(no subject)
*DIES LAUGHING...OR RATHER, JUST PLAIN DIES*
He despised himself for his petulant, self-sorry sulks, but Ishida had one for a while, anyway, flopping around on his well-worn couch and stuffing the pillow over his head occassionally, as though that would make everything go away. His head was killing him, and he felt rather nauseous. Kurosaki and Inoue had spoken of a night together at her house "hanging out", which as any respectable teenager knew, was arcane slang for "having sex". As much as it pained him to do it, Ishida couldn't stop thinking of that offhand comment now, of the level of their relationship. They'd already gone that extra mile, so to speak, and he'd known it - had watched them avoid each other, pointedly, with twin blushes on their faces that made it obvious - but he was tormented with the details, things he thought of and wished for that made him a sincerely unreliable friend.
He groaned, rolled over, and tried to bury himself even deeper in the sofa. He hated when he got on this particular vein, because when he thought about the two of them having sex, he thought about sex in general (most often sex with Inoue, though once or twice Kurosaki had slipped in there in a manner that was disconcerting), and when he thought about that, he generally had to go soak himself in an ice-cold bath for a while before he could put his pants back on again.
To prevent that from happening, he crossed to the phonograph and put on the "Fur Elise", a melancholic and intense piece that generally kept him wallowing in self-pity, as opposed to thinking any sort of indecent thoughts. He paced, as he always did, and toyed with a spare sewing needle subconsciously, unaware of it even as he started to draw blood.
Inoue. He'd have to think of an appropriate excuse for his behavior today, one that would nullify any and all suspicion about his ugliness and his fears. Ironically, it would be easy to fool Kurosaki, but Inoue was made of more sensitive stuff, and would likely doubt that whatever it was he said was said at face value. She was far more perceptive than anyone he had ever met, when she chose to be, and though he refused to let himself be assuaged by the fact that she did choose to pay attention to him, he couldn't help himself, and felt that same fluttering of hope from around his ribcage that he always did when that thought came to mind.
Still, he had just decided on a gastro-intestinal emergency as an excuse when there was a loud banging on the door, one that startled him outright. Ishida moved to the corner of the room hastily removed the needle from the phonograph with a comical scritching sound, and held his breath, trying to pretend he wasn't home. It could have worked; he had been pacing in the dark, and the door was locked, but he suspected that the volume of his "Fur Elise" had given him away.
It had. The pounding continued, with increased volume, and Ishida stomped at last to the door, afraid the noise would cause the neighbors to complain. He undid the lock and threw back the deadbolt, and when he finally wrenched the door open with no small amount of deadly annoyance, he was stunned to see that it was none other than Kurosaki and Inoue, looking windswept and concerned. The evening sky had clouded in a way that suggested rain, and the two of them were carrying umbrellas as proof of that, warm storm-like winds starting up from the east. Ishida wanted to turn them away, but realized it would be painstakingly rude in the face of such weather, even if he had his reasons. He conceded defeat and pulled open the door the rest of the way, though he offered no hospitalities as the two of them stepped inside.
When the door closed, encasing them in shadow, he spoke. "What is it?"
"'What is it'?!" Kurosaki repeated, taking a step forward, before seeming to think better of it and shaking his head in disgust. "You start avoiding us, dash outta school today like your ass is on fire... We should be asking you 'what is it?', not the other way around!"
"We're just worried, that's all..." Inoue offered, in a small voice, and it was that voice that threatened to break him, that threatened to make him confess everything, from his awkwardness to his jealously to his unendearing realization that he didn't want to be alone, not while the two of them were so happy. That he was a leech, and that if they let him, he'd suck their blood until they all fell.
But the Quincy steeled himself, in the name of his beloved ancestral pride, and turned his head sharply away. "It's nothing."
That, obviously, was a substandard explanation, and it was one that people never believed even when it was true, so he tried again. "I've been under a lot of stress lately."
"Then share it with us, you dumbass! That's what friends are there for!" Kurosaki grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake, and it was that that surprised Ishida more than his words. They had always had an informal rule between the two of them, one they rarely crossed: no touching. Kurosaki always touched his other friends, in casual, empty gestures: punching Asano in the arm, ruffling Mizuno's hair, throwing an arm around Sado in the best way that he could...but he never touched Ishida, except when he was very angry, or very afraid. Dimly, the archer wondered just which one it was now.
"You always did have a loose definition of the word 'friend'..." he murmured, trying to sound unaffected, and it seemed to work: Kurosaki 'tch'ed, and pushed him away, though he flexed his hands in a manner that suggested that he'd wanted to hold on. Ishida made a great show of rolling his shoulders back before turning to Inoue, fake polite smile on his face. This would be the test. He could never stand up to her, but damned if he wouldn't try.
"I-Inoue-san," he started, cursed the stutter, and cleared his throat before trying again. "Inoue-san, I appreciate your concern, but I assure you, I'm absolutely fine." Her eyes were flawless amber, able to see him for the insect that he was inside. "I've been, ah, training, much like I was before we left for the Soul Society. It doesn't hurt to be prepared, does it?" Her hair was left in wisps around her face; messy, but she was no less beautiful, and no less persuaded. Her top was tight and left nothing to the imagination as all of her tops did, and Ishida hoped that the heat on his face didn't show. "It...breaks my concentration to have people with me while I'm shooting, so I haven't bothered to - "
He was surprised when Inoue kissed him, soundly.
For a moment, he heard nothing in his head except the empty overload of white noise, like a television station gone off-air for the night, and he stared without seeing, startled eyes taking in the evening storm clouds somewhere past Inoue's right ear, electrifying and intent. She tasted sweet in his mouth, and yes, strangely sour - miso ramen and pickled plum, perhaps, if earlier was any indication - and the teen smelled from her hair the scent of fresh flowers, though even that too subsided from his consciousness by the sheer amount of his surprise.
But what he felt - God, what he felt; of her warm and slender fingers twining around his wrists, holding him in place, of her breath with his own and her lips against his - her chest a soft collision with his heart for every time that she inhaled - and yes, the affection and euphoria and disbelief that what he had so desperately hungered after, had flown so suddenly into his arms.
He spared a brief moment of resignation and regret when his eyes caught the flash of orange hair from somewhere about Inoue's head, but that was all: anyone with any sense of pride would accept their punishment for sin with solemnity and a nod, and he was no different. Let a death god himself do what he may; the cat will mew, and this dog will have his day. Inoue broke apart from him breathlessly, eyes anxious, and Ishida had a moment to doubt both her and himself before a shadow filled the resulting space, and he squinched his eyes shut.
He was even more surprised as Kurosaki kissed him, awkwardly.
In an instant, the Quincy's eyes fluttered open again, and in an attempt to escape, he backed ineffectively into a wall, and when he did, Kurosaki moved with him, bolder now, hands finding his wrists in the same way that Inoue's had.
It never occurred to him to fight it, perhaps because it was so bizarre - not unpleasant, or at any rate, the unpleasantry of it was numbed by the sheer force of his shock - but it never occurred to him to change the situation, to push back and decry Kurosaki for the polyamorous bisexual that he was, not for a second. For a fact, the only thing he could register was the fact that the Quincy cross that dangled from his right wrist was swinging as they kissed, making a chinking noise that metal sometimes did, a sound that sounded nostalgically like the twinkling of a bell. It eased him in a way it hadn't done with Inoue: he slumped his shoulders, shut his eyes, and when he started to slide down the length of the wall, knees folding up, the hands that were on his wrist latched around his waist then, and a loud shout broke the peaceful impossiblility of the scenario:
"O-Oi, Orihime! I think he's starting to faint!"
At the words, Ishida stood bolt upright, head connecting painfully with the underside of Kurosaki's chin, and the two of them instantly jumped away from each other, faces red and each independently rubbing the injured parts of their body. They had a brief face-off before facing elsewhere at exactly the same time - the shinigami staring somewhere in the direction of Inoue's shoulder, and the Quincy finding something suddenly fascinating about the lid of the phonograph - and at the tension, Inoue fluttered, and threw herself between the two of them, arms outspread.
"I-Ichigo," she faltered, and it was still strange to Ishida to hear her call him that, "didn't you say that it was a-alright...? Don't get angry at Ishida-kun for feeling a little f-faint, okay - ?"
"I was not going to faint, okay?!" the archer interrupted sharply, and responded to Inoue's resulting flinch with one of his own, hating the fact that he had been so uncouth as to raise his voice around her. "It was just...r-relaxing, I suppose, or perhaps some..." He cut off, embarrassed, and cleared his throat. "M-More importantly, what were you...?" And he couldn't bring himself to finish that sentence, either, couldn't bring himself to infect them all with his own paltry loneliness and shrugged, helplessly, unable to come up with any other excuse for conversation; what was there to be said, when he had set himself up for failure over and over again? Never had he dreamed of something like this ever coming to pass - couldn't make sense of it, either, because Inoue had always loved Kurosaki, and Kurosaki, for all of his tight-fitting fetish, most certainly hadn't given any indication of being gay.
What in the name of his beloved orderly world was going on?
Inoue, showing her ability to be serious in stressful situations, moved in closer to him and took his wrist. Her other hand landed softly on the side of Kurosaki's face, who was still staring somewhere in the opposite direction, perhaps at the outside window. The gale was growing so fierce that Ishida could hear it even over the frantic beat of his traitorous heart. He jumped a bit, startled, when Inoue brought his wrist to her lips to kiss it, lightly.
"Ishida-kun," she started, slowly, moving his hand to the location of her other one, atop the shinigami's cheek, and she set the shorter boy's palm atop her knuckles, far too close to Kurosaki's skin for anyone's comfort. The brunette closed her eyes, briefly, before going on. "Have you...ever...wanted something you couldn't have?"
