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The words, shouted and damning, hang in the air.
Ichigo stares at his father, separated by the sturdy dining room table that Ichigo has to remember was his mother’s favorite, and that Yuzu was liable to smack him with her stirring spoon if something happened to it. That, and then Karin would yell at Ichigo for upsetting her twin, and also because Karin liked the dining table too. Perhaps it was awful, awful that the only reason that Isshin wasn’t sprawled across a broken dining table was because Ichigo’s little sisters would be upset about the table rather than the violence that Ichigo was all but itching to unleash against his own father; someone who should have protected him, should have made him feel safe.
But this is Isshin, and for all that Isshin is his father, Ichigo has never been as close to the man as the girls have. Even when Masaki had been alive, Ichigo had always been a momma’s boy; had certainly been taunted about it by classmates more than enough, but even after, when Masaki had died and Ichigo had been at fault, Isshin had never become the stalwart that Ichigo had known he could lean on. That had always been Masaki, and the newest was-
Was someone who Isshin felt compelled to forbid Ichigo from seeing.
Despite what many people around town thought, and perhaps even some of his less observant classmates, Ichigo wasn’t stupid. He wasn’t a genius, not like how some of his friends were, but he was at least observant. It hadn’t taken much asking around and outright snooping to find out why his friends were suddenly avoiding him, or distancing themselves from him; why the Urahara Shōten - which had, in such a way that Ichigo hadn’t realized until later, become a home from home, with a room just for Ichigo, with his clothes and his school books and weapons collected from wayward thugs and yakuza members who’d forgotten that bright colors often meant warnings and beware - had been so abruptly closed to him when only a few nights before, Kisuke had placed a pot of - truly awful - tea in front of Ichigo and said, with as much solemnity that the emotionally stunted man could gather, that Ichigo would always be welcome there, no matter what.
“You forbade me?” Ichigo asks, silkily, quietly.
He may no longer have more than half his soul; Zangetsu and his hollow may have been ripped from him at his own unknowing hand with regret plaguing Ichigo’s every waking and sleeping steps until he feels as if he could drown in his own sorrow, but Ichigo has never needed his powers, his partners, to protect himself from something like this. Ichigo may no longer be whole, but he has never lost the drive to become more, to be better - whether for himself or for those he claims as his.
Isshin will not be the one to tear away the ones Ichigo has claimed and been claimed by in turn, not when his head is so lonely and his heart aches. His sisters - blessed, is Ichigo, with the two most wonderful little sisters he could ever have, who see his sorrow and his loneliness and his anger - try their hardest, but when Karin, who thinks Ichigo doesn’t know, is trying to pick up the slack that losing Ichigo has created, and Yuzu is trying to keep the peace with Isshin which shouldn’t be her job, it has become harder and harder.
“You forbade me?” Ichigo repeats, and he doesn’t know when he prowls closer, or when his voice becomes so cold and deep, but he can see how his father - taller, broader, always larger than life - has stepped back. “You think you can tell me what to do, who to see, when you’ve kept so many secrets I’m surprised you don’t choke on them?”
Isshin’s default has always been anger; and he’s angry like he’s happy. Loud and all consuming; and woe betide anyone who gets in his way. When Masaki had been killed, after the funeral, Isshin had been inconsolable for weeks after, and he’d holed himself up in the family clinic for nigh on two weeks, absolutely smashed and unable to take care of himself. It had been Ichigo who had broken down that door - bloodied knuckles and a swollen mouth still dripping blood onto his ragged t-shirt that had fit so nicely before Masaki had died - to the clinic It had been Ichigo who had splashed ice cold water onto his dad’s sprawled out, stinking body with a shark like dead eye gaze and a quiet threat that if Isshin didn’t get himself together and look after the girls that Ichigo would do what he needed to, no matter what that was. It had been Ichigo who had forcibly sobered the man up, who had poured any and all alcohol that came into the house down the drain, who had had to learn how to cook enough that the girls were able to eat something edible, who’d had to learn how to balance the bills, bring in enough money when Isshin had been…. indisposed. Perhaps the larger than life attitude was an act, but Ichigo couldn’t leave that chance, not when Isshin had held him at arms left for so long.
