Elevation, Verse 3
A/N: Due to the suggestion of my fabulous editor in chief gwoman, I'm posting this on Valentine's day (OK, so it's still Valentine's somewhere in the world) to show my love for all you wonderful folks out there. Thanks for reading, and for your support!
Summary: AU. What should you do when every visible thing in your life is fine, but everything inside is dead? Sometimes it just takes a little jolt to bring the dead back to life...
Warnings: Angst, bad language, dirty talkin', inappropriate groping, dirty thoughts, stories of past drunken misadventures, good sex (yaoi).
Usual disclaimers: I don't own these characters and don't make any money for these writings; I'm just creating these stories to entertain myself and (hopefully) you.
All of the people depicted (or referred to) in sexual situations in my stories are intended to be and considered to be by the author of the legal age of consent in any jurisdiction, regardless of what age these characters may be in the material they are derived from. OK?
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Missed Verse 2? Click here.
I'm being ridiculous, Ichigo thought, glaring at himself in the mirror. He finally turned away with a last glance at his ancient Cocteau Twins t-shirt, old blue jeans that had become fitted and faded through many washings, and black Chucks, trying not to feel exasperated at the idea that he'd spent at least an hour trying to figure out what to wear.
We'll just be jamming, that's all, he tried to tell himself, but the fluttering in his stomach remained unconvinced. Sighing at the feeling of riding a rollercoaster when he was standing on solid ground, Ichigo tried to ignore it and checked his gear again to make sure he had everything packed. He'd found where he'd stashed his guitar case and packed it up, brought his cords, effects pedals, and guitar stand in a backpack, and his practice amp stood ready beside the guitar case, since he wasn't sure what would be on hand in the studio. For some reason, the idea of playing in a studio for the first time didn't make him feel as nervous as who he'd be playing there with. Shaking his head at himself again, Ichigo donned a jean jacket before heading out the door, trying to focus on the music instead of the redhead who'd been dominating his thoughts lately.
The neighborhood the address was attached to wasn't a bad one, exactly, just older and a bit run down. He made sure to lock the car as he shouldered the backpack and picked up his guitar case, however, wanting to be certain that his amp would still be there when he came back for it. He looked at the address again before going into the building, and ended up knocking on a door in the basement.
He found himself lost for words when Renji answered the door with a knowing grin wearing skinny blue jeans along with a silk button down shirt, its red a few shades darker than his hair and the buttons undone enough to show off pronounced collarbones and a number of tattoos on his chest.
Renji grinned with a look that was altogether too pleased and also disturbingly predatory. “So you actually did come,” he said lazily, stepping backwards to open the door further. “Come on in and I’ll show you where to put your gear.”
As Ichigo followed Renji wordlessly inside, he caught sight of a living room divided from a kitchen beyond by only a tall counter surrounded by barstools. He turned to Renji, confused and wanting to ask about the studio, but had his thoughts interrupted as Renji started to speak again. “The studio’s in back; follow me.”
“You live here?” Ichigo said, suddenly feeling a bit panicked, then sheepish at his obviously disturbed tone.
Renji chuckled in reply, a low sound that made Ichigo feel just a little bit warmer. “Yeah, I live here too. Don’t worry, though: I won’t jump you.”
Ichigo tried to ignore the shiver that ran down his spine and followed Renji into the back room, stopping to catch his breath at what he saw. The room had soundproofing material laid on all of the walls and the ceiling, and the floor was carpeted as well. It had been arranged with a large open area, but two smaller areas had been walled off-what looked like an isolation booth in one corner, and in another a booth that had a commanding view of the whole floor and contained a huge mixing board and small monitor speakers.
“Set up anywhere you’d like,” Renji said, gesturing with open arms. “I’m over here,” he finished, pointing to an amp with a cream colored bass sitting in a guitar stand next to it.
Ichigo put his gear down nearby and looked closely at the bass. “Isn’t this a little small to be a bass?” he finally asked, realizing that although the number of strings was correct, the instrument looked much smaller than the one that seemed to dwarf Soi Fon.
Renji just looked at him for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s a short scale bass, dumbass. It makes it easier to play chords,” he said, and then his smile widened as Ichigo gave him a look of surprise. “I guess they're technically called double and triple stops since I’m playing bass, but you get the idea. I play leads, so I was interested to hear what you could come up with, since you don't.”
“Yeah, I spent a lot of years playing off of what Chad would do,” Ichigo replied with a nod, then gave Renji a curious look, thinking about how strong his hands would need to be in order to hold down chords on big bass strings. “Leads on the bass, huh? I don't know if I've ever heard anyone play like that before.” He was definitely trying to keep himself from staring at Renji's hands now.
“What, you've never heard any Ned's Atomic Dustbin? How about Morphine?” Renji shook his head when Ichigo replied in the negative. “I see I've got to give you some things for your mp3 player before I let you go. Anyway, do you want me to hook you up to one of the practice amps I have here?”
Ichigo straightened up, remembering. “Actually, my amp is out in the car.”
“Well, go out and get it then,” Renji replied, his smile lazy and smug.
Renji had already tuned by the time Ichigo returned, and he listened to Renji's half-imagined parts of songs as he tuned his own instrument and set up his effects pedals. He hadn't quite finished by the time Renji had settled on something, however. The deep, rhythmic sound sent a thrill through Ichigo, the low melody drawing him in like a tide. He was almost afraid to turn his amp on and put his hands to the strings, but once he did he found his face heating at the groan of unfulfilled desire that seemed to leap from them, drenched in echoing reverb and everlasting delay. Wondering briefly where the ghostly flutterings he was used to had gone, Ichigo listened in awe to the murmured whispers and soaring moans that seemed to be all he could produce now and how they seemed to mesh with the music Renji played as if they'd rehearsed it a thousand times before.
As Ichigo played, he tried to listen to what Renji was doing, but he kept getting lost in all of the sounds that flowed through and around him, feeling like a hollowed out reed only good for channeling music. At some point, Ichigo had no idea when, the sounds began to ebb and eventually stopped, the final notes dying in the air around them. He didn't know quite what he felt as he turned his head to look at Renji, but somewhere between manic energy and despair Ichigo felt that he'd just given the best performance of his life.
“I guess you can play.” Renji's voice sounded gruff, as if it had been a while since he'd spoken.
As Ichigo brought his hands away from the guitar, he realized for the first time that he had no idea how long they'd been playing. His hands felt cramped from being in the same positions for too long, however, and his fretting fingers had deep, angry lines cut into them. He hissed as put his pick down to flex his hands, then rubbed his fingertips against his thighs to try to bring some blood flow back into them.
“So,” Renji said, casually putting his bass down, “how about a break? You want a beer?”
Ichigo just watched for a moment as the man ducked into the mixing booth and did something with the equipment there. He regarded Renji with suspicion as he returned. “You recorded all of that?”
Renji smiled slyly. “Yeah, I set it up when you were out getting your amp. I didn't check the sound levels or anything, though, so it might all be crap, if anything peaked. Do you want to listen to the playback?”
“Yeah,” Ichigo replied, once he could get his voice working again, and followed Renji out to his kitchen.
“Don't worry, I've got it wired up so that you can hear it throughout the house,” Renji explained, handing Ichigo a beer.
He could only drink in silence for a few moments after he listened again to the primal moan his guitar had made once he’d started playing, only hoping he wasn't blushing.
“So, what did you think?” Renji drawled, looking at Ichigo in a way that told him that maybe he was blushing.
It ran through me like sunlight through a windowpane, Ichigo thought. It was a minute before he could force himself to reply, grudgingly, not wanting to inflate Renji's ego any more than it obviously already was. “I thought it sounded good.”
