Adult-FanFiction.org : Bleach

Darkest Blue	By : Katrinea Category: Bleach > Yaoi - Male/Male > Urahara/Ichigo Views: 4115 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own 'Bleach' and will make no money from writing/posting this fic.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
Chapter 11: Easy Silence
"I come to find a refuge in the

Easy silence that you make for me

It's okay when there's nothing more to say to me

And the peaceful quiet you create for me

And the way you keep the world at bay for me
I've got all the world to lose

But I just want to hold on to the

Easy silence that you make for me"

- Dixie Chicks
Teeth clenched around sensitive earlobes.

Nails cut dark grooves into skin already deeply marked by scars.

A moist tongue marked out its territory upon the trembling body.
'No…'
Teeth bit into bleeding lips to stifle screams.

Nails dug into the rough palms of his hands to extinguish the moans.

A moist tongue contorted as he choked out desperate, half-smothered cries.
'Enjoying yourself pet?'
His scalp ached from having his hair pulled and twisted.

His skin was slashed and mottled with blood and bruises.

His vibrant hair was matted with darkening blood, dripping down upon skin paled by moonlight.
'No… Please…'
His head was thrown back as his chin was grasped by cold hands.

His wrists were bruised bloody from the bonds that encircled them.

His breathing became difficult as the body pressed down on him, drenching him in sweat and panic and fear.
'You will submit to me, Ichigo…'
His dry and raw throat was ripped by screams, and the pain of his hallucination was so acute, so physical that he didn't even realise he was dreaming and screaming until the strong arms grasping his shoulders began shaking him back to reality.
'Ichigo! Ichigo wake up!' a familiar voice penetrated the veil between reality and imaginings. But in the dark fog of his nightmare, his master gripped him tightly and hissed.
'One way or another… You will be mine.'
As the young boy screamed in the arms of his saviour, miles and planes of reality away the face of the Lord of Las Noches cracked in a smile as cold and cruel as ice.

'Why did you let them escape?' the sharp voice of the silver fox cut through the omnipresent evening that shrouded the room in gloom. From his perch upon the throne Aizen regarded him with composed eyes.
'This will be the final breaking point, when I reclaim him.' He sounded almost gleeful, or at least as gleeful as Aizen Sosuke even sounded. 'This way he will know that he cannot escape, that I can crush him and his beloved world at any time I please.'
In one swift movement he left his seat to cross the room and grasp Gin's thin white wrist in his hand. 'Besides…' he murmured as he stroked the inside of the fox's wrist with his thumb. 'Isn't it more fun this way?'
Gin smiled, but he didn't need to open his eyes for Aizen to know that they were filled with a cold kind of playfulness.
'Yer like a kitty playing with a mouse Sosuke." He warned, his voice low and heady. 'Jus be careful that it doesn't slip through yer fingers.'
'He is already caught in my trap Gin.' Aizen assured his lieutenant. 'He just hasn't yet realised how futile his struggle is. I will teach him that, I will rip his wounds wide open again and this time he will not recover.' Gin's eyes slipped open momentarily with a hiss as pressure was applied to his thin wrist.
And in the dark light of the palace, even he was scared by the intensity of his Lord's stare, and the painful weight pressing down in around him as reiatsu filled the room.