“You did what you’re supposed to!” Isshin yells, and he’s stepped closer to. There’s an anger etched in his face that’s almost foreign; as if the anger before was always play acting. It would terrify Ichigo, he thinks, if he wasn’t full of a sick coldness that felt so much like Mugestu had felt. “You’re not supposed to be- be-”
“Supposed to be what, Goat-Face?” Ichigo hisses, and never has he felt Zangetsu’s influence as he does now, cold and angered like his Zanpakutō would often get when faced with memories of Isshin. “Lonely? Empty? Wishing that my friends didn’t listen to a stupid old man who wouldn’t know what his son needed even if it smacked him in the face? Go on, Isshin, tell me what I should be when you haven’t even attempted to help me!”
Isshin’s face is turning red, fists clenching as he looms, broad and tall, as if he can make Ichigo do what he says by threat and aura alone, as if Ichigo hasn’t faced men and monsters worse than Kurosaki fucking Isshin.
“My son!” Isshin shouts, and he’s close enough to feel the heat of, to feel spit fly in Ichigo’s face, close enough that Ichigo has to stop himself from reacting, from the violence, the loudness, the everything that has become so hard to not react to in instinctive fear and violence and protection. “You’re not supposed to go runnin’ to that man every time you so much as have a fuckin’ nightmare, you’re not supposed to go running to that fuckin’ monster every time he calls, like you’re nothing but his dog!”
Ichigo stills.
The only man that Isshin could be thinking of, Ichigo knows, is Kisuke.
“Is that it?” Ichigo asks, and he finds a grin spreading across his face, even as rage burns ice cold through him, filling the blank spots Zangetsu filled so lovingly. “Is that what this is? Are you jealous, Goat-Face?”
It can be the only reason; jealousy, anger. Kisuke has disregarded Isshin's wishes to leave Ichigo alone, though only after Ichigo had kicked down that door and had said he’d go if Kisuke really wanted him to, but if this was some bullshit way to stew in his own guilt and misery or because of Isshin, than Ichigo would - powerless or not - rip Kisuke’s hat to shreds until he’d gotten it into his unfortunately thick skull.
“You callin’ me a dog, Goat-Face?” Ichigo grins, and it must show too many teeth, for Isshin flinches back, scrambling until he ends up sitting in an askew chair, spreadeagled and leaning back on two chair legs until he’s as far as he can be from his son. It makes something cold and dark shaped like his once-hollow purr.
He leans close, teeth still bared. He wonders if his eyes have have gone black and golden; but his hollow is missing, is gone, is fucking dead . It was Ichigo that murdered him; ripped his partners from his soul like they were fucking expendable and Ichigo will never forgive Isshin for teaching him about the Final Getsuga Tenshō, will never forgive Urahara Kisuke for seeing a child and thinking weapon, will never forgive Aizen Sōsuke for being the madman bent on power that required that sacrifice, will never forgive himself for being too weak to find another way, for not listening to his partners. But what’s done is done . He’s gotten past things with Kisuke, finds that he likes being a weapon wielded by a man like that, for all the monstrous things Urahara Kisuke has done. He even has come to terms with Aizen, the maniac that he is, lonely and misguided and stupid.
He expects them to have secrets; he never expected his father to step out with a Shihakushō and an Zanpakutō, secrets piling themselves up until Ichigo expected the old man to fucking choke on them. Isshin isn’t any less guilty of the fact that he too molded Ichigo into the weapon he is today, regardless of the fact that he isn’t the one that holds Ichigo’s leash.
Maybe that’s the problem.
“Am I a dog, dad?” He grins wider and wider, more and more teeth showing. He leans further in until he can see the way Isshin flinches. “Kisuke’s dog? Do you wanna know what dogs do when they get mean?”
Isshin lets out a noise, quiet and weak.
“They bite.”
Ichigo doesn’t kill Isshin, despite how much he’d like to.
No, Yuzu and Karin still needed a father, despite how useless Goat-Face was, and Ichigo was sure that Isshin would even enjoy being able to shed his earthly responsibilities to go and live it up back in Soul Society and the Seireitei . No, Isshin wasn’t disappointing his daughter’s any more than he already had.
Instead, having scared perhaps only half the soul out of his father, Ichigo swans out of the door with an emptiness where his emotions should be and only one destination in mind.
The Urahara Shōten was a few blocks away from the Kurosaki Family Clinic, and despite the rain that had started to mist a few steps from exiting the house, Ichigo didn’t speed up, simply tucking his hands into his jean pockets and meandering through the streets that had seen him grow and bleed until he feels that the asphalt know the taste of his flesh and blood better than anything else does.
Thugs and yakuza members still tried their luck with Ichigo, and they provided entertainment and a way to keep his skills sharp in a limited way. Even without his powers, Ichigo was still strong enough that an unpulled punch could cause a lot of damage and he just wanted to teach the little shit’s a lesson, not permanently disable them - unless, of course, they deserved it.
