The Suit - Chapter 5 (Bleach, Sado/Ishida)
Title: The Suit, Chapter 5/10
Rating: currently R
Pairing: Sado/Ishida
Warnings: Set in Bleach universe, but the time skip made it A/R. Alcohol use. Sexual concepts. Violence in later chapters.
Summary: With less than a year left before Uryuu heads off to university, he'd been certain he'd avoid all the complications and distractions of a high-school romance. His attraction to Chad threatens to throw a wrench in his neatly-laid plans.
Chapter 5
Lazy Sundays turn to Mondays too soon
Uryuu's head was pounding when he woke up, and his tongue felt swollen and sticky in his mouth. He shifted, suppressing a groan... and he realized that the inside of his boxers was sticky, as well. His eyes flew open, early morning light stabbing into them. Squinting and gritting his teeth, Uryuu slid out from under Chad's arm, not even attempting to be careful about it, and lurched into the bathroom.
He didn't remember falling asleep. The last thing he remembered was Chad petting him... and he remembered that he had really liked it. That he'd had an erection. Had he...? Pulse racing, he closed the bathroom door behind him, catching a glance of his dark, mussed hair and bone-white face in the mirror. Bracing himself on the sink, he squeezed his eyes closed and swallowed convulsively to suppress his gag reflex, and he breathed deeply through his nose until the threat of heaving into the sink passed.
That finally taken care of, with shaking hands he pulled the waistband of his underwear away from his skin and squinted down.
He slumped in relief when the inside of his underwear showed no stiff, crusty evidence of orgasm. It was a little sticky, and that was all; he'd been so turned on he'd leaked a bit. Which was somewhat embarrassing, but nothing as bad as he'd feared.
After he'd emptied his bladder, taken an aspirin with a few tiny paper cups full of water and brushed his teeth, he shuffled back out of the bathroom. The covers on his side of the bed were still warm when he crawled under them. Chad shifted, mumbled something unintelligible, and rolled onto his back, and Uryuu glanced over at him. Then slammed his eyes shut, because the tent Chad made under the blanket was just ridiculous.
Somehow, he fell asleep again, even after Chad rolled over and that ridiculous thing bumped against the back of his thigh. Later when he awoke, he thought that with the hangover he had, it was a miracle that he had woken up at all.
He kind of wished he hadn't. His head throbbed like a rotten tooth, and the earlier bone-white of his face would have been an improvement on the corpse-grey it had turned. He fumbled in his toiletries case for the bottle of aspirin again and realized that earlier this morning, he must have still been a little drunk.
He shuffled out of the bathroom yawning and wishing he could stop. It felt as though he had old, creaking rubber bands running from the hinge of his jaw to his temples, ones that twanged and cracked and threatened to break.
"Aspirin," he croaked, holding the bottle up.
"Ugh," Ichigo complained, the tiny, swollen slits of his eyelids revealing heavily bloodshot eyes. His hand trembled in the air before he managed to grab the bottle, then he disappeared into the bathroom.
Keeping his eyes nearly closed against the light, Uryuu managed to pack his bags, not caring if he didn't do quite as neat a job this time. There were limits, he thought, to how tidy he could expect himself to be, when he was suffering from a hangover of these proportions.
Chad didn't look so hot, either; when Uryuu finally stopped concentrating on making sure he wasn't leaving half his closet behind, he noticed that Chad's skin looked ashen and dull. His eyes were hidden, and at that moment Uryuu envied Chad his thick, unruly head of hair.
After a wordless breakfast in the hotel lobby, during which Uryuu and Chad carefully choked down a dry bagel each and Ichigo mechanically consumed a huge plate of food, inserting mouthful after mouthful of eggs and sausage and hash browns and jellied toast in steady, measured bites that Uryuu could barely stand to watch, they boarded the train back to Karakura Town.
***
A subtle difference in the sounds of the train on the tracks invaded Uryuu's awareness, and he hazily lifted his head from the back of the seat. Miraculously, he'd fallen asleep again. It was also something of a minor miracle that this time when he woke, the pounding in his head and the nausea that he'd feared would overspill when the trip began had both eased back, and now were perfectly manageable discomforts. Not that he felt great, but it was an immense improvement.