In the spare bedroom of the Urahara Shoten, the shopkeeper held a trembling redhead in his arms. He had awoken with a start in the middle of the night, and even before he heard the screams coming from across the hall he knew that Ichigo was in pain. His reiatsu swirled around the bedroom, leaking into the hallway and creeping under the sliding doors of the other rooms. He had felt it before the others in the building, being as perceptive as he was, and had stumbled out of bed through the pain and distress that was trying to envelop his shop, after it had already laid claim to his student.
The screams didn't start until he entered the room. As if his presence had set something off inside the boy, the muffled cries and moans turned swiftly to screams of pain and agony. He ran to the boy's bedside, gripping his shoulders to try and shake him from his nightmare.
This wasn't the first night that he'd been roused from his sleep by a bad dream creeping across the hallway. It had been almost two weeks since Ichigo's return and though there would be no lasting physical injury (thanks to Orihime's tireless work) the emotional damage that he had suffered had not even begun to be repaired.
He pulled the shaking body close to his chest, dragging Ichigo onto his lap and shuddered a little himself as he remember the same way that Aizen had forced Ichigo into a similar embrace as he sat on his throne.
Never again. I'll never let him do anything like that again.
Urahara let his eyes slip shut as he soothed the broken shinigami in his arms, feeling his tears drip down and fall upon his exposed chest where his haori fell open, and he felt the sick bile rise in his throat as he once again remembered the physical examination that he had performed on the boy on the eve of his return. Ichigo had just sat there on the examining table, his beautiful brown eyes wide and painfully blank as they stared at nothing in particular. Urahara knew those eyes; they were the eyes of someone who had seen too much. The boy had been to hell and back, and in that place he had lost an important part of himself.
He was jittery, that was to be expected. Whenever he was touched he jumped and his whole body would tremble. Urahara could not even begin to image the kind of pain he'd been put through, trapped in that place as the plaything of Aizen and the silver fox with his knife collection. But then there was the way Aizen had acted in the throne room, when he held the boy upon his lap and petted him like a lover. He grit his teeth against the image, against the possibility that he had been trying to ignore ever since that moment. He'd never really believed that Aizen would actually get his hands dirty in such a manner, but then again there had been a time when he trusted the man as a colleague and friend, and look how that had turned out. Still the possibility of what he could have done to Ichigo plagued him, he saw it in the wrists bruised by the tight grip of long fingers, the way he jumped at sudden movements and even the softest of touches, the haunting look that he wore upon his face and those eyes, oh God those terrible eyes, once so bright and full of life and now so dead, so drained that they were painful to regard.
He had started slowly, along with Tessai, they begun by examining Ichigo's head, face and neck, Urahara tenderly working his way down over his chest, pressing gently to check for broken bones and damaged organs. His long fingers skimmed over the fresh scars that slashed across his once beautiful skin, just one of the ways that Aizen had left his mark upon the boy. He bandaged a sprained wrist and cleaned various scrapes and bruises, Ichigo allowing himself to be handled without a word of complaint, lying limp in Tessai's arms like a rag doll while Urahara tended to his wounds. He skimmed over the bite marks upon his body and neck, dismissing them as battle wounds when in the back of his mind he knew fine well what they were, and how he must have received them. The bruises covering him that were ringed by teeth marks, he couldn't even bring himself to look at.
But it wasn't until he worked his way further down that his heart sunk like the Titanic, that the voice in the back of his mind screamed at him to stop denying what had happened, what he had allowed to happen, to Ichigo in that place. It was when he saw the bruises left by fingers on his hips, legs and buttocks, when he saw the dried blood still on his thighs and the scratch marks on his back that he asked Tessai to leave. He had never felt so useless, he almost wanted to break down and cry. This was his fault; he never should have sent Ichigo in there so unprepared for the monster that was Aizen Sosuke. The wind was knocked from his lungs and for a moment all he could do was to sit there with the boy, his pale hand grasped in his own.
'Ichigo…' he choked, the words catching in his throat. To ask what had happened, to probe at those terrible wounds… He didn't know how Ichigo would react. But he knew, even deep down inside he knew that he had to ask, he had to know and Ichigo had to tell. If he kept it bottled up inside it would end up killing him. He cleared his throat,
'Ichigo.' Words forced their way out, grating against his oesophagus like sandpaper. 'What did he do to you?' Ichigo would not look at him, his eyes fixed on the floor, filled with that terrible vacant expression, but the hand that he held convulsed, gripping tightly around his own.
They remained that way, motionless, silent, until the gasping breaths that Ichigo took turned to low murmurs, the reply catching in his throat just as the question had stuck in Urahara's.
'I couldn't…' He shuddered. 'Kisuke…' Those terrible eyes turned upwards, connecting with Urahara's grey irises, wrenching his heart in so many ways, stabbing into him with a gaze so full of pain and fear that he thought he could almost feel the chaotic mess of emotions that swamped the fragile boy who gripped his hand so tightly. Those empty eyes filled with fluid, tears welling up behind a great dam, threatening to spill down those hollow cheeks at any moment. Ichigo looked as though he would choke upon the confession, and Urahara could feel something welling up inside himself, but it was not tears.
