Title: Glory In Surmounting, Chapter Two: I Will Eat
Author: Lys
Characters/Pairing: Pre-slash now. Eventual Yumichika/Ikkaku, Kenpachi/Ikkaku/Yumichika.
Rating/Warnings: PG-13 this chapter. Past!fic, eventually coming up to present.
Status: Incomplete ongoing. 1,985 words.

a/n: wtf is wrong with me.




Ikkaku didn't quite understand what Yumichika meant about the whole deal with the fancy, round little women’s sandals and the expensive, flowery fabrics that looked like they belonged on somebody‘s rich wife. Ikkaku’d always been under the impression that things that were for women were for women, and things for men were for men. Here was a guy telling him with a serious face that none of this was true. Ikkaku could have chosen, at the time, to make all of this a Big Deal and proclaim Yumichika a threat to all that was common sense, but this would take effort, and really, Ikkaku had a Thing where you didn’t judge a good man, seeing as he was a good man and all. Guys who saved you when you were face-down in a ditch, they were good men-- even if they were in women’s shoes. So Ikkaku graciously if not comprehensively accepted the fact that Yumichika was a man what liked wearing pretty things, but didn't like acting like a woman.

After all, Yumichika was a Good Man and Ikkaku had always been alive before too, so maybe things like gendered fashion just didn't matter in the afterlife. He’d been wrong about his deathlife already, being told that it was a prudent idea to eat when one was hungry, preconceptions notwithstanding.

Yumichika made some damn good rice, though, so maybe it was in his best interest that he hadn’t eaten, else he’d have never ended up in a ditch to be found.

He wondered if it would be as rude as he thought it‘d be to ask for a second large bowl of charity-rice. It was leftovers, that much Ikkaku could tell, and he supposed it would be a pain to ask a guy he just met to actually put forth the effort to cook for him. Ikkaku was sure Yumichika would cook for him. It showed in body language and the way Yumichika pressed the wet, clean cloth against Ikkaku’s face, biting his lip in concentration as he gingerly scrubbed off the cracked mud-smears and the coagulated blood that had been seeping from a cut on his tender, pink temple. It was probably opened by some sharp and spiteful little rock or another at the bottom of the ditch.

Forehead wounds bled a lot and if unattended, could scar. Ikkaku didn’t give a shit if he had a little brown line across his head; Yumichika clearly did.

Ikkaku sighed restlessly, jerking away from Yumichika's pointed, long-fingered hand when it slipped and pressed against his broken skin, fingertips hot, even more so than the boiled water in the fabric. Ikkaku cleared his throat and tried to act stoic about the sting, moving the last bits of chewed rice down his throat.

Yumichika stopped with an apologetic expression, wetting the tip of his thumb and running it along Ikkakus lips, soft pad velvety and pleasant against their chapped surface. Ikkaku fidgeted, confused by the decidedly unusual display. He had a wife once, what seemed like ages ago, and she used to press her finger against his lips just so. It made him angry to think of it, though, so he stopped. Most things made Ikkaku angry anymore.

Being angry made Ikkaku angry, come to think of it.

"What?" Ikkaku demanded, wiping his lower lip off with the back of his hand, sweat-salt seeping into the split corner of his mouth and causing him to wince slightly.

"Chapped," Yumichika explained, entertained smile evident in his voice and expression. “I should get you some fresh water before you leave.”

"Oh," said Ikkaku, supposing that was as good an excuse as any, because rationalizing it meant thinking about When He Was Alive. “You sure you want to be wasting all that shit on a guy like me? You still don’t know for sure I won’t stab you and run.”

“The depths of my insight are abyssal. Robbery is beneath you.”

“Sure. Whatever that means. Suppose you can afford it, though, given what you’re wearing.”

“I can’t afford it.”

“Proves my point, then.”

“You’d better make it up to me,” Yumichika smirked, winking a fine-lashed, poignantly violet sort of eye. “Debt is an excellent motivator, and I haven’t had any entertainment in a while.” He patted his obi with one pale hand, bringing Ikkaku’s attention suddenly to the lacquered little wakizashi nestled under the tight fabric. It was clearly part of a daisho, that much Ikkaku could tell from the plainish look of it.

So it was like that, then. Ikkaku didn’t know whether to be relieved or excited.

“People talk,” Yumichika observed, “You’re the one who killed those thieves the other day, aren’t you? Somehow. With only a bokuto. More than a little impressive, and don’t deny it, because then you’ll make an ass out of both of us. I have no intentions of ever becoming an ass.”

“And what if I say it wasn’t me?”

“You will have insulted my honor, sir. I’d have to gut you to restore it.”

Ikkaku smirked lopsidedly.

He sat in silence while Yumichika cleaned his face with amazing attention to detail and tenderness beyond the sort one usually showed to complete strangers, perhaps a friendly sort of respect. Ikkaku trusted the guy, though. Anybody who was stupid enough to leave their stuff unguarded in a place that looked as desolute and neglected as this one and yet still intelligent enough to know how to defend it if he needed to, couldn't be all bad. After all, you only suspected nasty sorts of behavior of other people if you'd do it yourself, he'd always thought. Otherwise you'd have no reason to think about it.

Though Ikkaku was slowly getting the hint that perhaps Yumichika was just scarier than anyone around to rob the guy. There was a hefty-looking kama leaning against the corner of the room opposite to the doorframe, mostly hidden by a discarded winter blanket. An ideal thing to have, when living in a world made of paper doors and modern evils.

