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In all honesty, Chad doesn’t do a lot of thinking.
That’s not to say he’s stupid -- not by a long shot. He knows he’s probably not quite as clever as some of his peers, but he takes apart math problems like breathing air and, though he’s always had a bit of trouble understanding literature, he’s able to repeat what others tell him and integrate it into his understanding of the novel. All-in-all, Chad’s pretty good at schoolwork -- though he doesn’t put a lot of thought into how he stacks up against his classmates, except when exams roll around, and even then it’s only in passing.
As far as Chad’s concerned, things like that don’t necessarily deserve that much thought. The problem-solving strategy he’s worked with for most of his life is to simply “go for it” (or, as he’s had it put to him by others, “keep punching the bad thing until it stops being bad”). And it’s got to be a pretty effective strategy, Chad thinks, because it’s worked for him so far.
Chad is struck with this line of thought in full force as he watches Uryuu push up the bridge of his glasses and talk himself in about three different circles in the space of a minute. He thinks that Uryuu could probably do with a problem-solving strategy more like his own.
He watches as Uryuu clutches the handle of his messenger bag like he’s holding on for dear life, clenching his teeth together as he tries to smile lightheartedly but ends up looking more scary than anything, his glasses flashing in the dim light of the late-night subway. He immediately goes back to chattering, his words spilling out so fast that Chad can’t really understand him, words like “edification” and “circumspect” and “cerebral” slurred on top of each other like some kind of word vomit as he pushes his glasses back up and then tilts his head down, letting them fall down his nose and repeating the process over and over and over again, saying the same words...
Chad places a hand on his shoulder and all at once Uryuu comes to a verbal and physical stop. “What are you trying to say?”
Uryuu takes in a deep breath and says, “I’m gay.”
“Oh,” Chad says, removing his hand. “Okay.”
“‘Okay’?” Uryuu repeats back to him.
Chad shrugs. “I don’t care.”
“What do you mean, you don’t care?”
Chad glances at Uryuu, flushed red and looking decidedly less put-together than he usually does, and is totally puzzled.
“Uh,” Chad says. “I mean, it’s not like it really matters.”
Uryuu huffs beside him. Chad turns his eyes back towards the opposite window, watching the scenery flash by with an absent mind. This is a matter that probably requires more thought, but he has no idea where to even start.
Clenching his teeth, Uryuu responds, “I suppose.”
---
“I’m gay for you. That’s why it matters.”
Chad has to consciously think not to come to a complete halt in the middle of the street, but he does continue walking, Uryuu a few steps behind him.
After a second of silence, Uryuu starts up again, “That’s not the right phrasing, what I should have said is -- “
“It’s fine,” Chad says.
Another pause, during which a woman shuffles past the two of them, shooting an awkward glance upwards somewhere in the vicinity of Chad’s neck as she does.
“What do you mean, ‘it’s fine’?!”
“I mean it’s fine,” Chad says.
Uryuu pauses. “Well, what does that mean?”
Chad puts his hands in his pockets, keeping his eyes fixed on the road ahead of them, the path they’re supposed to take, and thinks. Uryuu says nothing else, falling into step with him, but Chad can feel the anxiety rolling off him in waves, completely obvious in the weird stiffness in his steps and the way his jaw twitches the longer they keep walking in silence. Chad knows they’d be caught totally off-guard if they were to encounter an enemy right now.
“Are you ever going to answer?” Uryuu snaps after a few minutes.
Chad lets the silence hang for a few more seconds before he answers, “I guess it just means…” Another pause. “I guess I don’t really know what it means.”
Uryuu huffs out an angry breath, crossing his arms. Defensive body language -- he remembers reading that somewhere once.
“Gimme some time to think about it,” he says, putting his hand on Uryuu’s shoulder, heavy and probably bigger than Uryuu’s actual face.
Uryuu’s cheeks and the bridge of his nose erupt into a shade of red that looks almost uncomfortable against the pasty white of his skin. Adjusting his glasses, he walks straight out from under Chad’s hand. “Alright. That’s fine.”
“Cool,” Chad says.
They walk.
---
“Hey, Ichigo.”
“Huh? What is it?”