'I couldn't stop him…'
No Ichigo, please God no.
'He…' Ichigo's voice was so small and quiet that it was almost lost in the void of noiselessness. 'He…' Ichigo made a hiccupping noise and the hand that Urahara held tightened further until he knew that the boy's nails were digging into the palm of his hand hard enough to break the skin.
nonononononoNO
'He raped me.' When the admission came tumbling from the boy's cracked lips it was so silent that it barely registered against the sobs that followed, but the whisper hit Urahara like a sledgehammer. He held Ichigo again as he was racked with great hiccupping sobs and tears, but his mind was a blank, lost upon the shockwave of terror and disbelief.
It had really happened. And he had allowed, no, enabled it to happen. The well of emotion inside himself boiled over and flooded his body with heat, hot rage, anger like he had never thought to have experienced before. Self-pity over his part in Ichigo's imprisonment would have to wait; right now he wanted nothing more than to feel his hands around Aizen's neck, to choke the life out of him. Even that would be too good for him, a penance insignificant to what he had done to Ichigo, to his student, his Ichigo.
'Shh…' he tried in vain to soothe the boy in his arms, sitting beside him on the bed and allowing the boy to hide his face in the crook of his neck, dampening his exposed skin. 'Shh Ichigo, it's okay. It's okay.'
Who are you trying to kid Kisuke? It's NOT okay, and you both know it.
He knew it. And he also knew just how close he had come to losing the boy completely. But he was here; he was alive, broken but alive. And as long as Urahara could draw breath he would keep that monster of a man away from Ichigo, or die trying.
He couldn't even begin to imagine how Ichigo felt over those first few days, but as time stretched on, he seemed to be improving. Little by little he was getting his strength back, not enough to lift a sword in battle again, but he was getting close. And the days turned into a week, Urahara imagined that he began to see light breaking through the darkness that shrouded his eyes and soul. He still remembered how beautiful it had been to see him smile again, properly smile, and see those eyes sparkle back into life, even if only for the briefest of moments.
It was his family, they made him light up so exquisitely. When Ichigo had embraced his sisters for the first time since returning he had seen all the tension drain from his body, and that smile. Urahara had smiled too, feeling a warmth in his bones that he hadn't felt for a long time. Yuzu had cried, Karin had scowled and berated him for running off on his own again and getting into trouble. Urahara gathered that as far as they knew Ichigo had gone off and gotten himself into trouble with some gang again. Isshin had decided that it was best to keep the girls out of the entire spirit world situation for as long as was possible, and Urahara had no qualms with his decision. Isshin himself was much more difficult to placate. The two old friends left Ichigo to be scolded by his sisters and had retired to a more private setting.
Standing there with Ichigo's father, his own dear friend, Urahara once again felt sick to his stomach. Isshin had been kept as informed about the entire situation as anyone ever since they realised that Ichigo had been taken captive, and if not for the two young girls at home Urahara knew that he would've been at the front of the charge to rescue his son. But he didn't know the extent of what had happened to his child, the terrible truth that Urahara had only just confirmed for himself earlier that evening.
'Thank the Gods you got him out of there alive.' Isshin sat down heavily on the step, his hands cupped over his nose and mouth.
'It was touch and go for a while…' Urahara decided not to elaborate on the situation with the hollow. No sense in worrying the already stressed father.
'He's so… He seems so different.' Isshin sighed, uncharacteristically serious and suddenly Urahara realised that he was finally starting to show his age upon that face that had previously remained unchanged for so many decades. 'His eyes Kisuke…'
'I know.' Urahara sat down next to him, placing a hand on his friend's shoulder. 'I understand how you feel…'
'No you don't.' Isshin snapped, shrugging off the hand. 'You don't have a fucking clue.' Urahara was quiet for a moment, choosing his next words carefully.
'No, I do. I… I care about him too.' Isshin gave him a curious look but let the comment slide, he was too busy wrapped up in worry and concern for his only son. But he had known Urahara long enough for him to be able to tell when the shopkeeper wasn't being entirely honest with him.
'There's something you're not telling me.' He looked suspiciously at his friend, his eyes, normally so unlike Ichigo's, were so weary, so tired, and they reflected the unspoken admission that perhaps he really didn't want to know the truth. 'What happened to my son in there Kisuke?' He sounded so defeated, carrying the burden of the father who had failed to protect his offspring, and Urahara knew that he couldn't bring himself to tell his dear friend the truth.
The truth will set you free,
but it can also imprison. And he didn't want to be the one to lock Isshin up in that emotional cage. If he had to, he would carry that burden himself. It was the least he could do. He exhaled as he answered the question that hung heavy in the air.
'Things worse than you or I can possibly imagine.'
And for a long time afterwards, there in the fading daylight on the steps of the Urahara shop, the shadows snuck in around the two men who sat there in a painfully silent contemplation of the darkness that was slowly creeping in and surrounding their little world.

