Archive of Our Own

It’s a love story that begins with heartbreak.

“What the fuck were you thinking? What the actual fuck were you thinking? The idea of the present was to give you some—god damn it. It’s like you were sent here to destroy me.”

Ichigo jams his thumbs into his temples. He can’t even think straight. The whole world has gone red with incredulous frustration and he can’t think straight. Of all the stupid, brainless ideas Kon has come up with over the years, this one tops the list for pure oblivious fuckery.

“I don’t get it,” Kon says, and from his wide eyes and cocked head, he really doesn’t. He looks down at his new gigai, this perfect opportunity Ichigo gave him for all his years of help, and shrugs. “You told me to go to Urahara’s and get a gigai, any kind I wanted. Why are you pissing your pants like a toddler over it? I look great.” Familiar fingers pluck at his shirt, pulling it up slightly to show Ichigo the fabric and a wide flash of stomach. “They even treated me to bamboo thread clothes! I think they said it was wine red, but it looks kinda purple-red to me.”

Patience has never really been a virtue of Ichigo’s.

“Kon,” Ichigo says slowly, though extremely gritted teeth, “you still look like me.”

“So?”

“So the idea was for you to look like literally anyone else on the planet! You were supposed to go and, I don’t know, pick an identity! Figure out a life after the war! Go out and live! I didn’t work my ass off in favours for Urahara for three months just so you could come back looking like my evil fucking twin!”

Kon’s face is starting to crumple a little. Finally, it’s sinking in.

“You wanted me to leave?” Kon asks, small-voiced, and Ichigo throws up his hands.

“That’s not the point! It’s been five years of peace, Kon. I’m almost twenty-four—” Ichigo’s words are stopped by a gasp of sheer scandalised horror. Ichigo’s breath hisses out in an annoyed exhale, already knowing what’s coming next. Ever the drama queen, Kon stabs an accusing finger in Ichigo’s direction. He really is every inch Ichigo’s doppelgänger, from his soft mess of spiky orange hair to his grey-socked feet, but his expression is utter hot-cheeked outrage.

“You are trying to get rid of me!” The single syllable is pitched high enough to crack glass. “Your one trusted companion through all the years, the one who stuck with you even when you were being a big depressed black hole of self-pity, which was a really shitty time for me personally by the way, the one who never left your side except for when I got stolen! You can’t just toss me a gigai and then give me away like some old toy you outgrew!”

They always argue like this, escalating to yelling and arm-waving within moments, and it’s the familiarity of that old routine that makes Ichigo miss an important detail before he speaks.

“You are an old toy I outgrew!” he shouts right back at Kon, still standing there in his stupid new casual wear with that dumb, open look on his face. “That’s why I thought you might want a life. Something that’s yours and not mine for once. I thought—but you missed the whole fucking point, like always.”

“What point?” Something is changing on Kon’s face, going from outrage to flushed cheeks and eyes slicked with a wet shine. He looks small, unsure. A plush lion in a grown adult body. Ichigo doesn’t see it in time.

“The point was that you could have picked the best face in the whole world!”

Kon clenches his fists tight and lowers his head. He says two words.

“I did!”

He’s gone before Ichigo can think straight, sobbing and cursing him like he always does. He runs right out the front door he’d only just come in from ten minutes ago, new gigai feet slipping clumsily on the floorboards. The clacking of the door handle says he missed it a few times, too. Then he’s gone, just a flash of orange and alleged wine red through the window, crying like maybe the world had ended. Ichigo’s first instinct is to go out after him, but something tells him he’s just fucked up on a level he can’t quite gauge yet. Besides, Kon will want someone to give him pity, and Ichigo isn’t sure he can be that person without impulsively drowning him in the nearest body of water.

Ichigo mechanically locks the front door and wanders back into the living room, bothered right down to the bottom of his stomach. He hadn’t come off looking like his best self just then, but what’s he supposed to do about it now? Better to leave it a couple of hours. Kon never goes too far, anyway. There’s almost nowhere for him to even go, since he doesn’t have any real friends except for Ichigo. And that…

“An old toy I outgrew,” Ichigo groans with growing guilt swelling ever-larger beneath his ribs. He covers his face with his hands and quietly screams into them. Kon was always annoying as hell in the heat of the moment, but that had been thoughtless and cruel in ways he hadn’t even considered. He’d been too focussed on his own anger at eagerly giving Kon a gift only to find he’d essentially thrown it in the trash. But what can he do right now? Chasing after him immediately will make it worse.

There’s no sense crying over spilt milk, Ichigo tells himself resolutely, pulling his face out of his hands. At least, not until he’s sure it’s really spilt.

Instead, he makes a strong mental note to explain properly when Kon returns, with a caveat not to get drawn into another pointless argument. That’s the last thing either of them needs.

Yeah. He’ll think it over and explain properly when Kon has calmed down and come back.

It’ll be fine.

“He hates me,” Kon wobbles out, his blurry eyes on the hot cup of tea Tessai has given him. He hates matcha, but it’s a different taste to his tears and that’s an improvement. “I thought he’d be happy that I still wanted to help! Touched and stuff, you know? Stupid Kon had the chance to go out into the big wide world but chose to hang out with him anyway. I’m so dumb, Urahara! I’m really, really dumb! He’s never looked that mad before!”

“You and Kurosaki-san don’t always have the smoothest relationship, do you? Perhaps it’s simply another minor tiff, as it were.” Urahara is being unexpectedly kind for someone who probably predicted Ichigo’s reaction the instant Kon asked for the gigai and said nothing about it. Urahara is sometimes a real sick bastard when it comes to his research.

“He said he’s outgrown me.” The words hurt; each one feels like a rusty hook prying his ribs apart a little further, exposing his gigai heart. Kon imagines it’s a fist-sized object of plastic and metal, pushing fluid through him that looks nothing like human blood. “He’s never said anything like that before. I think he wants me to leave and the gigai was supposed to make it seem like it was my idea. He thinks he’s smart, but I know him inside and out.”

“Do you?” A pale hand lands amongst his hair, sifting through strands not quite as soft as Ichigo’s own but the exact style and colour. “Kon-san. You should know by now that Kurosaki-san’s temper flares hot and dies quickly. I’m sure he’s quite worried about you right now. Why don’t you head back home and talk it out with him?”

Head home? Talk it out? It all sounds easy and it’ll probably work out for Kon if he does it. It’s how it always goes when they argue, after all. They’ll grudgingly both half-apologise and hardly talk for the rest of the night, but then when it’s time for bed they’ll snuggle up together like always, unthinking and comfortable in their closeness. It’s Kon’s favourite part of the day, but there’s a spreading stain of hurt humiliation colouring the memories now, knowing he’d been the only one to enjoy it. Ichigo wants him to leave. Besides, a gigai can’t fit in his bed. Not that Kon wants to now, anyway. Contrary to widely accepted opinion, he’s not that pathetic.

“Didn’t you hear? He’s outgrown me,” Kon repeats slowly, uncertain whether they’re just stupid or don’t believe him. He sniffs back a load of artificial snot and wonders why that had to be a feature of his body. “I might only be a mod soul, but I’ve got my pride. There’s no way I’m going back. A-and screw Ichigo, anyway! What does he know about having a life? He’s still working part time for Ikumi-san and dicking around at Isshin’s clinic! He doesn’t have a girlfriend and he lives at home, Urahara. With his dad.”

“I feel oddly insulted,” Urahara replies, scratching at his unkempt hair thoughtfully. “Should I be kicking Ururu and Jinta out into the world?”

“Almost certainly,” says Tessai, and hides his expression by turning away to clean his glasses. His eyes look absurdly tiny without them on, but Kon isn’t going to tell him that. The guy is shredded and knows magic, and Kon has survival skills to the max. “Kon-san, your plan has a number of holes in it. Namely, you have nowhere to live, no skills and no other companions. You do not exist in this world, gigai or not. How do you intend to live without Kurosaki Ichigo and the generosity of his family?”

“I don’t know, but I can’t go back. I’ll find something, and he’s right, anyway. I can’t be his stuffed animal forever.” Kon looks down at himself and winces a little. “But I guess I need to ask a favour first. Can you change this gigai a little? Just so that it doesn’t look like Ichigo. I’ll sort out everything else on my own.” Because that’s what a man does, Kon tells himself bravely. They don’t rely on anyone and they don’t drag others down, even if it’s the easiest option and all the others seem really, really hard. If Ichigo doesn’t want him, he’ll just find someone who does.

Somewhere.

Urahara and Tessai do their conversation look again. It’s sort of exclusionary and annoying, and Kon feels like a small child being talked over by the real adults. He’s no stranger to not being taken seriously, though, and it’s given him a real thick skin when it comes to insisting on his own way.

“We have the room,” Tessai says after a moment, his moustache twitching. Urahara sighs.

“That may be, but I try my best not to interfere.”

“The alternative is losing him to the Living World.”

“Perhaps that’s what’s needed.”

“Perhaps,” Tessai allows. “But Jinta does go to university this year, and we could use the help.”

“Empty nest syndrome, Tessai-san?” Urahara smiles in the way that crinkles his eyes shut. There’s no mystery to that smile, except for how Kon can’t follow their husband and wife conversation at all. “I suppose it can’t hurt for a while. He’s endearing. More importantly, he’s got strong legs and nothing to do.” Urahara switches his gaze to Kon, grey eyes calm and reassuring. “Kon-san, why don’t you work here at the shop for a while? Gigai don’t come cheap, you know. We could use the help with stocktake and the register. Of course, we’ll give you room and board.”

Kon blinks. “You want to give me a job? I’ve never had a job before.”

Tessai leans forward at the low table, mouth severely downturned. “Is that a refusal?”

“No, but I don’t know what to do.” Licking his lips nervously, Kon looks down at his tea and thinks. He’d said all that stuff about leaving Ichigo behind and going out into the world, but this is a real offer to shelter him. Ichigo doesn’t even go to the shop much anymore, so they won’t run into each other. He can be independent. A Kon of the world. Brave and intrepid and probably washing toilets, but who cares? It represents freedom, even if it’s just a safe kind where he doesn’t have to run too far.

“And you’ll fix the gigai?” Kon hears himself ask, compressing his artificial lips, his tongue feeling the texture of a mouth that’s nothing like Ichigo’s. “So it can look different?” There’s a shake in his voice; a small tremor of vulnerability he can’t do anything about. Not yet, at least. Enormous hands clasp around his, and Kon looks up into Tessai’s big manly face. He’s crying silent rivers down his face, emotionally moved and utterly terrifying.

“As many times as you want,” he says gruffly, and Urahara looks briefly alarmed.

“I’m the one who has to do all the work, Tessai-san!”

“Tenchou. He’s a lost soul in need.” Looking between them both, Kon shrugs at Urahara, hands still bound in muscular shackles.

“I mean, I guess I can work for the changes, right? Like a servant. I think I could be good at that.” Something in what he says makes Urahara’s polite facade break a little; he blinks and blinks again, slowly leaning back on his hands. Kon doesn’t mind. He’s used to saying the wrong things. He pulls his hands free and drinks the last of his tea, wondering if matcha could grow on him one day. He’ll have to drink more of it, and thinks if he can stay in the shop then maybe that’s not so bad.

Finally, Urahara clears his throat and shoos a tearful Tessai away, taking the empty cup and handing it off to him. To Kon, he extends a hand positioned for shaking.

“All right, Kon-san. For now, I’ll see to your gigai maintenance in return for your assistance in the shop.”

“For now?”

“It’s not out of the question that Kurosaki-san will steal you back as soon as tonight. He is disarmingly honest at the most unexpected times.” To his credit, Urahara says the words with no inflection. Kon supposes it’s not a lie, but there’s a rock in his new stomach that won’t budge. He thinks maybe it’s the sad truth that Ichigo was right and he just never wanted to hear it.

Still, he’ll die before he tells Ichigo that.

“Okay, Urahara.” Kon shakes the hand in front of him with more eagerness than he feels. “Let’s sell some fucked-up black market goods!”

Urahara smiles his shady shopkeeper smile.

“We’ll start with the candy first.”

It’s not at all how Kon pictured his day going, but between the shop or a scared night out on the streets, he can’t help but feel grateful for their help. Plucking his mouth into a hesitant smile, he gets up and follows them both towards the hallway as they talk about labs and secret doors, feeling too small for the skin he’s in.

Maybe by the time Ichigo finds him, he’ll have a new face.

One he can stand.

Kon doesn’t come home that night.

Or the next.

Ichigo doesn’t wait that long, of course; he’s out on the streets in human form during the day and running across the skies at night, looking everywhere for a mop of orange hair and a tearful, possibly wounded mod soul. God fucking damn it, he always gets into trouble when Ichigo isn’t looking! He should have gone after him the moment he ran out the door, more arguments be damned. Idiot. Idiot.

Three days go by.

Kon doesn’t turn up anywhere.

Ichigo texts everyone he knows. Nobody has seen him: not Inoue, Chad, Ishida, Tatsuki or his sisters. Definitely not Isshin. Not even Urahara, who usually has tabs on everyone in town. Late one afternoon, standing on the street in the red light of a slow sunset, Ichigo stares at the list of glowing replies on his phone with a sense of true dread. It occurs to him suddenly, blindingly, that he won’t be okay if something has happened to Kon. Nothing will be okay. Feeling desperate, he opens the last message he received, ready to ask again, and looks at the two day-old thread.

Urahara, have you seen Kon? He should be in that gigai you made for him.

[Sandal-Hat]: thats terrible! if isee the gigai I will let u kno immediatley

Urahara never texts with any finesse or accurate spelling, but Ichigo frowns at the screen for the first time. He’s read the message already, scanning it in frantic frustration as he searched the streets, but he never read the damn thing. What was terrible? He never said anything was wrong.

“Oh, you asshole,” Ichigo seethes at his phone, pocketing it and running back home to get his combat pass. Better safe than sorry when dealing with Urahara. He might just need his extra strength to beat the living shit out of his crafty old mentor.

When he gets to the shop, out of breath and with a full head of steam to start absolutely screaming the moment he sees Kon’s face, the sun has been replaced by the deep blue shadows of evening. The shop is closed, its windows dark and the security shutter rolled down. There isn’t a hint of reiatsu coming from inside. Not that Kon ever had any, but Urahara sure does. Tessai does.

Nobody’s home.

For a hundred reasons, Ichigo feels exhausted by the fact.

Pulling out his phone again, he thumbs open the screen and makes a phone call.

“Hellooo!” The voice is cheerful, tinny and not coming over any human phone line. “I’m currently borrowing supplies from Twelfth Division’s laboratory storage, so if you need anything—”

“Where’s Kon?” Ichigo asks, the words scraping the sides of his throat as they leave. “What happened to him? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Urahara replies, insultingly casual. Something rattles in the background of the call, sounding metallic. “Forgive the misdirection of earlier, but it was at Kon-san’s request. He’s incredibly adamant that he doesn’t wish to return to the Kurosaki household. Or you, specifically.” The words strike with a critical impact Ichigo doesn’t expect.

Urahara tells him the story in a succinct, factual researcher manner, leaving out any of the embellishments or exaggeration that might otherwise have coloured the story. Slowly, as he listens Ichigo feels the urgency leaving his body, tiredness taking its place instead.

Kon isn’t sulking, Kon hates him and never wants to come back. Ichigo says as much to Urahara, feeling a little dazed by the information.

“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?”

“Kon is dramatic.” Ichigo swallows. “He’s also really honest.”

“I don’t pretend to be any expert on the behaviour of emotional mod souls, Kurosaki-san, but I do know that hurt tends to manifest as anger after a little thought on the subject. It’s a natural defence mechanism. What doesn’t kill you, et cetera. Leave him be for a while.” Something clanks loudly in the background. Urahara tsks. “Fudge. I think they heard that. This may be the last time we speak, Kurosaki-san! It’s off to the chairs of Muken for me. Please put a pillow over my face to save me from Aizen’s monologuing. Don’t remove it until my heart has stopped for sixteen minutes. I’m extremely difficult to kill.” The rest of the call explodes into high-pitched alarms and yelling before abruptly disconnecting. Ichigo stands there with a ringing ear and no idea what to do.

Kon isn’t coming back.

Kon doesn’t even want to see his face.

And the gigai. He’d asked for it to be destroyed. Kon’s big ticket out into the world and he’d given it back because Ichigo had humiliated him for choosing it.

Turning slowly, Ichigo leans on the closed shutter of the shop and stares blindly out at the dark and empty road. It’s Tuesday night. Katsudon night; Kon’s favourite of Yuzu’s dishes when Ichigo let him take his body. With absent humour, Ichigo guesses it’s not the big drawcard it used to be. Not after he went and fucked everything up.

Well…maybe it’s just what Kon needs, even if it hadn’t come about through the kind of means Ichigo had intended. While his intentions had been good, he hadn’t taken into account any feelings except his own. Of course Kon would think he still needed to be useful to Ichigo somehow. Be his body double when needed. Go to appointments in his place when he has to kill some hollows. Having a whole life of his own would never naturally occur to Kon. His entire value and belief system revolved around just struggling to be recognised.

And in trying to urge him into something that looked like a life, Ichigo had gone and told him he’s just an old toy he doesn’t need anymore.

It’s impossible to fuck up any harder than that.

Ichigo trudges away from the shop and heads back the way he came. He doesn’t leave a note or any indication he’s been there. Going unnoticed now can only be a good thing. The best thing. Pushing his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, head down and heart heavy as lead, Ichigo knows he’ll just do more damage if he sticks around waiting for everyone to come back.

Give it a while, Urahara had said.

Ichigo thinks maybe he should give it a lot longer than that.

“Kisuke is a super big-brain genius and everything, but when it comes to running the store, everything is still paper-based. Tessai uses an abacus, for fuck’s sake. They’re living in the Dark Ages.”

“But they have all those computers in the lab,” Kon protests. “You’re telling me not one of those connects to the internet?”

“Not one. Pure Seireitei tech.” Jinta shakes his head. His combed back, gelled cap of thick red hair doesn’t move an inch. Someone needs to tell that kid to lay off it a bit, but Kon doesn’t think he has the Living World street cred do to it. Not yet, anyway. Instead, Kon looks at the stacks of ledgers on the counter in front of him and thinks about bolting. They’ve been at the shop register for over an hour already, but Kon hasn’t seen Jinta in ages and he’s really shot up in height and age since he saw him last. Humans are so weird like that.

“But if they don’t have the internet, how do they look at porn?”