“You're damn right it did,” Renji said with a smirk, as if he'd heard what Ichigo hadn't said.
“Yeah, well, I sounded good,” Ichigo shot back, smirking a little on his own.
“I think it would have sounded better if someone had been practicing more than the past few days.”
Ichigo knew Renji had been kidding by the tone he'd made his careless comment in, but it still felt like salt thrown into a wound that hadn't really closed and Ichigo had to turn away momentarily. His eyes lit on the tiny speakers in the corners of the room as he did, and he took a calming breath before he turned back to look at Renji again, not quite meeting his eyes.
“How'd you find this place, anyway? It's really kind of perfect,” Ichigo ventured, finally darting a glance at Renji where he met the man's eyes.
From Renji's expression, Ichigo felt sure that he'd seen at least part of what Ichigo had tried to hide, but Renji accepted the change of topic anyway. “I didn't find it, I built it.”
Just staring at him for a moment, Ichigo wondered what Renji meant exactly while he mentally went over his own shortcomings in that department. Although he'd been the one to mostly set up the computer systems his father used in the clinic, Ichigo had always been worse than useless when something broke around the house. “You don't mean you built this whole place, do you?”
Renji laughed quietly and shook his head. “No, just my little piece of it.” He shrugged when Ichigo looked confused and continued. “I've known the slumlord who owns this place for a long time. A while ago, when he was complaining that the building was getting older and things were breaking down more, I offered to work as the super for the place as long as he let me build what I wanted in this corner and didn't charge me any rent for it. They'd only been keeping junk in the basement up until that, anyway, so one less corner didn't make that much of a difference. Of course he went for it, so I got to design this apartment from the bare walls up.”
“You built all this?” Ichigo looked around again, this time with new eyes. “By yourself?”
“I had some friends help sometimes, but yeah, I did most of it on my own,” Renji replied, not looking smug or arrogant now, but with a slight smile and what looked like pride in his expression. “I worked in pretty much all the building trades for years, so I was able to do most of the work myself. A couple of things I needed some help on, and I traded some of the more difficult plumbing tasks for helping a friend drywall his new house, but all the rest I did.”
“That's amazing,” Ichigo said, unable to help being awed, not keeping it out of his voice and not caring that he couldn't. The music took another soaring turn then and they both fell silent, Ichigo taking a drink of his beer and trying to ignore the ache in his chest as the music began to draw out of him things he hadn't felt in years.
It was late by the time the playback had finished, and Renji refused to erase what they'd done, saying that he'd mix the best parts and give the recordings to Ichigo the next time he came back. Then he'd confiscated Ichigo's mp3 player and hooked it up to his laptop to put a bunch of songs on it, saying, “Your musical education obviously sucks. If we're going to play any more music together, you've got to get some better taste.” He gave Ichigo a superior glance from under lifted eyebrows where he sat cross-legged on the couch, laptop on a cushion nearby.
“Of course my taste sucks,” Ichigo huffed, having moved from Renji's couch to a cushion on the floor, resting his second beer on his chest as he stared at the ceiling. For some reason, he hadn’t quite trusted himself to be that close to Renji. “I'm hanging out with you, aren't I?”
Renji laughed at that. “That's the reason that you fooled me in the first place, that you had good enough taste to want to be with me.”
Ichigo snorted to cover up the fact that he thought he was probably blushing again; the way Renji had said that just shouldn't have sounded so suggestive. Putting his hand over his eyes, Ichigo wondered again when it could possibly have happened that he'd become so flustered by a guy. After all, he'd never been interested in other guys. Before now, something in his mind helpfully supplied, and Ichigo closed his eyes, just barely stopping himself from groaning.
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Ichigo sat up quickly the next morning, hissing in his breath, looking around wildly. For a moment, he didn't recognize anything and wondered where the hell he'd ended up, fleece blanket half sliding to the floor as he leaned up on one elbow on the couch he laid on, trying to get a better look at the unfamiliar room around him.
“So, you're finally up,” a low voice behind him said, and something seemed to click in Ichigo's mind at the same time his cock twitched, reminding him about his morning wood.
Instead of answering, Ichigo turned over to lie on his stomach so that he could peer up over the counter and into the kitchen. At the same moment he smelled potatoes, onions, and fresh cracked pepper, another kind of hunger stirred in him as he watched Renji's biceps flex as he cooked. He was wearing some kind of tank top this morning, and showing off a series of dark inked slashes across his upper arms, and Ichigo tried not to hiss as his hips involuntarily thrust into the couch at the sight. “What are you making?” he asked, mentally cringing at his inability to think of a smart remark.
“You'll find out in a few minutes,” Renji replied, giving Ichigo a cocky smile over one shoulder. “If you want to take a shower in the meantime, it's the second door on the right. I put out some clean towels for you, but you'd better hurry if you want something to eat, or it'll all be gone.”
Ichigo grumbled as he rose to a sitting position and then stretched his arms up and over the back of the couch. Thankful for his foresight at un-tucking his shirt sometime the previous night, he shot Renji a quick look as he headed towards the shower. Any words he might have said stuck in his throat as he passed the partially open first door on the right, and he struggled not to look at the big unmade bed inside. He spent as little time as possible in the shower, trying not to give in to jerking off as he washed under the glacially cold spray, hoping it would calm him down a little.
He'd figured that breakfast with the man he'd had wisps of erotic dreams about all night would be an awkward affair, but it didn't take long until they were exchanging wisecracks as if they'd known each other for years.
“I mean, how did you even learn to cook anything like this, anyway?” Ichigo said between shoveling in bites of home-fried potatoes and pancakes.
Renji's eyes narrowed. “Cook anything like what?” he asked, his tone almost menacing.
Ichigo rolled his eyes. “Well, it's actually good.”
“Of course it's good,” Renji replied, straightening up in his chair. “You're probably one of those pathetic fucks who only knows how to boil water in the microwave, aren't you?”
“No!” Ichigo retorted, slightly stung that Renji had come somewhat close to the truth. “I can make pancakes, too.”
“Good, because you're cooking next time,” Renji said with a sly grin that seemed to tell Ichigo that admission had been Renji's aim all along.
Renji was carrying Ichigo’s amp once it was time to leave, and stood beside Ichigo on the pavement, still in the cut-off sweats he'd been wearing when Ichigo woke that morning. Ichigo tried hard not to think about how low they sat on his hips, low enough for him to spot the fangs of two tattoos edging their way down his abdomen. Ichigo continued not looking at the tempting sight of skin between the gap of Renji's sweats and the edge of his shirt as the man loaded the amp into Ichigo's car.
“So, you're coming to play some more next weekend, right?” Renji asked as Ichigo closed the rear door once all the gear was in the back seat. The way he said it, it sounded like he and Ichigo had already discussed it, which they hadn't yet. “It's the only way you'll stop sucking so bad, really.”
Ichigo blinked then, trying very hard to stop himself from blurting out something like, “What? When?” and instead managed to say, “Yeah, right. The only reason you want me to come by is to make you sound better. When do you want me to show up?”
Renji flashed a crocodile smile then, as if he grinned any wider the top of his head would come off. “How about when you get off on Friday? You can make me pancakes on Saturday morning.”
Determined not to say anything about the man's assumptions, Ichigo shrugged. “OK, I probably won't be here until about 7 or 8, though. Is that all right for the noise?”
Shrugging in turn, Renji replied, “The soundproofing in the studio is good, plus the guy who lives on the first floor over me is pretty much deaf, so it shouldn't be a problem.”
As he watched Renji wave once in the rearview, Ichigo told himself that it shouldn't seem normal to be spending his weekend with some guy he barely knew so that they could jam like a couple of band geeks, but the anticipation in his gut made the words ring hollow.