Urahara was snapped back to the present time by that soft voice whispering in his ear.
'Kisuke…?' Ichigo was nuzzling into his hair like a sleepy child in need of comfort, whispering his name as his eyelids fluttered. Urahara smiled a little at the warm weight he felt in his lap.
'Ichigo. How many times have I told you to call me Urahara-sensei?' he teased, his voice low and gentle in the drowsy atmosphere of the warm room.
'You call me Ichigo.' Ichigo murmured into soft blonde hair.
'That's because you're my student, you cheeky young thing.' He teased, gently ruffling the orange strands as he felt the boy relax a little against him. He knew what Ichigo wanted to say, and he had no intention of hurrying or forcing him.
'It was him again, Kisuke.' His voice lost the playful edge, regressing again to that broken sound, the frightened child. 'It's like he's inside my head.'
'He has that effect on people.' Urahara murmured, regarding the redhead lazily from beneath his long blonde eyelashes.
'I'm pathetic.' Urahara opened his eyelids fully as Ichigo squeezed his own tightly shut, choking out those words.
'No.' He pushed Ichigo upright from his lap, resting his warm palms on the boy's shuddering shoulders, watching his eyes snap open at the contact and stare desperately into his own. 'No you are not. Do you know why I'm not telling you 'get a grip', 'get over it', 'move on'? Because those kinds of things are impossible. You've been through so much Ichigo, it's a credit to your tenacity that you're still here with us now.'
'I know.' Pearl white teeth emerged to bite at Ichigo's lower lip. 'But I know that I can't stay like this.' His tan throat shuddered as he swallowed down his fearful bile. 'I have to get strong again; I have to be able to fight again. All I ever wanted to do was protect my friends, my family… but it seems that I can't even protect myself.' He hung his head at his last admission, tears welling behind his eyelids.
'You shouldn't have to.' Urahara murmured, his heart swelling with pity and anger. 'That's why I'm here… I'm the one who got you into this mess in the first place anyway.' It was Urahara's turn to hang his head and cast his eyes downwards, letting his hands drop from the teenager's shoulders. 'All this is my fault.'
'Don't ever say that!' Ichigo's head snapped upright and a trembling hand reached out to brush a hollow, stubble peppered cheek. 'You saved me.' Urahara raised his head and saw those eyes, those goddamn eyes, glisten in the light that threw itself from the hall to illuminate bits and pieces of the night blanketed room.
'If it wasn't for me…' Urahara faltered as he was cut off by Ichigo's near hysterical voice.
'Don't, don't, please, don't.' He stammered, his free hand sliding up to cup the other side of the older man's face. His voice hitched in his throat and his front teeth sunk into his bottom lip again as he fought to contain the tears that gleamed in his bright ochre eyes.
'You know…' Ichigo was the one to break the silence, speaking slowly, choosing his words carefully. 'When I was in there with my hollow I made a promise to him… It seemed so unreal, so much a part of the moment that I'd almost forgotten it. But I haven't. That's why I'm going to promise it to you too, right here and now.' He cleared his throat softly and blinked back the tears in the shimmering light as Urahara held his breath.
'I won't let Aizen hold me down any longer…' He whispered as he stared deep into Urahara's eyes, sliding those rough hands down his neck to rest upon his shoulders. 'I won't let him defeat me. I - I'm going to stand up and fight again… and I will destroy anyone who threatens my world.' His facial features seemed to soften in the dim light as the weight of this promise left Ichigo's shoulders, his arms dropping to his sides, the palms of his hands curling in the bed sheets.
