Title: Intermezzo (Bookmark)
Author: Lys
Characters/Pairing: Ishida Uryuu/Ishida!Kon, Kurosaki Ichigo
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 for language and nudity.
Status: Bookmark 10.2/20, 1124 words.


a/n: mostly HUMOR. very short chapter. this one mostly serves as an illustrator for the current mindsets of all those involved and sets up the next one, which will be the real beginning of the ichigoxishida in the fic as of yet.




Ishida woke to the sound of the alarm for the first time in four months, shrill noise invading his tender sinus cavities. It was 6:00 a.m. already? He’d gotten four hours of sleep, then, which was one full cycle. Better than anything else if he couldn’t have gotten eight hours, he surmised. Something was off, though. He eyed his right hand, sitting in the mussed but cool cotton sheets of his bed, the area where Kon should still have been, inside Ishida’s own body. Clearing his throat, he called out thickly for the other boy. Hopefully nothing had come up while Ishida was unconscious.

“Kon?”

“In the kitchen,” Kon replied, voice muddled by something in his mouth. Ah, thought Ishida, so something had come up. Mainly the fact that the only thing Ishida had for dinner last night, even with all the activity, was half a portion of white rice with furikake. Ishida could understand why Kon was currently raiding his cupboard, even if Ishida himself was only barely peckish. Given the circumstances, he was more than a little relieved to not be starving. Sliding out of bed and taking a moment to stare at his feet, not nearly awake enough to be motivated to be alive, Ishida stood and dressed himself in a light blue robe hanging on his bedroom door. He managed to get both feet into white house-slippers with some degree of difficulty before shuffling into his tiny kitchen.

Kon sat on one of the cheap black Swedish modern barstools wearing nothing but a smile on his face and Ishida’s Gameboy, purple bruise from last night now an obnoxiously huge splatter of reds and greens and yellows against Ishida’s nearly-white skintone. It was like a Jackson Pollock painting. Ishida snorted at the sight.

“You weren’t kidding when you said you healed faster than normal.”

“All of us did. You don’t spend billions of yen on something just to have it up and die on ‘ya.”

“Sensible,” Ishida said with a scowl, walking over to the sink to fill a glass with water, blowing a piece of his irritatingly longer hair out of his face.

“Didn’t know you liked this kind of thing,” Kon snickered, poking at the buttons on the hand-held in between taking bites out of his breakfast. “You always seemed like too much of a stick-up-the-butt to play video games.”

“Please,” Ishida rolled his eyes, drinking the full glass of water in one go before continuing. “I’m only pushing 17. I’ve still got 3 years to go before I’m completely perfect. Besides which, I only like tactical RPGS and puzzle games.”

“I noticed,” Kon laughed before turning off the Gameboy and sliding it across the table, away from where he was eating. “By the way, I saw that quilt you showed me the stuff for a while ago. It’s coming along real nice. The design kind of matches, well. Everything.”

“I’m aware that there is an obvious theme to my crafts.”

“Why do you do it, Uryuu?” Kon asked, not a hint of mocking in his tone.

Ishida shrugged, setting his glass in the sink and turning to face Kon. “I used to live with my grandfather. I was small and quiet and kind of too smart for my own good, so I never had any friends in class. All I had was ‘sensei,’ and my identity as a Quincy. But they took him away and then they butchered him,” Ishida muttered, voice cold and unemotional. “Then all I had was my identity.”

“I’m sorry,” Kon said simply, adjusting Ishida’s glasses on his thin nosebridge in thought. It was strangely touching.

Ishida leaned over and Kon, getting the point, leaned up. Ishida had planned on a much longer good-morning-and-thanks-for-everything sort of kiss, but he was immediately surprised by the taste on Kon’s lips.

“What in god’s name are you eating?”

“Cereal,” Kon said seriously. Ishida stared down into the bowl dubiously.

“But that is not milk you are eating that cereal with,” Ishida said, noting the painfully obvious in a deadpan tone.

“Nope,” said Kon.

“That is cranberry juice that you are eating that cereal with,” Ishida plowed on, one eyebrow slowly rising of its own accord.

“Yep,” said Kon.

“Thrilling,” said Ishida, slightly ill. “You have fun with that. I’m going to go set out my uniform, check on my homework and make myself a lunch. You finish eating, take a quick shower and meet me in the living room so that I can dress properly, as it typically behooves one to be visible during class.”

“Sir,” Kon grinned indulgently, familiar fox-grin splitting Ishida’s face. “I will await your return with bated breath.”

“And Kon?”

“Yes?”

“If I vomit while I’m at school, I am holding you personally responsible.”

~*~*~

Ichigo woke up that morning with Rukia’s still-cool body pressed against him, yawning and stretching. Rukia manipulated her way into staying in his sister’s bedroom and decided she would not continue going to school while she was in the living world this time. She missed Ichigo too much; she missed having friends too much. She would not have been able to leave them all a second time, like the first.

And so, Ichigo sat in class, the seat next to him still filled with Hirako Shinji’s smirking presence. The teacher droned on about math and the windows were open, letting in the smell of freshly-mown grass as birds sat on trees, tittering with the girls in the phys ed class currently doing stretches on the school’s small track.

He glanced out the window, watching the girls move, his mind elsewhere. Shinji cleared his throat at Ichigo, and Ichigo scowled at him.

“Daydreaming?”

“Bite me.”

Shinji grinned in a way that suggested he just might. He stuck his studded tongue out at Ichigo.

Ugh.

Ichigo ignored the vaizard, deciding that his time would be better spent staring at Ishida Uryuu’s back. At least he was somewhere near the direction of the teacher’s podium, so Ichigo looked more like he was actually paying a little bit of attention to the lesson plan.

Ishida hadn’t had enough sleep last night, that was much was obvious. The Quincy’s typically shining hair was dull and limp, his posture off. His back looked even smaller than usual, slouched over his desk tiredly. He looked vulnerable. Ichigo was itching to walk over and ask Ishida what was wrong and how the rest of his night went, and perhaps he would apologize a second time and see if he was very badly injured, before Ichigo resumed grilling Ishida for answers.

But for the moment, Ichigo watched the back of Ishida’s dark-haired head shakily trying to concentrate on his math classwork as it bobbed up and down, in and out of sleep. Ichigo brought his pencil to his lips and chewed on the rubber end of it, gritty pinkness scraping off on the tips of his teeth.

The birds outside twittered. Shinji smirked.