Chad, looming over Ichigo’s desk in a way that would probably a bit off-putting to anyone else, asks, “What do you do when someone likes you?”
Ichigo, lips cracked open in an offput and rather disbelieving expression around the straw of juicebox, says, “What?”
Keigo slaps him hard on the bag, grinning wide and exaggeratedly up at Chad. “What, you’ve got a lady after you? Chad, you sly dog -- “
Mizuiro elbows him in the side before he can finish that train of thought. “Hush up, Asano, no one wants to hear it.”
Keigo turns a hurt expression Mizuiro’s way and continue on with their usual banter. Chad watches as Ichigo rolls his eyes at the two of them, resting his hand in his chin, and turns a contemplative eye off into the distance. “You date them, I guess?" he says, more like he's in the process of trying to parse the question rather than actually confused as to the answer. "Or you...don't? I don't know, man. It's not really that hard of a question."
Keigo puts a hand on Chad's shoulder, attempting to pull him away from Ichigo and failing miserably. "Who is she? Is she cute? How big are her -- "
At that moment the teacher walks into the room, her heels clicking fiercely against the floor. Chad swears he can see Keigo's lips physically zip shut as he slides into his seat, a comically uneasy look on his face, like their teacher can hear his rude comments through the barrier of time.
"Wait, who -- " Ichigo starts as Chad ambles over to his seat.
Chad opens his mouth to throw the answer over his shoulder, but just before he does their teacher slams her hands down on the table, shouting something irate at the class as a whole, and Chad loses his chance.
He rests his pen against his lips as the teacher starts up talking, cheeks flushed as she bustles about setting up her lesson. Across the room, Uryuu sits by the window, pen poised over the paper of his notebook. He waits with an only slightly impatient expression as their teacher rifles through papers their papers, trying to track down their tests from last week. He had been in the room before, hadn't he? Chad wonders if he had overheard.
And, vaguely, more in concept than in actual letter, Chad contemplates how Uryuu would even feel if he did.
Uryuu is a bit of a mystery to Chad -- he’s a Quincy, kind of nervous, and spends a lot of time yelling at Ichigo. Also -- he has a lot of bad plans, Chad’s brain throws up at him from somewhere in his subconscious, and Chad quirks his lips as he sets his pencil to paper. Chad could probably say a lot about how he tends to react to other people -- or, mostly Ichigo. He mostly interacts with Ichigo.
Chad kind of wonders why he isn’t gay for Ichigo.
Thinking about it, he wonders if Uryuu would’ve cared if he had told Ichigo that Uryuu had -- asked him out? Is that what happened? He knows some people can be kind of twitchy about that thing, although, again -- Chad’s never put that much thought into it. And he did tell Chad alone, rather than in a group.
Chad stares down at his paper, then up at the board. He’s at least a half a problem behind on the notes. What should he do?
He feels like he’s going to break into a sweat sitting at his desk. He thinks, not self-pityingly so much as with a sense of overwhelmedness, that this is far too socially complicated for him.
He puts the whole issue out of his mind and pays attention to the math. They’re graphing conics, and there’s something satisfying about the process for graphing a hyperbola, Chad thinks. You get to draw the little box, the dotted diagonal lines, and fit the curve of the function perfectly along them.
But as soon as class is over and their teacher has walked out of the room, Chad turns around to find Ichigo staring at him with eyebrows pulled down and his lips screwed up into a frankly menacing expression.
“Uh,” Chad says.
“Rukia would tell me,” Ichigo grumbles, crossing his arms in his desk. “And it better not be Orihime,” he says. “That would just be...weird.” Chad knows enough to know that Ichigo isn’t really angry at him, or anything really, but the expression scribbled across his face is straight out of an unlikeable punk’s in a manga.
“I, uh,” Chad says. He’s not afraid so much as he has no idea how to deal with this situation. “I can’t really talk about it.”
“What do you mean -- “
Ichigo is cut off by Keigo, from Chad’s other side -- “What do you mean you can’t tell us?! We’re your friends, Chad, you owe us all of the dirty stories about you and your lady love!”
MIzuiro pipes up from beside Keigo, vastly unimpressed, “He doesn’t owe you anything, Asano.”