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Happy that his dreams no longer featured countless nightmares about being consumed by the darkness living just underneath his skin, Ichigo tried to ignore their new bent, at least until the night during the middle of the week when he woke up hard and sweating, unable to stop from grabbing his own hard cock and finishing himself off. Renji had starred in the dream, of course, like he had in many of Ichigo’s thoughts as time went by, but all he'd done was talk.
“I know you want me like this, Ichigo. I know you need me to push you, to make you do things you never would otherwise. I know you want me, and I know you want me to put it right in your face until you can't help but reach out. And I want you to, Ichigo. I want to you to show me what you like, because I'm going to turn around and do it all to you, until you come undone for me. And then we're going to do it all again, until you're heaving for breath and spent, sprawled naked over the covers. Come on, show me, Ichigo.”
And, oh, had he ever shown Renji. Although he’d already been naked in the dream, every touch he’d left on his own skin seemed to strip him to Renji more and more. He hadn't been able to find it in himself to mind, however, since Renji had been so obviously appreciative. He hadn't touched Ichigo himself, but his eyes had seemed glued to whatever Ichigo had done, and he’d kept commenting in that honeyed growl that made Ichigo's cock twitch.
“That’s it, keep touching yourself. Shit, do you even know how hot you look like that? Keep your hand on your cock and keep going because I want to watch you come.”
The more Renji had talked, the more Ichigo had felt like he wanted to show him. He’d showed Renji things he hadn't even known he’d liked himself. Ichigo figured he should probably have felt humiliated, but the only thing he’d felt under that hot gaze had been an amazing intensity of arousal. It had only taken about two strokes once he’d woken up before he came, and he’d had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from making some loud, embarrassing noises. After his heart had calmed down a little, Ichigo stripped out his sticky shorts and threw them in the direction of the laundry hamper, trying not to think about how far he was falling, and how quickly.
It hadn’t helped at all when he’d arrived at Renji’s the following Friday, when the man had rushed him inside and asked him to get set up right away. “I listened to what we did over the week and worked on some lyrics to a couple of the pieces that sounded really good. Do you want to try some of them out and see how everything sounds together?”
Ichigo nodded, thinking only of how well that low growl he remembered from his dreams would sound along with what they’d been playing. He tried hard to get the idea out of his head as he tuned, but once they’d begun to play, Ichigo felt like all the air had been punched out of his lungs the moment Renji started to sing. Willing his hands to keep playing, Ichigo found he couldn't really hear the lyrics Renji was singing; just the sound of his voice and the tone seemed to cause his mental processes to shut down. Somehow, the music itself seemed to have taken over, because Ichigo knew that he hadn't been thinking at all about what he’d played. Hoping he wasn't sounding too terrible, he found all he could really focus on was listening. Once again, when the music had trickled to a stop and Renji had shut down the recording equipment, Ichigo was surprised and uncertain as to how long they'd been at it, but this time he also felt bereft, somehow, wishing that they were still playing.
He found that he was still unable to really think of anything to say until after he'd been in the living room a while, sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, drinking a beer and listening to the playback. Even Renji seemed unusually quiet, perched on one arm of the couch, holding his beer thoughtfully and looking at one of the speakers as if he were seeing the music that sounded through the air around them. Ichigo knew he’d wandered back into the everyday world by the time he had to stop himself from focusing on Renji's long, strong hands on the bottle he was holding.
As the music continued to play, they'd ended up lying on the living room floor, Ichigo in one direction with his head on one corner of a big throw pillow and Renji laid out in the other direction, head resting on the opposite corner. Neither one of them seemed to want to discuss what they'd heard, instead talking about whatever popped into their heads. “How did you end up playing bass, anyway?” Ichigo heard himself asking at one point, right after they'd jumped around through the topics of the origins of punk rock and the difficulties of bike riding in the city.
He felt, rather than saw, Renji shrug as he moved the big cushion they were both resting their heads on. “Well, I'd wanted to be in a band for a couple years while I was in high school, but I didn't have money for an instrument. It was when I threatened to drop out of school and run away to join this one bunch of guys I knew who were planning to do some touring that my foster mother took action.”
Renji sat up a little to take another sip of his beer, and Ichigo looked over from where he lay to watch. “Anyway, she called her younger brother, the one she'd always said was lazy and shiftless, because he was a touring musician. So, I spent the summer being his roadie, and I found out how unglamorous and poorly paying it all was. All good to know, but it didn't stop me from wanting to play anyway. Towards the end of the summer he took me to a pawn shop and got me an old Gibson bass and a crappy amp cheap, to pay me for all my help, he said. I had that thing for years, nearly played the frets off of it, until I finally moved over to playing short scale basses like the Mustang.”
He gestured with his shoulder vaguely back to the recording studio where Ichigo knew he kept his bass. Ichigo nodded, knowing that Renji could probably feel the gesture even if he couldn't see it, and considered. Renji had never mentioned his past at all before, and it made Ichigo intensely curious, especially about his reference to foster parents. Before he could ask any of the embarrassing questions he was thinking about, however, he heard Renji say, “What about you? When did you get your first guitar?”
Ichigo leaned over to take another sip of his beer before answering, putting the half-full bottle over to the side near the couch as he finished. “Well, I don't know if you'd really call it my first guitar, but I adopted the one that used to belong to my mom when I was about ten. She gave me some lessons when I was younger, but I really didn't start playing it a lot until after she was gone.”
Renji craned his head in Ichigo's direction at that. “Where'd she go?”
Smiling to himself, Ichigo raised an eyebrow, thinking that apparently Renji didn't have any trouble asking whatever questions came into his mind. He knew he was frowning a little as he answered, however. “She, um, she died in a car accident. I came home from school one day and my dad told me she was gone.”
The response he got surprised Ichigo so much that it threw him out of the melancholy he might have been about to slip into. “Shit, man, I'm sorry to hear that.” To Ichigo's surprise, Renji actually did sound sorry, unlike a lot of people who'd just say something like that as a reflex.
Ichigo shrugged then, realizing to his surprise that he was actually smiling. “It's...well, I won't say I don't still miss her, but it's a lot less fresh, if that makes any sense.” He leaned back on the pillow, trying to see Renji's face to gauge his expression, but shrugged again when he couldn't see the other man. “Anyway, after I played that one for years, I managed to get my dad to buy me an electric when I was a teenager, and that's when Chad and I started playing together. I got the one I have now a few years after I got out of college.”
The guitar, along with the apartment he'd bought, had been the two things he'd gotten to really celebrate the success of Insane Clown Circus. It had been expensive at the time, probably too expensive, but he'd wanted one like it since he'd first seen them. “Yeah, that Rick you have now is pretty sweet,” Renji said, breaking into his thoughts.
Ichigo couldn't help but smile at the ceiling at that, wondering how Renji had possibly managed to vaguely compliment him.
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Strangely, Ichigo knew exactly where he was when he woke up the next day. Blinking at the ceiling light fixture, he slowly stretched and sat up, somehow not feeling too rough even though he'd spent the night on the floor. When he yawned and turned a moment later, he was surprised to see Renji still sleeping where he'd ended up the previous night. At some point, he'd freed his hair from the ridiculous high ponytail he usually wore, and Ichigo couldn't help but stare at the vibrant color, trying to stop himself from reaching out to stroke the strands to find out how soft they really were.
Trying to derail his thoughts, Ichigo’s gaze wandered Renji’s face, realizing that he never got a chance to study the man like this while he was awake, afraid of what he’d see in those sharp eyes, or worse, what Renji would discover in his own. For some reason, instead of looking like some kind of storybook demon, like he could sometimes when he shot Ichigo one of those wicked grins, Renji looked like something more ethereal when he slept, the inked lines seeming to emphasize his long leanness.