Still irrevocably confused by the evening's proceedings, it took the Quincy a moment to recover himself, shaking his head, before stuttering out an indignant insinuation. "Of... Of course I have!" A meaningful stare, hoping she would catch the hint, before Ishida recalled prudency, and sought to redeem himself. "But...they're just fancies, I-Inoue-san, and they're just...human nature. Only an idiot hopes to outrun the sun."
Kurosaki 'hmph'ed, taking offense as he was prone to do, but Inoue only smiled, in a way that seemed a bit sad, and moved towards Ishida again in a way that suddenly made him embarrassed. They hadn't explained their intentions yet, and he wondered wearily if it was all just a trap set up for him by an enemy - it would be shameful to admit that his very deepest fantasies had been breached by the foe's keen observations - but he was willing to accept that fact over the fact that not only Inoue, but also Kurosaki - the infamously stubborn - had somehow found an interest in him that was more than that of a friend.
But Inoue only touched his face, holding for a moment both his and the shinigami's, and let go just as suddenly, shaking her head. "Tatsumi-chan has always said that I'm an idiot," she confessed, before kissing the archer again, deeper than she had before, and with a considerably less amount of impulse.
It wasn't as unexpected as the first one had been, and so, Ishida had the sense of mind this time to enjoy it; to kiss back, fingers playing nervously up the girl's spine before settling on her shoulders, revelling in the feel of holding her, of crushing her body tightly against his, and acting out the things he had only imagined in his wildest dreams. The first kiss was dry, and didn't end until they had run out of air; they came together slowly again, in a proper kiss that let him show his affection instead of his disbelief, a kiss that was long and sweet and light, opening their mouths to each other in a way that suggested that there would be more. He grew fervent, he grew bold, and she yielded to him, to his deepening kisses and wandering hands, and when he moved his hand to slide it needily up her shirt, only the bell-like ring of his Quincy cross against his wrist reminded him of just who else happened to be in the room as well, staring right at them.
When Ishida stumbled back, halfway through the process of spinning around, he stumbled into Kurosaki, who caught him by the wrists and raised them in the air, turning the shorter boy around to look at him with a softer sort of annoyance than that the type that was usually on his face. Feeling slightly dizzy from being passed back and forth between the two of them like a ping-pong ball, Ishida was surprised that he managed to form words at all, let alone those that resembled something remotely coherent. "Kurosaki, you're...okay with this?" He hadn't meant to let his dubiousness register in his tone, but then again, he hadn't been able to control anything of his lately, whether it was his words or actions or wants.
Kurosaki cast his eyes at the ceiling, voice curt enough to let anyone know that he was attempting to stifle his own discomfort at the scenario. "If Orihime's an idiot for wanting something she can't have - that 'something' being the both of us - then I guess I'm an idiot, too, for wanting to make sure that it all ends up that way."
It was no surprise that Kurosaki would do something so comprising in order to make Inoue happy, but what was surprising was what he said next:
"She wasn't the only one who could tell that you were lonely, you know."
"I wasn't - " Ishida began to deny reflexively, but silenced himself at the feel of two rough sets of fingers tightening against his skin, and he hissed in unconscious reproval. Kurosaki glared at him, warningly.
"Can it, would you? Just...be quiet." The taller boy looked away again. "It's...pretty obvious that you'd always fancied Orihime, and to tell you the truth, we just didn't know how to...handle it. Even the both of us didn't think it was fair, and since Orihime had always tolerated my...hang-ups - " And Ishida realized then that the shinigami was talking about Kuchiki - "...I thought, maybe, it wouldn't be so hard to try and tolerate hers."
"You're doing a bit more than 'tolerating', I'd say," Ishida retorted dryly, hoping the hurried way he broke free from Kurosaki's grasp wouldn't give away his embarrassment, and made a show of dusting himself off. He adjusted his glasses and gave his head a little shake, a lot more confused - and a hell of a lot more hopeful - than what his face let on. He looked sideways at Inoue. "And, Inoue-san...polyamory is what you had in mind?"
She started, and looked ashamed of herself, and Kurosaki barged himself in their path, stoked to ire. "Yeah, so what?" he demanded, bared teeth flashing white in the fading light of the room, and a strike of thunder punctuated his growl. "It's what you wanted, wasn't it?" A pause. "Well, half of it, at least, but I sure as hell wasn't going to let the two of you do this alone! Isn't a half of it better than nothing at all, you ungrateful jackass?"
And it was. It really, honestly was. Ishida knew it, and he wanted it, and he wanted her, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted this: all of it's cracks and complications, of the solemn shadows in his apartment and the imminence of the storm outside. He wanted a friendly lunch and a sunny day, he wanted her in a summer dress with ribbons around the waist and a broad-brimmed hat, he wanted a kiss that was pleasant and not desperate, and he wanted a permanent promise that there would always be more.
"It isn't equal," he blurted out, leaping back from Kurosaki's hulking frame, and spoke his words over the shinigami's shoulder, to the saddened brunette who was standing behind him. "Inoue-san, I won't ever take you on loan, do you understand me?" Lightning flashed behind him, streaking his shadow across their twin frames, the three of them flaring briefly to life against the back of his living room wall. Not long behind it, thunder roared again. "It isn't equal when the two of you offer something like this out of pity, it isn't equal when one or the other of you feels as though you have to comply because those are the struggles of love. Polyamory is...never equal. There will always be one person on the outside who will forever remain left behind."
He had no need to say the rest out loud: I won't let that person be me. The archer stared at the pair through the dark, the only light being the pale sickly light of the street lamp outside, flickering at last into view. It made the two of them seem ethereal, like phantoms, or ghosts. Made them seem immutable, and invulnerable.
Ishida shook his head. "I won't accept love on a loan," he said stubbornly, finding at last his resolve and raising his nose haughtily into the air. "It would shame my grandfather's name, and I won't dare sully the honor of this immortal Quincy cross - "
Kurosaki, argumentative and implaceable as he ever was, was the one to say it - "Why don't you just stuff your pride for once, Ishida?!" - but Inoue was the one to actually do it - to reach forward, eyes impossibly angry, and snatch the chain that dangled inalterably from his wrist, before snapping it off with an uncharacteristic recklessness and hurling it across the room, where it slammed ungracefully against the wall. It made the familiar tinkling bell sound as it fell.
Ishida gaped at them, unable to say a word, and he felt the cold air on his empty wrist, sudden and obvious in a way it had never been before. His mouth moved, and his glasses slid part of the way down his nose, but he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't believe that his ageless pride was being stomped into the ground by one slender beauty, and her fiercely devoted shinigami. He took a breath that sounded somewhat similar to Inoue's name, and before he could find a sentence to go along with that breath, his world was flipped upside down - over the top of Kurosaki's shoulder, more accurately, where the taller boy had chosen then to sling him, like a sack of bricks.
"H-Hey, what are you - " Ishida started, breathlessly, but was cut off by Inoue's hand clamping firmly over his mouth, and her face appearing in front of him, smiling brightly as though the past half an hour or so had never happened.
"By a majority vote of 2 to 1, Ishida-kun," she announced cheerfully, walking with him as Kurosaki started towards an area that was alarmingly in the direction of his bedroom, "it has been officially decided that, tonight, we are going to make ourselves yours."
It had been a strange way to say it - make ourselves yours - but the Quincy hardly had time to ponder it as Kurosaki found the bedroom, and bonked his head on the ridiculously low threshold as he tried to enter.
"Dammit!" he swore, with feeling, and bounced the smaller boy over his shoulder once, for emphasis. "Oi, you got any doors around here that are made for humans?" he asked, sarcastically, and grunted as Ishida retaliated in the only way he could, without hands - biting the other boy, hard, somewhere around his side.
"I'd figured you were coming over," he replied, snidely, "so I thought it best to put in the doggy door."
He wasn't surprised when Kurosaki strode to the bed, purposefully, and dropped him there, leaving the floor to shake and the springs to squeak piteously in his wake. Inoue closed the distance between them effortlessly, flowing onto the bed with her palms on the sheets even as Ishida sat upright and backed himself squarely into the headboard.
"Ishida-kun," she said, and was it just him, or had her voice gotten somehow sultrier in the past five minutes?, "just relax, okay...?" Her eyes were pools of liquid honey, and he had been the fly that had fallen carelessly into the trap. Against his will, he felt the fight go out of his frame, felt himself leaning his head back towards the ceiling with an almost-defeated sigh, and could only manage a mildly-startled hiss when someone's lips found their way to his neck, hot and dry.
He chanced a glance down - it was Kurosaki - before setting his eyes to the ceiling again, breath coming faster in his hollow chest. He thought of his cross, lying discarded on the living room floor, but even that wasn't enough for him to push them away, to stop himself from enjoying the hands that were running up and down the fabric of his school-uniform slacks. He bit back a groan as someone's finger slid down the crease of his thigh, dangerously close to his vulnerable crotch. The lips on his neck moved to his ear, and he couldn't swallow his moan that time; he let it out along with a sort of half-sigh, voice sounding foreign and too-loud to his ears. He arched up into the hands on his legs, and shuddered when one of those hands accidentally - or perhaps not so accidentally - brushed his cock.
He was half-hard now, and shaking, eyes looking everywhere but at the pair spread out across his body, fingers digging into the sheets below him. He rolled his lower lip in his teeth and prayed fervently that he didn't look nearly as uneasy as the two of them were making him feel. For a moment, Kurosaki pulled back and looked at him, speculatively, and then - oh God, it was so embarrassing - actually petted him, on the head, as though he were some sort of frightened animal! Ishida colored, and tried to jerk away, but his jaw was caught by Inoue, who had appeared seemingly from out of nowhere, and he was drawn into yet another heart-rending kiss.