Ichigo sighs, scrubbing a hand over a rain damp face, before shoving his hand through his hair, trying to get it out of his face.
Depression and lack of energy had seen him skipping his regular haircuts, leading to it almost touching his shoulders, gaining a curl similar to Masaki’s when she’d lived. He’d planned to cut it off to his normal length when he’d started being able to drag himself out of bed more often, even if it was to only then crawl back into the futon in his room at Kisuke’s, or curled up in the corner of Kisuke’s laboratory with a book like a-
Ichigo snorts, like a dog.
Perhaps he is a dog. Perhaps he’s been leashed and he didn’t even know it until he’d given his leash to a man he trusted and respected enough to know that they wouldn’t pull it and strangle him with it. Urahara Kisuke, people will say, is more monster than man, more secrets than reiatsu , and maybe they’re right; Ichigo doesn’t know the man’s full story, other than what he’s pieced together and what Kisuke himself has given to him, piecemeal bite by piecemeal bite, as if wondering if this is what would be the one thing that scared Ichigo away from him. Sometimes, when Kisuke has ghosted into Ichigo’s room in the middle of the night, eyes dragged down with bruises and the guilt is too much to bare, and Kisuke speaks of nothing but being a blade in the hand of the woman he calls best friend, Ichigo wonders if this is the time it gets too much, if finding out that the one man who holds Ichigo’s leash used to be a dog himself.
Kisuke, Ichigo has found, has the fascinating ability to portray himself as harmless even as he holds a poisoned knife to your throat. Ichigo has never been fond of safety, and perhaps the lethal grace Kisuke has, closested away until it’s to be pulled out like a sword, is what called Ichigo to him at first. Shoved together by circumstances Kisuke and Aizen Sōsuke had been orchestrating behind the scenes all this time, Ichigo often wonders just what he’d be like if neither man had pulled his little puppet strings.
Boring, probably.
Ichigo is a loyal man, he knows he is. He’s been told by enough people, from friends to family to enemies, that it would be his loyalty and his inability to let that loyalty go that would be his downfall. Maybe it will be, maybe it won’t;if Ichigo could possibly save or even just help them, he isn’t going to throw that chance away, no matter if they don’t want it.
Loyal, Ichigo thinks, like a fucking dog.
It keeps coming to that, doesn’t it?
Isshin, his fucking father, calling him a dog, but it had been Ichigo that had labelled himself Kisuke’s dog, and that had been a can of worms Ichigo had never thought he’d open, not by having a temper tantrum in front of his dad.
The rain, having steadily gotten heavier and heavier until Ichigo’s hair is threatening to plaster to his face as he meanders through almost deserted streets, stops .
An umbrella hovers over his head, and a presence hovers at the very edge of his shoulder, as if testing their welcome. It’s only because Ichigo thinks he’d know the man deaf and blindfolded that he doesn’t react as Kisuke steps further into the cover of his umbrella.
Neither say anything until they can just see the outline of the Shōten through the rain, watching as water splashes angrily off the rain covers protecting the shuttered hatch, the storm clouds - pregnant and blackening the skies - hanging low and threateningly against the silhouette of it.
A hand, large and burningly warm, presses against the small of Ichigo’s back. He has to resist the urge to lean into it, the echo of his father’s voice ringing in the back of his mind.
“For someone who doesn’t have any reiatsu,” Kisuke says, pressing close enough that Ichigo can feel the heat of him. “You’re stunningly adept at making it known when you’re angry.”
Kisuke’s hand drops from the small of his back, and Ichigo would mourn the loss, but his knuckles, instead, brush against the back of Ichigo’s hand and - for a single, heart stopping moment - Ichigo thinks about dogs and leashes , and wonders what Urahara Kisuke’s hands would look like wrapped around his throat.
“Isshin’s the one that kept you all away,” He says, instead of all the ways he wants to crawl inside the man beside him. He tilts his gaze to Kisuke, seeing the shadow of his face, the way a muscle in his jaw spasms briefly before those slate gray eyes turn to him too. “Isn’t he?”
Kisuke doesn’t speak, but he stops. Ichigo stops too, and he turns to face Kisuke, forced close within the confines of the umbrella. Ichigo can feel fabric swishing against his knees, his wrists as he slips his hands into his front jean pockets, if only to stop himself from reaching out.