He turned his head to the right, neck creaking, and recognized a small huddle of buildings as they passed them. They were about five minutes outside of Karakura Town.
Yawning, he rolled his head to the left. Ichigo and Chad took up most of a center-facing bench, legs sprawled out into the aisle. Dark glasses covered most of Ichigo's face, pointed up toward the ceiling of the train car, and his mouth was wide open.
Chad's hands rested, loosely curled, at his sides, palms up. Uryuu stared blearily at them for several minutes, at the long, strong fingers, and his mind leapt back to the night before: the dark, the goosebumps on his skin, the prickly heat in his groin, the sound of Chad's breath in his ear. He swallowed, the ramifications of that settling into place now that his mind wasn't occupied with keeping his body from losing its breakfast or passing out. What was that? What had happened, exactly... and what had it meant? Had it meant anything at all?
He frowned at Chad's hands and drew his gaze up Chad's broad chest to his face. Chad's chin rested on his collarbones and Uryuu now noticed, as he had understandably missed earlier this morning, that Chad's dark hair, never especially neat, was a complete mess. It was a mass of tangles, and the left side of it above his ear was ratted up in a thick brown cloud. Presumably, where he had slept on it, and in the grainy, hungover confusion of this morning forgotten to brush it.
In spite of himself and his queasy, uncertain mood, Uryuu smiled a little to see Chad looking so rumpled.
Chad smiled back.
Uryuu's heart leapt up into his throat, but he managed to keep his expression under control. "Your hair," he explained, and he raised his hand to the side of his head to mime brushing it down.
"Oh. Thanks." Chad said, still smiling-the first words Uryuu had heard him say since the previous night. His voice, even on those two short syllables, was rough, gravelly. Sitting upright, he combed his fingers through the tangles, patting it down. Uryuu faced the front of the train, and they pulled into the station, the squealing brakes shooting needles of pain into Uryuu's temples.
***
Uryuu waved a wordless goodbye to Chad as Chad boarded the city bus that would take him home, and Uryuu climbed onto the eastbound bus behind Ichigo. They sat side-by-side, squinting out the windows at the way the town seemed to glitter in the morning sunlight.
Uryuu sighed, took a breath, and attempted to banish the uncharacteristic uncertainty that plagued him. He wasn't the type to angst over things like this, for heaven's sake.
Which was why he'd hoped to avoid it altogether until college. But he was at least a little entangled, and stewing in indecision had him anxious.
He needed more information before he could come to any satisfactory conclusion. Luckily, he had a source only a few inches away, his head lolling against the back of the seat.
"Has Chad ever had a girlfriend?" he asked Ichigo.
Ichigo jerked in his seat, then cleared his throat before he answered. "Yeah. Kind of."
"What do you mean, kind of?"
"Well... there was this girl a few years ago. He liked her a lot-gave her little presents, carried her books. You know. It was kind of cute, really, seeing them together. She was just this little thing, half his size it looked like, and they were always hugging, or he'd have his arm around her, or his head in her lap."
The bus passed under a bridge, and the light boomed back in when they came out from under it. There came a long pause, during which Uryuu slid his dry tongue around in his mouth and swallowed. Ichigo squeezed his eyes closed and kept them closed as he continued speaking.
"They only went out for a few weeks, though. One day she just... didn't come eat lunch with us, and that was that. Chad was pretty broken up about it. Didn't really show it-you know Chad-but he moped around for a couple months, after that."
"...What happened?"
"He never told me. My guess is she got impatient when Chad didn't try to do anything more than hug."
Uryuu pondered that for a moment.
"Just hug?"
"Yeah, I guess. I mean, I never saw them kissing or anything else. Just a lot of cuddly stuff. It got a little sickening, after awhile."
Uryuu attempted to process this new information, but he didn't get very far, his head filled with cotton as it was.
"And since then?"