And it was good, impossibly good. The heat of her mouth, and her heartbeat against his chest, and even, yes, Kurosaki's fingers raking through his hair, methodic enough to soothe. He leaned back into the touch, and Inoue leaned with him, hands finding the hem of his shirt and sliding it up slowly, inch by inch.
They had to break the kiss to get it off, but Kurosaki aided with that - jerking the thing upward until it nearly ripped, and hurling it somewhere in the room - before sliding away from the Quincy's side to somewhere down around the bottom of the bed, toiling away at something Ishida couldn't see.
Ah. His shoes went, and his socks, and he had a moment to feel a brief flash of jealousy as he did the same to Inoue, but tickled the soles of her feet, as well, elliciting a giggle from the soft-hearted brunette. Ishida would have called the whole thing off, then, had Inoue not started stroking his chest, fingers dabbling upward to toy with one of his nipples before sliding down the length of his stomach, in a way that made his toes curl. He closed his eyes, and started a bit at the feel of calloused fingers on his lips, thumbing them lightly and sending electrical currents down the length of his spine.
When the fingers disappeared, lips followed: Kurosaki's dry, chapped lips, known mostly for being turned down in a scowl, and Ishida couldn't help but gasp into the shinigami's open mouth when Inoue placed a slow, steady lick up the line of his sternum, tongue warm and wet. He shuddered, and moaned, and nearly bit down on Kurosaki's tongue when the taller boy chose then to slide it in his mouth, uncomfortable yet arousing.
They battled with each other, for a while, arms around each other's necks as though trying to asphyxiate, fingers tangling in each other's hair tight enough to rip, lips and tongues and teeth clashing with each other in a struggle of a half-painful, half-pleasureable sea of battle. He moved an arm from Kurosaki's neck to shove it almost ungracefully up Inoue's shirt, stretching his fingers past the plain cotton lace of her bra to cup the breast inside, spilling over his hand like liquid. The little moan she gave then was so gratifying that he nearly came in his pants right there.
He teased her nipple, and she stopped licking his torso long enough to sit upright, straddling his hips, bent halfway over Kurosaki's back, and she tossed her head back, breathing loudly through her nose. Her hair was a cinnamon spill down her arched back, her eyes squinched shut in pleasure. Her legs were bare against his, her school skirt swishing around his legs, her underwear a line of fabric that was nearly aligned with his groin. A flush of heat started somewhere around his stomach, and blazed right down to his cock; he was harder than he had ever been in his entire life. Kurosaki felt the stiffness around the back of his thigh and shifted down onto it, grinding in a way that made Ishida groan, and the shinigami smirk. They had a brief face-off in that way before Inoue raising her shirt above her head caused them both to spin in her direction.
Ishida was still propped up against the headboard, but made no move to fight it as Kurosaki hopped off, rolled to the end of the bed, and pulled on the shorter boy's ankles until he was on his back, staring up at his watermarked ceiling and finding a spare bit of time to marvel, briefly, at how something like this could possibly be real. But it was - Inoue was laying her shirt neatly over the headboard, and Kurosaki was rumpling his own into a ball and throwing it in some direction or another - and then they were both on him again, two spots of color in his otherwise dull grey world.
Inoue was at his face again, and he took her nipple into his mouth as she leaned; slid his first two fingers down the line of her navel and dipped them under the waistband of her skirt. She made a little noise from within her throat, and he answered it with a low groan. Kurosaki was doing something from the area of his hips that Ishida couldn't see, and honestly, couldn't bring himself to care about much, either. He moved his hand from the waistband of Inoue's skirt to slid it up her thigh, tracing around the line of her hip before settling on her shapely rear, which he kneaded, feverishly. He swirled his tongue around her aureola, and she pressed her thighs against his crotch, and they both moaned.
When the brunette paused for a moment to lift her hips, and lean over him on all fours, Ishida saw then what it was Kurosaki had been busy doing - he was undoing the Quincy's belt with his teeth, eyes intent on the leather, manuevering his tongue and teeth in a way that made the shorter boy groan. He reached down, past Inoue, and gripped the shinigami by the hair, pulling him up until their eyes locked; liquid fire. They had another stare-off for a moment or two, Ishida growing hopelessly aroused by the initiative in the other's eyes, before he brought his attention back to Inoue, and captured the leaping pulse of her neck in a desperate kiss.
He bit as though he meant for her to bleed, and she seemed to like it: she gripped his hair, and placed kisses along his brow, and bucked her hips against his torso, the crevice between her thighs alluringly hot. She was wet, soakingly wet, and he was so hard that he ached, Ishida realized that they both wanted it, that they were both ready for it, and he struggled upright, gripping her by the shoulders so hard that he was sure to leave marks.
"I...Inoue-san," he gasped, staring deep into her eyes to show her that he meant it, "let's...let's do this. Now."
She nodded, shakily. "I...I don't think I can wait any longer, either." She swiveled her head, glancing in the direction of their third member. "Ichigo...is it all right?"
Kurosaki whipped upright, then, and dangling from his mouth was the well-worn leather of Ishida's belt, and he had a predatory grin on his face. "Done and done," he said, letting the belt fall, before his face grew serious, and his eyes seemed to look at the other boy in a way they never had before. "Just...give me a second with him, okay?" He gestured, helplessly, then tossed his head at the ceiling, much in the same way stallions did when they were ill at ease. "I...he...we...argh! Just give me a sec, would ya?"
As both of the boys blushed, Inoue was unsuccessful at hiding her smile.
"You...you can't just say...'give me a sec with him' like I'm some sort of...of toy or some - " Ishida started, as Inoue moved from his hips and settled somewhere along the length of his body, spooning up against him as though they were...lovers, even, which Ishida supposed they were...in a way. The only obstruction to that fact filled the gap that Inoue had left, eyes ablaze with a soundless warning.
"For someone who's at the center of attention here, you sure do bitch a lot," Kurosaki griped, rougher than usual because of his uncharacteristic uneasiness, and gripped Ishida by the hair.
He didn't bring their lips crashing together in a heated kiss, as Ishida thought he would do, but instead leaned in close, close enough so that even Inoue couldn't hear, and spoke:
"There are a lot of times when I just want to hit you, you know? Because you're so cold and everything, at times when it really matters. Because you keep pushing Orihime away, all in the name of your godforsaken pride. But I can respect pride, too, you know? Playing the part of martyr is the sort of melodramatic shit you like to pull, so...I thought about leaving it, for a while, but...ha!" Kurosaki laughed at himself, lowly, shaking his head, and loosened his grip on the shorter boy's hair, stroking his fingers through it idly. "Martyrs aren't supposed to let their followers know how much they're suffering, you know? Since you're not any good at self-sacrifice, you should just give it up, s'what I think."
When Ishida opened his mouth to protest, it was then that Kurosaki kissed him - but lightly, as though chastizing - still petting him condescendingly upon the head. It was good - better than good, to be honest - and Kurosaki in a mode like this didn't rankle Ishida for once, but rather, relaxed him: he slid his hands all over the shinigami's body, enjoying the way the skin shuddered and the muscles rippled underneath his touch, and he latched his fingers onto their final destination of Kurosaki's belt.
Out of fighter's instinct, Kurosaki grabbed the waistband of Ishida's slacks, as well, and in that moment, both boys froze. They stared at anywhere but each other, embarrassed but too stubborn to back down, too uneasy to move.
"Have you ever...?" Ishida started, chancing a glance at the taller boy's face, and was instantly rewarded with an indignant glare.
"Of course not!" A considerable pause. "...Have you?"
Ishida colored, and tried not to think of that time with the boy in gym class, before he'd moved to Kurikara Town, and tried his best dignified sniff. "Most certainly not, thank you. How very kind of you to presume that I would be the gay one out of our group."
"Well, you're such a priss, so it was only natural for me to think that - "
"And who's the one who grew up around only girls, hunh?!"
When they stopped to glare at each other, out of breath, it was as though something clicked - each tackled the other, and they began grappling with each other furiously over clothes, determined to rid the other of his pants first, to take hold of what was underneath.
Kurosaki won, if only because Ishida stumbled a bit over Inoue, who had taken to nibbling at his neck, and so the shinigami, grinning triumphantly and looking ridiculous with his pants halfway down his knees, threw Ishida's slacks to the corner of the bed and grabbed the Quincy's cock threw his boxers.
Ishida let out a yell - not because it had felt good, but because it had hurt, dammit - and was only assuaged when Kurosaki loosened his grip, and fondled the shorter boy's balls gently with his other hand, making a apologetic sort of hissing noise out of the corner of his mouth. Ishida squirmed, and tried to catch a glimpse of those wandering hands, but his view was suddenly blocked by Inoue, who chose then to straddle him again, smiling wickedly in a way that made his heart throb, and captured his lips in hers again.
It was downright evil of her to block Kurosaki's hands from view, but at the same time, it felt so good, not to be able to see what was going to happen to him, what part was going to be teased, what part was going to be stroked, such that he couldn't really bring himself to care that much. He writhed, suspended in pleasure, and decided that yes, he could take love on a loan, so long as it was a loan that earned him interest with every payment; yes, there were things he could treasure more than his beloved pride. Inoue's hair was a sweet-smelling curtain that obscured all else from view.
He twitched, feeling himself about to breach that pinnacle of desire, and would have nearly fallen overboard had Inoue not caught his sudden tensing, and grabbed Kurosaki's wrists in time, pulling him forward so that they both overbalanced, and collapsed atop the Quincy, who felt all the breath leave him in a sudden whoosh. He was close, so damned close, and he wriggled underneath the both of them, making noises in his throat that sounded unbearably pathetic, even to him. He could feel the heat coming from between both of their legs, and knew that they had to be ready, too. Knew that...
...his legs were being lifted up into the air as though he were a stuffed turkey?