Still, interesting.

"You look amused by something, Ikkaku. Close them," Yumichika commanded in a matronly sort of tone, meaning Ikkaku's eyes. He obliged the smaller man with only a slight scowl of irritation. He wasn't some damn school-brat or something, you know? Yumichika wrung out the fabric with a soft, wet noise and dipped it afresh in the bamboo bowl.

“You, mostly,” taunted Ikkaku.

Yumichika either didn’t find this particularly taunt-worthy, or had chosen to ignore Ikkaku’s jibe entirely. He dragged the rag attentively over Ikkaku's lower forehead, smoothing the eyebrows down neatly. Yumichika spent careful attention on the dips and swoops of his underbrow and eyes, tracing them with his fingers and scrubbing, like somebody washing a pet dog‘s face. Admittedly, the water evaporating on his eyelids was refreshing.

"You remind me of something," Yumichika said at length, dark eyes fluttering and glancing to the right, as if trying to mentally recall the object he was thinking of; like a writer searching for just the right word to convey his meaning.

"Hope it's not a dead relative," Ikkaku snorted, "Or someone you used to date. It‘s always a dead relative or someone you used to date."

Someone, Ikkaku said. He'd said someone and not some lady, and Yumichika hadn't corrected him. It could have meant nothing and it could have meant everything, but he wasn't going to be too awfully judgemental about some guy he just meant, especially if some guy was willing to give him the food off his table (if not the clothes off his back—which Ikkaku doubted he would, somehow) and let some messed-up and half-starved sap into his home without keeping a well-sharpened sword trained on him at all times.

Which admittedly, Yumichika kind of was keeping a well-sharpened sword trained on him at all times; he just planned on Ikkaku picking the time and place, if Ikkaku had caught on to the situation correctly.

"No, definitely not something droll and creepy like that," said Yumichika, interrupting Ikkaku's Very Deep Internal Monologue.

"What?" Ikkaku muttered, yanked without warning back to his present surroundings, sitting in a chair in the house of a pugilist in a flowery kimono.

Yumichika fisted his hand around the white rag and slapped it into his open palm, face brightening in self-triumph. "I know what it is, now. You remind me of a crane."

Ikkaku had never been compared to a crane before, but he supposed there was a first time for everything. Even that.

"A what?"

"You know, a red-crowned crane. The sort that come around in Japan in winter, assuming that they still come around, what with how the tigers and whales are coming extinct all of a sudden. I think you‘re Japanese anyway. Your name is Japanese, but I‘ve been thrown for a loop before."

“I’m not Chinese,” Ikkaku said, with immense irritation.

“Sad,” Yumichika said, dropping the towel in the bowl and biting his thumbnail, obviously having completed his task. “Some of the most interesting people I’ve ever met were Chinese. But you are a crane.”

Ikkaku spluttered.

"I can't tell if you're insulting me or complimenting me," he grumbled, nonplussed. Ikkaku couldn't help get the feeling that he was being made fun of, and it was partially proven to be true as Yumichika stood quickly and chuffed Ikkaku on the top of the head with his fist. Ikkaku reached for his bokuto clumsily, water still beading at the edges of his eyes.

"That’s for me to know and you to worry about when you’re trying to sleep. Jumpy thing, aren't you?" Yumichika shook his head before turning his back on Ikkaku, reaching into a nearby large, open-mouthed clay pot. He shuffled around inside, apparently searching for whatever was hidden in the pot which he wanted to retrieve.

"I—" Ikkaku blushed lightly, lowering his proverbial hackles. "Ignore me. It's been a rough bit of time for me around here, y'know?"

“Then maybe you ought to flap your wings and go someplace nicer, Ikkaku.”

Ikkaku frowned. Yumichika retrieved two large, bright red apples from the pot and pressed them roughly into Ikkaku’s large hands.

“I bought them today. Eat one now, eat the other later. There’s a jar by the door sealed with wax that’s got fresh water in it. At least, as fresh as anything can be that’s been sitting around in a jar for two days. Take it and don’t tell me ‘thank you.’”

“But--”

“Don’t argue with me. You’ll lose. Don’t thank me because the next time you get anything from me, you’re going to have to make it worth my while with your swordsmanship. I wanted to kill those two myself. So now you owe me twice over.”

--//--//--

Ikkaku sat on the edge of the shallow, wide stream running through the district, gangly legs hanging into the water, flow eddying comfortably around his feet as the spirit-fish tickled his toes. He reached into the dirty robe he‘d arrived in Soul Society wearing, digging one of the large apples out of the white fabric, rubbing it on his rough yukata until it shone in the evening light, smooth and speckled.

He bit a large chunk out of it, enjoying the fresh little snap-noise, wiping his wet lips off with the back of his arm. The apple was mealy and not as flavorful as some of the ones he’d had before, when he wasn’t dead and all, but Ikkaku was a starving man until that afternoon and Yumichika had clearly picked the biggest over the best for his one-hour houseguest.

The apple-juice dried sticky in his sparse armhair, itchy. Ikkaku took another bite out of the fruit and rubbed his arm against his knee, staring out into the golden evening distance of Soul Society, towers of Seireitei atmospheric blue and hazy and tens of miles away.

Ikkaku tried not to think about red-crowned cranes.