, recorded or unwitnessed, are done. Surely, you don’t have to be a straight man to know something like this. She was being held under physically and emotionally by someone I refuse to even think about, because it makes me want to vomit and then shoot myself in the head, and I’m hardly exaggerating. He made her, and then he treated something so precious like trash just because he was responsible for her creation, like he was also her God or master. It was disgusting, and I tried and failed to do something to change it.”

“I don’t understand,” Ichigo murmured in baffled honesty.

“I failed to give her a life of her own, Kurosaki.” Ishida’s eyes flashed to the side, glasses magnifying the blues of them. They were like Karin’s eyes, Ichigo thought. Ishida stared at Kon, focused and intent.

Oh, thought Ichigo, suddenly feeling like the greatest jerk to ever jerk.

“You’re something else,” Ichigo muttered, sliding off of the Quincy and standing slowly, joints sore. He walked over to Kon, who stared up at him contemplatively. Understanding the situation, the mod-soul opened his mouth wide, letting Ichigo pull the tiny green gikongan out of his own body. Ichigo watched with practiced insensitivity as his own body curled to the cold dirt, eyes like a dead fish.

“In the future,” Ishida gritted out, face pained from the effort of lifting himself off of the ground with his wounded body. “Perhaps we’ll both remember that pride is giving more than you've got and taking less than you necessarily need, and that we’ve both got more than a bit of it ingrained in us.”

Ichigo held the gikongan out, sliding it into Ishida’s hand. He cupped it momentarily, giving it an unsure kind of shake. “You should take him with you. Until shit gets worked out.”

“What will I do with him?”

“He used to be my problem. He’ll be yours for a few days.”

Ishida lifted the gikongan, streetlight glinting off of the shiny green shell. After a moment, he slid it quietly into the pocket of his dark-washed jeans.

“I’m sorry I called you a fucking queer, Ishida. I'm cool with it. I am. I just—“

“Finish that sentence there. And I know you didn’t mean it. If you had, I’d have ripped your eyeballs out ten minutes ago.”

“I don’t hate you,” Ichigo groused, “but you’re still a dick.”

“I like you too, Kurosaki,” Ishida bristled back. “It doesn’t make you less of an idiot.”

“Eat with us during lunch break tomorrow.”

“I suppose.”