“Are you kidding? If I can’t get the plushy, soft, luxurious body of a woman between my own fingers, Chad has to at least tell -- “
“I wonder why you’re so bad with girls,” Mizuiro remarks.
“Excuse me -- “
Ichigo places a hand on his desk to get his attention, and Mizuiro and Keigo fade into the background. “Hm?”
“It’s fine if you can’t tell or whatever,” Ichigo says, gaze focussed somewhere off into the distance rather than at Chad himself. “Just --” he thuds Chad hard on the back, and out of the corner of Chad’s eye, he catches the movement as Uryuu pushes up the bridge of his glasses and shotts the both of them a look. “Good luck.”
“Yeah,” Chad says. “Thanks.
---
“I didn’t mean that -- I didn’t mean that I was -- it’s not like, specifically you or anything.”
Chad pauses for a second, peering at Uryuu out from under the curtain of his bangs. “I got that.”
Uryuu adjusts his glasses with his middle finger. It’s not quite a nervous gesture, Chad thinks, but more like he was crossing his arms or turning away. Kinda defensive.
“As long as you understand.”
The subway shudders around them -- another late-night commitment in their quest to save the world, or whatever it is they’re doing. Protecting people. Protecting lives. Chad doesn’t necessarily mind the midnight commute.
And then, something occurs to Chad. “Do you normally ride this train?”
Uryuu’s back stiffens. “Uh,” he says, clasping his bag so hard Chad can see his knuckles start to go white.
“Don’t you…live on the other side of town?” He’s not sure where he pulls that information from, but judging by the nervous nervous curve of his mouth, Chad’s not that far off. Uryuu’s glasses go nearly opaque with the light of the streetlights racing past the windows of the subway car. The timing seems almost purposeful, the way he obscures his own eyes -- although he can’t possibly control something like that. Or can he? He sure does do it a lot. It wouldn’t surprise Chad too much if he had managed to get that whole reflecting thing down to a sort of science.
Uryuu says nothing, just staring out the window opposite the both of them. Chad shifts the strap of his bag on his shoulder. “I think we should try it.”
Uryuu makes a noise kind of like he’s choking on his own spit. “You what!?”
Chad blinks. He says again, “I think we should try it.”
Uryuu stares at him with a totally disbelieving and rather disgruntled look on his face. The whole thing throws his usual stoic composure in stark contrast.
“That -- “ Uryuu has a hand clenched into some kind of claw up in the vicinity of his head. “That is a horrible idea!”
Chad frowns. “What?”
“It’s -- I’ve said like, what, twenty words to you in the span of the entire time I’ve known you?”
“Um,” Chad says. “Probably more than that.”
“You know nothing about me! I don’t know anything about you!”
Chad stands there and watches as Uryuu loses every ounce of composure he -- Chad is learning -- likes to pretend he has. Uryuu’s mouth curls into a scowl, and his shoulders rise up until they’re closer to his ears than the bottom of his neck.
“I could learn more about you.” Uryuu shoots him a look that Chad thinks is closer to actual anger than anything else. “I mean. That is what people who date each other do.”
“I -- that’s -- “ Uryuu stutters out a couple more unidentifiable half-syllables before he comes up with the objection, “We don’t have anything in common.”
Chad pauses for a second, and thinks. “How would you know that if we don’t know anything about each other?”
A pause, while Uryuu’s face erupts into a mortified shade of red. “I -- I know enough.”
“No offense,” Chad says, “but how do you know that we have nothing in common...if you don’t know anything about me?”
Uryuu exhales in that same way he does when he has to concede that Ichigo has a point, like a near-silent acknowledgement of his own loss.
A long moment passes in silence, the metal poles and handles rattling as the train jolts along the tracks. “You know, you seem pretty opposed to this whole thing...considering you were the one who suggested it.”
“I didn’t suggest it,” Uryuu snaps, his tone more caustic than Chad was expecting. “I only said that I -- that I -- “ He bites his own lip.
“That you were gay for me,” Chad says, a little smile creeping across his lips as he does.
Uryuu rests his head in his hands and mutters something to himself that Chad can’t quite make out.
“It’s okay,” Chad says, thunking Uryuu on the back so hard he rocks forward a few inches. “I thought it was pretty funny.”