"H-Hey!" Ishida colored, and flailed out with his legs, but was pinned by Inoue, who pressed all of her weight down on him in a soft rush, cradling his head into her neck and lipping his ear, momentarily reasserting his newfound trust in them.
Trust...yes, trust. He blinked at the realization of it, even as Kurosaki shed his own pants and boxers, even as Inoue lifted her skirt over her head and slipped out of her dainty white panties - cute, but the hem job on them was shoddy, and it was almost embarrassing that he could actually notice that - and even as he felt his own boxers being pulled from his legs, as rough hands palmed the strangely vulnerable area inside of his thighs. It was a matter of trust. He could trust that they wouldn't love him, then let him go, right?
It didn't matter as his legs were lifted high onto Kurosaki's shoulders, and it sure as hell didn't matter when two things happened simultaneously after that: Inoue lowered herself impatiently onto his stiffened cock, and Kurosaki's strangely oily fingers pierced the formerly unbreached area between the cheeks of his ass.
Ishida felt as though he must have blacked out for a moment, because time stopped until Inoue started to move, slowly at first, then with growing confidence. Kurosaki moved his fingers with her, poking and prodding in a way that suggested inexperience - obviously - but slowly growing bolder in his own way, occassionally stroking himself to sate his own desire.
And dear God, it was heaven. Being invaded by the rear was something that probably wouldn't have felt very good on it's own, but the slick tight heat of Inoue's vaginal walls closing in on him absolved his tension, made him feel light-headed and made the intrusion seem not only bearable, but actually quite pleasureable, when he concentrated on it for more than a second or two. There was a slight disruption in his paradise as Inoue paused, and Kurosaki sat up on his knees, the brunette leaning forward to give him room, and Ishida had a moment to feel a sense of vague apprenhension before -
Hot. And tight, and full, and it was Kurosaki's cock inside his ass, which was something that was impossible to describe in and of itself. Inoue was still riding him, but slower this time, letting him get used to the overdose of sensation, and Kurosaki was holding himself in place, teeth gritted and sweat beading on his forehead, for once in his life exercising self-control. Ishida took a shaky breath, and ground down on the taller boy's cock, in a way that he hoped gave reassurance that it was all right to move.
And they did move, the both of them, moving both in and out of synch, moving fast and slow and all over his body, in pants and moans and faint expulsions of breath that sounded vaguely akin to words. They moved in a way that was neither too gentle nor too rough, and after a minute or two of pure physical bliss, Inoue moved again - spasmed, gave out a little cry, and tightened around the dark-haired boy, eyes squinched shut.
Orgasm. That was what it felt like, to be on the receiving end of an Inoue Orihime orgasm, that was what he had been missing while Kurosaki had been receiving - oh, shit...
She tightened around him, in a burst of slick hot liquid and trembling thighs, and it was enough for Ishida - he dug his fingers into the mattress underneath him and felt his body string itself perfectly in tune to that of a livewire, and felt something erupt from roughly the area where Kurosaki was rocking repeatedly back and forth in his ass to the tip of his sheathed cock, shuddering then feeling the viscous warmth of his own come as it bubbled forth from his head, encasing him in the same feeling of blurred fuzziness as the rest of his body. He came hard, with a sort of strangled howl, and clung to Inoue with one arm, and managed to latch onto Kurosaki's neck with the other. For a moment he hung there, suspended by their strength, but let go as Kurosaki groaned, heartfelt, and gave one last push - there was a vague prickliness on Ishida's part as the shinigami squirted his load into the farthest reaches of his colon - before collapsing atop them all, sending Ishida spiralling down into a pleasant darkness.
Ishida burrowed himself in the comfortable pillow of Inoue's chest and thought a strange thing: here were the reirakus of two people who were similar to him, yes, here were two people whom he could stretch out his hand for, and always find an answer. He was willing to accept that neither of them would be completely his - didn't really want Kurosaki all that much, for that matter - but he had learned their well-taught lesson: that they would never really forget about him, either. Surrounded by their dual warmth - Inoue atop him, with Kurosaki's legs twining with his own - and feeling the dual force of their breaths against his skin, of their heartbeats in the room, made him think then that his grandfather would be proud of him, to see that he had made such good friends.
Then again, things always did have a way of looking rosy in the afterglow, or so he had been told. He stretched a bit under his companions and decided that for once, he could be a little bit selfish in his sacrifice.
It was a long time before any of them moved, and the first to stir was Inoue, lifting her breasts from Ishida's face and rubbing her eyes, exhaustion peering out from their depths. "Um...Ishida-kun? Can I... Can I use the bathroom? I want to take a shower..."
"Ah...sure. It's the first door in the hall - the only door in the hall, really...my apartment's small and everything." The Quincy was suddenly embarrassed at the situation, at Inoue and her unending consideration, at Kurosaki and his seemingly comfortable nudity (he flopped over bonelessly when Inoue stood and didn't seem to mind putting himself on display), at the entire...anticlimaticism of it all, after their little tryst had ended up being so intense. Ishida fumbled with the sheets and threw them over his legs, earned an amused look from the shinigami. He swallowed hard and attempted a smile at Inoue. "There are towels on the rack, and shampoo in the medicine cabinent...sorry I don't have much in the way of feminine bath products..."
"You don't? That's surprising, for a fruit like you," Kurosaki quipped from the bed, and Ishida glared at him. Inoue laughed, though, and that was that - the two of them faced opposite ways at the same time, and let the argument between them slide...for the moment, that was. Ishida wasn't sure how much longer he could take homosexual jokes from the guy who had just initiated the fucking him up his ass, after all.
A silence descended where all the two of them could hear was the water of the shower running, and Inoue singing, loudly and off-key. Ishida was wrapped up tightly under the sheets, trying to ignore the unease that was building up within him, and just when he thought he should go sit in the living room -
Pumpf. A heavy hand settled on his hair, and he rolled over in a flash to glare at Kurosaki, indignantly, who was half-propped against the headboard with a listless look on his face. When no smart remark came, when no opportunity for an argument presented itself, Ishida simply blinked, shrunk himself under the covers a bit, and prayed to the soul of his departed grandfather that the redness at the tips of his ears wasn't showing. The shock of pleasure he got when that hand started to rub through his bangs down to the nape of his neck wasn't necessarily from arousal, either. It was...a quiet sort of pleasure, one that calmed him down instead of wound him up, and made the fluttering in his stomach ease, made the hammering of his heart fade. He closed his eyes, and felt his grip on the sheets slowly loosen.
While he marveled at that, Kurosaki took the time to pose a question. "Are you...one of those types that likes to be petted, hunh?"
The redness of his ears had to be showing, by now. Ishida shrank even further under the covers, prepared to retort with a scathing barb of his own, if need be. But Kurosaki only grinned, wanly - his version of a smile, perhaps, if it wasn't a grin - and leaned his head back towards the ceiling, any remaining tension slowly leaking out of his frame.
"Good," was all that he said on the matter.
When Inoue stepped back into the bathroom, still entirely unclothed and ruffling her hair dry with a plain white towel, she was greeted with the sight of the two teens sprawled peacefully on the bed, Ishida lost in thought, and Kurosaki's fingers lost somewhere in Ishida's hair. The sight made her smile, brightly, as she wrapped the towel around herself and climbed up on the bed with them.
"I'm next," Kurosaki declared, sitting up and patting Inoue on the head as he passed her by.
What was even funnier was that Kurosaki sang as he showered, too - not upbeat pop like Inoue, but catchy alternative rock from a generation too old to be his own, along with the occassional splash of water that suggested he was really getting into it - and though Ishida thought that he would talk with Inoue as they lay there, he found that he couldn't really bring himself to do it - couldn't force himself to bring up unnecessary complications in the face of this near-domestic bliss. Instead, she held out her arms to him, soundlessly, and he crawled into them, nestling his face into her neck and wrapping his arms around her waist possessively. They lay like that, for a long time, and Ishida was just starting to doze when Kurosaki came banging back into the room, and cut off abruptly mid-verse when he saw the two of them snuggling there.
It was impossible to tell what went through his eyes, which was unusual, but all he grunted at them was, "Move over. I'm sleeping up here, too", and jostled his way onto the bed with them. Ishida thought for sure he'd stay on the other side with Inoue, but was surprised for the umpteenth time that night as Kurosaki pressed close to him, instead, pulling the shorter boy against his chest and mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like 'fruitcake' before setting his chin on Ishida's shoulder, breath tickling his ear.
Inoue looked troubled, but she simply smiled it off and pushed an errant strand of Ishida's hair behind his ear before relaxing into sleep, as well.
In the end, it was the Quincy who was left awake to marvel at it all, to feel sated and slightly sore, yet strangely hollow at the end of it all, to feel strangely anxious about his honor, and his friends, and the price he would pay for sacrificing them all. Lightning struck again outside, and a set of leaves whirled by past the window, helplessly caught up in the gale.
"Grandfather..." Ishida wondered aloud, and held his breath as Inoue stirred, "why do I feel as though I've somehow lost again...?"
He wasn't able to sleep until it had at last started to rain.
AN: Why the hell can't I end a fic happily? *dies of lame* Anyway, while I like the concept of this, I still wish IT HAD ENDED OFF BETTER WTF. By this point in time this fic had been sitting on my harddrive for 473028403 months, and I really just wanted to FINISH the freaking thing, which explains why it all sucks. Feel free to stone me, Errant N00b of the Fandom. *holds hands up in the air*
I'm not as into this fandom as I was when I first started writing this (oh, about 2-3 some months ago), but I hadn't seen much in the way of IchiIshiHime fics on the comms I frequent, so I thought I'd finish this and toss up my little offering to this generous fandom. ♥ More fic forthcoming, if you guys pelt me with ideas.