Jinta leans in conspiratorially, and Kon mirrors him until they’re almost forehead to forehead.

“I think they make their own. Ever hear that weird creak at night? It’s the hook in the ceiling that’s for holding their…” Jinta trails off with a shifty look. Kon is on the edge of his nonexistent seat.

“What? Holding their what?!”

“Sex swing,” Jinta says, laughing at Kon’s aghast expression. “Sorry, man, you moved into Brokeback Mountain.”

“Broke Ceiling Mountain,” Kon replies mournfully, and Jinta is so surprised he chokes on his laughter until he cries.

At least he sleeps on a futon downstairs in one of the back rooms, Kon thinks. It’s bland and boring in there but his ceiling isn’t Urahara and Tessai’s bedroom, or sex room, or whatever goes on up there at night. He has heard the creak, and now Jinta’s gone and ruined swingsets for him. What does a sex swing even look like? He’ll have to imagine forever now, since he has zero internet in Ye Olde Urahara Shop. At least before he’d been able to use Ichigo’s laptop sometimes.

Thinking about Ichigo sucks a lot, as Kon has rapidly discovered. Three weeks have passed already and Ichigo hasn’t even tried to hunt him down once, and it’s not like it’s hard or anything. Anyone with spiritual awareness in Karakura knows Urahara keeps track of everyone and everything. Not that Kon is even sure what he’ll say or do if Ichigo suddenly appears. Part of him just wants to be cold and quietly distant, like a shounen hero pushed too far. It’s way more likely he’s just going to get so mad he cries again though, and for that reason Kon has mixed feelings about Ichigo coming anywhere near him.

The first week is the worst. The absolute worst. Knowing that in the past, whenever someone Ichigo gave a shit about went missing he was first to storm heaven and hell looking for them, the big fat nothing he receives looks unbalanced. But then, he isn’t a pretty girl. He’s just Kon. It takes five nights of sniffling into his borrowed pillow, scared in the strange darkness of his new room, before he stops and realises he can just go back if he wants to. He isn’t kidnapped or imprisoned.

But Kon isn’t used to weighing his own options a whole lot. It often seems like a decision left for smarter people, or someone who needs to have him around for something. Left to his own devices, he doesn’t actually do much. So when Tessai tells him that he should just exist for a while without Ichigo, see where it takes him, Kon nods and decides it feels like some okay advice. At least until he’s a bit more sure of himself.

After three weeks living at the Urahara Shop and learning how serve customers and run things during the day, Kon’s thoughts of Ichigo are starting to space out more. Not by much, but enough that he can actually do things like stand and listen to Jinta teaching him how to maintain the ledgers and print the day’s takings from the old cash register. Things like helping Tessai do the dishes, or the laundry, or whatever else helps him stay busy and useful. Urahara sometimes gives him funny looks from under his hat brim, which Kon wonders about, but he keeps saying he’s happy to have the help around the house. Jinta will be living full time on campus soon, which is why Kon has to pay attention to everything he’s teaching him.

“Tessai will be able to cover off on a lot of this stuff if you forget,” Jinta says as he hands over an ancient sheaf of notes on how the cash register works. “But you’ve got your phone now, and my number is in it. Just text me though. I don’t want any girls thinking I’m dating someone if I’m on the phone to you all the time talking about candy.”

“So you’re not gonna call me your little chocolate button?” Kon asks, ducking Jinta’s amused hand swipe. “Or maybe you’re my little button. I think my guns are bigger than yours.” He lifts his arm to flex slightly and Jinta rushes to compare. Shoulder to shoulder, they flex as hard as possible, faces screwed up and fists clenched.

“I’m bigger!” Jinta insists, grinding his bicep into Kon’s like it’s going to help somehow. “And this is all natural, baby. Get those plastic lumps out of here. They’re only a week old!”

“Four days, actually,” Kon grunts, measuring across their muscles with the flat of his other hand. “Last week’s gigai didn’t convey my playful spirit enough.” He looks at their arms and frowns. Too close to call. “I think we need a gummy ruler to settle this. Row two?”

“Row three. Row two is boiled candy and those jubes that smell like grandma.”

“Like you ever had one.”

“In my head, she looks like asian Betty White.” The best part of Jinta since he grew up a bit is that he can take an orphan joke as well as Kon can. It’s evident in the big grin he receives as Jinta hops around the edge of the countertop and heads for gummy land, bitching about synthetic muscles and steroids. Kon is laughing about grandma complexes and Urahara’s secret love affair with Golden Girls re-runs when the bell on the shop door jingles.

Ichigo walks straight in, barely glancing at the cash register and the frozen smile on Kon’s face. There is no recognition in his warm brown eyes, but there’s no animosity either. It’s a marked improvement from last time they saw each other, and for an instant Kon lets Ichigo walk right on by. His latest gigai is a stranger, after all.

Ichigo isn’t. Three weeks can’t change much about him. He’s still tall, still lean and too damn serious around the eyes. Brown and orange and a faded summer tan, wearing the tightest damn jeans in his wardrobe. Like always. His t-shirt is pale blue and has some indecipherable logo across the chest in bright yellow, half-tucked in so the v-neck doesn’t ruck up through the day. He’s painfully familiar and the misery Kon feels as he catches a whiff of shampoo-scented hair is visceral. Everything about that body is familiar to him. Everything about Ichigo.

In an instant, three weeks is nothing.

“Hey, Ichigo,” Jinta calls out from gummy aisle. There’s a chewy rainbow python hanging from the corner of his traitor mouth. “Maybe you can judge: Kon and me are measuring our muscles. I say he’s cheating anyway, since Urahara keeps building his gigai however he wants it to look.”

Ichigo jerks right around and stares at him. Kon fights to have no reaction at all.

“It’s Kon and I, dumbass,” Kon says, trying for a lazy, unaffected kind of tone. “You sure you got into university legally if you can’t even get that right?” Jinta just flips him off and starts sucking up his gummy snake like a noodle, nodding to Ichigo as he walks back toward the register. Kon’s fake heart is pounding hard enough to explode by the time Ichigo stops on the other side of the counter and looks at him.

Long seconds pass as Ichigo scans Kon’s new body from head to waist, which is all he can see clearly from where they both stand. Kon knows what he’s looking at: a body that’s average height and muscular, kind of compact looking but not too short. Pale skin just to try it, blue eyes for the hell of it, and a mouth that’s small and just a little bit pale pink and pouty. A strong jaw to stop him being too pretty, and a ponytail tucked low on his nape to hold back a riot of thick black hair. He’s wearing a green t-shirt with the Urahara Shop logo on it in white writing and baggy black cargo pants to hide all his new worldly possessions in.

He’s about twenty-two by eye, Urahara told him four days ago, pushing his pill into the open mouth of the body. A little stubble would grow in if he didn’t shave it. A perfectly functional new body to try.

Ichigo looks at it for a real long time before he speaks.

“Urahara said you’d have brown hair. I almost didn’t—” He stops before he finishes the sentence, and Kon knows why. Faceless things have no identifying features. A gigai isn’t really him. To Ichigo, he’s probably just a stuffed lion.

“Brown hair is so four days ago,” Kon replies, keeping his voice bright with energy, if not emotion. “I’m on my third body since I dumped you. I might try red hair next; Renji red, not that cut-price bleach job that yours looks like.” He watches Ichigo blink and touch his own hair cautiously, his mouth thinning down a little. His shoulders straighten, just a bit. Kon catalogues everything with borrowed blue eyes.

“You never complained before,” Ichigo says.

“I never had options before.” Kon’s teeth are cold with the air in the shop. He’s smiling somehow. “Urahara isn’t here, by the way.”

“I know,” Ichigo replies shortly. His eyes haven’t left Kon’s face. “I came to see you, not him. Do you want to go for a walk or something?”

Yes, Kon thinks with a sore heart.

“No,” Kon says, because he’s a fucking idiot. “I’m working. Having a life. Enjoy next time you heroically sacrifice yourself for the greater good, knowing I won’t be incinerated in the trash or whatever.”

That’s when Ichigo does something different. Something Kon has never seen before. He backs down. He steps back and nods, and his eyes switch to anything but Kon’s face.

“Okay,” Ichigo says. His expression is as blank as one of Urahara’s gigai templates. “I have to—there’s some stuff I need to do for Urahara sometimes, but I’ll try to make it the same time each week. I won’t hang around.”

Kon shrugs before he can think about doing anything else. In the corner of his eye, Jinta is still chewing his snake and watching, more twelve than nineteen. Briefly, Kon realises he really is older than that poor kid. He has no idea he just witnessed a massacre.

Ichigo pulls his shoes back on and leaves, giving Kon a brief nod before he goes. His silhouette against the bright afternoon sun is still straight and strong and everything Kon ever wanted to be, but for a split second there Kon sees something tired, something bent. His instincts for Ichigo’s state of mind might never dull, but for the first time he turns away with a truly stubborn determination to ignore it. He has to become a person, after all.

There’s no doing that while worrying about Kurosaki Ichigo, everyone’s favourite shinigami substitute.

Anyone else in the world can do that.

“I don’t get what the problem is,” Renji says in between decisive sword-strokes. He’s been going through the same forms for what seems like hours and Ichigo is already bored. “Doesn’t Kon always piss you off? You should be glad he’s gone, not moping in Soul Society and killing my mood.”

“I’m not moping.” He is, though. He really is. It’s gotten to the stage where Ichigo doesn’t even want to practice spar, content to just lay on the white stone of the training arena and stare at the permanently blue sky of Soul Society. “Kon can be loud and annoying and he fires off questions without waiting for an answer to the first one, but he’s always been my wingman. My sidekick. My lieutenant. I never thought he’d leave. It’s like someone stole my kidneys, Renji. I need my kidneys.”

“Well, your kidneys said your hair looks like shit and got a job with Urahara. Move on.” Renji is a lot better at swordplay than advice. Or sympathy, for that matter. Ichigo frowns and blocks out the happy sunshine with the concealing weight of his hands. Renji pokes him in the head with his foot. “Cheer up. I can be your lieutenant.”

“You don’t qualify,” Ichigo replies behind his hands, and the poke becomes more like a kick. “Kon and I have this thing. It’s like an unshakable bond. He can’t just go off and leave me.”

“Sounds like he did.”

“I know, and it’s unnatural.” Pulling his hands away, Ichigo blinks blearily up at Renji’s face. “How did I fuck up so hard that Kon left and won’t come back? He’s right. He’s the only one who stuck with me through thick and thin. Even you pretended I was dead when I lost my powers.”

“You couldn’t even see me! Plus we had to rebuild Soul Society’s hierarchy after Aizen murdered our entire ruling body. It was an intense year.”

“You could have sent a letter, asshole.”

“I’m illiterate, you dumbass.”

Ichigo’s eyes pop open. “What? Oh shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” He’s rewarded with Renji diving on him in outrage, sword tossed aside in favour of laying into Ichigo’s stomach with fists like mallets.

“Don’t believe me so easily!”

“Don’t lie, then!”

They scrap for a while on the training courtyard like that, trading schoolyard kicks and punches like only two friends can. Renji might be shit at advice and sympathy, but he’s not so bad at cheering people up. Eventually Ichigo spits out a chunk of red hair and shoves his way clear, rolling over and feeling his ribs for damage. It hurts, but he’ll live. Beside him, Renji is breathing hard, his haori shoved down to bare his tattooed chest. For a brief, bizarre instant Ichigo catches himself wondering if Renji has a better body than his own. Kon seemed to like his hair more. Renji red. Not orange. The idea rankles in a way he can’t quite explain.

“Well, I don’t have a clue what to do,” Ichigo says, groaning as he sits up. “Usually we yell and fight and then we’re friends again. Kon doesn’t just leave.” He’s stuck on that point like a broken record, returning to it over and over in jerky, involuntary loops. It doesn’t make sense, which means he’s done something worse than ever before: he really hurt Kon this time. “How do I fix it if he won’t even talk to me?”

“Maybe you’re getting your just desserts?” Renji suggests, pulling his haori back up and pushing his arms inside it. “Besides, it’s not like you need a mod soul to transform. There’s soul candy, the glove, your combat pass, Urahara’s walking stick, there’s probably even a dildo by now that can shove you out of your body. Say he comes back. What will you do with him? He’s in a gigai now. Nothing will ever be the same again.” Getting to his feet, Renji sheaths his sword and reaches out a helping hand. His expression isn’t unkind. “Move on, Ichigo. He has.”

For an instant Ichigo wants to slap the hand away, to argue and fume and pace and plan something out. To burst into the Urahara Shop and just grab Kon, to pin him down until he has to listen. But it’s not all on his terms anymore, and maybe that’s the hardest to accept. Kon isn’t his. Kon belongs to himself now—and he’s done with living at the Kurosaki house, with Ichigo. Maybe Renji is right. Talk about a bitter pill to swallow.

Renji darts down and snatches Ichigo’s wrists, hauling him up with too much ease. He grins a bit when Ichigo lets him sling an arm around his shoulders, reeking of sweat and that oil he sticks on his tattoos all the time. There’s no energy in him to fight.

“C’mon, the captain’s out with Rukia today doing bankai drills. Let’s go get his good bottle of sake from the office and nap on the couch together. You can call me Kon for ten thousand yen.”

“That’s too expensive,” Ichigo says immediately. “At least let me cuddle for that price.”

“Yeah, deal.”

“You’ve gotta shower first.”

“Twelve thousand yen.”

“Fuck you.”

They’re joking of course, because they always joke and Renji is a good friend. Ichigo leaves for the senkaimon after another hour, just a little bit tipsy with a head full of thoughts. But his arms feel empty and somewhere in the depths of his uncomprehending brain, a strange thought begins to form.

He doesn’t deserve Kon anymore, Ichigo thinks after a moment.

Man, fuck Renji and his pearls of wisdom.

Ichigo doesn’t return to the Urahara Shop for two more weeks. He doesn’t do anything useful to his plight for two weeks, except call the only person who he really trusts to tell it to him straight.

“What do you think?” Ichigo asks nervously.

“You dug your own grave,” Chad says succinctly, “and now you’re lamenting the consequences of your own actions. This is a growth moment for you, Ichigo. Don’t waste it. Learn from it.”

This isn’t remotely what Ichigo wants to hear. He hates the truth, just this one time. Hates it.

“Karin is never going to date you,” Ichigo reveals maliciously. “She thinks you’re secretly forty, like the kid in that Orphan movie.”

“Ichigo, I don’t want to date your sister.”

“Well, stop buying her ice cream at the train station!”

“She always looks angry. I’m trying to help.”

“Yeah, well, cut it out. I think she’s into you.”

“You just said—”

“I know what I said,” Ichigo replies, contrary and mad about it. “Damn it, I just need sympathy and nobody will give it to me.”

“Ask Kon for it,” Chad replies with force, clearly fed up with the conversation. “But do not, under any circumstances, ask Inoue. She is off limits to you. Permanently.”

“You never explain why, though!” Ichigo yells down the line, throwing his pillow across the room. “Does she give bad advice? Does she hate me too? I know I’ve been studying and working a lot and I haven’t hung out in ages, but—”

“The answer is no. Go ask Ishida what he thinks.”

“So you do hate me,” Ichigo accuses, and for an instant he feels victimised. Overlooked. Condescended to. And just a little bit like his friends are tired of listening to him talk. He sits up straight on his bed. “Oh. Oh, shit.”

Chad just grunts his little Chad noise.

“There’s a mexican fusion restaurant in town I want to try out tomorrow. Are you free?”

“What? Yeah, I guess, but—”

“Invite Kon. And Inoue.”

Ichigo’s outrage can’t be contained.

“But you just said—”

“Trust me.” Chad hangs up before Ichigo can begin to list the reasons why their conversation just made no sense at all. Two minutes later, his phone pings with a calendar invitation and an address. He really is serious about the mexican food thing. Makes sense; there’s only like two restaurants in all Karakura that know what cumin is.

Confused, pissed and lonely, Ichigo confirms his damn invitation and throws his phone down onto his desk. Chad might have a plan, but he also might just want dinner theatre and Ichigo isn’t even sure if he likes mexican food. He’ll try it though, just because it’s Chad. Even if he’s secretly plotting against him. At the rate Ichigo is going he just wants someone to smile at him. Kon sure won’t.

The notion that he’s absolutely obsessing over Kon hasn’t escaped him. The suspicion that it’s an ego-driven quest to make sure everyone is his friend has occurred once or twice, but Ichigo doesn’t actually like people that much to care what they think. It’s just Kon, in some horrible twist of fate, who is filling every waking moment with insecurity and guilt.

It can’t hurt to invite Kon out for dinner. He always loves to be included in things, and with Inoue coming too it’s guaranteed he’ll hop at the chance instantly. Maybe Chad is a diabolical genius. Ichigo sends the invite text out to Inoue and almost immediately gets an affirmative reply back, complete with several emoji sparkles, a taco and for some reason, a robot head.

Well, tomorrow afternoon he can visit the Urahara Shop and get Kon’s agreement to come, and from there anything is possible. No way can Kon resist an invitation from Ichigo when he’s looking his best, being his most earnest and charming, and offering to pay. It’s the whole package.

Kon won’t know what hit him.

“Um, no thanks,” Kon says, fighting the urge to flee the shop counter altogether. “Jinta and I are going to the cinema tonight for that new ninja movie.” He has the pleasure of seeing Ichigo’s whole face freeze as the words sink in. But like hell Kon’s going to be their awkward fourth wheel, listening to them talk about the good old days that he always missed out on because he was babysitting the twins and Isshin.

“Jinta will understand if you postpone,” Ichigo says, bracing his forearms on the counter and leaning across slightly. He looks good, all soapy-smelling and brushed and wearing Kon’s favourite hoodie, the black one with the thumb holes in the cuffs. It makes his hair stand out like fire. But it makes him look like a shinigami too, and Kon is sick of seeing that. It just reminds him that he’s not needed anymore. “C’mon, Kon. It’ll be my shout and everything.”

“I’ve got money! I just don’t want to hang out with you.”

“Not even Inoue?” The skepticism is plain. Kon snorts.

“And watch her make eyes at you all night? If I want to see unrequited love get tragically stomped on, I can just watch Downton Abbey with Tessai.”

“Unreq—look, Kon, just come tonight. Let me explain everything properly,” Ichigo entreats, his eyes all soft and pretty like they go when he’s being particularly genuine. It’s a look that Kon could never master, for all his practice in that body. There’s a lot of things he was never able to pull off. “Please.”