Uryuu makes another horrified noise into his hand before he peers up at Chad through his fingers and asks, scathingly, “Are you even gay?”
Chad pauses, thinking. He shrugs. “I guess.”
Uryuu scoffs. “You guess?”
“Well,” Chad says. “I’m pretty sure I like guys. If that’s what you mean.”
Uryuu blinks, his glasses sliding down his nose. “Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Oh.”
The train comes to a halt, screeching gently against the tracks. As the doors slide open, Chad briefly considers placing a hand on Uryuu’s shoulder, or holding grabbing him by the wrist, but decides not to. It might not go over too well considering what he’s about to say.
They step off the train, the doors swishing close behind the two of them. “Stay the night at my place.”
Uryuu jumps in place, a weird kind of startled motion. “What?”
“You live across town, right?” Chad wonders how did he even get back the first time. Admittedly, it’s not especially far, but --
“I -- I can’t!” He raises his hands up, bag dangling haphazardly from his fingers. “That would -- I -- I don’t have a spare change of clothes -- more specifically a uniform -- and it’s just improper not to mention rude to show up at school in a dirty uniform -- and I don’t have a toothbrush either, and dental hygiene is very important, so I’m afraid I must decline, sorry, it’s just that I don’t have any spare -- “
He’s starting to talk himself into circles again.
“Uryuu,” Chad says, trying out the name fresh on his tongue, and all of a sudden Uryuu’s spew of words comes to an abrupt halt. “Tomorrow is Saturday.”
The station is nearly empty this late at night, which is probably why Chad can hear Uryuu swallow in response to that. “Ah,” he says. “That makes things significantly less complicated, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Chad agrees.
“Well, I suppose I -- “ he fiddles with the handle of his bag, scratching at the seams. “I suppose I -- could. In that case.”
“Cool,” Chad says. He takes the first step, leading the both of them out of the station and on to the short walk home to Chad’s place.
“So,” Uryuu says, “how exactly did you figure out you...liked guys?” He says it like he still doesn’t quite believe it. Some part of Chad draws a similarity in his tone to Cinderella, about to be trussed up for the ball.
Chad chuckles. “There was this one time Ichigo beat up like five dudes under a bridge…”
Uryuu makes a muffled choking noise. “Okay, what -- “
---
“So, you live alone?”
Chad toes off his shoes just inside the door. “Yeah,” he says.
Uryuu hums in acknowledgement. “Yeah, me too. My father….” He pauses. “I used to live with my father.”
Chad doesn’t know how exactly how to respond to that, so he takes his usual course of action, which is to not respond at all. Instead, he glances around his apartment -- which isn’t anything particularly out-of-the-norm, he thinks. There’s not much actually in it. He’s got a place to sleep and a couch, which one of his old band members had pushed off on him a few months back. It was a gesture which he doubted the kindness of, given the fact that it was an ugly enough shade of yellow that he felt obliged to cover it with an old sheet, and seemed to be falling apart at the seams. Other than that, his place was pretty barren. Chad’s never spent much time here, or had people over. Furnishing the place had never seemed that important.
Uryuu stands awkwardly in the doorway. Chad reaches for something to say, a conversation topic, something, and when he draws a total blank he briefly considers that he might not exactly have thought this through.
“There’s, uh. Not very much to do,” Chad says. Watching Uryuu shift uncomfortably is starting to make him uncomfortable, like some weird kind of cycle. It’s like listening to Uryuu talk to himself. Or maybe a positive feedback mechanism -- Chad thinks that’s what they’re called. Where the output enhances the original stimulus, a neverending cycle of Chad watching Uryuu get uncomfortable which makes Chad uncomfortable which makes Uryuu more uncomfortable, repeat ad infinitum until the original stimulus comes to some kind of crux, a turning point --
“This is awkward,” Uryuu says.
“Yeah.”
“We could, uh -- “ Uryuu doesn’t stutter, not really, but Chad can hear the way his voice shakes. Really awkward. “What time is it?”
Chad glances at the clock. “Nine thirty.”
Uryuu swallows. “Well, we both probably have homework.”