Ichigo's head rolled to the side, and he looked at Uryuu askance from the corner of one eye.
"I think that was it, from what I've seen anyway. I haven't seen him with anyone else-I don't know if he's even liked anyone else."
"That seems strange. I mean, you'd think he-"
"It's not like he doesn't get hit on. When we go out, girls come up to him all the time. Nothing ever happens, though."
"Why not?" Uryuu asked, frowning.
"Well, you see a guy like Chad, you think he's gotta be packing, right?"
Uryuu blinked, and Ichigo went right on. "That, and I guess they think he's a lot older. I don't know, maybe they just look at him and they like him." Ichigo stopped to yawn, balling his fist over his mouth, then leaned his head back again. "But they start flirting with him, then they find out he doesn't flirt back, doesn't dance, doesn't even hold up his end of the conversation, and... " Ichigo shrugged, then threw his arm over his face as the bus took a turn and sunlight slanted in through the window. "Too much work. They look elsewhere."
"That makes sense," Uryuu said, sliding his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Why the sudden curiosity?" Ichigo asked. Then he laughed, and grimaced as if he wished he hadn't. "Last night bug you or something? I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it."
"No, nothing like that," Uryuu said, standing on rubbery legs to pull his suitcase out of the overhead compartment as they neared his stop. "I just realized that I don't know him very well. And you know him better than anyone."
"Yeah." Ichigo waved his hand dismissively. "You don't have to ask me, though. He likes you. He'll talk to you-you just have to get the ball rolling."
Uryuu breathed out a short breath, and grabbed onto a handrail as the bus lurched to a stop. The doors opened with a hiss.
Just before he exited the bus, he stopped. "Thanks," he said.
One arm still slung over his eyes, Ichigo gave him a jaunty wave with his ring- and pinky-fingers tucked into his palm.
Uryuu rolled his eyes and walked away.
TBC...
A/N: Posting before the ice storm hits, lol. Also, there are a couple more sketches in the The Suit doodle folder :D
Lyrics (c) The Hellacopters - No Song Unheard
previous chapter | next chapter
Rating: currently R
Pairing: Sado/Ishida
Warnings: Set in Bleach universe, but the time skip made it A/R. Alcohol use. Sexual concepts. Violence in later chapters.
Summary: With less than a year left before Uryuu heads off to university, he'd been certain he'd avoid all the complications and distractions of a high-school romance. His attraction to Chad threatens to throw a wrench in his neatly-laid plans.
Chapter 5
Lazy Sundays turn to Mondays too soon
Uryuu's head was pounding when he woke up, and his tongue felt swollen and sticky in his mouth. He shifted, suppressing a groan... and he realized that the inside of his boxers was sticky, as well. His eyes flew open, early morning light stabbing into them. Squinting and gritting his teeth, Uryuu slid out from under Chad's arm, not even attempting to be careful about it, and lurched into the bathroom.
He didn't remember falling asleep. The last thing he remembered was Chad petting him... and he remembered that he had really liked it. That he'd had an erection. Had he...? Pulse racing, he closed the bathroom door behind him, catching a glance of his dark, mussed hair and bone-white face in the mirror. Bracing himself on the sink, he squeezed his eyes closed and swallowed convulsively to suppress his gag reflex, and he breathed deeply through his nose until the threat of heaving into the sink passed.
That finally taken care of, with shaking hands he pulled the waistband of his underwear away from his skin and squinted down.
He slumped in relief when the inside of his underwear showed no stiff, crusty evidence of orgasm. It was a little sticky, and that was all; he'd been so turned on he'd leaked a bit. Which was somewhat embarrassing, but nothing as bad as he'd feared.
After he'd emptied his bladder, taken an aspirin with a few tiny paper cups full of water and brushed his teeth, he shuffled back out of the bathroom. The covers on his side of the bed were still warm when he crawled under them. Chad shifted, mumbled something unintelligible, and rolled onto his back, and Uryuu glanced over at him. Then slammed his eyes shut, because the tent Chad made under the blanket was just ridiculous.