Scrubbing a hand over his face in disbelief, Ichigo stood and made his way to the bathroom for a shower, trying not to think about the fact that he’d just been watching another man-his friend, he could probably admit-sleeping, and had been admiring him. He really tried hard to forget about the fact that Renji hadn’t touched him since they’d run into one another in the bar the evening they'd watched Minor Key...at least until he decided to give himself a break for a few minutes while he was under the spray. Closing his eyes, all he saw was Renji’s bright red hair dipping over one eye as he leaned forward for a kiss, and he swore he could feel those big hands all over his body. Hoping that the shower, and the lip he’d nearly bitten through, had muffled the noise he’d made when he came, Ichigo dressed and went out to see about getting some breakfast ready.
He fumbled through Renji's cabinets as quietly as possible, finding ingredients and cookware as he went, and was in the middle of cooking the second pancake, watching the edge carefully to determine when to flip it as Yuzu had taught him, when a sound made him turn around.
“So you can cook,” Renji said, his voice full of dark humor and still rough from sleep.
“Yeah, but it's sort of a close thing, so if you want anything to eat this morning, you'd better not distract me,” Ichigo replied, brandishing a spatula. His gaze automatically fell to where Renji's shirt had ridden up slightly and Ichigo spotted the dark lines of tattoos across his belly, more than he'd been able to see before. Looking away, Ichigo met Renji's eyes briefly and noted that the man was smiling sleepily as he ran a hand through his long red hair.
Ichigo turned away entirely a moment later, nervously flipping the pancake over and frowning as he realized it had gotten a bit browner than he'd intended. He tried not to gasp a moment later as he felt Renji behind him, sliding into the narrow kitchen, not touching but more than close enough to.
“I guess unless that's all we want, I'd better get busy, too,” Renji said, opening the refrigerator to stare inside.
Ichigo couldn't have said afterwards if everything had gone smoothly or exactly what they'd eaten for breakfast. Having spent a good portion of the morning so close to Renji but not touching had been hell on his nerves, and he found that although part of him didn't want to leave when it was time, the rest of him was grateful that he didn't have to spend another few hours trying not to reach out and grab the redhead.
He did have a clear memory of getting ready to go, however, of him and Renji out at his car loading his gear into the back. “You know,” Renji had said casually as he handed Ichigo's amp over, “you don't have to park out on the street when you visit. I have a space at the back of the building, but I haven't had a car for years, so you can use it.”
“So how do you get your gear out to shows?” Ichigo asked, straightening up after putting his amp in the back seat.
“Oh, somehow I'm always able to get one of my bandmates to come and get me on show days,” he said with a smirk. “Same time next Friday?”
Ichigo nodded as he got back into his car, wondering as he drove off how long this would last. He still played for hours in the evenings and had begun absently jotting down new song ideas in the more boring meetings he attended. Also, strangely, though he hadn't been part of the teams coding new games for years, Ichigo found new game ideas coming to mind as well. Since that had been something else that had dried up in his years in the creative desert, probably even before his music had, he'd catch himself sketching out ideas sometimes and then force himself to stop, unsure in a way he'd never been before his dry spell.
The following week when he visited Renji was been both worse and better, in a way. As had become usual for the two of them, they played for hours, this time focusing on a few of the pieces they'd played before and really liked, feeling around to see if the music would gel into songs. They went out to the living room later to listen to the playback, and after a while Renji had given Ichigo an odd look, but he was unable to tell from the redhead's expression what it was about.
“You know, I saw this the other day and for some reason I thought of you,” Renji finally said, throwing something in Ichigo's direction. “Probably because there were so many guitar players in it. I swear, you guys are a dime a dozen.”
Ichigo caught the item, which turned out to be a DVD, and turned it over, reading the description of the film with wide eyes. They'd recorded the meeting of three guitar players, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin (music he'd listened to way too much in his early teens), the Edge from U2 (who'd always been a hero of his and someone he'd modeled his early playing style after), and Jack White of The White Stripes. He immediately itched to watch it and looked over at Renji, who laughed and grabbed the disc back from him, then put it in the player.
They'd stopped the film partway through so that Ichigo could get his guitar, and of course Renji had grabbed his bass as well, and they spent the rest of the film seeing who could pick up licks the fastest and playing little snatches of things that sometimes sounded complementary and sometimes competitive. When it had finished and Renji went to pull the DVD out of the player, Ichigo noticed a stack of videos on the side table and put his guitar aside to thumb through them, his eyebrows raised after a moment.
“You have the biggest collection of crappy horror films that I've ever seen,” he finally stated, smugly.
Renji turned to him with a look of challenge on his face. “Oh, you have a problem with horror films, then? I bet it's because they make you scream like a little kid.”
Ichigo gave Renji his best hard stare. “Bring it on, dumbass. I bet you'll be screaming before I will.”
And so the rest of the evening was spent with the two of them critiquing the movies as they watched them, comparing the quality of various special effects or giving instructions to the characters on screen that, of course, went unheard.
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Ichigo remembered breathing in first, and the scent that reached him seemed to bring with it the sense that everything was all right, something he couldn't recall feeling for a long time. Waking seemed to come in stages, and the main sensation pushing him to wakefulness seemed to be that he'd been in an uncomfortable position for too long. As he blinked, Ichigo saw that it looked like the TV had turned itself off and the only light seemed dim and far away, probably coming from the light over the stove in the kitchen.
He groaned softly as he realized what position he'd ended up in. It seemed he'd fallen over from where he'd been sitting on the couch earlier and now he was lying partially on a couch cushion and partially on the arm of the couch, one arm curled awkwardly beneath him. As he shifted to try to get into a more comfortable position, Ichigo had another realization, suddenly becoming aware of being pinned to the couch. When he looked down to figure out why, all he could focus on was the long red hair fanned out along the cushion he partially rested on, not far from his face.
As some of the rest of his senses returned, Ichigo took stock and finally spotted one of Renji's legs slung over his own, pressing him to the back of the couch. He almost smiled at the ridiculousness of the situation, but it got stuck somewhere as he breathed in and smelled something fresh and slightly sweet. Ichigo clenched his free hand, telling himself that it would be wrong to touch his friend while he slept, but after a few moments he bit his lip and shook his head, tired of trying to deny to himself what was happening. Touching the strand of red hair farthest from Renji, Ichigo yanked his hand back a second later, images of running his hands through that hair and digging his fingers into Renji's scalp flooding his mind. He sighed in defeat as he didn't even attempt to tell himself that he should get up and sleep somewhere else, instead wriggling farther down onto the couch so that his arm wasn't bent at such an odd angle and his head rested completely on the cushion.
Ichigo closed his eyes as he realized that Renji's hair was now right in front of him. He let his head drop then, burying his face into red hair and breathing deeply, trying not to think about the effect that all that wiggling around between the couch and Renji's body had had on him.
Only I would be dumb enough to fall for the most annoying guy I've ever met, he thought with 2AM clarity as he slung an arm around Renji and drifted off again.
He awoke sometime later, alone on the couch and sleeping on his stomach. Closing his eyes again as he sat up, Ichigo struggled to ignore the sense of emptiness he felt and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Cursing himself for being a fool, he staggered over to the coffee machine to get it going, steadfastly not thinking about the subtle sound of the shower going down the hall.
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Comments about what you liked and what you think could be improved are most welcome!
-WriterX
P.S. For any of you who haven't yet seen It Might Get Loud, the film Renji and Ichigo watch, I recommend it highly!