Chad does, in fact, make an attempt to hide exactly how unenthusiastic he is about that idea, but Uryuu seems to notice anyways, because he laughs anyway, this gentle little snicker behind the palm of his hand.
“We could talk,” Chad says. “Or just go to bed.” He swallows, and upon seeing the way Uryuu’s cheeks flush a violent shade of red lets his mind wander to what they could be doing instead of talking for a brief second before he corrects himself. “Sleep.”
“Right,” Uryuu says. “We should talk.”
Chad grunts in agreement.
A moment passes in silence.
“What...do you want to talk about?” Chad asks. Uryuu is still standing awkwardly in the doorway, and hasn’t made any move to leave.
“Literally anything.”
“Oh.” Chad pauses, running his tongue along the back of his teeth. “Conics?”
Uryuu stares at him blankly. “What?”
“You know, hyperbolas and ellipses and para -- “
“I know what conics are!” Uryuu cuts him off. “I just -- why would you want to talk about that?”
Chad shrugs. “I don’t know,” he says. “They’re cool.”
Uryuu frowns. “You sound like you actually do want to study.”
Chad feels his vocal cords tighten up as his brain chooses that exact moment to let it sink in that he and Uryuu are absolutely alone, nobody around, nobody going to be around, with a somewhat shaky but at least existent promise of...of whatever. And if that thought doesn’t send Chad’s brain spinning into a confused mess of hormones, well -- he probably wouldn’t be human.
Helplessly, Chad nods.
Uryuu’s eyebrows contort into a quizzical curve. “Well, okay?”
---
They sit on the couch and study.
Chad very clearly thinks that this is not what he wants to be doing on a Friday night, but he tries not to put too much thought into it.
He balances his math notebook on his knees while Uryuu digs a pencil out of his bag. And -- well, at that point, he supposes, there’s not much else to do other than...study.
So he starts on a problem, sorting out the equation out, dividing and subtracting until the numbers are set out all even and Chad can tell it’s a circle. He takes a second to sketch a graph, figures out where the center is and how wide the radius should be. It’s a smooth process, like scraping peanut butter out of a jar or the way skates slide along ice.
When he glances up, he finds Uryuu staring down at his own paper, tapping the plastic end of his mechanical pencil against his lips. His eyebrows bow into an angry curve, his lips pursed tightly. Chad’s seen him make that expression before, holding a bow as he shoots down Hollow after Hollow, this intense kind of concentration writ across his features. It makes Chad’s day a little bit better to know that serious expression is also reserved for math problems.
Uryuu glances up at him, his expression not changing in the slightest. “What?”
Chad realizes he’s been caught. “Um,” he says. “Why don’t you...live with your father anymore?”
Uryuu reaches up a middle finger to adjust the bridge of his glasses. At this point Chad’s wondering if the bridge is just malfunctional, or something. “After my grandfather died,” he begins, “my father was hell-bent on keeping me out of all Quincy business.” Chad realizes this may not have been the best conversation topic for this situation, but he can’t exactly do anything about it now. “It was difficult to practice when I got grounded every time he caught me trying.” When I got the chance, I went to a high school out of town.”
“Oh,” Chad says. He feels like he should offer up some kind of opinion or relation, but he doesn’t really have anything else to say to that. He doesn’t spend a lot of time alone with other people.
Uryuu turns back to his work. “What about you?” he asks. He stabs his pencil against the paper a few times, like he wants to write something but doesn’t know what.
“Huh?” Chad asks, eloquently.
“Your parents,” Uryuu says. “How did you end up living on your own?”
“Oh,” Chad says. “Uh, my grandfather died.” He doesn’t really know how to explain, so he sits there for a second, thinking. Uryuu continues to stare, tapping the point of his pencil against the notebook. Chad chooses not to interpret that particular gesture as impatience. “We used to live in Mexico. I used to live in Okinawa, when I was a kid. So I came back here.”
Uryuu hums. “Does that mean you know Spanish?”
“Uh, yeah,” Chad says.
“Must make learning English a lot easier.”
Chad nods. “I guess.”