Kon almost wavers. But like a traitorous backstab, his mind spits a reminder as sharp as broken glass: an old toy has no place at the dinner table.

“Pass,” Kon replies, gripping the edge of the shop counter with all his might. Ichigo’s entire face goes red. His soft brown eyes begin to spark.

“Stop being so damn stubborn!” he yells, and just like that the nice soft Ichigo is gone, replaced by a far more familiar asshole. “Do you think I’ll just keep begging and trying like this forever? If you keep pushing me away like this, I’ll go. I swear I’ll—”

“Like there was any fucking doubt!” Kon shouts, grabbing a plastic-wrapped sherbert stick and hurling it at Ichigo like a tiny javelin. He ducks it with too much ease. “Kurosaki Ichigo tries exactly twice to apologise without actually saying sorry and expects me to fall at his feet? Fuck you! Selfish asshole! What do you even want me to like you again for?”

“I don’t know! I just do! It’s all I can think about!” Breathing hard, Ichigo grabs the sherbert off the floor and slams it down on the countertop. It’s a tube of pink plastic with fireworks on it. Kon hates it like he’s never hated anything in his life. “You know I didn’t mean it the way it sounded! I was just—pissed that you wasted the gigai. Urahara worked me like a fucking dog for three months in between my study and Dad and Ikumi.” He pushes the sherbert back towards Kon, who stuffs it back in the jar by the cash register. His brows crease. “Didn’t you wonder why I was hardly ever home? Why I kept giving you my body?”

Thinking back, Kon wonders if Ichigo even knows what he’s saying sometimes.

“You always leave me behind! It’s the first thing you do! Why would I suddenly wonder where the hell you’re going or why you come back tired? You think I worry about you? Fret over you? Sit up on your bed trying to stay awake as late as I can so—” Kon manages to stop himself, but it’s already too late. Ichigo’s whole expression breaks apart. Shoulders slump. Eyes lower. Even his nose does that sad little scrunchy thing. Shit, Kon always talks too much.

The silence between them rings loud, too loud. Kon can almost feel the canyon between them widening.

“I mean, I always cared,” Ichigo says eventually, his voice not quite steady. “You’ve gotta know that, at least.”

Kon scoffs before he can help himself. This week’s newest gigai has brown hair, green eyes and a chest that feels like a bomb went off inside it. He really wishes that Urahara would stop with the intense emulation of a living body. Ichigo looks at his face and loses his energy altogether. Kon wants to take pity on him, but there’s a wall of hurt that he just can’t climb over to do it. Everything hurts, and Ichigo still only cares about himself.

“Be honest,” Kon says. “If you still needed me to transform, you never would have gotten me that gigai. You would’ve left me stuck between the stuffed lion and your second-hand body forever.”

Ichigo flinches like he’s been struck. Kon doesn’t blink; doesn’t do anything really. Not much to say or do when he knows he just hit dead centre. In an instant, both of them realise the exact depths of Ichigo’s indifference. That he deserves everything he gets, guilt most of all.

“I,” Ichigo starts after a long moment, then stops. His throat works on a hard swallow. “I don’t know.” But his eyes say he does, and it’s terrible.

“I don’t want to go to your stupid dinner,” Kon says, and the gigai’s gotta be defective because he feels like he’s dying. “I don’t want to go anywhere you are. Come and do whatever errands for Urahara that you’ve gotta, but quit this shit, Ichigo. You got your wish.”

It takes a long, long moment for Ichigo to move. So long that for an instant Kon wonders if he’s going to try again, come up with some stunningly touching last minute speech that’ll fix everything. Kon catches himself hoping for one, right up until Ichigo does that painful-looking gulp again and nods wordlessly. His eyes are just a little too shiny as he backs off, but they’re hidden by his hair too quickly for Kon to be sure. He just trudges back to the door without any argument, his shoulders sloping and head held low. Kon looks away, gritting his teeth together and willing his eyes not to prickle.

“Do you hate me?” Ichigo asks quietly, his back to Kon, just one footstep away from leaving. Kon’s whole throat has joined his chest with a new ache. There’s so much pressure inside him to keep it together that he can’t even open his mouth and say no.

After a while Ichigo leaves without his answer. The bell jingles with a note of finality, like the door has shut on the past. Five weeks and the world is never going to be the same.

Kon puts his head down on the counter and sobs.

It’s how Urahara finds him thirty minutes later, half a scolding about not locking up the shop at closing time still on his lips. He stops when Kon lifts his face and desperately tries to wipe his cheeks off, hiccupping and choking on his own tears.

“S-s-sorry, I’m sorry, I forgot.” Kon fumbles the cash drawer to empty it before he’s even tried to lock the door. He can’t see. He can’t think. “I’m sorry, I’m an idiot, just give me a second—”

“Kon-san,” Urahara says, and his voice is very gentle. The hand he puts on Kon’s shoulder is careful. “Go inside the house and find Tessai-san. I’ll lock up for the day.”

“I can do it! I know how—”

“Kon.” Urahara squeezes a little and lets go. It’s the most anyone has touched him in weeks. “You’ve worked hard enough today. Go on.”

He heads into the house still snuffling and trying to keep it together, wiping his tears onto his sleeve so he can see clearly. Why does he have to see Tessai? Tessai doesn’t have any work for him, he did it all already. Head pounding, nose blocked and his face feeling flushed, Kon just wants to slink out of sight into his bedroom and keep crying until he passes out. But Urahara gave him instructions, so he pushes the sliding screen open and walks into Tessai’s TV room.

“Hi,” Kon says miserably to the large man drinking matcha on his zabuton, facing a small rear-projection television from the nineties. Tessai looks up and goes still. “I was late to close and Urahara said to see you. Am I in trouble?”

Tessai is a weird guy, in that he looks like he’s killed before but he also likes wearing an apron and making tea, and he always calls Urahara tenchou like he’s an employee. It’s hard to know what he’s thinking because he hardly makes any facial expressions. Kon isn’t afraid of him, more just afraid he’s going to say or do the wrong thing and not realise he’s pissed the man off. It’s for that reason he just stands there as Tessai puts his tea down quietly and gets to his full height, crossing the room to stare down at Kon’s tear-streaked face. He probably made the gigai look like shit—

Tessai hugs him.

It feels like an attack at first, and Kon goes rigid with wary surprise. But it’s a hug, with huge arms and a hard chest and that funny hair wax smell and cologne he always wears. It’s warm and unexpected and Kon doesn’t know why it’s happening to him.

“You’ll be stronger before you know it,” Tessai says simply, and his big palm cradles the back of Kon’s head. Kon’s mouth wobbles once, twice.

“I’m sorry about all the snot,” he manages to say, and then his tears start again in a wrenching wave. But there’s a flicker of desperate relief in it this time, too. He’s not alone.

Kon might always be lonely without Ichigo, but at least he’s not alone.

Yuzu takes one look at Ichigo’s face as he walks into the living room and starts pulling out her phone.

“Daaaad! It’s takeout night and we’re doing dessert! Big dessert and buckets of chicken!”

“I love you, my darling! Order Daddy his favourite!” Isshin calls through the clinic door. Ichigo hardly hears; he’s halfway to the stairs before Yuzu’s noises start resembling real words.

“Come back! What happened? You’re supposed to be having dinner with Sado-kun and Orihime-chan.”

“I cancelled.”

“You cancelled on Sado? Nicest and most well-meaning guy on the planet?” Karin stretches all the way around the side of the couch and glares at him. It fades almost immediately. “Ichi-nii, have you been crying?”

“No.” Ichigo turns numbly toward the stairs again but Yuzu is in front of him, stretching to swipe his hair out of his eyes. He must look like something terrifying because her eyes widen.

“Just—come on,” Yuzu says softly, taking his hand. She’s waving at Karin with her other one. “Come sit on the couch with us. We’ll put your favourite movie on, won’t we Karin-chan? And we’ll do popcorn and blankets, and your friends will understand for sure. We won’t even bother you with questions. Just come sit. Pretty please.” Her eyes are so big and brown and worried. Ichigo thinks about going upstairs anyway just to hide his horrible expression, but he’s disappointed enough people.

They sit him on the couch between them both and put something on that he doesn’t immediately recognise. They do everything Yuzu described and more, even taking his phone when it beeps and putting it away. Usually he hates being managed, but just then it’s good not to have to function. There’s an enormous gaping wound through the middle of him that would put any hollow hole to shame.

He couldn’t answer Kon. The silence said it all. I don’t know. And Kon had been crushed; it didn’t take a genius of body language to pick up on the little tremble of his mouth, the tearful flare of his nostrils. Ichigo had done that. He’d taken a mistake, a slip of the tongue and made it a hundred times worse. Kon thought he was just a commodity. An appliance. And Ichigo had done nothing to dissuade him. Even working for the gigai just looked—like he was trying to offload him somehow. He didn’t need to become a shinigami nearly as often as he used to. They had stationed soldiers to do that, and if it was ever an emergency he had his battle pass.

Kon…Kon had been left behind more and more. There had been places he couldn’t go. Times when there was no bag to sneak into. Ichigo couldn’t just leave him sitting on his bed looking like a forgotten doll. And somehow in trying to fix that, Ichigo let Kon think that’s exactly what he thought he’d been all along. Property, now surplus to requirements.

Now Kon wants nothing to do with him. Wish granted. Ichigo has never felt worse in his life, and he’s lived through some pretty shitty times. Chad was right; he dug this grave himself. Getting stronger won’t help. Talking makes it worse. It’s him. His mistakes. His actions. The only thing he can do is honour Kon’s wishes and stay away now. And as much as it feels like giving up, Ichigo understands. He wouldn’t want to see his face either.

All that’s left is to tell the family.

“If either of you are looking for Kon, he’s living at Urahara’s from now on.” His voice sounds rusty. “He’s going through some changes and stuff, so you might see some different faces in there working if you visit. But they’re probably all just Kon.”

“I thought he went to Soul Society to visit or something,” Karin says in confusion. “He moved out? What different faces?”

Ichigo gives them the short version. They’re owed an explanation, even if it paints him pretty terribly. Yuzu picks at the edge of the blanket she’d thrown over him, looking pensive. She doesn’t speak until he elbows her in the side.

“It’s probably a shared blame, you know.” Ichigo opens his mouth to argue but Yuzu artfully throws popcorn into it. “Think about it. I used to put him in pretty dresses and make him have tea parties, and when I was scared and you were gone I made him sleep in my bed.” Her face falls a little. “I didn’t know he was in there until later, but he probably never liked us much. We never took him anywhere or asked him things, either. Urahara-san must be a lot nicer to him than we ever were.” Yuzu looks over at Karin. “I always just—all he ever wanted to do was be with you, Ichi-nii. He must miss you a lot right now, even if he doesn’t want to. You’ve been his whole world for years.”

Ichigo swallows back the lump growing in his throat. “So what do I do?”

“Nothing,” Karin says, leaning into his shoulder. “You can’t dig around in an open wound like that. Kon’s got his own pride, doesn’t he? Maybe he wants to grow apart from you. Get distance. You’ve gotta let him sort himself out.”

“But he’ll think I don’t care.”

“Maybe,” Yuzu allows, leaning in on his other side. “But it sounds like you’re hurting each other a lot right now. And you’ve got to take Kon seriously, don’t you? He wants his space. Don’t be a dummy and ignore him just because you want to feel better in a hurry. It won’t work.”

Sometimes Ichigo wonders what he ever did to deserve sisters like his. Smart, sensitive, tough, compassionate and not afraid to tell him like it is, they’re everything a neglectful shit like him doesn’t deserve. Kon sleeping in their beds when they were scared. Putting up with tea parties and dresses because it made Yuzu happy, when they all knew now Kon could have given himself away and made a break for it if he really wanted to. Watching over them every time Ichigo had to go to Soul Society on short notice, giving reports like they were of the utmost importance when he returned. Their loyal bodyguard and stand-in brother.

They’re all sitting in depressed silence when Isshin walks in from the clinic, tugging his reading glasses off and frowning myopically at them all. He has small indents on his nose from the grips and a dire five o’clock shadow.

“Chicken?” he asks after a moment, looking bewildered. “Dessert? Chicken? What happened?”

“Just sit and be melancholy with us,” Karin barks, stabbing a finger at the couch beside her. “Surely something bad has happened to you in the last few weeks that you can think about.” She frowns as Isshin agreeably sits beside her, and in a long line they stare at the television in silence.

A whole minute passes. Isshin discreetly checks his watch. Yuzu’s stomach rumbles.

“I hate this movie,” Karin says suddenly, fumbling in the blanket for the remote. “Why did we put The Lion King on, anyway?”

Ichigo blinks, his brain making the connection at last.

“This isn’t my favourite movie.”

“But it was always in the recent queue when we turn on streaming…” Yuzu says and trails off quietly, realising at the same time that it hadn’t been Ichigo hijacking the algorithm. “But he’s not really a lion. He’s a person.”

“Hm, not the point,” Isshin says unexpectedly. “He liked to watch it late at night when he couldn’t sleep. He said he liked that Simba came back in the end.” When everyone looks at him, he smiles crookedly. “Yes, your dear father knows some things you don’t. I’m an old man; I wake up in the night needing snacks. Kon and I would talk sometimes.”

Ichigo sits up straighter. “About what?”

“The clinic, why unsliced bread tastes better, James Earl Jones’ filmography, Masaki,” Isshin shrugged. “Whatever came to mind. Has he moved out for good then? It’s been over a month since Urahara said he was staying there temporarily. That man always was a collector of rarities. Kon wouldn’t be out of place in that house.” He doesn’t say it with any particular sadness, that’s not how Isshin works, but Ichigo understands the silence that follows and the way he sinks into the couch a little.

The contemplative silence is broken by the knock of a delivery man at the door, bringing chicken and blessed distraction. They break up into dinner duties and switch the television to some action movie, and Ichigo tries to be a helpful member of Team Dinner and grab out glasses and a couple of options for drinks. With fried chicken and an assortment of sides, it feels more like Christmas in May than anything. Yuzu rarely lets them eat junk food of any kind; testimony to her instincts that Ichigo needs some cheering up.

They eat together and talk a little, just light topics of no real importance. Ichigo feels ashamed that he needs it as badly as he does, when at any other time he’d bear it with his usual unwillingness to burden anyone. Where everyone else had given him well-meaning advice, only his family knows Kon as closely as he does, even if it’s not the same depth of bond.

Later, when he’s in bed alone and the sheets are cold on his skin, Ichigo blinks up at his ceiling and hopes Kon is okay. Will be okay. Because he’s not going to be there to fix it the way he wants to. Karin and Yuzu are right, as much as he doesn’t want to agree with them. There’s a deep wound in their affection, and prodding it when it’s still torn and tender will only make things worse.

That’s not all, though. There’s logic, there’s guilt and there’s advice, there’s all of that, but there’s one brilliantly blinding and terrifying possibility behind it all, something Ichigo doesn’t dare stare directly into just yet. Ichigo shouldn’t care as much as he does. Kon shouldn’t have the power to gut him with a few words. His unfamiliar face smiling its big happy smile shouldn’t be so dear to him when it’s not even directed at him. Ichigo shouldn’t be desperately trying to catalogue every blink and furrow of his brow, still finding commonalities in his features between his own body and a gigai he’d designed to look completely different. Still finding Kon behind the different eyes, the different hair, the different nose.

It’s a truth too painful to stare at for more than a few seconds, so Ichigo puts it away, deep down under his ribs and behind his lungs. He puts it away so deeply he hopes he forgets about it altogether.

He won’t, but the months ahead will need him to try his hardest.

Ichigo might not make it through them otherwise.

Three months go by. Kon gets stronger, just like Tessai said he would.

It’s hard not to mope and pity himself, harder still not to think about Ichigo. The amount of times in the darkest hours of the night that a tiny voice whispered to him to drop everything and just go back are countless. But Kon knows right deep down in his fake heart that there’s no happiness in trying to make things what they used to be. That hadn’t even been happiness—just ignorance. Blindness. Dependance. Kon doesn’t belong to Ichigo, and Ichigo isn’t his master.

So, he lives a life. Day by day, it even becomes something normal. After a few more weeks, Kon is surprised to find that he’s a little bit happy. Him! Happy! And happy to just help out in a place that appreciates him, pays him, gives him a roof over his head. Urahara and Tessai are the only ones who live in the house full time these days, with Jinta and Ururu off at university through the week. They visit a lot, but most of the time it’s Kon, Urahara and Tessai, running the shop and enjoying each other’s company. They’re weird and old and too interested in acrobatics for Kon’s liking, but he loves them.

That’s always been his problem, really. Loving people for the smallest gestures of kindness. But who ever got anywhere by being cautious all the time, anyway? Kon thinks being tough and cold is a huge crock of shit. He’ll take his bruised heart and dumb words over staying lonely any day. Besides, he’s making friends.

To Kon’s immense surprise, people actually do visit the Urahara Shop and purchase things. Some of them are shinigami wearing gigai too, but some are humans he’s never met before. Karin comes by sometimes, picking up hollow mace and things she couldn’t possibly use up in time for how frequently she visits. Kon makes sure to add a lollipop for her and Yuzu each, free of charge. It’s his own way of saying he still thinks about them. If they ever need him, he’ll drop his shop apron and run to anywhere they are. Not that they ever will—Ichigo has that covered.

Ichigo visits every Friday afternoon, but it’s not to see Kon.

Mail delivery, Tessai said once when Kon couldn’t hold in his questions anymore. Ichigo goes to Soul Society for them once a week and collects any orders and letters, dropping them off directly into Urahara’s hands. It’s why he’s always in his shinigami form when he walks through the shop, eyes forward and clutching a bag in one white-knuckled fist. Kon watches him from the cash register by the door, safely behind the counter. It’s worse when Ichigo is leaving; he’s facing forward as he walks out, and it’s too easy for Kon to glance up and meet his eyes.

Sometimes he does. Ichigo always stares at the floor the instant later.

Kon’s gigai changes every week. Brown hair, blond hair, black hair, he gets sick of them all and starts getting experimental. Purple, blue, pink, silver, long hair, short hair, spikes, braids, curls, ponytails. Eyes in every colour of the rainbow. Skin in every shade. Long nose, button nose, pouty lips, crooked mouth. Cheekbones, long lashes, long fingers. Piercings. Tattoos—but not where patrons might see them, Tessai cautioned. Even scars. Kon tries it all.