Click here for Elevation, Refrain
Summary: AU. What should you do when every visible thing in your life is fine, but everything inside is dead? Sometimes it just takes a little jolt to bring the dead back to life...
Warnings: Angst, bad language, dirty talkin', inappropriate groping, dirty thoughts, stories of past drunken misadventures, good sex (yaoi).
Usual disclaimers: I don't own these characters and don't make any money for these writings; I'm just creating these stories to entertain myself and (hopefully) you.
All of the people depicted (or referred to) in sexual situations in my stories are intended to be and considered to be by the author of the legal age of consent in any jurisdiction, regardless of what age these characters may be in the material they are derived from. OK?
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Missed Verse 2? Click here.
I'm being ridiculous, Ichigo thought, glaring at himself in the mirror. He finally turned away with a last glance at his ancient Cocteau Twins t-shirt, old blue jeans that had become fitted and faded through many washings, and black Chucks, trying not to feel exasperated at the idea that he'd spent at least an hour trying to figure out what to wear.
We'll just be jamming, that's all, he tried to tell himself, but the fluttering in his stomach remained unconvinced. Sighing at the feeling of riding a rollercoaster when he was standing on solid ground, Ichigo tried to ignore it and checked his gear again to make sure he had everything packed. He'd found where he'd stashed his guitar case and packed it up, brought his cords, effects pedals, and guitar stand in a backpack, and his practice amp stood ready beside the guitar case, since he wasn't sure what would be on hand in the studio. For some reason, the idea of playing in a studio for the first time didn't make him feel as nervous as who he'd be playing there with. Shaking his head at himself again, Ichigo donned a jean jacket before heading out the door, trying to focus on the music instead of the redhead who'd been dominating his thoughts lately.
The neighborhood the address was attached to wasn't a bad one, exactly, just older and a bit run down. He made sure to lock the car as he shouldered the backpack and picked up his guitar case, however, wanting to be certain that his amp would still be there when he came back for it. He looked at the address again before going into the building, and ended up knocking on a door in the basement.
He found himself lost for words when Renji answered the door with a knowing grin wearing skinny blue jeans along with a silk button down shirt, its red a few shades darker than his hair and the buttons undone enough to show off pronounced collarbones and a number of tattoos on his chest.
Renji grinned with a look that was altogether too pleased and also disturbingly predatory. “So you actually did come,” he said lazily, stepping backwards to open the door further. “Come on in and I’ll show you where to put your gear.”
As Ichigo followed Renji wordlessly inside, he caught sight of a living room divided from a kitchen beyond by only a tall counter surrounded by barstools. He turned to Renji, confused and wanting to ask about the studio, but had his thoughts interrupted as Renji started to speak again. “The studio’s in back; follow me.”
“You live here?” Ichigo said, suddenly feeling a bit panicked, then sheepish at his obviously disturbed tone.
Renji chuckled in reply, a low sound that made Ichigo feel just a little bit warmer. “Yeah, I live here too. Don’t worry, though: I won’t jump you.”
Ichigo tried to ignore the shiver that ran down his spine and followed Renji into the back room, stopping to catch his breath at what he saw. The room had soundproofing material laid on all of the walls and the ceiling, and the floor was carpeted as well. It had been arranged with a large open area, but two smaller areas had been walled off-what looked like an isolation booth in one corner, and in another a booth that had a commanding view of the whole floor and contained a huge mixing board and small monitor speakers.
“Set up anywhere you’d like,” Renji said, gesturing with open arms. “I’m over here,” he finished, pointing to an amp with a cream colored bass sitting in a guitar stand next to it.
Ichigo put his gear down nearby and looked closely at the bass. “Isn’t this a little small to be a bass?” he finally asked, realizing that although the number of strings was correct, the instrument looked much smaller than the one that seemed to dwarf Soi Fon.
Renji just looked at him for a moment, then shook his head. “It’s a short scale bass, dumbass. It makes it easier to play chords,” he said, and then his smile widened as Ichigo gave him a look of surprise. “I guess they're technically called double and triple stops since I’m playing bass, but you get the idea. I play leads, so I was interested to hear what you could come up with, since you don't.”
“Yeah, I spent a lot of years playing off of what Chad would do,” Ichigo replied with a nod, then gave Renji a curious look, thinking about how strong his hands would need to be in order to hold down chords on big bass strings. “Leads on the bass, huh? I don't know if I've ever heard anyone play like that before.” He was definitely trying to keep himself from staring at Renji's hands now.
“What, you've never heard any Ned's Atomic Dustbin? How about Morphine?” Renji shook his head when Ichigo replied in the negative. “I see I've got to give you some things for your mp3 player before I let you go. Anyway, do you want me to hook you up to one of the practice amps I have here?”
Ichigo straightened up, remembering. “Actually, my amp is out in the car.”
“Well, go out and get it then,” Renji replied, his smile lazy and smug.
Renji had already tuned by the time Ichigo returned, and he listened to Renji's half-imagined parts of songs as he tuned his own instrument and set up his effects pedals. He hadn't quite finished by the time Renji had settled on something, however. The deep, rhythmic sound sent a thrill through Ichigo, the low melody drawing him in like a tide. He was almost afraid to turn his amp on and put his hands to the strings, but once he did he found his face heating at the groan of unfulfilled desire that seemed to leap from them, drenched in echoing reverb and everlasting delay. Wondering briefly where the ghostly flutterings he was used to had gone, Ichigo listened in awe to the murmured whispers and soaring moans that seemed to be all he could produce now and how they seemed to mesh with the music Renji played as if they'd rehearsed it a thousand times before.
As Ichigo played, he tried to listen to what Renji was doing, but he kept getting lost in all of the sounds that flowed through and around him, feeling like a hollowed out reed only good for channeling music. At some point, Ichigo had no idea when, the sounds began to ebb and eventually stopped, the final notes dying in the air around them. He didn't know quite what he felt as he turned his head to look at Renji, but somewhere between manic energy and despair Ichigo felt that he'd just given the best performance of his life.
“I guess you can play.” Renji's voice sounded gruff, as if it had been a while since he'd spoken.
As Ichigo brought his hands away from the guitar, he realized for the first time that he had no idea how long they'd been playing. His hands felt cramped from being in the same positions for too long, however, and his fretting fingers had deep, angry lines cut into them. He hissed as put his pick down to flex his hands, then rubbed his fingertips against his thighs to try to bring some blood flow back into them.
“So,” Renji said, casually putting his bass down, “how about a break? You want a beer?”
Ichigo just watched for a moment as the man ducked into the mixing booth and did something with the equipment there. He regarded Renji with suspicion as he returned. “You recorded all of that?”
Renji smiled slyly. “Yeah, I set it up when you were out getting your amp. I didn't check the sound levels or anything, though, so it might all be crap, if anything peaked. Do you want to listen to the playback?”
“Yeah,” Ichigo replied, once he could get his voice working again, and followed Renji out to his kitchen.
“Don't worry, I've got it wired up so that you can hear it throughout the house,” Renji explained, handing Ichigo a beer.
He could only drink in silence for a few moments after he listened again to the primal moan his guitar had made once he’d started playing, only hoping he wasn't blushing.
“So, what did you think?” Renji drawled, looking at Ichigo in a way that told him that maybe he was blushing.
It ran through me like sunlight through a windowpane, Ichigo thought. It was a minute before he could force himself to reply, grudgingly, not wanting to inflate Renji's ego any more than it obviously already was. “I thought it sounded good.”
“You're damn right it did,” Renji said with a smirk, as if he'd heard what Ichigo hadn't said.