'Ichigo…' Urahara whispered, words failing him as those eyes and that promise pulled him under. Instinctively he moved his left hand to lie upon Ichigo's right where it rested on the bed, taking it in his own and squeezing gently. A soft, weary kind of smile crept across the redhead's face and for a moment he seemed to be that same vibrant teenager that he was before all this tragedy happened.
Ichigo edged closer to him on the bed, and suddenly Urahara's heart was thumping in his chest. The warmth and low lighting in the room was making his head spin and though he had not been able to shake the drowsiness from his bones he could feel adrenaline shooting through his veins with every beat of his heart. Ichigo's eyes smouldered as the fading light swept through his hair and danced across his lips.
He couldn't think straight, he could barely breathe and without thinking he cupped Ichigo's cheek in his free hand and leaned in to press their lips together.
Ichigo startled, his eyes snapping wide open at the horribly familiar feel of lips on his. His mind jumped, flashing images of Aizen and the feeling of a foreign tongue penetrating his mouth. Urahara felt Ichigo's body stiffen in his arms, but he did not pull back. Squeezing his hand gently, he stroked the soft skin of the boy's cheek with his thumb and whispered against his lips, 'I'm not him, Ichigo.'
Ichigo let his tensed muscles go slack again and he sighed softly against Urahara's lips as they pressed gently against his own in a soft kiss.
'I'll never hurt you.' Urahara whispered again as he looked into the eyes of the younger man who gripped his hand so tightly.
'I know.' Ichigo's eyelids fluttered and he whispered back, 'I've always known that.' And this time it was he who lent forward to touch their lips together.
The kiss was gentle. It was soft, sweet and tender. Urahara did not push against him, did not prise his lips open to thrust his tongue inside. He did not bite at Ichigo's lips or run his nails along his skin. When Urahara moved his mouth softly against the teen's, he could not feel anything resembling Aizen Sosuke in the caress.
They stayed that way on the bed for some time, each lost in the slow dance of their lips and warm embrace of each other's body. When they parted it was at the insistence of Ichigo's yawn and the first rays of morning light which reminded both of them how many hours over into the next day time had moved.
'I'm sleepy.' Ichigo murmured against the older man's lips, his eyelids fluttering shut. 'Will you stay with me tonight?'
'Of course.' Urahara whispered back as he rose from the bed to extinguish the light in the hallway. When he returned the shinigami had already slipped back beneath the thin bed sheets, leaving more than enough space for him to slip in next to him. He curled an arm around the warm body and felt Ichigo subconsciously snuggle in closer to him, seeking out his the warmth of his body like a sleepy child.
'Thank you Kisuke…' Ichigo yawned, his voice fading along with his consciousness. 'For everything…' Urahara responded only by giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze, and within minutes the rising and falling of Ichigo's chest told him that he was gone into a sleep sounder that he had experienced since he first had entered the realm of the hollows.
Time had stopped for Ichigo, there in that dark place of endless night. But now daylight had finally broken through and he was getting ready to take his first few steps back into the world. The body of the young man was warm and comforting in Urahara's arms as he slept his dreamless sleep. The nightmare would pass, and Ichigo would see the dawn of a new morning once again.
- 10
- 11
- 12
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Darkest Blue