The one thing Kon never chooses is orange hair.

None of the gigai really fit the way he wants, or look exactly the way he likes, so he keeps changing into new ones. Urahara suggests a wheel to spin for each combination, but Kon wants to do it by choice. His own choice. Tessai thinks he keeps changing because he can’t imagine himself with a face of his own, and Kon thinks he might be right. He was built in a lab to never have a face of his own. Deep down, he knows his true form is just a little green pill. So he doesn’t get attached to the gigai, keeps paying Urahara for new ones, and the shop keeps running along smoothly.

Kon becomes something of a star at the shop. The returning shinigami customers comment on his gigai and the originality of this week’s attempt, praising him on his creativity. Some even make sure to come back and check out his latest design, even when they don’t have an order to collect. Kon staunchly insists they have to buy two bags of caramels before he’ll reveal his secrets, and they always do. Hanatarou, some nervous kid from the Fourth Division, says his captain is a big fan of them now and wants to subscribe him to their newsletter. Kon agrees, but not because he cares about healing techniques. He just likes getting mail. Urahara always hands it to him, but it comes from Ichigo’s delivery first. Kon likes to imagine that Ichigo touched the little scroll with his name on it and wondered what was in it. Ichigo never asks, though. Ichigo never does anything.

Some of the others visit the shop too; Inoue-san, Sado, Arisawa-san, even Ishida all come occasionally and say hello. At first Kon thinks they’re just spying for Ichigo, but the longer they keep showing up, buying random items and asking him how he’s been, the more he thinks maybe they’re just curious about his life. Kon is honest and tells them he’s happy, and encourages them all to buy the Urahara Shop special item of the week. They always do, except for Ishida. Ishida always wants to check for a pulse for some reason, planting a palm on his chest like there’s a real heart in there. Med students. Absolute freaks, every one. He doesn’t mind, but he does protest the personal space invasion on principle.

Kon won’t act on it, but there’s a small concern each week that won’t leave him alone. Ichigo is beginning to look more and more tired. Not sleeping well, maybe, or he’s working too hard. Kon knows he’s still studying for his english literature degree, stuck on the idea that he’s going to publish his adventures one day in a novel and be a romantic professor type. Well, at least that’s what Kon imagines. But if he’s doing that, helping Isshin in the clinic, doing runs for Ikumi-san’s odd jobs and also helping Urahara with his mail, when does he rest?

Not my business, Kon thinks. Ichigo was doing all that stuff before, too. It’s probably just exam crunch. And how can he help, anyway? But it’s impossible to shake the funny idea that it’s not just tiredness that’s got Ichigo looking a little pale and wan. He mentions it to Urahara one day, and the look he gets in return makes no sense at all.

“Kurosaki-san will always do as Kurosaki-san wishes,” Urahara says, taking the ledger of the week’s totals. He reads through it with a quick eye and a satisfied curl in the corner of his mouth. “Good work, Kon-san! I think you’re quite the attraction at the shop these days. I’ve received good feedback since you began really growing into the role. I was never a naturally charismatic sort. Mysterious, brooding and handsome, yes, but—”

“That’s Tessai,” Kon says in confusion, and Urahara almost keels over in dramatic shock. “You’re more like a pervy uncle with a white van and a bag of candy.”

They fight a little after that, but there’s no heat in it. Urahara is smiling way too much, something Kon doesn’t remember him doing often in any genuine way. He gets a double helping of teriyaki chicken on his rice that night, and that’s how he knows Urahara told Tessai what he said.

Life is like that for a while, and Kon enjoys himself more than he can say. Ichigo can handle himself, he always does. Urahara and Tessai are right; he’s just worried like a good person would be.

Life is good.

“So what was it like?” Jinta asks one Friday afternoon, helping him unpack new stock onto the shelves. They haven’t officially closed for the day, but it’s close enough and none of the regulars really care that much.

“What was what like?” Kon asks. Jinta jerks his chin toward the open door into the house. Ichigo walked in there five minutes ago for his weekly mail meeting with Urahara.

“Living in his body while he was out doing shinigami stuff.” Jinta smiles with all his teeth, hefting the next box onto his hip like a sugar-laden toddler. The hand that lays out the stock is ultra careful to keep everything neat. Tessai’s influence. “Spill it. Did you ever do anything while you were in it and not tell him?”

“I don’t know, probably. I always got dragged into the dumbest stuff. Isshin swore me to secrecy a couple of times, but I think that was just so nobody would beat on him for being a secret shinigami the whole time.” Kon tips out some expired chocolate that’s beginning to get that white coating on it and replaces the jar with a new batch. Jinta rolls his eyes.

“That’s boring. Did you ever go pick up girls?”

“Girls didn’t like me,” Kon replies easily. “I don’t do that stuff anymore, anyway. Tessai says it was an unhealthy coping mechanism that forced other people to take responsibility for my trauma.” He snorts at Jinta’s expression. “It means I was too needy from being alone in a box for like ninety years.” He moves onto the jar of gummy worms. There’s a suspicious abundance of the yellow ones that says someone’s been picking and choosing their favourites. He tops it up with deft motions, turning over the load and mixing them with the little shovel. When he looks up again Jinta is giving him a stricken sort of look.

“What? Get back to work,” Kon barks, because this is his shop now and he has seniority. Jinta just touches his forearm, blunt fingers curling over the sleeve of his nice purple shirt. His eyes are really wide.

“Dude. You were in a box for that long? How?”

“Oh,” Kon says, laughing a bit. “Didn’t I ever tell you that? The project that made me is really old. Urahara says it was just a few years after he left Soul Society. When I escaped the whole purge of mod souls, I was just kinda in storage. Pill form, you know? I was me and everything, but pills can’t move on their own. Ichigo’s was the first body I ever got to wear that wasn’t just a test to make sure I was functional.” He still remembers the day, vaguely; just after his birth, or creation or whatever, using a mostly frozen human corpse to test each pill in. Kon doesn’t know if it was male or female, just that the test was to move each limb, blink, speak, breathe and then they would eject him. Rigorous testing for Soul Society at the time, probably. Mad fucking scientists. “Calm down. It’s just the past! Live in the moment!”

“That’s fucked though,” Jinta breathes, grabbing the gummy jar off him and fisting a bunch of worms directly into his mouth. Kon looks into the jar in dismay, then fills it up again. Urahara will probably still know, but he won’t care. Jinta swallows them all in a huge gulp that almost chokes him. “And you didn’t go do something wild when you finally got a body? Snort coke, hire hookers, get shitfaced on expensive alcohol?”

“At first I did kinda run off for a while,” Kon confesses. “Ichigo was pretty mad about it. After they put me in the stuffed lion and stuff, it just kind of became routine for me to look after his body.” He smiles a little at the memory. “My favourite thing to do was shower. I’d wash his hair until the water ran cold, and then I’d moisturise everything. His knees would get weirdly dry, you know? And Yuzu was always complaining that he didn’t eat properly, so when he was gone I’d shovel down all the vegetables I could.” Snorting down into the jar, he sticks it back on the shelf and checks the next one. Candy teeth, still full. “It was kind of like paying rent! I even did a face mask one time, but I don’t think it did much. Ichigo doesn’t really have bad skin to start with. Then I’d sleep a lot, so that when he got back it would help. His spirit form injuries transfer into his human body when he gets back into it, so I’d…” Spotting Jinta’s expression, he trails away uncertainly. “Rambling about Ichigo again, huh?”

Jinta doesn’t reply, just starts straightening the jars up and fussing around uselessly. His eyes are pinned on the shelf so intently that Kon frowns and looks around.

Ichigo is standing at the edge of the genkan, where it looks like he’s been for more than a moment. Still in socked feet, no sway in his hakama, Kon gets the instant impression he heard a lot of that. Maybe all of that. God! Damn! It! He looks up defiantly, ready to stare Ichigo down—and stops. Stops and looks.

Ichigo really does look like shit lately. There are bleak shadows beginning to gather under his eyes and a paleness to his usually nice skin. The faint tan he always seems to pick up just by doing nothing is completely gone. His hair needs a cut; it’s getting long enough to gather across the nape of his neck, hanging just a little in his eyes. But it’s the expression he wears that makes Kon’s stomach dance in anxious circles. He can’t make heads or tails of it.

“Well?” Kon clips out, tense and about to start sweating. “What? Are you staying or going? You left the door open too, so if flies got into the house Tessai will kill us all!”

Self-sabotage is a fucking art form, Kon tells himself acidly as Ichigo firms up his shoulders and looks away, getting down to put his shoes on. Sandals. Whatever they are. They always looked like they chafed. Ichigo is quick about it before he stands up in the shop, heading for the door. He has to walk right past them to get there.

“Thanks, Kon,” Ichigo says quietly as he passes, his eyes firmly fixed on the door. A fingertip taps his shoulder as he goes, a touch as light as air. The sensation of that little impact through his shirt pierces Kon’s body like a quincy arrow. Then he’s gone, out the sliding glass door of the shop with a jingle of a bell and an easy footstep up into the sky.

With his hand covering his shoulder and eyes on the red sunset that Ichigo had vanished into, Kon begins to wonder if the sliding scale between them means Ichigo does a lot worse just as he starts doing great. But they’ve never been closely joined like that. There is no red string of fate for a mod soul.

“Good thing you didn’t talk about how much you jerked off in his body,” Jinta says grimly, clapping him on his other shoulder. “Which I’m betting was a whole lot.”

“Heaps,” Kon replies faintly. “His bedroom was a sea of crusty socks while he was gone. Yuzu is still traumatised when she does his laundry.”

Jinta makes some kind of outraged noise and thumps in him the arm. Kon rocks with the force, but his attention is still on the sky.

Whatever is going on with Ichigo isn’t his business anymore, but for just a tiny little instant, he kind of wishes it is. Those friends of his never push hard enough, annoy him enough, yell enough when it’s important. Too much respect for the bastard. Nee-san could do it, but she isn’t around. He could send her a letter—but no, she’s busy. Acting captain is hard work.

Still, as he turns to close the shop and finish unpacking, the niggling worry only grows roots.

One thing Kon always had is a damn good instinct for when Kurosaki Ichigo isn’t okay.

One thing he doesn’t have anymore is the right to do anything about it.

“So what was the gigai of the moment?” Yuzu asks idly as she chops the vegetables for dinner. Ichigo has his back to her, elbows resting on the other side of the kitchen bench. “You saw him last Friday, didn’t you? Tell me all about it.”

Ichigo doesn’t want to think about Kon. He’s too busy, too tired, too—everything to think about Kon and his ever-changing faces. He especially doesn’t want to remember how he looked that afternoon in the shop, talking about the good old days and things Ichigo had never known about. Smiling his big easy smile at Jinta, describing the horrific circumstances of his life before Rukia bought a defective soul candy from Urahara’s shop. Nearly one hundred years in storage, just to be treated like—

“Well?” Yuzu asks curiously, interested by his silence. Ichigo swallows and tries to think of an answer. Kon’s gigai. What had it been? They’re all running together in his head. None of them are him. All of them are him.

“He’s got blue eyes this week, really dark blue. Tanned skin and…maybe brown hair? Dark blond.”

“Does it suit him?”

“They all suit him.”

“You mean you like them all,” Yuzu pounces, “because they’re all Kon. Ichi-nii, why don’t you try talking to him again? It’s been over four months! And you miss him so much, you know you do.”

“It’s done, Yuzu,” Ichigo replies wearily, sick of the ongoing pestering. “Kon is his own person now. He has been for a while. He’s going great; Urahara says he’s ruling the shop and bringing back customers Urahara didn’t even know he had. He hangs out with Jinta and Ururu and changes gigai and buys clothes and goes to the movies…” Ichigo squeezes his tired eyes shut. You got your wish. “He’s strong and happy and he can handle his own life. Stop worrying about me, Yuzu. I’ll be fine once the semester is over. I’ve been thinking of taking a break from Ikumi’s work anyway. Dad won’t care if I live here for a few more months than we planned.”

Yuzu murmurs her doubt like she always does, but Ichigo isn’t listening. He’s heard it all before. Take a break, get some sleep, talk to Kon, eat more, work less, talk to Kon, blah blah blah. Final exams are coming up and he has a pile of reading and essays still to prepare for his own revision. He just has to power through the year and he’ll be okay. Spacing it out isn’t an option. He has things to do, and if it means working himself to the bone for a while then that’s fine. He’s used to pushing himself beyond his boundaries. Just a few more months of hell and he’ll have his degree and can look for an apartment to rent.

Talking to Kon isn’t going to change any of that. Even if Kon would listen, and he won’t.

A few more weeks pass by, and Ichigo knows he’s buckling under the pressure. He hasn’t given up Ikumi’s work, or Isshin’s, random shinigami patrol or Urahara’s mail run, and his study load is still insurmountable. The thing is, though, the work keeps him unthinking and busy. Machine-like, he’s getting through his tasks one by one without having to stop and think. It also might just be killing him, but it’s hard to tell these days.

Kon’s faces keep changing, and every Friday Ichigo tries not to look at him. He always fails. It’s—he’s fascinating. Tens of gigai been and gone, all different and wild and strange, plain and unassuming or vibrant and seeking attention, but they’re all him. Ichigo thinks he can find Kon by his smile, the quirk of his eyebrow, his voice or even his scent if he has to now. He changed his soap to something the household uses, maybe, but it’s new and different and Ichigo knows it by heart now. He knows it like he knows the little scrunch of Kon’s nose when he laughs, head thrown back and throat long, teeth white and just a tiny little bit sharp in the incisors. It’s the one thing he seems to keep adding to his gigai. Ichigo has the soul inside memorised, he thinks, and now he knows why. God damn it, he knows why.

So Ichigo stays busy, he doesn’t ask questions when he walks through the shop, and he never, ever again tries to touch Kon.

It’s the best he can do when he feels like he’s crumbling from the inside out.

It’s a stifling night to go to the movies alone, but Kon doesn’t mind the late August summer heat. Humidity doesn’t affect him like most, so seeing a sky thick with storm clouds just makes him smile, stretching his arms way up high like he can grab them with his hands. It’s another eight blocks to get back home, but if it rains he doesn’t really care. It’s his day off tomorrow, the volcano movie had been cool and he’s feeling great!

So Kon hums his way down the street, tempted to jump over a few buildings just because he’s really feeling it in his legs tonight. The new gigai Urahara gave him is perfectly synced with his pill, with slightly longer legs than he usually chooses. It gives him some real stride even if he had to buy new black jeans to fit them. Maybe he’ll get a nose piercing and a leather jacket or something. Well, maybe next time. He has a head of wavy brown hair and big grey eyes this week that just don’t look badass to him. Probably the freckles Urahara insisted on smattering along his cheeks. The man has some good ideas, but he’s always really insistent on making Kon look just a little bit soft even when he wants to be intimidating and cool.

Kon gets six blocks from home when a flutter of dark presence begins to open up in the back of his mind. It’s a reiatsu he recognises by its fetid, tainted aura and the way the air suddenly sours on his tongue. A hollow just entered Karakura, and it’s really close by. Checking his watch, he notes that it’s exactly ten past ten in the evening. Late for a Sunday night, so there shouldn’t be many people around. It’s also nice and dark, perfect for kicking the shit out of some low-level asshole until those two stationed losers arrive to cut its head in half.

It doesn’t take long to find it; there’s a tortured shriek of rage coming from the children’s playground. If you can call it that - it’s mostly just an empty lot with a few of those spring-mounted rocking horses rusting away in the dirt and an ancient merry-go-round. The hollow is perched in the centre of the spoke-like arms of the spinning structure, which moves slowly with a long, low creak of tormented momentum. The thing on top of it has a body like an animal; shaggy, four legs and paws. It’s stocky, from the looks of it. Not a fast mover.

It’s also about the size of a small house, and the merry-go-round rails are bending under its weight.

“Are you one of the talking ones?” Kon asks it as he jumps up onto a spring horse. He’s got great balance, and even the tilt of the old thing under his weight doesn’t change his stance. Yeah, this one is an excellent gigai. Perfectly in tune. The hollow turns its white-plated face towards him and screams, mouth open so wide Kon can see the second set of human teeth deep inside. Gross! “You’re a small fry. Got it.”

Well, he can keep it busy for a while. There’s a run-down apartment complex behind the playground that looks as old as it does, but there’s some lights on in some of the windows. He’s going to look like a moron fighting an invisible monster if anyone walks by, but there’s more than one crazy person in Karakura. Crouching slightly, Kon uses the spring momentum in the horse to lunge high in the air, ready to somersault and bring his leg down on the spine of the thing in one sure slam.

Lightning splits the sky, bright enough to blind Kon in mid-air. Startled, the hollow looks up and sees his silhouette. Belatedly, Kon notices its paws are actually more like clawed hands.

“Crap—!” It’s the only thing he can yelp as a mutated hand grabs his calf and yanks, swinging him in a powerful throw against the brick wall that holds a bent basketball hoop. Kon lands hard enough to crack some of the bricks, but Urahara does good work. His spine doesn’t break. Nothing breaks. Kon is back up and ready for more in seconds. Around them, the rain begins to fall in fat, heavy droplets that bring up a smell like hot stone.

“Dickhole!” Kon yells to the hollow as it looks around the street, drawing its glowing red eyes back to him. It’s slow and dumb, but it’s pretty strong for a low-grade hollow. He has to be careful. “You can’t even kill one mod soul? You picked the wrong town, Shaggy.” The rain is picking up quickly, thunder rattling the street. Kon’s cute red t-shirt is sticking to his chest unpleasantly and he can’t sense those two kids anywhere. Ikkaku’s sister and the cowardly one are supposed to be all over this stuff. Guess it’s on him to save the day!

The hollow lumbers toward him with the single-minded interest of something with really low IQ, drooling between its clenched mask teeth. Matted dags of brown fur cover its body. Kon finds himself really unwilling to get close to its stench, but whatever. Better him than some poor people in the shacks up the back.

“Bring it!” he calls, cupping his hands around his mouth, and starts moving like he hasn’t moved in years.

It’s funny how much he enjoys himself. It’s pouring rain, he can hardly see and the hollow is persistent in its chase around the playground, but Kon finds himself grinning into the storm, darting forward and backwards, flipping over it and kicking out when he’s able to land a solid strike. It’s what he’s made for; incapacitating hollows to help out shinigami. This is what Spearhead meant for him to do. And he can do it because he was made with the enhanced leg strength of something more than an ordinary human. Of an ordinary gigai. Urahara had taken it all into account with every single one he made: not a shinigami gigai, but one for an underpod mod soul who can kick through solid steel.