He despised himself for his petulant, self-sorry sulks, but Ishida had one for a while, anyway, flopping around on his well-worn couch and stuffing the pillow over his head occassionally, as though that would make everything go away. His head was killing him, and he felt rather nauseous. Kurosaki and Inoue had spoken of a night together at her house "hanging out", which as any respectable teenager knew, was arcane slang for "having sex". As much as it pained him to do it, Ishida couldn't stop thinking of that offhand comment now, of the level of their relationship. They'd already gone that extra mile, so to speak, and he'd known it - had watched them avoid each other, pointedly, with twin blushes on their faces that made it obvious - but he was tormented with the details, things he thought of and wished for that made him a sincerely unreliable friend.
He groaned, rolled over, and tried to bury himself even deeper in the sofa. He hated when he got on this particular vein, because when he thought about the two of them having sex, he thought about sex in general (most often sex with Inoue, though once or twice Kurosaki had slipped in there in a manner that was disconcerting), and when he thought about that, he generally had to go soak himself in an ice-cold bath for a while before he could put his pants back on again.
To prevent that from happening, he crossed to the phonograph and put on the "Fur Elise", a melancholic and intense piece that generally kept him wallowing in self-pity, as opposed to thinking any sort of indecent thoughts. He paced, as he always did, and toyed with a spare sewing needle subconsciously, unaware of it even as he started to draw blood.
Inoue. He'd have to think of an appropriate excuse for his behavior today, one that would nullify any and all suspicion about his ugliness and his fears. Ironically, it would be easy to fool Kurosaki, but Inoue was made of more sensitive stuff, and would likely doubt that whatever it was he said was said at face value. She was far more perceptive than anyone he had ever met, when she chose to be, and though he refused to let himself be assuaged by the fact that she did choose to pay attention to him, he couldn't help himself, and felt that same fluttering of hope from around his ribcage that he always did when that thought came to mind.
Still, he had just decided on a gastro-intestinal emergency as an excuse when there was a loud banging on the door, one that startled him outright. Ishida moved to the corner of the room hastily removed the needle from the phonograph with a comical scritching sound, and held his breath, trying to pretend he wasn't home. It could have worked; he had been pacing in the dark, and the door was locked, but he suspected that the volume of his "Fur Elise" had given him away.
It had. The pounding continued, with increased volume, and Ishida stomped at last to the door, afraid the noise would cause the neighbors to complain. He undid the lock and threw back the deadbolt, and when he finally wrenched the door open with no small amount of deadly annoyance, he was stunned to see that it was none other than Kurosaki and Inoue, looking windswept and concerned. The evening sky had clouded in a way that suggested rain, and the two of them were carrying umbrellas as proof of that, warm storm-like winds starting up from the east. Ishida wanted to turn them away, but realized it would be painstakingly rude in the face of such weather, even if he had his reasons. He conceded defeat and pulled open the door the rest of the way, though he offered no hospitalities as the two of them stepped inside.
When the door closed, encasing them in shadow, he spoke. "What is it?"
"'What is it'?!" Kurosaki repeated, taking a step forward, before seeming to think better of it and shaking his head in disgust. "You start avoiding us, dash outta school today like your ass is on fire... We should be asking you 'what is it?', not the other way around!"
"We're just worried, that's all..." Inoue offered, in a small voice, and it was that voice that threatened to break him, that threatened to make him confess everything, from his awkwardness to his jealously to his unendearing realization that he didn't want to be alone, not while the two of them were so happy. That he was a leech, and that if they let him, he'd suck their blood until they all fell.
But the Quincy steeled himself, in the name of his beloved ancestral pride, and turned his head sharply away. "It's nothing."
That, obviously, was a substandard explanation, and it was one that people never believed even when it was true, so he tried again. "I've been under a lot of stress lately."
"Then share it with us, you dumbass! That's what friends are there for!" Kurosaki grabbed him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake, and it was that that surprised Ishida more than his words. They had always had an informal rule between the two of them, one they rarely crossed: no touching. Kurosaki always touched his other friends, in casual, empty gestures: punching Asano in the arm, ruffling Mizuno's hair, throwing an arm around Sado in the best way that he could...but he never touched Ishida, except when he was very angry, or very afraid. Dimly, the archer wondered just which one it was now.
"You always did have a loose definition of the word 'friend'..." he murmured, trying to sound unaffected, and it seemed to work: Kurosaki 'tch'ed, and pushed him away, though he flexed his hands in a manner that suggested that he'd wanted to hold on. Ishida made a great show of rolling his shoulders back before turning to Inoue, fake polite smile on his face. This would be the test. He could never stand up to her, but damned if he wouldn't try.
"I-Inoue-san," he started, cursed the stutter, and cleared his throat before trying again. "Inoue-san, I appreciate your concern, but I assure you, I'm absolutely fine." Her eyes were flawless amber, able to see him for the insect that he was inside. "I've been, ah, training, much like I was before we left for the Soul Society. It doesn't hurt to be prepared, does it?" Her hair was left in wisps around her face; messy, but she was no less beautiful, and no less persuaded. Her top was tight and left nothing to the imagination as all of her tops did, and Ishida hoped that the heat on his face didn't show. "It...breaks my concentration to have people with me while I'm shooting, so I haven't bothered to - "
He was surprised when Inoue kissed him, soundly.
For a moment, he heard nothing in his head except the empty overload of white noise, like a television station gone off-air for the night, and he stared without seeing, startled eyes taking in the evening storm clouds somewhere past Inoue's right ear, electrifying and intent. She tasted sweet in his mouth, and yes, strangely sour - miso ramen and pickled plum, perhaps, if earlier was any indication - and the teen smelled from her hair the scent of fresh flowers, though even that too subsided from his consciousness by the sheer amount of his surprise.
But what he felt - God, what he felt; of her warm and slender fingers twining around his wrists, holding him in place, of her breath with his own and her lips against his - her chest a soft collision with his heart for every time that she inhaled - and yes, the affection and euphoria and disbelief that what he had so desperately hungered after, had flown so suddenly into his arms.
He spared a brief moment of resignation and regret when his eyes caught the flash of orange hair from somewhere about Inoue's head, but that was all: anyone with any sense of pride would accept their punishment for sin with solemnity and a nod, and he was no different. Let a death god himself do what he may; the cat will mew, and this dog will have his day. Inoue broke apart from him breathlessly, eyes anxious, and Ishida had a moment to doubt both her and himself before a shadow filled the resulting space, and he squinched his eyes shut.
He was even more surprised as Kurosaki kissed him, awkwardly.
In an instant, the Quincy's eyes fluttered open again, and in an attempt to escape, he backed ineffectively into a wall, and when he did, Kurosaki moved with him, bolder now, hands finding his wrists in the same way that Inoue's had.
It never occurred to him to fight it, perhaps because it was so bizarre - not unpleasant, or at any rate, the unpleasantry of it was numbed by the sheer force of his shock - but it never occurred to him to change the situation, to push back and decry Kurosaki for the polyamorous bisexual that he was, not for a second. For a fact, the only thing he could register was the fact that the Quincy cross that dangled from his right wrist was swinging as they kissed, making a chinking noise that metal sometimes did, a sound that sounded nostalgically like the twinkling of a bell. It eased him in a way it hadn't done with Inoue: he slumped his shoulders, shut his eyes, and when he started to slide down the length of the wall, knees folding up, the hands that were on his wrist latched around his waist then, and a loud shout broke the peaceful impossiblility of the scenario:
"O-Oi, Orihime! I think he's starting to faint!"
At the words, Ishida stood bolt upright, head connecting painfully with the underside of Kurosaki's chin, and the two of them instantly jumped away from each other, faces red and each independently rubbing the injured parts of their body. They had a brief face-off before facing elsewhere at exactly the same time - the shinigami staring somewhere in the direction of Inoue's shoulder, and the Quincy finding something suddenly fascinating about the lid of the phonograph - and at the tension, Inoue fluttered, and threw herself between the two of them, arms outspread.
"I-Ichigo," she faltered, and it was still strange to Ishida to hear her call him that, "didn't you say that it was a-alright...? Don't get angry at Ishida-kun for feeling a little f-faint, okay - ?"
"I was not going to faint, okay?!" the archer interrupted sharply, and responded to Inoue's resulting flinch with one of his own, hating the fact that he had been so uncouth as to raise his voice around her. "It was just...r-relaxing, I suppose, or perhaps some..." He cut off, embarrassed, and cleared his throat. "M-More importantly, what were you...?" And he couldn't bring himself to finish that sentence, either, couldn't bring himself to infect them all with his own paltry loneliness and shrugged, helplessly, unable to come up with any other excuse for conversation; what was there to be said, when he had set himself up for failure over and over again? Never had he dreamed of something like this ever coming to pass - couldn't make sense of it, either, because Inoue had always loved Kurosaki, and Kurosaki, for all of his tight-fitting fetish, most certainly hadn't given any indication of being gay.
What in the name of his beloved orderly world was going on?
Inoue, showing her ability to be serious in stressful situations, moved in closer to him and took his wrist. Her other hand landed softly on the side of Kurosaki's face, who was still staring somewhere in the opposite direction, perhaps at the outside window. The gale was growing so fierce that Ishida could hear it even over the frantic beat of his traitorous heart. He jumped a bit, startled, when Inoue brought his wrist to her lips to kiss it, lightly.
"Ishida-kun," she started, slowly, moving his hand to the location of her other one, atop the shinigami's cheek, and she set the shorter boy's palm atop her knuckles, far too close to Kurosaki's skin for anyone's comfort. The brunette closed her eyes, briefly, before going on. "Have you...ever...wanted something you couldn't have?"
