Log; Complete

[thunderwitch.livejournal.com]

When; June 6th, evening
Rating; PG-13/R {for suggestive hole touching? O_O?}
Characters; Cirucci {thunderwitch } & Ishida {anti_buttons }
Summary; Weakened considerably by the magical backlash of the day, Ishida makes the mistake of letting said weakness show. His roomate makes the mistake of telling Cirucci where they lives so she can help him after she swears on her honor not to harm him, and her? She gets to have more fun with her favorite toy~
Log;

Ishida did not remember how he had, step-by-step, gotten onto his bed. He remembered sitting at the desk in his modest, rectangular room, the desk against the window with dull beige blinds folded up, the light from inside reflecting on the dark window. He remembered it, contemplating a pattern for Lady Lailis and reaching for the top drawer, where he stored his sewing kit that was slightly larger than the one he kept in his bag. He remembered the world, abruptly, becoming a series of blurred angles and revolving, a feeling that went beyond bone, his stomach heaving, his breath shortening, and his fingers slipping on the keys of his computer. Words, falling, and Kira-kun bursting in to drag him, protesting, onto his bad. 

Ishida also was not certain of how he had come to be clutching a large, thick plastic bowl of a strange purple color, except that he could relate it dimly to the dry-heaving with which he kept seizing up. He pushed at it, and didn’t hear the dull, expected sound of it hitting the thinly carpeted floor. When he closed his eyes he could still feel the world shuddering, rocking around him, but at least he didn’t have to see it. Alarm at what Kira-kun had promised, reiatsu medication, absurd, couldn’t compete with his body’s inability to fight the symptoms of what had to be a curse. But weren’t they all twenty-four hours?
 
Don’t need a doctor, he thought, his thoughts much clearer than anything spoken. The thought of a doctor brought to mind his father, and Ishida clinged to his independence through the nausea.

 

It had been so very annoying, having to knock out that boy. Kira, was it? Well, he wouldn’t be waking up for some time. Honestly, innocent human males should listen to Arrancar when they asked them to leave. No matter. Golondrina’s hilt against the back of his head was enough for that issue to be resolved. It had been troublesome enough tricking him into letting her come and giving the location away.

 

Cirucci smiled, reiatsu suppressed, standing outside the door to Ishida’s room with a small bowl and a few things under one arm. She couldn’t resist, couldn’t pass up the opportunity to exploit the Quincy’s moment of weakness so obviously stated. No. She just couldn’t.

 

The Arrancar opened the door softly, crept in and looked about before her eyes fell on the bed, the male there. Ishida Uryu. Hers. She didn’t speak yet, merely closed the door behind her with a small smirk,

 

Astute, attentive, possessing of sharpened senses in both physical and spiritual matters, these were strengths Ishida could stake claim in on a typical today. Now, however, he heard nothing of the brief skirmish in the hall, and even if the Thunderwitch had not bothered to suppress her reiatsu, he would have been hard-pressed to accurately identify it. He had realized it, as soon as he had been able to make the first attempts to analyze his queer condition. Had realized that it went beyond the physical and left him sick, dizzied in the spiritual; he might have identified a ghost as a person, might have done any number of clumsy things with his energy, could he even begin to focus it. It fluctuated, unsuppressed as it had previously been.

Eyes still closed, lights spinning around on the backs of his eyelids, Ishida was not at first aware that anyone had entered his room, that the door had opened and shut. He became alert in a sudden burst, a struggled moment of clarity that had come of evening his breath and burying his fingers into the blanket he lied on top of, the bed beneath him made. Ishida’s eyes opened, slid to the door, and focused.

 The surge of emotions, no doubt a tumult, dizzied him and Ishida could only groan, throw a badly-aimed arm over his head, and turn over toward the wall. Perhaps he was delirious. Kira-kun couldn’t have been that stupid. Couldn’t have. “Get out,” he mumbled, a touch raspy.