Kon is at heart a lover, not a fighter. He sure isn’t a killer. But he loves to move, to jump, to run. For a while right there in the playground, distracting some shitty hollow, that’s exactly what he does. For a while, he’s not just a shopkeeper or a sad little lion. He’s amazing.

For a few minutes, Kon feels utterly amazing.

The situation changes in an instant. The hollow, dumb and slow, gets frustrated and screams reiryoku right through Kon’s leaping body, blasting his entire artificial nervous system like an EMP. He drops into a huge puddle, face-down and insensate for long seconds. The wind is knocked out of him. He shouldn’t need to breathe, but he does. He gasps—chokes on the water his face is submerged in. Wind is picking up, it howls around him. Or maybe it’s the hollow.

Shoving himself up on numb arms, Kon blinks through dirty water and sees the enormous gaping mouth descending to tear him in two.

“Getsuga tenshou!”

Oh, Kon thinks as the world turns red and black around him, his heart racing and the storm pounding down on his saturated skin. Some things never change. By the time the silver spots in his eyes subside and he can pull in a proper breath, there’s a clang of metal hitting concrete and strong hands on his shoulders, hauling him all the way up to his feet.

“Kon! Kon!” Ichigo sounds frantic, and it makes Kon stiffen his legs, locking his knees so he doesn’t fall. Hands are pushing water off his face, moving over his chest and stomach like they’re looking for something. The rain is smashing down on them like a closed fist and Kon can’t see properly, but there’s no missing the heaving shoulders of Kurosaki Ichigo in his full shinigami form, eyes still lit with the glow of raised reiryoku ready to hit the next target. He’s holding Kon by his shoulders again. He looks—

“I’m fine,” Kon says, rain in his mouth and eyes. Ichigo is a white-faced blur when lightning forks next. The thunder that comes after makes him cringe. “It surprised me! I didn’t think it could attack like that—”

“What were you thinking?!” Ichigo yells in his face, right over the hiss of pouring rain and all of Kon’s excuses. “How could you be so stupid?! You’re not a shinigami!” The hands on his shoulders turn crushing, shaking him so hard his head wobbles on his neck. Ichigo looks wild, unhinged. His eyes are too wide. “You see a hollow, you run. You run like I always told you. What the hell did you think you were doing out here?!”

Ichigo is panting like he just fought an army. His hands are hurting Kon’s shoulders. Staring back through the curtain of rain between their faces, Kon quails.

“Ichigo, you’re scaring me!” Pulling in a gasp of air, Kon hears it sound like something else. “Nobody else was around, so I was distracting it. I—I wasn’t trying to—” His words all run out into a tearful sound, because Ichigo is trembling so hard Kon can feel it through his hands.

There’s something wrong with Ichigo, Kon thinks helplessly as his favourite person in all the world drops his face into the cold crook of his neck, rain-drenched and shaking, and wraps his arms so tightly around Kon’s body that his arms are pinned to his sides. His breath is coming in hot shudders that sound like they’re being torn out of him, and in a horrible burst of clarity Kon realises Ichigo is crying.

Kurosaki Ichigo, dauntless hero of three worlds, is hiding his face and crying right into the dirty wet mess of Kon’s shoulder.

“Hey,” Kon says softly, arms rotating hesitantly until he can pull them out of the vice Ichigo has made. As soon as they’re free he wraps them around Ichigo as hard as he can. “Hey, shh, shh. You’re fine. I’m fine. Everything’s okay.” He speaks each word into the drenched orange hair that’s covering his ear, lips moving over water and cold strands. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Thanks for saving me.”

There’s no reply, not for a long minute. The rain just drums down, down, down, a late summer storm unleashing its last roar of the season. It passes almost as quickly as it started, moving on to other parts of town. The deluge becomes a shower, and then a drizzle. Kon stares over Ichigo’s shoulder and doesn’t see a thing, his hands rubbing soothing circles over a wet black uniform, around and around and down. Back up, fingertips curving over the top of his shoulder. Starts again. He doesn’t know what he murmurs into Ichigo’s ear, but he hopes it’s comforting. Slowly, the hitching breaths gusting against his neck start to slow down, to become something calmer.

Kon thinks Ichigo is about to let go when he hears a string of hoarse words spoken right into his skin.

“Don’t go any further away than you already have.”

Oh.

Oh, no.

It’s him, Kon realises with a dawning kind of guilt, the kind that slowly freezes him on the spot. He’s what’s wrong with Ichigo. Him! Kon! Oh, he’s ruined everything, he’s gotten it completely fucked up and stupid, he’s such an idiot—he hurt Ichigo. He’s been hurting him for months without even realising, he hasn’t been outgrown or tossed away, he—he made Ichigo cry.

It’s all his fault. All his instincts and he couldn’t figure that out.

“Ichigo—”

But Ichigo pulls away before Kon can think of what to say, turning around and sniffing hard, pulling himself back up into his usual posture by inches. He clears his throat, wipes his face and strides away to go get his sword. He actually dropped Zangetsu on the ground earlier to grab Kon. When he walks back his eyes look like holes in his face, tired and worn out and empty. Kon’s heart shrivels up in his chest at the sight, but Ichigo grabs his wet wrist in one hand and starts tugging him along without a word, out of the playground and onto the street. The stormwater gutters are running hard still and Kon stares at them blankly as they walk.

“Ichi—”

“I’m walking you home,” Ichigo says. He doesn’t sound blocked up like Kon always does after a hard cry. Maybe he’s better at it. He watches Ichigo shake his head suddenly, almost irritably. “To Urahara’s, I mean. You’re going to go inside and get warm and dry. Get some tea or something.”

“It’s summer,” Kon replies, still staring at the place where Ichigo’s hand is wrapped around his wrist. He can see the blue-green veins in his wrist. “Are you cold?”

“I’m fine. Come on.”

They trudge on for a while. It’s hard to find anything to say that isn’t awkward or dismissive. Kon knows nothing good really happens when he opens his mouth in emotional situations. Especially with Ichigo, who never usually owns up to having feelings in the first place. He always crams it down inside like a big constipated jerk. Looking at the back of his head, hair still wet but trying to spike up again, Kon feels badly for thinking Ichigo didn’t really care about him. Ichigo cares about everyone, maybe even when he wishes he could switch it off. His life would be more relaxing that way, for sure.

The whole way back Kon racks his brain for a way to fix things, but he doesn’t come up with anything in time. The looming sign of the Urahara Shop rises like an end of the line signal, and the moment Kon steps onto the muddy lot of the shop Ichigo lets him go.

“I’ll wait until you go inside.”

“You can come in too,” Kon ventures hopelessly, but Ichigo is too closed off to even look at him directly. His whole body looks like it’s bowing, ready to break. “I owe you, don’t I? Heroic shinigami saves the dumb mod soul, part seventy-three.” He’s trying too hard for humour and it tips the other way. Ichigo’s quick glance is sharp, almost angry.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that. You’re doing well, Kon.” Ichigo straightens, too tense to be natural. “I’m sorry I scared you before. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“But—”

“Kon, please just go inside,” Ichigo says wearily, rubbing a hand across his own face. He looks too tired to function. Too everything to be standing outside a closed shop an hour before midnight, talking to an idiot who missed his chance to clear everything up. “I need to go home.”

“Okay,” Kon says, small-voiced and guilty. Some way or another he’s always a burden on Ichigo, even when he’s trying to be useful. Trying to be separate and whole. But at the first sign of danger, everything slides back onto his shoulders. It’s the worst. It really is. He lets Ichigo watch as he turns and walks across the long, muddy path to the shop, the packed soil still soft and battered from the storm. Maybe Tessai will still be awake and can pour him some tea. There’s always tea when Tessai is around.

Kon’s almost at the door when he’s reminded again of the tremble of Ichigo’s whole body inside his arms, of the words he said when he didn’t have to look him in the eye. Those hadn’t been throwaway words. Ichigo cares about him a lot, and Ichigo isn’t doing so well. What has Kon done to help, other than traumatise him by almost getting eaten by a shitty hollow? Nothing. He hasn’t done a thing, and Ichigo is still trying to keep him safe and walk him home. Waiting on the street, even now, until he’s safely inside the shop. Always watching and guarding and—

“Wait a second!” Kon cries, spinning around and running back to the street pavement. “I forgot something.”

Ichigo almost slumps at the sight of him. “Kon, just—”

His cheek is soft, Kon thinks with remembered pleasure, kissing it with a quick and gentle pressure. He’s never done anything like that before, but it feels right. All of Ichigo’s skin feels right to him. It’s just a little peck, but it’s more than he’s been able to give in months. Too much talking, or not talking always getting in the way.

“What the hell?” Ichigo says, clapping a hand to his cheek. Under the streetlight his wide brown eyes are almost golden. “You’ve never done that before.”

“So what?” Kon barks, fists clenched at his sides and heart hammering in embarrassment. “I can kiss you if I want, can’t I? I’ve known you long enough! Slept in your bed! Seen you naked!”

“Kon, shut up,” Ichigo mutters, looking around the neighbourhood. “Nobody can see me right now, but they can hear you. What’s gotten into you?”

There’s a bubbling impatience rising in Kon, a resentment that Ichigo fails to see in time. Always dismissing him! Always, always, always!

“Well, I love you, don’t I?” Kon says bravely, stupidly and so, so honestly. “Who else thanks you properly? No-one! Go the fuck home and get thirty hours of sleep!”

Ichigo’s eyes are like saucers. “Kon—”

“Don’t talk to me until Friday!” Kon shouts back, even though they’re only a few feet apart. He feels like a freshly boiled kettle, all steam and heat ready to cool to silence the moment he moves. “Take the week off, stupid! You look like shit!”

It’s pure gigai balls of steel that keep Kon from looking around as he turns and stomps back to the shop, righteously inflated with his old feelings of having to be louder than the other person to matter. But maybe it’s what Ichigo needs. Everyone listens to him too much, but they’re not looking when they do it! Well, Kon has done plenty of looking. He’s still looking, and Ichigo needs a hand. If four months of being a whole person, even a gigai person, is enough to help, then Kon is going to use all the leverage he’s got.

He’ll never be able to wipe those tears off his neck otherwise.

Five days have never crawled by so slowly.

It’s not that Ichigo is impatiently waiting for Friday, or even that he’s doing what Kon told him to. He doesn’t get nearly enough sleep after there’s a scaffolding accident two blocks away involving night construction workers, filling the clinic for most of the night while they patch wounds and splint limbs. Ichigo is so exhausted he has to try three times to pin a bandage correctly, and the mildly concussed guy waiting for him to get it right gives him intensely suspicious looks the entire time. That’s his Monday.

Tuesday is spent hurriedly finishing an essay for submission on Wednesday, since his Monday night was hijacked. He’s not even completely sure what the hell happened on Wednesday and Thursday, but there’s twenty thousand yen in his wallet and Yuzu stands and watches him eat an entire bowl of porridge and fruit before she lets him head to Ikumi’s in the afternoon. It’s not healthy to work so hard, she insists, and Ichigo knows she’s right. But it’s habit now, a way to fill his time with so much busywork that he simply can’t stop and touch his cheek, or think about the way Kon’s eyes were miserably affectionate in that instant before he swelled up with indignation, slipping back into his old persona and shouting Ichigo down about how tired he looked. He can’t think of a way to tell him properly, but Ichigo has missed that rude attention badly.

Kon loves him. The thought appears at strange times, always without warning. Ichigo tries every time to put it away somewhere rational and logical. Love in the moment, maybe. Affection from gratitude at being saved. Not—that kind of love. Not after what he said. How he treated him for years. Even if Kon can be that forgiving, there were deep, deep lines in the sand and one quick save from a medium-class hollow wasn’t going to change a thing. Ichigo pushes it to the back of his mind again and again, but the traitorous little thought always surfaces when his guard is down. Kon loves him.

Strange, how Ichigo can still have some kind of hope in tandem with his crushing guilt. He really is just a selfish asshole, still wanting to occupy some permanent part of Kon’s life when he’s done nothing to earn it. Soaking up the good graces of someone as honest and genuinely kind as him—annoying, yes, loud, yes, but always kind—because he has no capacity to give it to himself. Ichigo tells himself that over and over in those low moments of exhausted weakness, but the memory of Kon’s careful hands moving over the tired muscles of his back, soothing his mortifying breakdown won’t leave him. It’s been months since anyone touched him. No soft body tucked under his chin in bed, no murmuring voice in his ear or familiar weight on his shoulder. It ended with Kon and now it’s starting all over again.

Sunday night had been a complete nightmare come to life. A possibility Ichigo never considered had opened up right in front of him, and it was only pure chance that things had worked out. That was the true terror of that moment in the storm, seeing a young guy get up on his elbows and stare into the face of the hollow, rain falling in his huge grey eyes. Eyes that Ichigo knew by heart in any colour, any shape. The heart-stopping black fear of realising Kon was about to die, that it was an utter fluke he’d even stopped by to see why Ryuunosuke and Shino weren’t taking care of it.

Ichigo isn’t proud of how he acted afterwards. It’s a memory he tries to squirm away from as much as he wants to pore over Kon’s reaction to it. He hadn’t yelled back or told him to get lost, hadn’t reminded Ichigo of his own words and the argument that had sent him running from the house in the first place. Kon had simply pulled his arms free of Ichigo’s grip and hugged him like he was trying to stop him from flying apart. Like it was nothing to whisper soft, comforting words in his ear, to rub his back while he snivelled like an idiot into Kon’s neck, completely undone. Kon, with his twenty faces and loud mouth and generous heart, still giving himself away for free. The thought gives rise to a possessiveness that Ichigo can’t handle. So he pushes it away, again and again, as Friday slowly approaches.

Tomorrow is mail day.

That’s going to be his only real chance, Ichigo thinks as he finally falls into bed, feet cold beneath the sheets and feeling unreasonably chilly for the weather. Tomorrow he’ll do Urahara’s mail like always and recreate that distance. He’ll hit the reset button, for both their sakes.

It’s the kindest thing Ichigo can do now.

“He’s not coming,” Kon says blankly to the faded green ceiling of the living room. He’s been sprawled on his back like a starfish ever since the shop closed an hour ago. “I yelled too much and now he’s not coming.”

Urahara folds down his newspaper and gives him an amused look. He’s sitting at the little table with his hat and haori off, doing his evening routine of half-watching the news while he reads the horoscope section. Kon is pretty sure he knows it’s total bullshit, but he never stops checking out what the almost certainly made up future has in store for him.

“Kon-san, when has your yelling ever scared anyone away?”

“Well,” Kon thinks, “never, but Ichigo arrives like clockwork every Friday and suddenly he’s late? It’s me. I did it. I kissed his cheek and it did a reverse fairy tale! He’s left the country forever, I know it.”

Urahara leans over the table to look at him.

“You kissed Kurosaki-san? You didn’t tell me that.” Leaning all the way back again, Urahara calls into the kitchen. He’s already shaking his newspaper back out, though. “Tessai-san, our fuzzy little baby chick is growing up and kissing lonely shinigami! He’ll be having sex soon!”

“Nooo!” Tessai howls from the depths of the kitchen, where some delicious-smelling stew is bubbling away. “I won’t allow it. He’s too tenderhearted. Nobody is good enough for our Kon-chan.”

“It’s just Kon, you assholes,” Kon says tiredly to the ceiling. “You two design my dick every week. We’re past honourifics. And don’t ever call me Kon-chan in front of Ichigo. It’s cute and infantile and it’ll set my progress back by months! I’m over a hundred years old!”

It’s all true and they do their level best to ignore it, Kon thinks as Urahara buries his nose in the paper like it’s the most interesting thing in the world. Jinta must have said something to them about keeping him in storage, probably knowing he was a mod soul. Kon doesn’t hold any resentment towards them, really. Nobody knew what a mod soul looked or sounded like before he came into play. Pandora’s soul candy dispenser was probably better left unpopped, or whatever. Besides, those years in the dark had mostly blended together. Mostly.

“Well, I’m sure Kurosaki-san will be along shortly. Even on his lowest days he’s never missed a Friday afternoon mail delivery, or a chance to see you.” Urahara’s eyes smile over the top of the paper. “Why don’t we invite him to stay for dinner?”

Kon sits up in a rush. The thought has never even occurred to him. It doesn’t just have to be the mail run, does it?

“You’d do that?”

“Of course! He’s more than earned a hot meal and some quiet time with his favourite mod soul. I take your interest to mean that you’ve forgiven him for his harsh words?”

Kon can’t think of a proper answer right away. It’s too cloudy in his head, all mixed up with his competing instincts to help Ichigo, to not be a burden, to leave him alone. To have his very own life with friends and work and clothes and food, without it all having to be passed to him from Ichigo’s hands first. Forgiving Ichigo isn’t even the real problem anymore, it’s the lonely hole in his chest where all his good feelings about Ichigo used to live. It’s how much Ichigo still feels like someone who belongs to him. Who he belongs to. It’s how warm his wet back had felt under his hands, how the soapy smell of his rain-soaked hair had tugged on his memories. And it’s other stuff too, stuff Kon is too chicken to even think about for long. Stuff that’s not for him to have.

He’s saved from answering and damned in the same instant when the shoji door into the shop slides open quietly, revealing Ichigo in his human form. He’s holding the mail bag loosely in one hand, and he’s dressed suspiciously nicely just to come to Urahara’s. Kon sits up straighter as the others welcome him in, not sure what to say. Ichigo looks like shit. Well-dressed shit, maybe, but exhaustion is radiating off the rigid line of his shoulders like it’s only brute determination keeping him from slumping. So much for getting some sleep like he asked, Kon thinks with some indignation.

“Sorry I’m late,” Ichigo sighs, passing the mail bag over. “I have a class party to get to tonight, so I stopped off to get back into my body.” He glances down at Kon, giving him a considering look. “You’re in the same gigai as last time.”

Kon looks down at himself. “I change on Saturdays. What, you don’t like it?”

“I like it,” Ichigo says easily, but it sounds more like he’s just saying what he thinks Kon might want to hear. Or maybe like he doesn’t care either way. “It’s just the first time I’ve seen the same one twice.” When Kon doesn’t have anything to say to that, he deflates a little. “Anyway, I gotta go.”