A rumble of thunder, low and near, and Ichigo can delude himself for a moment in thinking it’s Zangetsu in the back of his mind.
“My apologies to you,” Kisuke says, after a long while. “Are going to run into the double digits soon, Ichigo-kun.”
“Maybe you should stop doing things that require sayin’ sorry.” Ichigo points out, if only to see how Kisuke grins, quicksilver, fleeting. They both know that’s never going to happen.
“Perhaps, perhaps.” Kisuke murmurs.
He continues to look at Ichigo with those shadowed eyes as if looking through him, and Ichigo wonders if Kisuke knows why he’d been so angry, what had caused Ichigo to storm out with only the clothes on his back and the only destination in mind being the Urahara Shōten.
“I shouldn’t have listened to Isshin-san,” Kisuke says, abruptly. “I wrongly thought that as your father, Isshin-san would know what was best for you.”
“Best for me ?” Ichigo scoffs. He stares severely at Kisuke, wondering how such a smart man could be so stunningly stupid. Kisuke winces.
“I deserve that,” He admits, He tightens his grip on Benihime’s hilt, tucked securely through his belt. “Perhaps I simply…. deluded myself into thinking that it was also what you wanted.”
All of a sudden, Ichigo feels tired. Bone deep exhaustion creeping up on. He wonders when people will stop presuming, and start asking what he wants. Whether that be his friends fucking deserting, or to give the man in front of him the leash he’d freely given back to Ichigo. Instead, Ichigo swallows his anger and his hurt and his exhaustion, scrubbing his hands across his rain damp face until hurt.
“He called me a dog,” Ichigo says instead. “Isshin, that is.”
For a single moment, like the sun breaking through clouds, Kisuke’s face is furious, before it abruptly goes blank. Something settles heavily in the pit of Ichigo’s stomach; he can’t quite decide if it’s a good thing or not, only that Kiuske’s anger is a force of nature not even Ichigo could weather untouched. Perhaps he doesn’t want to.
“He’s right.”
Kisuke’s face doesn’t change, but there’s a certain… heaviness that hangs, storm like, around the very edges of the man, as if the spirit is trying to crawl from its gigai.
“Ichigo -” Kisuke starts, but Ichigo finds something welling up inside of him and then it spills out, like candle wax, like a dam breaking.
“He’s right,” Ichigo says, and his hands itch; he can’t resist the urge to touch Kisuke, not now. He holds onto the wide sleeves, pinched between shaking hands. “But I don’t think I can find it in me to care, not when I already know who holds my leash.”
Eyes fierce and shadowed, Kisuke’s teeth are bared as he steps forward, until they’re almost chest to chest. Benihime brushes against Ichigo’s sternum, and he wonders if he imagines the grasping hands ghosting over his chest up to his shoulders, caressing over the hollow of his throat.
“And who,” Kisuke hisses, as if suddenly possessed. “Who holds your leash, Ichigo-kun?”
It sounds like and who do I have to murder who made you think like that?
Fool.
Knees weak, Ichigo wonders if they should truly be doing this in the middle of a storming street when all Ichigo wants to do is fall to his knees.
“I think you already know.” Ichigo says quietly, and it burns something in his chest when it’s Kisuke that reaches out first, pale hand tangling in the curl of Ichigo’s hair, winding the strands tighter and tighter around his first two fingers. Pain sparks stars in the very corners of Ichigo’s eyes, a barely there ache, and he leans into the touch, feeling the rough stretch of protruding knuckles against his jaw. A thumb against the front of his chin.
Those fingers unwind in his hair, knuckles ghosting further against his jaw, down his throat, pressing against the front of it, into the hollow of it until it feels like Ichigo can’t breathe, a heavy lump where the base of his throat should be. He wonders if Kisuke will leave fingerprints, bruises, anything.
Ichigo has never had someone who has called him theirs, not in any truly meaningful way. Karin and Yuzu call him big brother, Isshin weapon and son and dog like they’re one in the same, and Chad, Orihime, Rukia, Renji - he’s been friend to beast of burden to the enemy. Kisuke has called him weapon, student. Now, now he’s going to be called-
“Kisuke .” He pants, breath coming short as Kisuke slots fingers around his throat; a five fingered burning brand.
“My dog, Ichigo-kun?” Kisuke murmurs, and he yanks Ichigo closer, like pulling a disobedient dog with its leash.
Ichigo will never be disobedient, not with Kisuke, not unless he needs to, and is it disobedience when Kisuke - smart, brilliant, one hundred steps ahead Kisuke - would understand?