“Yeah, well, I sounded good,” Ichigo shot back, smirking a little on his own.
“I think it would have sounded better if someone had been practicing more than the past few days.”
Ichigo knew Renji had been kidding by the tone he'd made his careless comment in, but it still felt like salt thrown into a wound that hadn't really closed and Ichigo had to turn away momentarily. His eyes lit on the tiny speakers in the corners of the room as he did, and he took a calming breath before he turned back to look at Renji again, not quite meeting his eyes.
“How'd you find this place, anyway? It's really kind of perfect,” Ichigo ventured, finally darting a glance at Renji where he met the man's eyes.
From Renji's expression, Ichigo felt sure that he'd seen at least part of what Ichigo had tried to hide, but Renji accepted the change of topic anyway. “I didn't find it, I built it.”
Just staring at him for a moment, Ichigo wondered what Renji meant exactly while he mentally went over his own shortcomings in that department. Although he'd been the one to mostly set up the computer systems his father used in the clinic, Ichigo had always been worse than useless when something broke around the house. “You don't mean you built this whole place, do you?”
Renji laughed quietly and shook his head. “No, just my little piece of it.” He shrugged when Ichigo looked confused and continued. “I've known the slumlord who owns this place for a long time. A while ago, when he was complaining that the building was getting older and things were breaking down more, I offered to work as the super for the place as long as he let me build what I wanted in this corner and didn't charge me any rent for it. They'd only been keeping junk in the basement up until that, anyway, so one less corner didn't make that much of a difference. Of course he went for it, so I got to design this apartment from the bare walls up.”
“You built all this?” Ichigo looked around again, this time with new eyes. “By yourself?”
“I had some friends help sometimes, but yeah, I did most of it on my own,” Renji replied, not looking smug or arrogant now, but with a slight smile and what looked like pride in his expression. “I worked in pretty much all the building trades for years, so I was able to do most of the work myself. A couple of things I needed some help on, and I traded some of the more difficult plumbing tasks for helping a friend drywall his new house, but all the rest I did.”
“That's amazing,” Ichigo said, unable to help being awed, not keeping it out of his voice and not caring that he couldn't. The music took another soaring turn then and they both fell silent, Ichigo taking a drink of his beer and trying to ignore the ache in his chest as the music began to draw out of him things he hadn't felt in years.
It was late by the time the playback had finished, and Renji refused to erase what they'd done, saying that he'd mix the best parts and give the recordings to Ichigo the next time he came back. Then he'd confiscated Ichigo's mp3 player and hooked it up to his laptop to put a bunch of songs on it, saying, “Your musical education obviously sucks. If we're going to play any more music together, you've got to get some better taste.” He gave Ichigo a superior glance from under lifted eyebrows where he sat cross-legged on the couch, laptop on a cushion nearby.
“Of course my taste sucks,” Ichigo huffed, having moved from Renji's couch to a cushion on the floor, resting his second beer on his chest as he stared at the ceiling. For some reason, he hadn’t quite trusted himself to be that close to Renji. “I'm hanging out with you, aren't I?”
Renji laughed at that. “That's the reason that you fooled me in the first place, that you had good enough taste to want to be with me.”
Ichigo snorted to cover up the fact that he thought he was probably blushing again; the way Renji had said that just shouldn't have sounded so suggestive. Putting his hand over his eyes, Ichigo wondered again when it could possibly have happened that he'd become so flustered by a guy. After all, he'd never been interested in other guys. Before now, something in his mind helpfully supplied, and Ichigo closed his eyes, just barely stopping himself from groaning.
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Ichigo sat up quickly the next morning, hissing in his breath, looking around wildly. For a moment, he didn't recognize anything and wondered where the hell he'd ended up, fleece blanket half sliding to the floor as he leaned up on one elbow on the couch he laid on, trying to get a better look at the unfamiliar room around him.
“So, you're finally up,” a low voice behind him said, and something seemed to click in Ichigo's mind at the same time his cock twitched, reminding him about his morning wood.
Instead of answering, Ichigo turned over to lie on his stomach so that he could peer up over the counter and into the kitchen. At the same moment he smelled potatoes, onions, and fresh cracked pepper, another kind of hunger stirred in him as he watched Renji's biceps flex as he cooked. He was wearing some kind of tank top this morning, and showing off a series of dark inked slashes across his upper arms, and Ichigo tried not to hiss as his hips involuntarily thrust into the couch at the sight. “What are you making?” he asked, mentally cringing at his inability to think of a smart remark.
“You'll find out in a few minutes,” Renji replied, giving Ichigo a cocky smile over one shoulder. “If you want to take a shower in the meantime, it's the second door on the right. I put out some clean towels for you, but you'd better hurry if you want something to eat, or it'll all be gone.”
Ichigo grumbled as he rose to a sitting position and then stretched his arms up and over the back of the couch. Thankful for his foresight at un-tucking his shirt sometime the previous night, he shot Renji a quick look as he headed towards the shower. Any words he might have said stuck in his throat as he passed the partially open first door on the right, and he struggled not to look at the big unmade bed inside. He spent as little time as possible in the shower, trying not to give in to jerking off as he washed under the glacially cold spray, hoping it would calm him down a little.
He'd figured that breakfast with the man he'd had wisps of erotic dreams about all night would be an awkward affair, but it didn't take long until they were exchanging wisecracks as if they'd known each other for years.
“I mean, how did you even learn to cook anything like this, anyway?” Ichigo said between shoveling in bites of home-fried potatoes and pancakes.
Renji's eyes narrowed. “Cook anything like what?” he asked, his tone almost menacing.
Ichigo rolled his eyes. “Well, it's actually good.”
“Of course it's good,” Renji replied, straightening up in his chair. “You're probably one of those pathetic fucks who only knows how to boil water in the microwave, aren't you?”
“No!” Ichigo retorted, slightly stung that Renji had come somewhat close to the truth. “I can make pancakes, too.”
“Good, because you're cooking next time,” Renji said with a sly grin that seemed to tell Ichigo that admission had been Renji's aim all along.
Renji was carrying Ichigo’s amp once it was time to leave, and stood beside Ichigo on the pavement, still in the cut-off sweats he'd been wearing when Ichigo woke that morning. Ichigo tried hard not to think about how low they sat on his hips, low enough for him to spot the fangs of two tattoos edging their way down his abdomen. Ichigo continued not looking at the tempting sight of skin between the gap of Renji's sweats and the edge of his shirt as the man loaded the amp into Ichigo's car.
“So, you're coming to play some more next weekend, right?” Renji asked as Ichigo closed the rear door once all the gear was in the back seat. The way he said it, it sounded like he and Ichigo had already discussed it, which they hadn't yet. “It's the only way you'll stop sucking so bad, really.”
Ichigo blinked then, trying very hard to stop himself from blurting out something like, “What? When?” and instead managed to say, “Yeah, right. The only reason you want me to come by is to make you sound better. When do you want me to show up?”
Renji flashed a crocodile smile then, as if he grinned any wider the top of his head would come off. “How about when you get off on Friday? You can make me pancakes on Saturday morning.”
Determined not to say anything about the man's assumptions, Ichigo shrugged. “OK, I probably won't be here until about 7 or 8, though. Is that all right for the noise?”
Shrugging in turn, Renji replied, “The soundproofing in the studio is good, plus the guy who lives on the first floor over me is pretty much deaf, so it shouldn't be a problem.”
As he watched Renji wave once in the rearview, Ichigo told himself that it shouldn't seem normal to be spending his weekend with some guy he barely knew so that they could jam like a couple of band geeks, but the anticipation in his gut made the words ring hollow.