Just like that? Not even a proper hello and he’s already trying to leave. It occurs to Kon that Ichigo might be embarrassed about crying on Sunday night, but he at least thought they’d made some really good progress. Breaking down barriers, or whatever. Talking, just a little, without the tension vibrating between them. But no, because Ichigo looks like he can’t wait to run away and possibly pass out somewhere. Well, Kon won’t beg.

“But you’re just in time for dinner,” Urahara replies brightly, a saviour in green casual wear, not even looking up from the mail as he rummages through it. A scroll from Fourth Division hits Kon in the forehead. Ooh, his newsletter! “Why not stay and have some stew with us, Kurosaki-san? Surely your party can wait another half hour. One doesn’t want to be too early for these things, you know.”

“Yeah,” Kon surprises himself by saying. It’s not begging! “They’ll think you’re a real nerd if you’re there on time. Sit and eat.” He budges up to the table a little as Tessai comments on still having plenty of leftovers, but Ichigo is already turning towards the door again.

“I promised my classmates I’d help set up. I can’t let them down.” There’s a bleak kind of cast to Ichigo’s profile that Kon doesn’t know what to do with. Not without insisting, and it just doesn’t look like that’ll do the trick this time. And why should he insist, anyway? Ichigo always does whatever he wants, and he doesn’t want to stay. Well, fine. That’s just fine.

Ichigo waves over his shoulder as he heads to the door—and then he’s listing dangerously to the right, his spine losing all its strength. Kon is on his feet before he can think.

“Whoa,” Kon says, taking the entire slumped weight of Ichigo’s body against his chest. “Ichigo! Get it together! Are you all right?” He’s not though, there’s no way he’s okay; his skin is pasty and clammy with exhaustion and there’s a stunned kind of blankness to his gaze. Well and truly pushed past its limit, Ichigo’s body just gave up before he did. Kon strains to hold him up until Ichigo can find his own feet, mumbling about how he’s fine, it’s just a dizzy spell.

“You’re a fucking idiot,” Kon tells him flatly, “and you’re coming with me.”

“No, I need to be there,” Ichigo is still saying stubbornly. “I swore I’d make it this time. I have to—I’m not going to disappoint them.”

“You’re running on fumes! Less than fumes!” Kon cries, well and truly fed up. Ichigo is fumbling to break his grip, but Kon isn’t having it. “I swear to those dusty shinigami gods, Ichigo, if you try to leave I’m gonna crush you with my thighs and lock your dumb ass in the bunker. Now, c’mon.” Over his shoulder, to a deeply entertained Urahara, he adds, “Can you get the gigai out of storage?”

“Of course.” From the sudden glint in Urahara’s eye, Kon doesn’t need to tell him which one. Crafty asshole. Kon always suspected he’d never incinerated it like he said he did. “What are you planning?”

“Just a Kon special.” Shouldering Ichigo’s weight a little, feeling the lean warmth of his waist with his fingers, he starts off in the direction of his bedroom. Ichigo stirs against his side, perking up by sheer force of will and begins struggling in earnest. Kon punches him directly in the stomach without remorse and uses the distraction to half-carry his sagging, wheezing weight down the hallway. Fucking Ichigo. Talk about burning the candle at both ends.

“I’m fine,” Ichigo tries again as Kon hauls him into the darkened bedroom, flipping the yellow overhead light on with his elbow. He doesn’t actually fall over when Kon lets him go, but he’s weaving like a drunk bastard, like all his bad decisions are catching up with him at once. “I’m just tired.”

“I know. Take off all your clothes.”

“What? Why?”

“Ichigo. Get them off, right now, or I’m gonna start blowing buttons on that cute burgundy dress shirt.”

Something in Kon’s expression must convince him, because after a small hesitation Ichigo’s face changes slightly. He lifts his hands and begins slowly unbuttoning his shirt, which is tucked into belted black jeans. The belt is overkill; those jeans look so tight that only surgical scissors should be able to remove them. Kon watches with the rigid aura of a drill sergeant as the shirt and belt come off, taking them both and throwing them over the threadbare upholstered chair in the corner of the room. Ichigo just looks at him under the watery light, strangely quiet. Kon doesn’t know what to do with the look on his face.

“I said all your clothes.”

“I know what you’re going to do,” Ichigo says, still unmoving. “You don’t have to do things like this anymore.”

“I know that.” Of course he knows that! Kon points at the jeans. “Get them off or I’m stripping you myself.”

Ichigo opens his mouth again, probably to argue some more, but he’s interrupted by the door sliding open. Urahara walks in without a care in the world, hauling a naked gigai over his shoulder like a corpse he needs to dispose of. The butt is an identical match for Ichigo’s, just like everything else about it. A little sad for the sight of it, Kon turns away and unsnaps Ichigo’s jeans, pulling the zipper down.

“C’mon, you can owe me for this later,” he says. “Get the jeans and socks off. I don’t have any clothes that will fit the gigai.”

“It will also stop you escaping if you’re in nothing but your underwear,” Urahara remarks, bowing to slide the gigai off onto the floor. He sort of drops it the last foot, forgetting to bend his knees, and its head thunks on the tatami. “Whoops! Good thing I made him durable.” Planting his hands on his hips proudly, Urahara studies his handiwork. “My finest custom gigai with all the trimmings. I apologise to you both for the deception, but he’s the pinnacle of gigai advancement. The rest are garbage by comparison. It would have been a tragedy to destroy such a work of art.” Kon almost plucks up at the insult. What does he mean, garbage? He paid good money for his!

“It’s creepy when you talk about it like that, just so you know,” Ichigo says, handing over the jeans and socks he’d removed while Urahara spoke. Kon is surprised for an instant; usually Ichigo fights a lot harder when he doesn’t want to do something. Maybe his grumpy face contains real power now. They all blink down at the gigai in varying levels of interest before Ichigo steps forward suddenly and curses. “What the fuck, Urahara? Why is its dick so big?”

“Is it?” Urahara asks, looking down at it with interest. “This isn’t average size?” He sounds a little too thrilled. Kon mourns the innocence he just lost in that moment. “Interesting, interesting! I need to make some calculations. If either of you need me, I’ll be in the lab! Tessai-san will bring you some dinner, Kurosaki-san, so please make yourself comfortable in here. Kon-san, my adorable ward, I bid you a productive evening.” He’s out the door with a smart about-face and a wave over his shoulder, sliding the shoji door shut behind him with a clack. Kon just sighs and flips on a small lamp on the floor, turning off the main light. Something about seeing the naked gigai sprawled on the floor in full view like that creeps him out.

Ichigo starts to kneel down beside it, but he’s wobbling again. Kon grabs the elastic of his black boxer briefs and wedgies him back up to his feet, grabbing one of his elbows once he’s closer. He steers Ichigo directly to the big futon on the floor. It’s his own bed, pillow plumped and made up to look as comfortable as possible. Kon won’t tell Tessai because it’s weird, but he loves how that man makes up his futon. Try as he might, Kon can’t get the duvet to look quite so fluffy. Ichigo stares at it with the same kind of yearning even as he tries to unpick his underwear with an absent hand.

“Get in and sleep for a few hours,” Kon tells him. “I’ll wake you when I’m back. I just have to play nice with your nerdy university friends, right? Quote a little Shakespeare and toast to some losers? Easy.” It will be, too; Kon knows all of Ichigo’s mannerisms and favourite phrases, all the way down to the cant of his head when he’s quietly curious about something. Pairing that knowledge with all his customer service experience means he’s a skilled imposter. A fetching one, even—but he’ll have to tone it down. Ichigo is a lot of things but he’s not really happy in large crowds, not like Kon is.

“And set up chairs, snacks, drinks,” Ichigo says reluctantly. “My phone is in the back pocket of my jeans. It has directions in the map app, and my PIN hasn’t changed. Are you sure you—”

“Yes! Stop being a dick about it!” Kon throws his hands up in exasperation. “If you want to avoid this ever happening again, maybe don’t run yourself into the damn ground. You’re supposed to be the responsible one! I’m supposed to be the useless mess!” Ripping back the thick blanket for Ichigo, he turns back to the gigai and slams his mouth over its slack lips, forming a tight seal where no air could escape.

It’s not a kiss or anything. The suction activates the transfer function that lets him swap gigai without help, and in a quick rush of confusing light his soul pill is pulled from one body into the other. Kon grunts as this week’s gigai slumps bonelessly against his naked chest. He’s naked, stiff and a little cold, but clothes will fix that. Pushing the shaggy-haired gigai off him, stopping momentarily to stare curiously into its flat grey eyes, Kon gets to his feet and reaches for Ichigo’s discarded clothes. They’re still a little warm when he bunches the material in his hands. He knows without checking that they smell just like his favourite cologne.

“You’re right,” Ichigo says after a rustling silence, watching Kon pull his clothes on in short, annoyed bursts of motion. The shadows beneath his tired brown eyes look even more pronounced than before. “I am a useless mess. But you never were. Helpless sometimes, sure, and you’d get yourself into trouble in the blink of an eye, but not useless. And I don’t—I don’t mean just because you were able to mind my body when I went and did shinigami things.” Getting down to sit on the edge of the thick futon, legs stuck out in front of him, Ichigo rubs his whole face with both hands. “Are you sure I can sleep here?”

The tone of his voice startles Kon, but he’s not going to own up to that. There’s an almost plaintive quality to it, and in an instant Kon realises it’s because Ichigo is asking him for permission. In nine years Kon can’t remember him ever really doing that before. Probably because Kon never had a single thing he could call his own. Not until five months ago. Now he’s got a collection of gigai, all bought and paid for with money he earned. He has a soft bed, a room of his own and clothes he thinks are really cool. He has a home that doesn’t depend on handing a body back at the end of each day. The look on Ichigo’s face makes Kon wonder if he wishes things could go back to how they used to be.

“Get some sleep, Ichigo,” Kon finally replies, confused and a little heartsore. “I’ll go help your friends.” He watches Ichigo nod a little and swing his legs under the covers, pulling them up and burrowing down into the pillow. The exhale of pure relief that leaves him at the motion sounds like it came from the very tips of his toes. When all Kon can see is a spiky mess of orange hair and an unmoving lump of a body, he turns off the lamp and leaves the room. There’s something sweetly nostalgic about seeing him exhausted and ready to sleep, and it aches deep down in his chest that he can’t just crawl in there with him anymore.

At least he can do this, Kon tells himself as he pats his pocket where Ichigo’s phone is, giving Tessai a silent wave as he heads for the door. The big man lifts his glasses and frowns slightly.

“I’ll put your portion of stew in the refrigerator,” he says gruffly, but it sounds like a question.

“I’m only going to keep up appearances for him. Be back in a couple of hours, promise!” Kon’s smile is as big and reassuring as ever, but Tessai has a weird sixth sense for his moods. He just nods slowly and straightens his glasses, but there’s no mistaking the doubtful cast to his features.

“Don’t get hurt, Kon-chan.”

“It’s just Kon.” The tired correction will never actually work, but he’ll keep saying it. “Bye bye. Look after Ichigo.”

Don’t get hurt, Kon thinks as he locks the shop behind him and jogs out onto the street, toes wiggling in Ichigo’s comfortable shoes.

Tessai is a little late to be saying that, but he appreciates the advice all the same.

The party is so plain that Kon wants to cry.

The way Ichigo had insisted he had to come to set up things made Kon think it was at least going to end up being cool, but this? It’s a boring party full of pretentious wannabe-writers sipping prosecco like it’s Tessai’s top shelf sake! They’re talking about books! Inferior movie adaptations! The music sounds like the acoustic soundtrack to every Nicholas Sparks movie ever! No wonder Ichigo looks like he’s had his entire soul sucked out and replaced with packing peanuts. Kon would take seven more part-time jobs just to forget these boring assholes exist.

“What do you think, Kurosaki-senpai?” one of the girls asks him brightly, and Kon jolts back into reality. They’re sitting in a large circle of folding chairs in one of the larger study rooms on campus, which some guy with black hair and an annoying smirky mouth boasted he’d been trusted with the key for. The girl on Kon’s immediate left is looking at him expectantly with big brown eyes, turning a small plastic cup in her hands. Kon thinks fast.

“I tuned out, sorry. What was the question?” His honesty mostly saves him from embarrassment; the girl laughs along with a few others, and one of the guys takes an elbow in the side. The guy with black hair glares as the laughter increases, and Kon realises quickly that he doesn’t like being the butt of any joke. Or maybe everyone wanted to say the same thing. “What? There’s pretty girls in the room. I can’t sit here and be expected to listen to a bunch of dudes talk.” He sips the tepid wine in his shitty little cup to hide his evil grin. The girls are all paying attention to him now, discreetly tucking hair behind their ears and smoothing their clothes down. Whoever is sitting next to him beams prettily, her cheeks flushing with surprised pleasure. Damn, he’s charming. Ichigo must be a real stooge if he’s getting these results. He’s barely even trying.

The rest of the party—if you can call it that—kind of goes in the same fashion, except wherever Kon goes a few girls seem to keep following. Right, Ichigo’s face. He’s interested by his own disinterest in any of them. Once upon a time, a lot of insecurity and attention-seeking behaviour would have had him shouting declarations of love and grading them by breast size. Now Kon just sees nervous young women wearing clothes they don’t even like, and the stab of commiseration he feels is strange. Is this what the boring real world is like? Constantly second-guessing and seeking approval of people who don’t even know your name? In that case, Kon could have been ruling the world six years ago. Now he just feels kind of sad, and the girls look kind of tired, and for a moment he stops and thinks: these girls are all Ichigo after too much study and not enough sleep. They all came out for a boring-ass party to keep up appearances and relax, and look at them!

“You all look really nice,” Kon tells the three girls lingering near the drinks table he’d set up with the guys. “Sorry it’s a bit wasted on us dorks, though. You should go out and have some actual fun.” Two of them share a glance, while the third pours out and necks an entire cup of prosecco. Kon doesn’t like the taste and he’s pretty sure she doesn’t either.

“You know what I want to do?” she says, wiping her glossy lips. “I want to go to my room, get in my pyjamas, make a double bowl of instant ramen with soy sauce and watch Bridgerton again.”

“Oh, I like that series!” Kon says excitedly, because television time with Tessai really is one of his favourite things. “I thought it was going to be like Downton, but boy was I wrong. You think it’ll get another season?”

“Oh, definitely,” the girl says with bright interest, and the other two nod eagerly. “We should all do a night when it’s out!”

“That’s cool. I’m in.” Even if he has to pretend to be Ichigo, that’s an invitation he can’t ignore. Their bubbly laughter and discussion of what snacks each should bring, whether it’s a sleepover and if they make Ichigo sleep in the toilet attracts some of the guys, who hesitantly try to join the conversation with some trivia facts absolutely nobody is interested in.

“I hope the duke is back next season,” the girl with brown hair and pink cheeks sighs. “He can absolutely rearrange my insides.” Kon chokes on his drink.

“Holy shit!” he splutters. “I mean, same, but holy shit! Write those things in your diary! You’re gonna kill these virgins on the spot if you go around saying stuff like that.”

The arguments and laughter that sparks is loud and boisterous, and Kon is jammed right in the middle of every nerd who came to the stupid english student party, each throwing an opinion or joke around. In an instant, with just a handful of words their whole facade cracks wide open, and their dry pseudo-intellectual bullshit dissolves like it was never there. Smiling at the uproar, ducking a few probing questions on Ichigo’s sexuality, Kon waits for his chance to back out of the tipsy crowd and tip the warm drink he’s been nursing into what is almost certainly a fake plant. He checks Ichigo’s phone and mentally pats himself on the back. Two hours, an improved vibe and he’s made Ichigo some cool new female friends. That’s a success.

He’s barely outside, feeling the cool night air brushing his cheeks when he hears a voice calling.

“Senpai! Wait a moment.” It’s the kind looking brown-haired girl again, jerking her cleavage into place and twisting her skirt straight. Kon is dismayed just long enough to take a couple of steps back, his polite refusal face firmly on display, but when she reaches out it’s only for the phone in his hand.

“Oh.” Kon watches her switch to Ichigo’s contacts and enter her details in. Meiko, the contact reads when she hands it back. “Thanks, Meiko-san.”

“I’d say you can message me for stuff other than binge watching, but you even turning up here was great. It’s wonderful to see you finally smiling, you know.”

“I haven’t been?”

“No. Well, not with your eyes. Not for months now.” She reaches out and pats his arm a little. It’s such a sisterly gesture, so reminiscent of Yuzu that Kon lets his cautious hackles go right down. Ichigo won’t want him leading anyone on, after all, but Meiko seems all right. “Stay smiling, okay? You’re the only normal guy around here.”

“That’s me,” Kon laughs. “So normal it hurts. Thanks for tonight, but I’ve gotta get back. Don’t let them start mansplaining Jane Austen or anything.” Historical dramas are his shit, even if all he’s seen are the television adaptations. Meiko laughs like he’s said the funniest thing in the world and waves him off, already turning back to the study room entrance with a spring in her step. When she’s gone and the door has closed behind her, Kon leaves with a head full of conflicting thoughts. All of them are about Ichigo.

They aren’t even close friends. From the way everyone acted, Ichigo has been scene filler up until that night. Sad looking scene filler, if Meiko is right, and antisocial to boot. If he’s like that for his uni classes, and worked to the bone any other time, what the hell kind of life is that? Even Kon gets more social time, and he mostly warms the cashier counter for a black market fence that fronts as a candy store. Poor Ichigo. Everyone seems to realise he’s miserable except for him. Working hard! What a load of shit! It’s running, that’s all. Running real far away.

Well, screw that. Kon’s got legs strong enough to out-sprint that dumbass any day of the week. The thought warms him as he runs the whole way back to the shop, which is no small amount of city blocks to cover. By the time he gets back he’s sweated lightly through his borrowed clothes, so he creeps all the way upstairs and into the shower when he gets inside. It’s not late, but the house interior is dark and quiet, with only a small sensor light plugged into the stairwell to light his path. Urahara and Tessai are probably out or in the hidden lab together. Kon tries not to think of anything else they might be doing as he heads down in a towel to his bedroom, freshly showered and stomach squirming as he gets closer to his closed door. Ichigo should be in there still sleeping. He can just put on some pyjama pants and sleep in Jinta’s bed if he is. No way is he going to wake him up if he doesn’t have to.

When he opens the door, the lamp is on and Ichigo is sitting up in bed. His spiky orange hair is sticking up everywhere with an intense case of bed head, but he looks pretty alert. Kon feels his heart twitch a little when he meets his eyes.