The two of them continue to sit in awkward silence for another minute. Chad watches, and Uryuu does not start back up on his homework, just sits there, staring at Chad as he presses the point into the paper of his notebook. Chad doesn’t start his homework either, eyeing Uryuu’s hands in his peripheral vision, the slender curve of his fingers and the rounded tips of his fingernails. He’s thin; Chad can see his veins running through his wrist like little mountain ridges, a bluish color that stands out clear against the pale white of his skin. And, Chad thinks, he’s not entirely sure if this is going to work, but it certainly has the potential to.
“Okay,” Uryuu says, after a long moment. “This is horrible.”
“Um,” Chad says. He feels like he’s said that a lot tonight. Well, he’s probably said it a lot in his whole life, but he’s downright abused that word over the last few hours.
“We are a pair of teenagers, totally alone for the foreseeable future, and we’re,” Uryuu’s voice seems to lose that self-assured timbre he usually employs, and his next word comes out quiet and hesitant, like he’s trying it out for the first time, “dating.” He takes in a deep breath as he gathers himself back together. “We should make out.”
Chad feels the sides of his lips pull into an expression he honestly can’t name. “What?” he says.
Uryuu flushes a frankly adorable shade of red. “I mean, it’s the logical thing to do, considering -- “
“Okay, hold on.” Chad places a hand on Uryuu’s shoulder, his palm seeming to dwarf Uryuu outright, and Chad is again reminded of their sheer difference in size. “Did you just say...it was logical to make out right now?”
He can feel Uryuu’s muscles stiffen beneath his hand. “I -- I mean, if we’re operating on the assumption that we want to progress our relationship as teenagers normally do, then it makes sense to -- “
Chad leans down and kisses him.
It’s not even close to Chad’s first kiss, but it sure does feel like Uryuu’s -- it’s like reading a book, the way it takes him a few seconds to understand the way he’s supposed to move his lips and even longer to get the finer mechanics down, he doesn’t know what to do with his hands or his tongue, but Chad just keeps kissing him, threading his fingers through the hair at the back of Uryuu’s neck, and gives him time to figure it out.
After a minute or two, Chad pulls away. Their math notebooks are still sitting on their laps, but Uryuu’s pencil has rolled somewhere possibly never to be found again. “Like that?”
“Yeah,” Uryuu says, and it comes out as this undignified little squeak.
“Cute,” Chad says, because there’s no way Chad couldn’t think so. It’s the juxtaposition between how serious Uryuu usually takes himself and how vulnerable he is now.
“I am not -- “ Uryuu starts, but then Chad leans in and kisses him again, and Uryuu doesn’t seem to care enough about the rest of his sentence to do anything about it. His mouth is small and warm and earnest and the metal of his glasses is cool where it’s pressed only a little uncomfortably into Chad’s face -- and maybe Chad’s never thought about it too much before but it hits him then that Uryuu is hot, even with the questionable fashion choices and the weird hair and the overabundance of crosses. It’s all just part of who Uryuu is.
Uryuu’s the one who breaks the kiss this time, and Chad takes the chance to run his thumb down the edge of his jaw, sharp and fine. Uryuu doesn’t say anything, just cooly peels his glasses from his face and sets them gently on the side table.
“Uh, don’t you need those to see?” Chad asks.
Uryuu says, “It’s fine,” and leans back over to Chad. He looks weird without his glasses. His eyes are a slightly different color, Chad thinks, like they’ve lightened up a shade to be almost a deep blue. Chad leans in to kiss him again, because he can and he definitely wants to. Chad fits their lips together like a lock fits in a key, seamless as he wraps his arm around Uryuu’s waist and drags him closer, relishing the surprised noise that gets lost in Chad’s mouth.
He has to break up the kiss for a second to pull their notebooks out of the way, folding them closed and placing them on the floor before he presses another soft kiss to Uryuu’s lips -- he stares at Chad with mildly unfocused eyes, and Chad starts to think that he probably did need his glasses to be able to see. But Chad doesn’t find it within himself to really start a fuss about that now, just hikes his knees up onto the couch and tugs Uryuu up over them, until he’s straddling Chad’s lap, flushed red all the way down to his collarbone. “Y-Yasutora -- “
“You can call me Chad.”
Uryuu braces himself on Chad’s shoulders. He’s looking into Chad’s eyes, but his eyes waver, like he can’t tell exactly how far away they are. “That’s not your name.”