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Happy that his dreams no longer featured countless nightmares about being consumed by the darkness living just underneath his skin, Ichigo tried to ignore their new bent, at least until the night during the middle of the week when he woke up hard and sweating, unable to stop from grabbing his own hard cock and finishing himself off. Renji had starred in the dream, of course, like he had in many of Ichigo’s thoughts as time went by, but all he'd done was talk.
“I know you want me like this, Ichigo. I know you need me to push you, to make you do things you never would otherwise. I know you want me, and I know you want me to put it right in your face until you can't help but reach out. And I want you to, Ichigo. I want to you to show me what you like, because I'm going to turn around and do it all to you, until you come undone for me. And then we're going to do it all again, until you're heaving for breath and spent, sprawled naked over the covers. Come on, show me, Ichigo.”
And, oh, had he ever shown Renji. Although he’d already been naked in the dream, every touch he’d left on his own skin seemed to strip him to Renji more and more. He hadn't been able to find it in himself to mind, however, since Renji had been so obviously appreciative. He hadn't touched Ichigo himself, but his eyes had seemed glued to whatever Ichigo had done, and he’d kept commenting in that honeyed growl that made Ichigo's cock twitch.
“That’s it, keep touching yourself. Shit, do you even know how hot you look like that? Keep your hand on your cock and keep going because I want to watch you come.”
The more Renji had talked, the more Ichigo had felt like he wanted to show him. He’d showed Renji things he hadn't even known he’d liked himself. Ichigo figured he should probably have felt humiliated, but the only thing he’d felt under that hot gaze had been an amazing intensity of arousal. It had only taken about two strokes once he’d woken up before he came, and he’d had to grit his teeth to prevent himself from making some loud, embarrassing noises. After his heart had calmed down a little, Ichigo stripped out his sticky shorts and threw them in the direction of the laundry hamper, trying not to think about how far he was falling, and how quickly.
It hadn’t helped at all when he’d arrived at Renji’s the following Friday, when the man had rushed him inside and asked him to get set up right away. “I listened to what we did over the week and worked on some lyrics to a couple of the pieces that sounded really good. Do you want to try some of them out and see how everything sounds together?”
Ichigo nodded, thinking only of how well that low growl he remembered from his dreams would sound along with what they’d been playing. He tried hard to get the idea out of his head as he tuned, but once they’d begun to play, Ichigo felt like all the air had been punched out of his lungs the moment Renji started to sing. Willing his hands to keep playing, Ichigo found he couldn't really hear the lyrics Renji was singing; just the sound of his voice and the tone seemed to cause his mental processes to shut down. Somehow, the music itself seemed to have taken over, because Ichigo knew that he hadn't been thinking at all about what he’d played. Hoping he wasn't sounding too terrible, he found all he could really focus on was listening. Once again, when the music had trickled to a stop and Renji had shut down the recording equipment, Ichigo was surprised and uncertain as to how long they'd been at it, but this time he also felt bereft, somehow, wishing that they were still playing.
He found that he was still unable to really think of anything to say until after he'd been in the living room a while, sitting on the floor with his back to the couch, drinking a beer and listening to the playback. Even Renji seemed unusually quiet, perched on one arm of the couch, holding his beer thoughtfully and looking at one of the speakers as if he were seeing the music that sounded through the air around them. Ichigo knew he’d wandered back into the everyday world by the time he had to stop himself from focusing on Renji's long, strong hands on the bottle he was holding.
As the music continued to play, they'd ended up lying on the living room floor, Ichigo in one direction with his head on one corner of a big throw pillow and Renji laid out in the other direction, head resting on the opposite corner. Neither one of them seemed to want to discuss what they'd heard, instead talking about whatever popped into their heads. “How did you end up playing bass, anyway?” Ichigo heard himself asking at one point, right after they'd jumped around through the topics of the origins of punk rock and the difficulties of bike riding in the city.
He felt, rather than saw, Renji shrug as he moved the big cushion they were both resting their heads on. “Well, I'd wanted to be in a band for a couple years while I was in high school, but I didn't have money for an instrument. It was when I threatened to drop out of school and run away to join this one bunch of guys I knew who were planning to do some touring that my foster mother took action.”
Renji sat up a little to take another sip of his beer, and Ichigo looked over from where he lay to watch. “Anyway, she called her younger brother, the one she'd always said was lazy and shiftless, because he was a touring musician. So, I spent the summer being his roadie, and I found out how unglamorous and poorly paying it all was. All good to know, but it didn't stop me from wanting to play anyway. Towards the end of the summer he took me to a pawn shop and got me an old Gibson bass and a crappy amp cheap, to pay me for all my help, he said. I had that thing for years, nearly played the frets off of it, until I finally moved over to playing short scale basses like the Mustang.”
He gestured with his shoulder vaguely back to the recording studio where Ichigo knew he kept his bass. Ichigo nodded, knowing that Renji could probably feel the gesture even if he couldn't see it, and considered. Renji had never mentioned his past at all before, and it made Ichigo intensely curious, especially about his reference to foster parents. Before he could ask any of the embarrassing questions he was thinking about, however, he heard Renji say, “What about you? When did you get your first guitar?”
Ichigo leaned over to take another sip of his beer before answering, putting the half-full bottle over to the side near the couch as he finished. “Well, I don't know if you'd really call it my first guitar, but I adopted the one that used to belong to my mom when I was about ten. She gave me some lessons when I was younger, but I really didn't start playing it a lot until after she was gone.”
Renji craned his head in Ichigo's direction at that. “Where'd she go?”
Smiling to himself, Ichigo raised an eyebrow, thinking that apparently Renji didn't have any trouble asking whatever questions came into his mind. He knew he was frowning a little as he answered, however. “She, um, she died in a car accident. I came home from school one day and my dad told me she was gone.”
The response he got surprised Ichigo so much that it threw him out of the melancholy he might have been about to slip into. “Shit, man, I'm sorry to hear that.” To Ichigo's surprise, Renji actually did sound sorry, unlike a lot of people who'd just say something like that as a reflex.
Ichigo shrugged then, realizing to his surprise that he was actually smiling. “It's...well, I won't say I don't still miss her, but it's a lot less fresh, if that makes any sense.” He leaned back on the pillow, trying to see Renji's face to gauge his expression, but shrugged again when he couldn't see the other man. “Anyway, after I played that one for years, I managed to get my dad to buy me an electric when I was a teenager, and that's when Chad and I started playing together. I got the one I have now a few years after I got out of college.”
The guitar, along with the apartment he'd bought, had been the two things he'd gotten to really celebrate the success of Insane Clown Circus. It had been expensive at the time, probably too expensive, but he'd wanted one like it since he'd first seen them. “Yeah, that Rick you have now is pretty sweet,” Renji said, breaking into his thoughts.
Ichigo couldn't help but smile at the ceiling at that, wondering how Renji had possibly managed to vaguely compliment him.
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Strangely, Ichigo knew exactly where he was when he woke up the next day. Blinking at the ceiling light fixture, he slowly stretched and sat up, somehow not feeling too rough even though he'd spent the night on the floor. When he yawned and turned a moment later, he was surprised to see Renji still sleeping where he'd ended up the previous night. At some point, he'd freed his hair from the ridiculous high ponytail he usually wore, and Ichigo couldn't help but stare at the vibrant color, trying to stop himself from reaching out to stroke the strands to find out how soft they really were.
Trying to derail his thoughts, Ichigo’s gaze wandered Renji’s face, realizing that he never got a chance to study the man like this while he was awake, afraid of what he’d see in those sharp eyes, or worse, what Renji would discover in his own. For some reason, instead of looking like some kind of storybook demon, like he could sometimes when he shot Ichigo one of those wicked grins, Renji looked like something more ethereal when he slept, the inked lines seeming to emphasize his long leanness.