Still irrevocably confused by the evening's proceedings, it took the Quincy a moment to recover himself, shaking his head, before stuttering out an indignant insinuation. "Of... Of course I have!" A meaningful stare, hoping she would catch the hint, before Ishida recalled prudency, and sought to redeem himself. "But...they're just fancies, I-Inoue-san, and they're just...human nature. Only an idiot hopes to outrun the sun."
Kurosaki 'hmph'ed, taking offense as he was prone to do, but Inoue only smiled, in a way that seemed a bit sad, and moved towards Ishida again in a way that suddenly made him embarrassed. They hadn't explained their intentions yet, and he wondered wearily if it was all just a trap set up for him by an enemy - it would be shameful to admit that his very deepest fantasies had been breached by the foe's keen observations - but he was willing to accept that fact over the fact that not only Inoue, but also Kurosaki - the infamously stubborn - had somehow found an interest in him that was more than that of a friend.
But Inoue only touched his face, holding for a moment both his and the shinigami's, and let go just as suddenly, shaking her head. "Tatsumi-chan has always said that I'm an idiot," she confessed, before kissing the archer again, deeper than she had before, and with a considerably less amount of impulse.
It wasn't as unexpected as the first one had been, and so, Ishida had the sense of mind this time to enjoy it; to kiss back, fingers playing nervously up the girl's spine before settling on her shoulders, revelling in the feel of holding her, of crushing her body tightly against his, and acting out the things he had only imagined in his wildest dreams. The first kiss was dry, and didn't end until they had run out of air; they came together slowly again, in a proper kiss that let him show his affection instead of his disbelief, a kiss that was long and sweet and light, opening their mouths to each other in a way that suggested that there would be more. He grew fervent, he grew bold, and she yielded to him, to his deepening kisses and wandering hands, and when he moved his hand to slide it needily up her shirt, only the bell-like ring of his Quincy cross against his wrist reminded him of just who else happened to be in the room as well, staring right at them.
When Ishida stumbled back, halfway through the process of spinning around, he stumbled into Kurosaki, who caught him by the wrists and raised them in the air, turning the shorter boy around to look at him with a softer sort of annoyance than that the type that was usually on his face. Feeling slightly dizzy from being passed back and forth between the two of them like a ping-pong ball, Ishida was surprised that he managed to form words at all, let alone those that resembled something remotely coherent. "Kurosaki, you're...okay with this?" He hadn't meant to let his dubiousness register in his tone, but then again, he hadn't been able to control anything of his lately, whether it was his words or actions or wants.
Kurosaki cast his eyes at the ceiling, voice curt enough to let anyone know that he was attempting to stifle his own discomfort at the scenario. "If Orihime's an idiot for wanting something she can't have - that 'something' being the both of us - then I guess I'm an idiot, too, for wanting to make sure that it all ends up that way."
It was no surprise that Kurosaki would do something so comprising in order to make Inoue happy, but what was surprising was what he said next:
"She wasn't the only one who could tell that you were lonely, you know."
"I wasn't - " Ishida began to deny reflexively, but silenced himself at the feel of two rough sets of fingers tightening against his skin, and he hissed in unconscious reproval. Kurosaki glared at him, warningly.
"Can it, would you? Just...be quiet." The taller boy looked away again. "It's...pretty obvious that you'd always fancied Orihime, and to tell you the truth, we just didn't know how to...handle it. Even the both of us didn't think it was fair, and since Orihime had always tolerated my...hang-ups - " And Ishida realized then that the shinigami was talking about Kuchiki - "...I thought, maybe, it wouldn't be so hard to try and tolerate hers."
"You're doing a bit more than 'tolerating', I'd say," Ishida retorted dryly, hoping the hurried way he broke free from Kurosaki's grasp wouldn't give away his embarrassment, and made a show of dusting himself off. He adjusted his glasses and gave his head a little shake, a lot more confused - and a hell of a lot more hopeful - than what his face let on. He looked sideways at Inoue. "And, Inoue-san...polyamory is what you had in mind?"
She started, and looked ashamed of herself, and Kurosaki barged himself in their path, stoked to ire. "Yeah, so what?" he demanded, bared teeth flashing white in the fading light of the room, and a strike of thunder punctuated his growl. "It's what you wanted, wasn't it?" A pause. "Well, half of it, at least, but I sure as hell wasn't going to let the two of you do this alone! Isn't a half of it better than nothing at all, you ungrateful jackass?"
And it was. It really, honestly was. Ishida knew it, and he wanted it, and he wanted her, but he wasn't entirely sure he wanted this: all of it's cracks and complications, of the solemn shadows in his apartment and the imminence of the storm outside. He wanted a friendly lunch and a sunny day, he wanted her in a summer dress with ribbons around the waist and a broad-brimmed hat, he wanted a kiss that was pleasant and not desperate, and he wanted a permanent promise that there would always be more.
"It isn't equal," he blurted out, leaping back from Kurosaki's hulking frame, and spoke his words over the shinigami's shoulder, to the saddened brunette who was standing behind him. "Inoue-san, I won't ever take you on loan, do you understand me?" Lightning flashed behind him, streaking his shadow across their twin frames, the three of them flaring briefly to life against the back of his living room wall. Not long behind it, thunder roared again. "It isn't equal when the two of you offer something like this out of pity, it isn't equal when one or the other of you feels as though you have to comply because those are the struggles of love. Polyamory is...never equal. There will always be one person on the outside who will forever remain left behind."
He had no need to say the rest out loud: I won't let that person be me. The archer stared at the pair through the dark, the only light being the pale sickly light of the street lamp outside, flickering at last into view. It made the two of them seem ethereal, like phantoms, or ghosts. Made them seem immutable, and invulnerable.
Ishida shook his head. "I won't accept love on a loan," he said stubbornly, finding at last his resolve and raising his nose haughtily into the air. "It would shame my grandfather's name, and I won't dare sully the honor of this immortal Quincy cross - "
Kurosaki, argumentative and implaceable as he ever was, was the one to say it - "Why don't you just stuff your pride for once, Ishida?!" - but Inoue was the one to actually do it - to reach forward, eyes impossibly angry, and snatch the chain that dangled inalterably from his wrist, before snapping it off with an uncharacteristic recklessness and hurling it across the room, where it slammed ungracefully against the wall. It made the familiar tinkling bell sound as it fell.
Ishida gaped at them, unable to say a word, and he felt the cold air on his empty wrist, sudden and obvious in a way it had never been before. His mouth moved, and his glasses slid part of the way down his nose, but he couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't believe that his ageless pride was being stomped into the ground by one slender beauty, and her fiercely devoted shinigami. He took a breath that sounded somewhat similar to Inoue's name, and before he could find a sentence to go along with that breath, his world was flipped upside down - over the top of Kurosaki's shoulder, more accurately, where the taller boy had chosen then to sling him, like a sack of bricks.
"H-Hey, what are you - " Ishida started, breathlessly, but was cut off by Inoue's hand clamping firmly over his mouth, and her face appearing in front of him, smiling brightly as though the past half an hour or so had never happened.
"By a majority vote of 2 to 1, Ishida-kun," she announced cheerfully, walking with him as Kurosaki started towards an area that was alarmingly in the direction of his bedroom, "it has been officially decided that, tonight, we are going to make ourselves yours."
It had been a strange way to say it - make ourselves yours - but the Quincy hardly had time to ponder it as Kurosaki found the bedroom, and bonked his head on the ridiculously low threshold as he tried to enter.
"Dammit!" he swore, with feeling, and bounced the smaller boy over his shoulder once, for emphasis. "Oi, you got any doors around here that are made for humans?" he asked, sarcastically, and grunted as Ishida retaliated in the only way he could, without hands - biting the other boy, hard, somewhere around his side.
"I'd figured you were coming over," he replied, snidely, "so I thought it best to put in the doggy door."
He wasn't surprised when Kurosaki strode to the bed, purposefully, and dropped him there, leaving the floor to shake and the springs to squeak piteously in his wake. Inoue closed the distance between them effortlessly, flowing onto the bed with her palms on the sheets even as Ishida sat upright and backed himself squarely into the headboard.
"Ishida-kun," she said, and was it just him, or had her voice gotten somehow sultrier in the past five minutes?, "just relax, okay...?" Her eyes were pools of liquid honey, and he had been the fly that had fallen carelessly into the trap. Against his will, he felt the fight go out of his frame, felt himself leaning his head back towards the ceiling with an almost-defeated sigh, and could only manage a mildly-startled hiss when someone's lips found their way to his neck, hot and dry.
He chanced a glance down - it was Kurosaki - before setting his eyes to the ceiling again, breath coming faster in his hollow chest. He thought of his cross, lying discarded on the living room floor, but even that wasn't enough for him to push them away, to stop himself from enjoying the hands that were running up and down the fabric of his school-uniform slacks. He bit back a groan as someone's finger slid down the crease of his thigh, dangerously close to his vulnerable crotch. The lips on his neck moved to his ear, and he couldn't swallow his moan that time; he let it out along with a sort of half-sigh, voice sounding foreign and too-loud to his ears. He arched up into the hands on his legs, and shuddered when one of those hands accidentally - or perhaps not so accidentally - brushed his cock.
He was half-hard now, and shaking, eyes looking everywhere but at the pair spread out across his body, fingers digging into the sheets below him. He rolled his lower lip in his teeth and prayed fervently that he didn't look nearly as uneasy as the two of them were making him feel. For a moment, Kurosaki pulled back and looked at him, speculatively, and then - oh God, it was so embarrassing - actually petted him, on the head, as though he were some sort of frightened animal! Ishida colored, and tried to jerk away, but his jaw was caught by Inoue, who had appeared seemingly from out of nowhere, and he was drawn into yet another heart-rending kiss.