Somehow, he fell asleep again, even after Chad rolled over and that ridiculous thing bumped against the back of his thigh. Later when he awoke, he thought that with the hangover he had, it was a miracle that he had woken up at all.
He kind of wished he hadn't. His head throbbed like a rotten tooth, and the earlier bone-white of his face would have been an improvement on the corpse-grey it had turned. He fumbled in his toiletries case for the bottle of aspirin again and realized that earlier this morning, he must have still been a little drunk.
He shuffled out of the bathroom yawning and wishing he could stop. It felt as though he had old, creaking rubber bands running from the hinge of his jaw to his temples, ones that twanged and cracked and threatened to break.
"Aspirin," he croaked, holding the bottle up.
"Ugh," Ichigo complained, the tiny, swollen slits of his eyelids revealing heavily bloodshot eyes. His hand trembled in the air before he managed to grab the bottle, then he disappeared into the bathroom.
Keeping his eyes nearly closed against the light, Uryuu managed to pack his bags, not caring if he didn't do quite as neat a job this time. There were limits, he thought, to how tidy he could expect himself to be, when he was suffering from a hangover of these proportions.
Chad didn't look so hot, either; when Uryuu finally stopped concentrating on making sure he wasn't leaving half his closet behind, he noticed that Chad's skin looked ashen and dull. His eyes were hidden, and at that moment Uryuu envied Chad his thick, unruly head of hair.
After a wordless breakfast in the hotel lobby, during which Uryuu and Chad carefully choked down a dry bagel each and Ichigo mechanically consumed a huge plate of food, inserting mouthful after mouthful of eggs and sausage and hash browns and jellied toast in steady, measured bites that Uryuu could barely stand to watch, they boarded the train back to Karakura Town.
***
A subtle difference in the sounds of the train on the tracks invaded Uryuu's awareness, and he hazily lifted his head from the back of the seat. Miraculously, he'd fallen asleep again. It was also something of a minor miracle that this time when he woke, the pounding in his head and the nausea that he'd feared would overspill when the trip began had both eased back, and now were perfectly manageable discomforts. Not that he felt great, but it was an immense improvement.
He turned his head to the right, neck creaking, and recognized a small huddle of buildings as they passed them. They were about five minutes outside of Karakura Town.
Yawning, he rolled his head to the left. Ichigo and Chad took up most of a center-facing bench, legs sprawled out into the aisle. Dark glasses covered most of Ichigo's face, pointed up toward the ceiling of the train car, and his mouth was wide open.
Chad's hands rested, loosely curled, at his sides, palms up. Uryuu stared blearily at them for several minutes, at the long, strong fingers, and his mind leapt back to the night before: the dark, the goosebumps on his skin, the prickly heat in his groin, the sound of Chad's breath in his ear. He swallowed, the ramifications of that settling into place now that his mind wasn't occupied with keeping his body from losing its breakfast or passing out. What was that? What had happened, exactly... and what had it meant? Had it meant anything at all?
He frowned at Chad's hands and drew his gaze up Chad's broad chest to his face. Chad's chin rested on his collarbones and Uryuu now noticed, as he had understandably missed earlier this morning, that Chad's dark hair, never especially neat, was a complete mess. It was a mass of tangles, and the left side of it above his ear was ratted up in a thick brown cloud. Presumably, where he had slept on it, and in the grainy, hungover confusion of this morning forgotten to brush it.
In spite of himself and his queasy, uncertain mood, Uryuu smiled a little to see Chad looking so rumpled.
Chad smiled back.
Uryuu's heart leapt up into his throat, but he managed to keep his expression under control. "Your hair," he explained, and he raised his hand to the side of his head to mime brushing it down.
"Oh. Thanks." Chad said, still smiling-the first words Uryuu had heard him say since the previous night. His voice, even on those two short syllables, was rough, gravelly. Sitting upright, he combed his fingers through the tangles, patting it down. Uryuu faced the front of the train, and they pulled into the station, the squealing brakes shooting needles of pain into Uryuu's temples.