“I heard you get in,” Ichigo says by way of explanation, reaching beside the futon to drink from a big glass of water. It has a massive slice of lemon in it. Tessai really has been looking after him. “How was the party? Did anything happen? Tell me you didn’t flirt with anyone.” He watches Kon shut the door and throw the clothes over the chair arm, tossing the phone over to the futon where Ichigo can grab it. Kon pulls open his wardrobe and looks around. The fucking gigai is gone.

“The party was fine, if you can call it a party to begin with. Where’s my other gigai?”

“Tessai said if you’re going to leave things lying around on the floor, you should—”

“Expect to find them in the trash,” Kon finishes, sighing. He’s such a housewife! A mother hen! “It’s probably just in storage with the others. Oh well, guess you have to put up with looking at this one then. Some girl named Meiko gave me her number, by the way. If she tells you season two of Bridgerton is out, let me know. I said I’d watch it with her and her friends.” Kon selects some drawstring pyjama pants that Urahara loaned him months ago when he had nothing to wear. They’re the only thing that hits his heels since Ichigo is mostly legs. He drops his towel shamelessly.

“So you did flirt!” Ichigo accuses, then blinks and looks away. His face is doing something complicated. “Did you ask for a bigger dick than mine when you had that made?”

“I didn’t flirt!” Kon says hotly. “I said the girls looked nice to cheer them up. Your classmates look as dried up as you do. And what’s with that guy with the black hair? What an attention drain. I don’t like him, and I don’t think he likes you either.” Ichigo keeps looking at him obstinately, arms crossed over his bare chest and doesn’t reply. Kon’s memory twigs. “I didn’t ask for anything! I just told Urahara to make me a gigai that looks like you. He said he went off plan and made a bunch of other modifications, but the dick is really the only thing that’s different. Don’t ask me; I was just happy to have a body.” A body he couldn’t wait to run back home and proudly show to Ichigo, too, expecting a pat on the head for wanting to still be his body double. It’s mortifying to think of now, after so much has changed. Sure, he might have doubled for him tonight, but it’s not the same as thinking it’s his duty. This was his choice.

The memory shakes something loose between them in the silence. Looking chastened by the information, Ichigo’s attention slides towards his clothing and lingers. Kon beats him to it.

“They need cleaning. I sweated them up running home.” To drive his point home, he balls them up and stuffs them hard into the depths of his little bedroom hamper. “Just stay here tonight. Tessai can wash them in the morning.”

“I have to work tomorrow,” Ichigo says gamely. “Early. Ikumi—”

“You’re gonna quit working for her!” Kon barks, zero to one hundred and furious. “Are you stupid? No down time? Hardly any sleep? You want me to worry forever, is that it? Want everyone to worry about your stupid ass?” That hits home like a freight train, his entire face blanching in anguish, but Kon has no sympathy for self-inflicted injuries. “Ichigo, for fuck’s sake, what the hell are you doing? Everyone can see you’re falling apart!”

“I’m fine—” Ichigo says, and then Kon is on him, throwing the phone across the tatami and shoving him down on the futon. The forearm across his chest is as strong as an iron bar compared to the struggling going on beneath. Ichigo’s brown eyes widen fiercely when he realises he can’t get up. “Kon, get off! It’s none of your business anymore!”

“It’s always gonna be my business!” Kon snarls, refusing to be thrown off by his bucking and thrashing legs. “You threw me away, not the other way around! I still give a shit and I always will! It’s just how it is!”

Something twists in Ichigo’s face, a tension winding tighter and tighter. The hand clenching Kon’s wrist is strong enough now to bruise his gigai skin, but his mouth is trembling in a way Kon has never seen before.

“I never threw you away, Kon!” Ichigo says desperately, hoarsely, and his eyes are shining terribly in the lamplight. “I was stupid and angry, and I thought I wanted you to live without me!” He swallows hard and turns his face away. “But you ripped out half of me when you went. And I can’t fix it. I can’t fix it because I’m the problem. I did it to myself, and you’re thriving, and it’s great. It is. So just—”

“Do you love me?” Kon asks, the full ache of his throat almost strangling him so the words won’t come. He can’t see through the blinding wetness in his eyes. “Ichigo, do you love me? Miss me? Do you think I’m nice? Does having me around make you happy? Or do you just want all this to go away, right back to how it was before? Because the stuffed lion is in the wardrobe. If you wanted, if you’re strong enough, you could—” And then Ichigo is strong enough, desperately strong enough to rear up and shove his arms away, pushing Kon back until he’s almost arched back into the tent of Ichigo’s raised knees. But he’s got nothing to grab except a fistful of his hair and the curve of his jaw. He takes both in his hands and yanks their foreheads together so fast Kon almost sees stars. Instead he sees Ichigo’s wild gaze, feeling each rapid, panting breath exhale just to fill his own lungs. One breath, just like they used to be one body.

“I will never put you back in that toy, Kon,” Ichigo says, and grief doesn’t begin to cover it. “And I won’t let anyone else do it. I’ll fucking die first. You can wear my face forever but I’ll never put you back into that lion. Never.”

“But you’re so sad,” Kon says tremulously. The hand in his hair gentles, slides down until both hands are cupping his jaw. They feel so good on his skin that his whole artificial heart aches. “Why not do it? I’d do it, if I was you.”

“You wouldn’t, and you know it.” Ichigo’s mouth plucks at the corners, almost like he’s trying to smile. “Besides, I love you, don’t I? You can’t just be my Kon anymore. The world deserves to meet you, too.”

Just like that, all of Kon’s strings are cut at once. He can’t help the huge teardrops that his eyelashes finally let go of, or the uncontrollable hitching breaths that rip their way out of his throat. He can’t help the way his hands shoot up to clasp Ichigo’s whole face between them, sweeping up through his hair and down his cheeks and neck. He knows that face, that skin, the nape of his neck and the shallow dip of his collarbone. He knows it all and Ichigo does love him, he really does, and the knowledge isn’t joyous, it hurts. Because Ichigo wants to let him go.

“I’m lonely all the time,” Kon chokes out, cowardice turning his face away until their temples rest side by side. His sniffle is messy but Ichigo’s skin is warm against his cheek, and he tries to focus on it instead of his tears. “I can’t just jump onto your shoulder or hide in your clothes now. I can’t just hug people, because it’s weird or they get the wrong idea. Isn’t that crazy? I finally get a body but there’s all these rules, so I’ve just gotta hang onto myself. And sometimes it’s cold at night and I roll over, but you’re not there anymore either. And then I think, maybe this is just how it is for people, and then I miss being cheap fabric with plastic circles for eyes. It was easy to just reach out then, even if nobody really wanted me.” Sinking his head down little by little, Kon pushes his brow into the smooth column of Ichigo’s neck. “I miss you, Ichigo. I really miss you. I’m sorry I picked a bad gigai.”

“Kon, no.” Fingers slip away from his cheek, returning with crushing arms that wrap around his back, pulling him all the way up Ichigo’s blanketed thighs. Ichigo turns his face down towards his own shoulder, speaking into Kon’s tearstained cheek. “Don’t apologise for anything when I’m the one who hurt you. But god, I really miss you too. I miss you like—like the whole fucking sun is gone. I’m sorry I said what I did. I’m sorry I didn’t think about what you might want before I got the gigai. I’m a selfish idiot. I’m,” Ichigo stops then, fighting something, or fighting to say something. And then it comes out, painful and raw. “I’m not the person I thought I was.”

It’s such a small statement, but in the quiet of the room it grows with Kon’s realisation that that’s it, really. That’s the problem down to the damaged and twisted roots of what happened between them. In hurting him, Ichigo doesn’t think he’s worth all that much anymore. Which is silly, isn’t it? Kon’s feelings don’t balance out against all the good Ichigo has done in the past. He saved worlds. And yet, sitting there with his arms around his tired body, hearing the worn and ashamed confession right there in his ear, Kon knows that to Ichigo, his feelings do matter. They matter just as much as all his world-shaking victories.

“But you’re still my hero,” Kon says into his damp neck, and he knows by the sudden press of fingertips against his bare ribs that Ichigo heard him. “That’s not gonna change. You’re still my Ichigo.”

Warm skin grazes his cheek and ear, skimming into his hair. It takes Kon a moment to realise it’s Ichigo’s mouth, and it might just be a kiss. Pulling his face out of the soft nook he made for himself, he tries to blink his eyes back into focussing. The lamplight is casting only one half of Ichigo’s face in gold, highlighting the curve of his cheekbone and his slightly parted lips. His eyes are golden brown and still as tired as anything Kon has ever seen, but they’re soft, too. Soft and sad.

Kon’s kiss is mostly an accident, barely thought out and poorly aimed at the tender bracket beside Ichigo’s mouth. He doesn’t count on Ichigo turning his head to follow his movement, and their lips touch so gently and by perfect mistake that Kon’s eyes fly back open. His whole spine goes rigid with surprise. Ichigo’s mouth—and his mouth—

Ichigo doesn’t pull away. The kiss breaks, warm breath touches Kon’s damp lower lip, but Ichigo doesn’t recoil or swear or yell. His fingers fuss a little against his ribs. When he tilts his head just slightly, eyes lowered to Kon’s mouth, there’s only a hair’s breadth between them. It would be easy. It would be more than easy.

Kon is too much of a coward to try.

But like any hero, Ichigo is dauntlessly brave. Cupping the back of Kon’s head, he tugs their mouths back together. It’s warm and soft and comforting and the air around them smells just like Ichigo, and his arms are around him and his eyes are closed and—okay, Kon is definitely getting a little worked up, but Ichigo is kissing him and it’s not a mistake this time. He’s so thunderstruck and overwhelmed he forgets to respond until the kiss is over again, leaving Ichigo clearing his throat and pulling away this time. His cheeks are flushed and Kon knows his look exactly the same.

“Fuck, sorry,” Ichigo is saying, looking anywhere but at Kon’s face. “I should have asked first.”

“Do it again?” His request sounds uncertain compared to the jangling desperation going on inside. Ichigo blinks hard. Kon scrambles to explain, comes up empty handed for good excuses, and just crushes his mouth back against Ichigo’s.

It’s not soft this time; it’s clumsy, almost bruising and a little bit off centre, but Ichigo comes alive under his lips and opens his mouth hungrily, leaning into him with short, almost frantic breaths between each new angle and each new kiss. Kon is euphoric in his response, fingers digging into the long dip of Ichigo’s spine, pulling their chests as close as their mouths are. He can’t shuffle up into Ichigo’s lap any further so he rips the blanket back instead, squirming his feet under it until he’s straddling him properly, feeling the heat of his skin soak through the thin pants he’s wearing. All the while, Ichigo doesn’t stop.

He kisses like he’s finally found water in a desert, Kon thinks dizzily, leaning in so much that Ichigo has to tug on his hair to stay sitting up. They both kiss like that, he thinks, opening his mouth and freely sliding his tongue inside Ichigo’s mouth. Oh, he’s always wanted to try it, and it’s hot and wet in there and Ichigo just let out the best kind of groan, the kind that belongs to the deafening hiss of the shower or the darkness of sheets pulled up all the way over his head. It’s pure instinct to rock down on Ichigo’s lap, to break the kiss and taste his jaw, his neck, his shoulder instead. Eyes slammed shut, lips parted, Ichigo just bares his throat for long moments and tries to catch his breath, but his hands have lowered to Kon’s hips, right where the elastic of his pants is riding low.

“This is kind of fast,” Ichigo says weakly, but Kon is licking a trail up behind his ear and only half listens. “Isn’t it?”

“What’s the point of slow? I already know all your favourite spots and what you look like without clothes on.” His skin tastes a little bit salty, Kon discovers, and realising there’s things he still doesn’t know about Ichigo’s body makes everything suddenly more exciting. Some things take two people, an outside perspective. He tilts his head slightly as a thought occurs to him and pulls back to look at Ichigo properly. “Is it this gigai? Is it a turn-off?”

Ichigo’s smile is disbelieving.

“Do I look turned off to you? What you look like isn’t a problem, Kon. I’ve gotten great at finding you inside all these gigai. Right now you don’t look like me at all.” Warm hands rub upwards from the hard, artificial bones of his hips and back down again. “You look like you. But this is probably rushing things—” He breaks off on a weird sound, but it’s mostly because Kon has pulled back the elastic on his briefs and put his hand inside. Ichigo is a hard, hot weight against his palm, as soft as satin and more familiar than he can say. They both look down at the contact with vastly different reactions.

“We can stop, but I was kind of hoping you’d let me blow you,” Kon says honestly. “I’m pretty sure I don’t have a gag reflex. I’ll swallow and everything; anything I eat gets converted to raw gigai energy anyway. Can I try it?” When Ichigo just lifts his eyes to stare at Kon in stunned silence, he adds, “You do kind of owe me. Let me get you off. I want to see what your face looks like when you—” His words are smothered into silence by Ichigo’s mouth, only his hand is knocked away from the throb of a really interesting erection as he’s flipped around like a pancake until he’s the one on his back amongst the pillows. “Hey!”

“You’re not giving me a blow job,” Ichigo says resolutely, fingers tangling in his drawstring and making the knot like ten times worse, “until we’ve figured out every trick Urahara put in your gigai. So just lay there while I check things out.”

“You’re so pushy,” Kon says in annoyance, crossing his arms over his chest and lifting his hips just as Ichigo finally unties his pants and flings them away. It leaves him completely naked and exposed in the lamplight, fully hard and shameless about it. The urge to sulk is tempting, but he’s distracted from it as Ichigo pulls off his own underwear. Kon gets real excited—

“It’s like a whole two inches longer,” Ichigo says in disgust, and Kon throws his head back onto the pillow and covers his eyes. “I should sue that bastard for unauthorised modification.”

“That’s not a thing! Quit being so jealous!” But Ichigo is fuming, getting right down next to his dick and examining it from all angles. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so fucking bizarre. “You gonna measure our balls next too?”

“Yeah,” Ichigo says, like it’s obvious. “Hold still.” But Kon absolutely does not hold still, instead lifting his knees and trapping Ichigo’s waist between them, clenching just hard enough that when he lifts his thighs Ichigo’s whole body is brought with them. His expression is gratifying. “Kon. Holy shit.”

“I’m strong,” Kon reminds him, because he probably forgot. He only releases Ichigo when he can pull him down against his own chest and stomach, but he leaves his ankles hooked on top of Ichigo’s calves. Skin to skin, only a little imprisoned and tangled up together, Kon snorts at Ichigo’s flushed face. “Grind on me a bit? Or just kiss me some more. Or jerk me off, if you want. Or there’s this whole, uh, mutual oral thing I always wanted to try. That’s slow enough, right?” He’s in the perfect position to kiss Ichigo while he thinks it over, running his fingers down his back and over the curve of his ass while he does it. Ichigo doesn’t seem to be doing too much thinking though; he’s busy making soft sounds into his mouth as Kon’s curious fingers slip further down between his thighs before dragging slowly back up. They’re not the sounds of someone who wants to go slow at all. Chivalrous idiot!

“Okay, that’s kinda nice,” Kon breathes as Ichigo rocks his hips shallowly against him, slow and experimental. There’s no lotion or lube to make everything slick and nice, but feeling Ichigo’s stomach slide over his cock and the pressure of his gentle thrusts between Kon’s inner thighs make up for it. “Let’s do this for a while.” Ichigo, seemingly done with weak arguments, sinks his tongue deep into Kon’s mouth and complies.

It’s good. It’s really, really good, and it’s Ichigo, and Kon can trust him not to be too rough or weird, even if it’s their first time. For a while there’s just the rustle of the blanket and the gradual sweat-slick slide of bodies meeting against each other, broken only by an occasional hitching breath or—in Kon’s frequent case—a low moan. Kon learns he’s kind of shamelessly vocal and will grab everything from Ichigo’s hair to his ass to increase the pressure, bucking up any chance he can when Ichigo’s weight shifts against him. It’s so good Kon wants to do it forever and ever and—

Kon’s eyes fly open.

“Ichigo stop, stop.” Ichigo stops and rolls off his body like he’ll catch fire if he doesn’t, eyes wide and stricken. They’re both panting and straining and fuck, Kon really wanted to come like that, but something’s up. “Check my ass out.”

“What.” Ichigo gets up on his knees, cock swollen and bobbing and just, really nice to look at, but his face is all kinds of disbelief. “What about your ass? Fucking hell, I was almost about to—”

“I know! Me too! But something’s wrong!”

“What’s wrong?”

Kon covers his face with both hands. “I think it’s working or something.”

“What?” Ichigo sounds two seconds from killing him or laughing at him. “Kon, calm down. It’s supposed to work.”

“It’s not! It’s a display ass only!” Squirming on the futon, giving up on Ichigo, Kon shoves a hand under himself. Ichigo’s eyes get really wide. And then he feels it. Pulling his hand back, Kon looks at the wet shine thickly coating two of his fingers. It’s—it’s—

“Oh my god,” Kon moans. “I’m a sexbot.”

Ichigo lights up like it’s his birthday. He doesn’t touch Kon though, except to get down on his stomach between his legs and curiously poke his asshole like a total freak. It doesn’t feel bad though, so Kon spreads his knees out and tries to come to grips with the knowledge that Urahara gave him a self-lubing ass and a big dick in a body that looks just like Kurosaki Ichigo.

Kon is ejected out of his thoughts with a yip and a twitch as a finger slips inside him, smooth and almost impossibly easy. There’s barely any stretch at all, and no pain. Ichigo’s little finger, probably.

“Pervert,” Kon says, because protesting too much is kind of his thing. Ichigo slides back up his body and looks him directly in the eye, finger sliding out freely with the movement. Kon can’t help but look at the hand he plants in the blanket beside his chest and does a double-take at which finger is slick. It sure wasn’t his little finger.

“I guess making it hurt if it doesn’t have to is just being sadistic,” Ichigo says, sounding a little out of breath. He buries his face in Kon’s hair and inhales the scent like smelling salts, clearly trying to get his bearings. “I can do that for a while, if you liked it.” A pause, then, “I want to.” Ichigo says it like admitting he wants anything at all is a shameful secret. Kon is going to have his work cut out for him.

The thing is, Kon is enjoying the hell out of himself but he’s nowhere near as close as he wants to be to Ichigo’s body. He can’t touch it enough, explore it enough, taste it or bite it or smell it nearly enough the way they are. It’s not Ichigo’s fault that Kon is used to feeling that body completely from the inside out, and he’s missed it as much as he’s missed Ichigo wrapped around him while wearing it. Simply put, he’s really fucking horny and Ichigo keeps trying to be a gentleman about it. Ass-poke notwithstanding, anyway.