Chad shrugs, and Uryuu lurches. He can’t be that small, not really, it’s only that Chad dwarfs just about everyone. “It’s what people call me,” he says as he leans up to press a kiss along Uryuu’s jaw.
“Yeah, but it’s not your name,” Uryuu says, and Chad feels his fingers slide back over his shoulder blades, fingers knotting in the fabric of Chad’s shirt.
“Call me whatever you want,” Chad mutters into the flesh of Uryuu’s neck just before he scrapes his teeth along Uryuu’s jugular and feels him shudder in Chad’s arms.
“Names are -- important -- “ Uryuu says in this hot, breathy voice. He’s so insistently wordy most of the time, Chad’s actually kind of surprised he can distract Uryuu from talking at all. Chad grunts back and neutral response. “I’ll call you Yasutora.”
“That’s fine,” Chad says. He slips a hand up Uryuu’s back and pulls him even closer, until Chad can feel Uryuu’s body pressed up against his chest, warmth radiating through the cotton of their clothes. “Whatever’s fine,” he mutters into Uryuu’s neck.
Uryuu leans back and tilts Chad’s chin upwards with a couple of insistent fingers. “Okay,” he says, and leans in to kiss Chad again.
---
“Uryuu,” Ichigo says, eyebrows pulled down into an expression that seems more confused than accusatory. “Uryuu Ishida?”
“Yeah,” Chad says at the same time Uryuu barks, “I’m standing right here, moron!”
Ichigo stares at the both of them dumbly for a long second. “Are you sure?”
Chad can’t see Uryuu’s face from the angle he’s at, but he has no doubt that he’s currently fixing Ichigo with a disgustedly disappointed look. “No, we both hallucinated the entire thing, Ichigo. That’s what really happened, totally probable.”
Ichigo crosses his arms and gives Uryuu a downright spiteful look. “You know that’s not what I meant.”
Uryuu raises a hand up to his face, no doubt to adjust his glasses. Chad wonders if he knows how much he does that. “I’m not sure how else I’m supposed to interpret that -- “
Ichigo rolls his eyes, but before the two of them can break out into a full-out fight, Orihime pops in with an enthusiastic twinkle in her eyes. “You’re dating? This is so great!” She cuts Uryuu off like he hadn’t even been talking. She doesn’t do it with any kind of malice, she just hadn’t even realized, and it makes Chad smile. “Because you’re both guys, and since you’re both guys the dudeliness between the two of you is magnified -- “ he catches Ichigo, behind her, mouth ‘dudeliness’ to himself with a puzzled look -- “and so your relationship can get exponentially more fantastic and outdo all the other relationships!”
Chad stares at her. “Uh.”
“That’s...nice, Orihime,” Uryuu says.
She holds a finger up. “It’s not nice, it’s the truth,” she says, with a self-assured wink.
“It’s weird,” Ichigo says. Uryuu’s shoulders stiffen and his back straightens out in a split second. Chad puts a hand on his shoulder. “Not -- Not because you’re both guys, or anything, but -- “ Ichigo’s eyes widen, and he points at Uryuu with a weak finger. “It’s just...he’s so small, and,” the finger migrates from Uryuu to Chad, “you’re so big.”
Chad, very solemnly, takes his hand off of Uryuu’s shoulder and forms a ring with his finger and thumb, which he promptly brings up to his other hand and pushes a finger through.
Ichigo looks a bit like somebody just slapped him with dead fish, while Orihime gazes at him like he’s just given her some truly enlightening information.
“I’m...I’m gonna….” Ichigo rigidly gestures over his shoulder. “Go.”
“What?” Uryuu asks, glancing from Ichigo to Orihime and finally back at Chad. “What just happened?”
Trying to hold back a smile, Chad shrugs.
Uryuu glances back to Orihime and the scandalized-looking Ichigo, who doesn’t look like he’s going to start recovering anytime soon. “Okay, no, really, what just happened?”
Chad drapes an arm over Uryuu’s shoulders, enjoying the way he seems to stiffen up underneath him and then immediately relax. “Don’t worry about it,” Chad says, and pulls him just a little bit closer.
Chad thinks he can probably make this work.