Scrubbing a hand over his face in disbelief, Ichigo stood and made his way to the bathroom for a shower, trying not to think about the fact that he’d just been watching another man-his friend, he could probably admit-sleeping, and had been admiring him. He really tried hard to forget about the fact that Renji hadn’t touched him since they’d run into one another in the bar the evening they'd watched Minor Key...at least until he decided to give himself a break for a few minutes while he was under the spray. Closing his eyes, all he saw was Renji’s bright red hair dipping over one eye as he leaned forward for a kiss, and he swore he could feel those big hands all over his body. Hoping that the shower, and the lip he’d nearly bitten through, had muffled the noise he’d made when he came, Ichigo dressed and went out to see about getting some breakfast ready.
He fumbled through Renji's cabinets as quietly as possible, finding ingredients and cookware as he went, and was in the middle of cooking the second pancake, watching the edge carefully to determine when to flip it as Yuzu had taught him, when a sound made him turn around.
“So you can cook,” Renji said, his voice full of dark humor and still rough from sleep.
“Yeah, but it's sort of a close thing, so if you want anything to eat this morning, you'd better not distract me,” Ichigo replied, brandishing a spatula. His gaze automatically fell to where Renji's shirt had ridden up slightly and Ichigo spotted the dark lines of tattoos across his belly, more than he'd been able to see before. Looking away, Ichigo met Renji's eyes briefly and noted that the man was smiling sleepily as he ran a hand through his long red hair.
Ichigo turned away entirely a moment later, nervously flipping the pancake over and frowning as he realized it had gotten a bit browner than he'd intended. He tried not to gasp a moment later as he felt Renji behind him, sliding into the narrow kitchen, not touching but more than close enough to.
“I guess unless that's all we want, I'd better get busy, too,” Renji said, opening the refrigerator to stare inside.
Ichigo couldn't have said afterwards if everything had gone smoothly or exactly what they'd eaten for breakfast. Having spent a good portion of the morning so close to Renji but not touching had been hell on his nerves, and he found that although part of him didn't want to leave when it was time, the rest of him was grateful that he didn't have to spend another few hours trying not to reach out and grab the redhead.
He did have a clear memory of getting ready to go, however, of him and Renji out at his car loading his gear into the back. “You know,” Renji had said casually as he handed Ichigo's amp over, “you don't have to park out on the street when you visit. I have a space at the back of the building, but I haven't had a car for years, so you can use it.”
“So how do you get your gear out to shows?” Ichigo asked, straightening up after putting his amp in the back seat.
“Oh, somehow I'm always able to get one of my bandmates to come and get me on show days,” he said with a smirk. “Same time next Friday?”
Ichigo nodded as he got back into his car, wondering as he drove off how long this would last. He still played for hours in the evenings and had begun absently jotting down new song ideas in the more boring meetings he attended. Also, strangely, though he hadn't been part of the teams coding new games for years, Ichigo found new game ideas coming to mind as well. Since that had been something else that had dried up in his years in the creative desert, probably even before his music had, he'd catch himself sketching out ideas sometimes and then force himself to stop, unsure in a way he'd never been before his dry spell.
The following week when he visited Renji was been both worse and better, in a way. As had become usual for the two of them, they played for hours, this time focusing on a few of the pieces they'd played before and really liked, feeling around to see if the music would gel into songs. They went out to the living room later to listen to the playback, and after a while Renji had given Ichigo an odd look, but he was unable to tell from the redhead's expression what it was about.
“You know, I saw this the other day and for some reason I thought of you,” Renji finally said, throwing something in Ichigo's direction. “Probably because there were so many guitar players in it. I swear, you guys are a dime a dozen.”
Ichigo caught the item, which turned out to be a DVD, and turned it over, reading the description of the film with wide eyes. They'd recorded the meeting of three guitar players, Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin (music he'd listened to way too much in his early teens), the Edge from U2 (who'd always been a hero of his and someone he'd modeled his early playing style after), and Jack White of The White Stripes. He immediately itched to watch it and looked over at Renji, who laughed and grabbed the disc back from him, then put it in the player.
They'd stopped the film partway through so that Ichigo could get his guitar, and of course Renji had grabbed his bass as well, and they spent the rest of the film seeing who could pick up licks the fastest and playing little snatches of things that sometimes sounded complementary and sometimes competitive. When it had finished and Renji went to pull the DVD out of the player, Ichigo noticed a stack of videos on the side table and put his guitar aside to thumb through them, his eyebrows raised after a moment.
“You have the biggest collection of crappy horror films that I've ever seen,” he finally stated, smugly.
Renji turned to him with a look of challenge on his face. “Oh, you have a problem with horror films, then? I bet it's because they make you scream like a little kid.”
Ichigo gave Renji his best hard stare. “Bring it on, dumbass. I bet you'll be screaming before I will.”
And so the rest of the evening was spent with the two of them critiquing the movies as they watched them, comparing the quality of various special effects or giving instructions to the characters on screen that, of course, went unheard.
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Ichigo remembered breathing in first, and the scent that reached him seemed to bring with it the sense that everything was all right, something he couldn't recall feeling for a long time. Waking seemed to come in stages, and the main sensation pushing him to wakefulness seemed to be that he'd been in an uncomfortable position for too long. As he blinked, Ichigo saw that it looked like the TV had turned itself off and the only light seemed dim and far away, probably coming from the light over the stove in the kitchen.
He groaned softly as he realized what position he'd ended up in. It seemed he'd fallen over from where he'd been sitting on the couch earlier and now he was lying partially on a couch cushion and partially on the arm of the couch, one arm curled awkwardly beneath him. As he shifted to try to get into a more comfortable position, Ichigo had another realization, suddenly becoming aware of being pinned to the couch. When he looked down to figure out why, all he could focus on was the long red hair fanned out along the cushion he partially rested on, not far from his face.
As some of the rest of his senses returned, Ichigo took stock and finally spotted one of Renji's legs slung over his own, pressing him to the back of the couch. He almost smiled at the ridiculousness of the situation, but it got stuck somewhere as he breathed in and smelled something fresh and slightly sweet. Ichigo clenched his free hand, telling himself that it would be wrong to touch his friend while he slept, but after a few moments he bit his lip and shook his head, tired of trying to deny to himself what was happening. Touching the strand of red hair farthest from Renji, Ichigo yanked his hand back a second later, images of running his hands through that hair and digging his fingers into Renji's scalp flooding his mind. He sighed in defeat as he didn't even attempt to tell himself that he should get up and sleep somewhere else, instead wriggling farther down onto the couch so that his arm wasn't bent at such an odd angle and his head rested completely on the cushion.
Ichigo closed his eyes as he realized that Renji's hair was now right in front of him. He let his head drop then, burying his face into red hair and breathing deeply, trying not to think about the effect that all that wiggling around between the couch and Renji's body had had on him.
Only I would be dumb enough to fall for the most annoying guy I've ever met, he thought with 2AM clarity as he slung an arm around Renji and drifted off again.
He awoke sometime later, alone on the couch and sleeping on his stomach. Closing his eyes again as he sat up, Ichigo struggled to ignore the sense of emptiness he felt and scrubbed a hand through his hair. Cursing himself for being a fool, he staggered over to the coffee machine to get it going, steadfastly not thinking about the subtle sound of the shower going down the hall.
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Comments about what you liked and what you think could be improved are most welcome!
-WriterX
P.S. For any of you who haven't yet seen It Might Get Loud, the film Renji and Ichigo watch, I recommend it highly!
Click here for Elevation, Refrain