And it was good, impossibly good. The heat of her mouth, and her heartbeat against his chest, and even, yes, Kurosaki's fingers raking through his hair, methodic enough to soothe. He leaned back into the touch, and Inoue leaned with him, hands finding the hem of his shirt and sliding it up slowly, inch by inch.
They had to break the kiss to get it off, but Kurosaki aided with that - jerking the thing upward until it nearly ripped, and hurling it somewhere in the room - before sliding away from the Quincy's side to somewhere down around the bottom of the bed, toiling away at something Ishida couldn't see.
Ah. His shoes went, and his socks, and he had a moment to feel a brief flash of jealousy as he did the same to Inoue, but tickled the soles of her feet, as well, elliciting a giggle from the soft-hearted brunette. Ishida would have called the whole thing off, then, had Inoue not started stroking his chest, fingers dabbling upward to toy with one of his nipples before sliding down the length of his stomach, in a way that made his toes curl. He closed his eyes, and started a bit at the feel of calloused fingers on his lips, thumbing them lightly and sending electrical currents down the length of his spine.
When the fingers disappeared, lips followed: Kurosaki's dry, chapped lips, known mostly for being turned down in a scowl, and Ishida couldn't help but gasp into the shinigami's open mouth when Inoue placed a slow, steady lick up the line of his sternum, tongue warm and wet. He shuddered, and moaned, and nearly bit down on Kurosaki's tongue when the taller boy chose then to slide it in his mouth, uncomfortable yet arousing.
They battled with each other, for a while, arms around each other's necks as though trying to asphyxiate, fingers tangling in each other's hair tight enough to rip, lips and tongues and teeth clashing with each other in a struggle of a half-painful, half-pleasureable sea of battle. He moved an arm from Kurosaki's neck to shove it almost ungracefully up Inoue's shirt, stretching his fingers past the plain cotton lace of her bra to cup the breast inside, spilling over his hand like liquid. The little moan she gave then was so gratifying that he nearly came in his pants right there.
He teased her nipple, and she stopped licking his torso long enough to sit upright, straddling his hips, bent halfway over Kurosaki's back, and she tossed her head back, breathing loudly through her nose. Her hair was a cinnamon spill down her arched back, her eyes squinched shut in pleasure. Her legs were bare against his, her school skirt swishing around his legs, her underwear a line of fabric that was nearly aligned with his groin. A flush of heat started somewhere around his stomach, and blazed right down to his cock; he was harder than he had ever been in his entire life. Kurosaki felt the stiffness around the back of his thigh and shifted down onto it, grinding in a way that made Ishida groan, and the shinigami smirk. They had a brief face-off in that way before Inoue raising her shirt above her head caused them both to spin in her direction.
Ishida was still propped up against the headboard, but made no move to fight it as Kurosaki hopped off, rolled to the end of the bed, and pulled on the shorter boy's ankles until he was on his back, staring up at his watermarked ceiling and finding a spare bit of time to marvel, briefly, at how something like this could possibly be real. But it was - Inoue was laying her shirt neatly over the headboard, and Kurosaki was rumpling his own into a ball and throwing it in some direction or another - and then they were both on him again, two spots of color in his otherwise dull grey world.
Inoue was at his face again, and he took her nipple into his mouth as she leaned; slid his first two fingers down the line of her navel and dipped them under the waistband of her skirt. She made a little noise from within her throat, and he answered it with a low groan. Kurosaki was doing something from the area of his hips that Ishida couldn't see, and honestly, couldn't bring himself to care about much, either. He moved his hand from the waistband of Inoue's skirt to slid it up her thigh, tracing around the line of her hip before settling on her shapely rear, which he kneaded, feverishly. He swirled his tongue around her aureola, and she pressed her thighs against his crotch, and they both moaned.
When the brunette paused for a moment to lift her hips, and lean over him on all fours, Ishida saw then what it was Kurosaki had been busy doing - he was undoing the Quincy's belt with his teeth, eyes intent on the leather, manuevering his tongue and teeth in a way that made the shorter boy groan. He reached down, past Inoue, and gripped the shinigami by the hair, pulling him up until their eyes locked; liquid fire. They had another stare-off for a moment or two, Ishida growing hopelessly aroused by the initiative in the other's eyes, before he brought his attention back to Inoue, and captured the leaping pulse of her neck in a desperate kiss.
He bit as though he meant for her to bleed, and she seemed to like it: she gripped his hair, and placed kisses along his brow, and bucked her hips against his torso, the crevice between her thighs alluringly hot. She was wet, soakingly wet, and he was so hard that he ached, Ishida realized that they both wanted it, that they were both ready for it, and he struggled upright, gripping her by the shoulders so hard that he was sure to leave marks.
"I...Inoue-san," he gasped, staring deep into her eyes to show her that he meant it, "let's...let's do this. Now."
She nodded, shakily. "I...I don't think I can wait any longer, either." She swiveled her head, glancing in the direction of their third member. "Ichigo...is it all right?"
Kurosaki whipped upright, then, and dangling from his mouth was the well-worn leather of Ishida's belt, and he had a predatory grin on his face. "Done and done," he said, letting the belt fall, before his face grew serious, and his eyes seemed to look at the other boy in a way they never had before. "Just...give me a second with him, okay?" He gestured, helplessly, then tossed his head at the ceiling, much in the same way stallions did when they were ill at ease. "I...he...we...argh! Just give me a sec, would ya?"
As both of the boys blushed, Inoue was unsuccessful at hiding her smile.
"You...you can't just say...'give me a sec with him' like I'm some sort of...of toy or some - " Ishida started, as Inoue moved from his hips and settled somewhere along the length of his body, spooning up against him as though they were...lovers, even, which Ishida supposed they were...in a way. The only obstruction to that fact filled the gap that Inoue had left, eyes ablaze with a soundless warning.
"For someone who's at the center of attention here, you sure do bitch a lot," Kurosaki griped, rougher than usual because of his uncharacteristic uneasiness, and gripped Ishida by the hair.
He didn't bring their lips crashing together in a heated kiss, as Ishida thought he would do, but instead leaned in close, close enough so that even Inoue couldn't hear, and spoke:
"There are a lot of times when I just want to hit you, you know? Because you're so cold and everything, at times when it really matters. Because you keep pushing Orihime away, all in the name of your godforsaken pride. But I can respect pride, too, you know? Playing the part of martyr is the sort of melodramatic shit you like to pull, so...I thought about leaving it, for a while, but...ha!" Kurosaki laughed at himself, lowly, shaking his head, and loosened his grip on the shorter boy's hair, stroking his fingers through it idly. "Martyrs aren't supposed to let their followers know how much they're suffering, you know? Since you're not any good at self-sacrifice, you should just give it up, s'what I think."
When Ishida opened his mouth to protest, it was then that Kurosaki kissed him - but lightly, as though chastizing - still petting him condescendingly upon the head. It was good - better than good, to be honest - and Kurosaki in a mode like this didn't rankle Ishida for once, but rather, relaxed him: he slid his hands all over the shinigami's body, enjoying the way the skin shuddered and the muscles rippled underneath his touch, and he latched his fingers onto their final destination of Kurosaki's belt.
Out of fighter's instinct, Kurosaki grabbed the waistband of Ishida's slacks, as well, and in that moment, both boys froze. They stared at anywhere but each other, embarrassed but too stubborn to back down, too uneasy to move.
"Have you ever...?" Ishida started, chancing a glance at the taller boy's face, and was instantly rewarded with an indignant glare.
"Of course not!" A considerable pause. "...Have you?"
Ishida colored, and tried not to think of that time with the boy in gym class, before he'd moved to Kurikara Town, and tried his best dignified sniff. "Most certainly not, thank you. How very kind of you to presume that I would be the gay one out of our group."
"Well, you're such a priss, so it was only natural for me to think that - "
"And who's the one who grew up around only girls, hunh?!"
When they stopped to glare at each other, out of breath, it was as though something clicked - each tackled the other, and they began grappling with each other furiously over clothes, determined to rid the other of his pants first, to take hold of what was underneath.
Kurosaki won, if only because Ishida stumbled a bit over Inoue, who had taken to nibbling at his neck, and so the shinigami, grinning triumphantly and looking ridiculous with his pants halfway down his knees, threw Ishida's slacks to the corner of the bed and grabbed the Quincy's cock threw his boxers.
Ishida let out a yell - not because it had felt good, but because it had hurt, dammit - and was only assuaged when Kurosaki loosened his grip, and fondled the shorter boy's balls gently with his other hand, making a apologetic sort of hissing noise out of the corner of his mouth. Ishida squirmed, and tried to catch a glimpse of those wandering hands, but his view was suddenly blocked by Inoue, who chose then to straddle him again, smiling wickedly in a way that made his heart throb, and captured his lips in hers again.
It was downright evil of her to block Kurosaki's hands from view, but at the same time, it felt so good, not to be able to see what was going to happen to him, what part was going to be teased, what part was going to be stroked, such that he couldn't really bring himself to care that much. He writhed, suspended in pleasure, and decided that yes, he could take love on a loan, so long as it was a loan that earned him interest with every payment; yes, there were things he could treasure more than his beloved pride. Inoue's hair was a sweet-smelling curtain that obscured all else from view.
He twitched, feeling himself about to breach that pinnacle of desire, and would have nearly fallen overboard had Inoue not caught his sudden tensing, and grabbed Kurosaki's wrists in time, pulling him forward so that they both overbalanced, and collapsed atop the Quincy, who felt all the breath leave him in a sudden whoosh. He was close, so damned close, and he wriggled underneath the both of them, making noises in his throat that sounded unbearably pathetic, even to him. He could feel the heat coming from between both of their legs, and knew that they had to be ready, too. Knew that...
...his legs were being lifted up into the air as though he were a stuffed turkey?