“Let’s do what I want for a while,” Kon finally replies, distracting Ichigo with a long kiss, the kind he’s never going to get tired of giving him. And Ichigo, he leans into it like the thought of making out with his doppelgänger is completely normal. Anticipated, even. It gives Kon just enough opportunity to settle Ichigo between his legs and stuff a pillow under his own hips, hardly giving himself away until he pulls Ichigo away and down, taking his cock in a nervous hand and guiding it right up against himself. To his credit, Ichigo only hesitates for a moment, then sucks in a short breath and nods.

Kon fully expects the first push to hurt, especially with no real prep other than a lot of lube, some of which is leaking out of him in embarrassing quantities. Instead he feels Ichigo’s hands arranging his legs over the bend of his elbows, tender and careful, ignoring the strain of his control being tested, and the slow spread of unfamiliar parts of him clenching around something that isn’t supposed to be there. But it doesn’t hurt, and everything is really full and weird and then he feels it; a slight give, and that’s how he knows the head of Ichigo’s cock is seated completely inside him. The sound Kon makes is more realisation than sensation, but it’s that too, because Ichigo is throbbing inside him and hotter than he expected, and Ichigo looks like he’s only holding on by his fingernails.

“You all right?” Kon asks breathlessly, unable to hold back the smile quirking the corner of his mouth. “I can ride you a little if you’re not sure how to—”

“Shut up,” Ichigo says with effort, grabbing his thighs and steadying himself. “Sexbot.”

“Don’t objectify me!” Kon forgets his next insult as Ichigo shallowly thrusts, surging just a little deeper each time. Covering his mouth with both hands to hold in the sounds he wants to make, he reminds himself to keep breathing as the feeling of being stretched open and filled beyond his capacity grows, grows and goes past what he thinks he can take and Ichigo looks like he’s still going—

“Are you,” Ichigo pants, sweat gleaming on his shoulders and eyes blazing, “are you okay? ‘Cause I’ve really gotta move, if you’ll let me.”

Kon’s only response is to fumble for one of Ichigo’s hands and shove it on his untouched cock, dragging him right down until their faces are as close as they can get in that position. Their kiss is half-formed, messy, and Kon makes a tearing sound of loss as Ichigo begins pulling out, scrabbling for a way to hold him there.

“It’s okay,” Ichigo says, and the tone of his voice says it’s a miracle he can make words at all. “Just tell me if I hurt you.” It’s the last thing he says before he thrusts hard enough that Kon slides up the futon a little, eyes wide and mind blank at the slick, impossible breach. Nerve endings pulse as one for an instant and Ichigo begins again, and again, and again, as Kon’s entire world shrinks down to nothing but each warm ragged breath in his ear and the rhythmic sounds of their bodies meeting, joined together in the only way they can now.

It’s not a consolation prize, Kon thinks when he finally strains up into Ichigo’s hand, trying with all his might not to clench his legs when he comes in hot spurts, head thrown back and mouth open in senseless euphoria, feeling Ichigo’s pace stutter and speed up. Boneless and still twitching in the aftershocks, Kon can do nothing but watch Ichigo hunch down over him and lose his entire rhythm, freezing up, and then he hears it; the short, almost startled groan of Ichigo unexpectedly coming inside him. Two more pumps of his hips follow like that, uncontrolled impact hitting Kon’s ass, and with a final sound that’s more moan than sigh Ichigo folds down on top of Kon’s sweaty, sticky body and holds him like he’s found his way home.

Breathing takes a long time to slow down, but longer for Ichigo, who can’t seem to raise himself up on his arms and kisses Kon’s chest instead of anything more strenuous. Well, he is pretty worn down, Kon thinks charitably, and pets his soft hair. It’s way too long, falling in his eyes and everything, but it’s kind of nice. He wonders if he can convince him to grow it out, just to see what it looks like.

Kon lays there for a while and thinks about his ass. Ichigo is still mostly inside him, which is weird and nice, but there’s a whole other question on his mind that he can’t answer.

“How the hell am I getting all that mess out of me now?” A middle finger levitates its way right into his face.

“Forget that, why does your jizz smell like caramel syrup?”

“Why would I know? Although,” Kon thinks, “I do love caramel. Maybe Urahara thought the only action I’d get would be with myself. Which is pretty insulting, really and doesn’t explain the lube thing at all.”

“I don’t hate caramel,” Ichigo says unnecessarily, tipping his head until he can rest his chin on Kon’s chest. His brown eyes look tired beyond measure, but there’s a question there, too. “Are you okay? I got kind of rough in the middle there.”

“I’m great.” He means it, too. He’s covered in weird science goo, fake sweat, real sweat and Ichigo’s entire naked body, and it’s the last one that really makes it for him. Ichigo, cuddling on his chest like he only does when he’s super tired, except this time Kon is in a whole gigai of his own. Hell, he’s in the gigai. “Can we stay like this for a while? I like it.”

“They’re going to need acetone to unstick us later, but sure.” Ichigo does do him the courtesy of shifting just enough that he pulls out, then faceplants back on Kon’s chest and shuts his eyes. “I can’t believe I had that much energy still in me. I think I’m dying.” Despite the tepid complaint, he’s stroking a careful line over Kon’s shoulder and down his bicep with a single finger, over and over, like he’s something precious that might otherwise dissolve into smoke. “I’ll quit Ikumi’s in the morning. Kaoru is old enough to help her out now, and he wants the money anyway. I need a rest, Kon.” He yawns wide and long, only sighing a little on the exhale when Kon gratefully ploughs his fingers back into his hair. For a while, that’s all either of them say or do, and it’s all of Kon’s dreams come true. He’s a little scared of how happy he is. Nothing good ever came of being this happy, not ever.

Then again, Ichigo always manages the impossible, doesn’t he?

“I want to see you every day,” Kon whispers to Ichigo’s sleeping face, already lulled into dreams. He weighs a lot, but his head is resting right on top of his fake heart, which pumps with such determined love that just then it feels more real than anything flesh and blood. “Well. Maybe not every day, or you won’t miss me. But a lot. And we should have so much sex! Just, heaps of it, everywhere. And you should let me be on top next time, just to try it.”

“Not with that dick, I’m not.”

Kon stiffens. “Stop eavesdropping! And why not? You scared of the big bad dick?”

“Have you seen that thing?” Ichigo’s head pops up, expression aghast. “Maybe you have a fleshlight for an ass but you’ll destroy mine. You’ve got me beat in this arena, Kon, and I’m not proud enough to try.”

“Quitter.”

“You’re damn right.”

Tetchy bastard, Kon thinks with some amusement when Ichigo promptly passes out again, finally succumbing to the nice scalp massage he’s receiving. Maybe he’s due for a proper gigai soon; something he can really call his own instead of just mixing and matching different features and colours like a lucky dip. He loves the one he’s in, but kissing Ichigo in public while looking like his lost twin brother was going to get them arrested, and Kon has big plans for doing nasty shit in public with him as often as possible. That’s if Ichigo wants to, and from the sound of his stupid dick phobia, he’s definitely thinking ahead to the future.

It’s kinda perfect to think about.

They’re going to wake up in a disastrous mess, Kon figures as he uses his toes to grab the edge of the blanket and pull it up where he can grab it, covering most of Ichigo up to his own waist. The pillow he pulls out from under himself is thoroughly gooed on, so he tosses it aside and doubles up the one under his head. Without fail Tessai is going to open the door at some stupid hour with a full western breakfast on a tray, like he does most Saturdays, and see that holy hell has unfolded during the night. Snickering to himself a little, cradling Ichigo’s head in his arms, Kon shuts his eyes and hopes he gets to see the entire thing happen.

Ichigo receiving the shovel talk from Tessai just sounds way too good to be true.

For now though, he’s just happy.

The happiest.

Ichigo wants to play dumb as he watches his entire life change for the better inside of a week, but he knows he can’t. Kon isn’t a lucky charm, he can’t magically fix his life, but the moment he gets him within arm’s reach and takes his advice, things just get better. Kon actually smiling at him with his whole heart hits him like rain on parched soil, softening him into something that can do more than just crawl toward the end of each day. Ichigo actually feels alive again.

Ikumi is delighted when he tells her he’s quitting for good to focus on uni, helping the clinic only occasionally as well. She, like a lot of people in his life, has been frustrated beyond all measure that he’s been running himself into the ground, but knew that firing him meant he’d just find work somewhere else. A watchful eye, she tells him smartly when he hands back the office key, is absolutely invaluable when it comes to hard-headed idiots. He tells her he’ll be back after uni when he needs some spare change, and she invites him back for drinks one weekend when Kaoru is out—but only if he brings his father too. Like hell.

Ichigo gets three full nights of sleep in a row after leaving Urahara’s. It’s surprising, since he misses Kon the moment he’s out of sight, but Tessai makes him promise to go away for a few days or he’ll peel him like a grape. It’s best not to argue with a terrifying kidou master, even if he mopes around the house and jerks off way more than usual as a result. For whatever reason, he’s constantly horny now. Kon has infected him with some kind of perverted STI.

So Ichigo sleeps, eats an absolute mountain of Yuzu’s deliciously cooked food, and goes to lectures. The latter is the real weird one, since he gets bombarded with invitations from the gang that had set up the party Kon had covered for. The girls want him to come spend time in their dorm and watch movies, the guys want him to hang out with them in the hopes he attracts the girls, and everyone is trying to brainstorm a new kind of party that isn’t about english lit. Ichigo actually likes those types of parties, but Kon has started some kind of revolution. He tells them he’ll bring his boyfriend to the next one and walks away before the meltdown starts. His phone dings the moment he’s around the corner.

[Meiko]: for fucking real???? oh tell me he’s hot. tell me. i’ll die if you don’t tell me

Ichigo smiles before he can help himself. His fingers tap out a reply before he can think twice about it.

Way hotter than me.

It’s four whole days in total until he can get back to the Urahara Shop, with Tessai’s stupid embargo and a night spent with yet another damn essay to prepare. It’s a Wednesday evening and kind of cold when he finally arrives, and it makes the shop look like a glowing beacon of warmth compared to the plain-looking building he’d visit every Friday afternoon with the mail. If he honest with himself now, Ichigo knows he’s ready to drop the mail run, too. He doesn’t need stupid errand excuses to catch a glimpse of Kon anymore. It’s that eager thought that makes him hasten into the shop and slide the glass door shut behind him, already toeing his heels out of his sneakers as he hits the little platform entry into the house. He’ll never admit it, but there’s a nervous flutter in his stomach that’s never been there before. Will Kon change his mind? Rethink everything? What if he opens the door and Kon has already decided he can do better? What if—

“Fucking hell,” Ichigo gulps, yanking the door open and shoving himself inside before he can talk himself out of it. He has his back to the room and is closing the door before he can even focus on who’s there. “I made it. Am I late?”

“No,” Urahara said amiably from somewhere behind him, just as two unfamiliar arms shoot around his waist, a body pressing itself intimately close along the whole line of his back. Smooth lips touch the side of his neck, raising every tiny translucent hair on his body.

“You’re early, you desperate loser,” Kon says gleefully, practically grinding into his ass. And he was desperate? “I missed you, I want to climb you like a tree, I want to go on dates and buy condoms and—”

“Kon-chan, you don’t contract diseases or infections.” Tessai’s deep voice booms with disappointment, and Ichigo quietly dies inside right there on the spot. “There is no condom for heartbreak.”

“What the hell,” Kon whispers against Ichigo’s flaming pink ear, laughing under his breath. In a normal voice, he says, “Turn around, Ichigo! I’ve found my forever gigai. Urahara only made this one; I designed the whole thing. So if you hate it, be prepared to fake an orgasm for the rest of your life.”

No pressure, Ichigo thinks, hoping he isn’t visibly sweating. He looks down at the arms around him. Kinda lean, nice looking, hardly any hair. His skin seems to have a kind of tan this time, which is interesting. Looks like that belong on beach-going sunbathers. Curious despite the impending doom if the vaguest twitch indicates he isn’t happy, Ichigo turns around inside that circle of arms and meets a pair of luminous golden eyes.

For a long moment, he just stares. He stares for so long that his eyes dry out a little and Kon’s pleased grin wobbles. Ichigo can’t even reassure him. He’s too busy looking. Kon hasn’t just designed himself a body he likes, he’s modelled it after—

Golden brown skin, but paler. Honey coloured. He’s only an inch shorter than Ichigo himself and lean enough to sculpt out his features, bringing everything into sharp relief. His eyes are a blazing golden hazel, way too bright to look like anything other than contact lenses. Completely unrealistic, with the tiniest catlike tilt and thick, short eyelashes. Cheekbones like razors, and a wide, expressive mouth that looks made to smile. To kiss. There’s a peek of very slightly pointed incisors where his smile is fading by slow degrees, framed by a jawline that’s stubborn and strong, entirely masculine. His ears are endearingly small and rounded, but the hand Kon raises to touch one as Ichigo looks is strong and wide-fingered, not delicate at all. And surrounding that incredible face is the one thing that takes the absolute cake: a riotous shoulder-length mane of wavy, shaggy brown hair. A mane. Skin like a summer afternoon. Eyes animal-bright and laughing. And the teeth. He always keeps the teeth.

Kon didn’t just design a gigai. He designed the gigai; a perfect adaptation of his lion plush toy brought wholly to life.

“I’m starting to freak out,” Kon warns him, anxiously patting down a black v-neck t-shirt that looks like one Ichigo used to own. He’s even wearing faded blue jeans, ripped at the knees and tight as hell. His dark brows are slowly crumpling upward as the silence stretches beyond normal boundaries. Ichigo tries to snap out of it.

“Want to talk in your room?” Ichigo asks, and Kon’s face freezes, suddenly crestfallen.

“You hate it,” Kon pronounces, blinking rapidly. He takes a look over his shoulder where Urahara is very much looking and Tessai has a white-knuckled grip on the strongest teacup in the world. “Well, that sucks—”

“I love it,” Ichigo blurts out, grabbing Kon’s wrist before he can step back or brush it off. “I’m sorry, I’m just—I love it. I was ready for anything but this is…”

“Sexy?” Kon provides hopefully.

“You,” Ichigo replies, trying to reel him in by the wrist. “It’s you. So I love it. And we should really, really go to your room to talk. Privately.” If he gets any more obvious he’s going to break into some kind of desperate interpretive dance. Luckily, Kon’s cheeks darken a little. Bingo.

“We’re going to go have a completely adult conversation about my new gigai in my room,” Kon tells Tessai seriously, like it’s not complete bullshit and neither of them can see straight through him like a pane of shop glass. “Do not listen at my door.”

“I suspect we won’t have to,” Urahara sighs, hitting the remote to turn up the volume on whatever sitcom is airing. “Goodnight to you both.” Ichigo opens his mouth to say something polite that might downplay the insinuations, but Kon jerks his arm almost completely out of its socket, all but eagerly sprinting down the hallway to his room.

They barely get inside and shut the door before Ichigo has Kon slammed up against the wall, a fist in his hair and a thigh between his, gracelessly kissing him with an open mouth. Kissing everything he can reach while Kon tries his hardest to pull all their clothes off, getting absolutely stuck on their tight jeans like always. Ichigo doesn’t even care, really; he’s got every bit of Kon inside his arms and he tastes just like he did last time, smells the same, sounds the same. He doesn’t need to re-explore his body to find anything new he likes more than the other one. It’s Kon, and that’s all he needs.

“I got you a surprise,” Kon says in his ear when they’re finally on the futon, mostly wriggled out of their clothes and down to underwear and one sock each. “You’re gonna love it.” He pulls off his sock and flings it away. “I think. It’s an extra gigai modification.” He points directly at his underwear.

“You know you don’t need to change yourself for me, stupid,” Ichigo says, and he means it. Kon just snorts at him as he hooks his thumbs in the waistband of Kon’s underwear, curious despite his insistence. What’s going to be under there? Some kind of pattern? A tattoo? Not a lion face, he prays, pulling them down like he’s ripping off a particularly stuck bandaid. Kon’s dick bobs with the motion, mostly hard and—

Ichigo’s face shoots up accusingly. “No. Hell no.”

Kon’s smile could have split his face. “Hell yes, Ichigo.”

“Tell me you didn’t.” But the proof is right there in front of him. Ichigo drops his face right into the smooth, flat stretch of stomach above the new bane of his existence. It grazes his throat, already twitching in anticipation.

One perfectly average sized dick.

“Sent here to destroy me,” Ichigo says in defeat, and sucks a bruising kiss into the soft skin beneath his mouth. “You’d better have a lot of fucking lube.”

The way Kon’s whole face lights up would make anything worth it, but Ichigo isn’t going to tell him that just yet. Better to keep some things to himself, just in case Kon gets any ideas of wrapping him around his finger. As if he’s not already there, completely at his mercy. Kon is a master of reading his body language, after all. It’s going to be exciting trying to learn him just as well.

Maybe it’s going to be a challenge, and maybe they’ll fight a lot too, but there’s a massive gulf between what Ichigo knew before and what he knows now. For one thing, there’s no living without Kon’s brutal honesty and vulnerable affection, so to keep it Ichigo is prepared to hand over his heart and put all his trust on the table.

“Okay, I’ve got strawberry and I’ve got vanilla,” Kon says, breaking into his musing thoughts. He fishes two large containers of lube out from underneath his pillows and flashes them both in Ichigo’s face. “I’m not saying we have to do it tonight, but I am saying I’m making a whole dessert out of your ass sometime soon. You owe me in damages for that heart attack I almost had in the living room.”

Okay, so maybe his ass has to go on the table, too.

“Fair call,” Ichigo replies, pulling himself up the futon until he’s braced over Kon’s slightly flushed face. Not as confident as he sounded, then. “In the meantime, what are you going to do with me?”

Kon’s whole facade breaks apart, just like Ichigo knew it would. It’s easy to kiss the stammering right out of his mouth, just like it’s easy to sink into the brand new arms that are determined to drag him all the way down, peppering his face with embarrassingly adoring kisses. They might still have a ways to go, and they haven’t even discussed the future at all, but for once Ichigo isn’t worried about it.

If there’s one thing they’re great at, it’s sharing a life.

Ichigo can’t wait to do it all over again.

THE END.