***
Uryuu waved a wordless goodbye to Chad as Chad boarded the city bus that would take him home, and Uryuu climbed onto the eastbound bus behind Ichigo. They sat side-by-side, squinting out the windows at the way the town seemed to glitter in the morning sunlight.
Uryuu sighed, took a breath, and attempted to banish the uncharacteristic uncertainty that plagued him. He wasn't the type to angst over things like this, for heaven's sake.
Which was why he'd hoped to avoid it altogether until college. But he was at least a little entangled, and stewing in indecision had him anxious.
He needed more information before he could come to any satisfactory conclusion. Luckily, he had a source only a few inches away, his head lolling against the back of the seat.
"Has Chad ever had a girlfriend?" he asked Ichigo.
Ichigo jerked in his seat, then cleared his throat before he answered. "Yeah. Kind of."
"What do you mean, kind of?"
"Well... there was this girl a few years ago. He liked her a lot-gave her little presents, carried her books. You know. It was kind of cute, really, seeing them together. She was just this little thing, half his size it looked like, and they were always hugging, or he'd have his arm around her, or his head in her lap."
The bus passed under a bridge, and the light boomed back in when they came out from under it. There came a long pause, during which Uryuu slid his dry tongue around in his mouth and swallowed. Ichigo squeezed his eyes closed and kept them closed as he continued speaking.
"They only went out for a few weeks, though. One day she just... didn't come eat lunch with us, and that was that. Chad was pretty broken up about it. Didn't really show it-you know Chad-but he moped around for a couple months, after that."
"...What happened?"
"He never told me. My guess is she got impatient when Chad didn't try to do anything more than hug."
Uryuu pondered that for a moment.
"Just hug?"
"Yeah, I guess. I mean, I never saw them kissing or anything else. Just a lot of cuddly stuff. It got a little sickening, after awhile."
Uryuu attempted to process this new information, but he didn't get very far, his head filled with cotton as it was.
"And since then?"
Ichigo's head rolled to the side, and he looked at Uryuu askance from the corner of one eye.
"I think that was it, from what I've seen anyway. I haven't seen him with anyone else-I don't know if he's even liked anyone else."
"That seems strange. I mean, you'd think he-"
"It's not like he doesn't get hit on. When we go out, girls come up to him all the time. Nothing ever happens, though."
"Why not?" Uryuu asked, frowning.
"Well, you see a guy like Chad, you think he's gotta be packing, right?"
Uryuu blinked, and Ichigo went right on. "That, and I guess they think he's a lot older. I don't know, maybe they just look at him and they like him." Ichigo stopped to yawn, balling his fist over his mouth, then leaned his head back again. "But they start flirting with him, then they find out he doesn't flirt back, doesn't dance, doesn't even hold up his end of the conversation, and... " Ichigo shrugged, then threw his arm over his face as the bus took a turn and sunlight slanted in through the window. "Too much work. They look elsewhere."
"That makes sense," Uryuu said, sliding his glasses off and pinching the bridge of his nose.
"Why the sudden curiosity?" Ichigo asked. Then he laughed, and grimaced as if he wished he hadn't. "Last night bug you or something? I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it."
"No, nothing like that," Uryuu said, standing on rubbery legs to pull his suitcase out of the overhead compartment as they neared his stop. "I just realized that I don't know him very well. And you know him better than anyone."
"Yeah." Ichigo waved his hand dismissively. "You don't have to ask me, though. He likes you. He'll talk to you-you just have to get the ball rolling."
Uryuu breathed out a short breath, and grabbed onto a handrail as the bus lurched to a stop. The doors opened with a hiss.
Just before he exited the bus, he stopped. "Thanks," he said.
One arm still slung over his eyes, Ichigo gave him a jaunty wave with his ring- and pinky-fingers tucked into his palm.
Uryuu rolled his eyes and walked away.
TBC...
A/N: Posting before the ice storm hits, lol. Also, there are a couple more sketches in the The Suit doodle folder :D
Lyrics (c) The Hellacopters - No Song Unheard
previous chapter | next chapter