"H-Hey!" Ishida colored, and flailed out with his legs, but was pinned by Inoue, who pressed all of her weight down on him in a soft rush, cradling his head into her neck and lipping his ear, momentarily reasserting his newfound trust in them.
Trust...yes, trust. He blinked at the realization of it, even as Kurosaki shed his own pants and boxers, even as Inoue lifted her skirt over her head and slipped out of her dainty white panties - cute, but the hem job on them was shoddy, and it was almost embarrassing that he could actually notice that - and even as he felt his own boxers being pulled from his legs, as rough hands palmed the strangely vulnerable area inside of his thighs. It was a matter of trust. He could trust that they wouldn't love him, then let him go, right?
It didn't matter as his legs were lifted high onto Kurosaki's shoulders, and it sure as hell didn't matter when two things happened simultaneously after that: Inoue lowered herself impatiently onto his stiffened cock, and Kurosaki's strangely oily fingers pierced the formerly unbreached area between the cheeks of his ass.
Ishida felt as though he must have blacked out for a moment, because time stopped until Inoue started to move, slowly at first, then with growing confidence. Kurosaki moved his fingers with her, poking and prodding in a way that suggested inexperience - obviously - but slowly growing bolder in his own way, occassionally stroking himself to sate his own desire.
And dear God, it was heaven. Being invaded by the rear was something that probably wouldn't have felt very good on it's own, but the slick tight heat of Inoue's vaginal walls closing in on him absolved his tension, made him feel light-headed and made the intrusion seem not only bearable, but actually quite pleasureable, when he concentrated on it for more than a second or two. There was a slight disruption in his paradise as Inoue paused, and Kurosaki sat up on his knees, the brunette leaning forward to give him room, and Ishida had a moment to feel a sense of vague apprenhension before -
Hot. And tight, and full, and it was Kurosaki's cock inside his ass, which was something that was impossible to describe in and of itself. Inoue was still riding him, but slower this time, letting him get used to the overdose of sensation, and Kurosaki was holding himself in place, teeth gritted and sweat beading on his forehead, for once in his life exercising self-control. Ishida took a shaky breath, and ground down on the taller boy's cock, in a way that he hoped gave reassurance that it was all right to move.
And they did move, the both of them, moving both in and out of synch, moving fast and slow and all over his body, in pants and moans and faint expulsions of breath that sounded vaguely akin to words. They moved in a way that was neither too gentle nor too rough, and after a minute or two of pure physical bliss, Inoue moved again - spasmed, gave out a little cry, and tightened around the dark-haired boy, eyes squinched shut.
Orgasm. That was what it felt like, to be on the receiving end of an Inoue Orihime orgasm, that was what he had been missing while Kurosaki had been receiving - oh, shit...
She tightened around him, in a burst of slick hot liquid and trembling thighs, and it was enough for Ishida - he dug his fingers into the mattress underneath him and felt his body string itself perfectly in tune to that of a livewire, and felt something erupt from roughly the area where Kurosaki was rocking repeatedly back and forth in his ass to the tip of his sheathed cock, shuddering then feeling the viscous warmth of his own come as it bubbled forth from his head, encasing him in the same feeling of blurred fuzziness as the rest of his body. He came hard, with a sort of strangled howl, and clung to Inoue with one arm, and managed to latch onto Kurosaki's neck with the other. For a moment he hung there, suspended by their strength, but let go as Kurosaki groaned, heartfelt, and gave one last push - there was a vague prickliness on Ishida's part as the shinigami squirted his load into the farthest reaches of his colon - before collapsing atop them all, sending Ishida spiralling down into a pleasant darkness.
Ishida burrowed himself in the comfortable pillow of Inoue's chest and thought a strange thing: here were the reirakus of two people who were similar to him, yes, here were two people whom he could stretch out his hand for, and always find an answer. He was willing to accept that neither of them would be completely his - didn't really want Kurosaki all that much, for that matter - but he had learned their well-taught lesson: that they would never really forget about him, either. Surrounded by their dual warmth - Inoue atop him, with Kurosaki's legs twining with his own - and feeling the dual force of their breaths against his skin, of their heartbeats in the room, made him think then that his grandfather would be proud of him, to see that he had made such good friends.
Then again, things always did have a way of looking rosy in the afterglow, or so he had been told. He stretched a bit under his companions and decided that for once, he could be a little bit selfish in his sacrifice.
It was a long time before any of them moved, and the first to stir was Inoue, lifting her breasts from Ishida's face and rubbing her eyes, exhaustion peering out from their depths. "Um...Ishida-kun? Can I... Can I use the bathroom? I want to take a shower..."
"Ah...sure. It's the first door in the hall - the only door in the hall, really...my apartment's small and everything." The Quincy was suddenly embarrassed at the situation, at Inoue and her unending consideration, at Kurosaki and his seemingly comfortable nudity (he flopped over bonelessly when Inoue stood and didn't seem to mind putting himself on display), at the entire...anticlimaticism of it all, after their little tryst had ended up being so intense. Ishida fumbled with the sheets and threw them over his legs, earned an amused look from the shinigami. He swallowed hard and attempted a smile at Inoue. "There are towels on the rack, and shampoo in the medicine cabinent...sorry I don't have much in the way of feminine bath products..."
"You don't? That's surprising, for a fruit like you," Kurosaki quipped from the bed, and Ishida glared at him. Inoue laughed, though, and that was that - the two of them faced opposite ways at the same time, and let the argument between them slide...for the moment, that was. Ishida wasn't sure how much longer he could take homosexual jokes from the guy who had just initiated the fucking him up his ass, after all.
A silence descended where all the two of them could hear was the water of the shower running, and Inoue singing, loudly and off-key. Ishida was wrapped up tightly under the sheets, trying to ignore the unease that was building up within him, and just when he thought he should go sit in the living room -
Pumpf. A heavy hand settled on his hair, and he rolled over in a flash to glare at Kurosaki, indignantly, who was half-propped against the headboard with a listless look on his face. When no smart remark came, when no opportunity for an argument presented itself, Ishida simply blinked, shrunk himself under the covers a bit, and prayed to the soul of his departed grandfather that the redness at the tips of his ears wasn't showing. The shock of pleasure he got when that hand started to rub through his bangs down to the nape of his neck wasn't necessarily from arousal, either. It was...a quiet sort of pleasure, one that calmed him down instead of wound him up, and made the fluttering in his stomach ease, made the hammering of his heart fade. He closed his eyes, and felt his grip on the sheets slowly loosen.
While he marveled at that, Kurosaki took the time to pose a question. "Are you...one of those types that likes to be petted, hunh?"
The redness of his ears had to be showing, by now. Ishida shrank even further under the covers, prepared to retort with a scathing barb of his own, if need be. But Kurosaki only grinned, wanly - his version of a smile, perhaps, if it wasn't a grin - and leaned his head back towards the ceiling, any remaining tension slowly leaking out of his frame.
"Good," was all that he said on the matter.
When Inoue stepped back into the bathroom, still entirely unclothed and ruffling her hair dry with a plain white towel, she was greeted with the sight of the two teens sprawled peacefully on the bed, Ishida lost in thought, and Kurosaki's fingers lost somewhere in Ishida's hair. The sight made her smile, brightly, as she wrapped the towel around herself and climbed up on the bed with them.
"I'm next," Kurosaki declared, sitting up and patting Inoue on the head as he passed her by.
What was even funnier was that Kurosaki sang as he showered, too - not upbeat pop like Inoue, but catchy alternative rock from a generation too old to be his own, along with the occassional splash of water that suggested he was really getting into it - and though Ishida thought that he would talk with Inoue as they lay there, he found that he couldn't really bring himself to do it - couldn't force himself to bring up unnecessary complications in the face of this near-domestic bliss. Instead, she held out her arms to him, soundlessly, and he crawled into them, nestling his face into her neck and wrapping his arms around her waist possessively. They lay like that, for a long time, and Ishida was just starting to doze when Kurosaki came banging back into the room, and cut off abruptly mid-verse when he saw the two of them snuggling there.
It was impossible to tell what went through his eyes, which was unusual, but all he grunted at them was, "Move over. I'm sleeping up here, too", and jostled his way onto the bed with them. Ishida thought for sure he'd stay on the other side with Inoue, but was surprised for the umpteenth time that night as Kurosaki pressed close to him, instead, pulling the shorter boy against his chest and mumbling something that sounded suspiciously like 'fruitcake' before setting his chin on Ishida's shoulder, breath tickling his ear.
Inoue looked troubled, but she simply smiled it off and pushed an errant strand of Ishida's hair behind his ear before relaxing into sleep, as well.
In the end, it was the Quincy who was left awake to marvel at it all, to feel sated and slightly sore, yet strangely hollow at the end of it all, to feel strangely anxious about his honor, and his friends, and the price he would pay for sacrificing them all. Lightning struck again outside, and a set of leaves whirled by past the window, helplessly caught up in the gale.
"Grandfather..." Ishida wondered aloud, and held his breath as Inoue stirred, "why do I feel as though I've somehow lost again...?"
He wasn't able to sleep until it had at last started to rain.
AN: Why the hell can't I end a fic happily? *dies of lame* Anyway, while I like the concept of this, I still wish IT HAD ENDED OFF BETTER WTF. By this point in time this fic had been sitting on my harddrive for 473028403 months, and I really just wanted to FINISH the freaking thing, which explains why it all sucks. Feel free to stone me, Errant N00b of the Fandom. *holds hands up in the air*
I'm not as into this fandom as I was when I first started writing this (oh, about 2-3 some months ago), but I hadn't seen much in the way of IchiIshiHime fics on the comms I frequent, so I thought I'd finish this and toss up my little offering to this generous fandom. ♥ More fic forthcoming, if you guys pelt me with ideas.