 

“So rude~” Cirucci murmured smoothly, softly, voice hushed in some mockery of the silence given to the ill. She wasn’t at all thrown off by his words, after all, she had hardly expected a warm reception. That would take all the fun out of the challenge, after all. Honestly.

 

The Arrancar set her bowl down on his desk, it was filled with cool water, a small cloth. She hardly knew anything about tending the ill, but she’d heard of a few things in passing. Hmmph, he should be grateful. Carefully, moving slowly, she approached the bed, bent down to place her hand, small and pale, against the arm over his head with a condescending smile.

 

“You’re sick, Uryu.” She crooned, looking down on him. Weakened, vulnerable… her grip spasmed for a brief moment. It would be so easy, so easy to just…

 

No. Not yet.

 

“Get out,” He tried again, tried to raise the volume of his voice, though it was muffled in the crook of his arm, his hand disappearing beneath his pillow. Irritation and panic swam through the muddle that was his mind, and, as he forced his eyes open, his bleary vision. Ridiculous, ridiculous, to be stuck weak and hopeless. Ishida had little doubt that she would kill him, and made confused, distracted plans toward some defense. The feeling of his pendant against his skin, not quite the comfort. 
 
An incoherent mumble, the inability to work out 'don't' or something like it, stumbled over his lips as her hand, much cooler, moved against his arm. He flinched, pushing away his arm to shoo off her hand. 
 
“I’m not,” he lied to the wall, hoping dimly that if he didn’t look at her, she would simply go away, a figment of his imagination. Next he’d see his grandfather in bloody stumps, or Ryuuken would piece together an appropriately disdainful lecture.

 

Cirucci smirked and obliged him with a light laugh, let him shake her hand from his arm and retreated from his side, withdrew to the desk where she dipped her hands into the cool water, wetting the cloth as she spoke.

 

“You should be grateful, darling.” She crooned, the soft sounds of water lapping against her wrists, not caring she was still wearing the long white gloves of her uniform, hadn’t made the effort to try and disturb him particularly in her appearance by making it more human as she had the last time, had when she’d made the point of letting him see her with Orihime to let that fear creep into him, that she would harm the girl if he didn’t come to her. She wondered if he’s gotten the message.

 

“Cirucci came all this way just to see you.” She wrung the cloth out with a nod, returned to his side and sat herself on the edge of his bed as if she belonged there, and she did, in her mind.

 

“You’re an awfully hard male to find.” 

 

An illusion that continued to speak and laugh. He supposed that he would have to, very soon, face the distorted reality of this. All his precaution, wasted by some magical backlash. In a fleeting moment of cool clarity, Ishida could hear the sound of the water against its bowl, splashing light against her hands, the sound different due to the material. Sweat beaded down his brow, he could feel it, could feel his lungs contracting and expanding with little result.

Grateful, she said; he laughed, a breathless chuckle that became long and almost a little mad. He thought of stuffing the pillow over his face and waiting, counting to seven, seventy, forty days and nights. But even a chuckle hurt, ground into his stomach and urged the acid toward his throat, empty of half-digested food to spill out. Ishida only coughed.

He heard all of it, felt and saw her come to his bed, the mattress caving some toward her weight. His eyes rolled up; a willing action, he stared at what he could of his headboard.

“You might as well kill me,” he forced out, words dry but not yielding, “If that’s… what this is. I’d rather you get it… over with than listen to you.” Inhale, exhale, no spasm from his gut up his throat, good. Ishida felt the pentacle against his wrist.

“Congratulations,” he mocked, even with a weak quaver in his voice.

 

Cirucci felt a swell in her hollow breast, something torn between pride, happiness, and that overwhelmingly smug feeling of utter superiority. She was in control. He’d said it would never happen again, and here she was. He couldn’t stop her from doing anything, couldn’t stop her from killing him-

 

She looked down with some disdain at her hand, realizing she had started reaching for his neck, and pulled back sharply. No, not now. She couldn’t explain why not now, but… she wanted him dead, didn’t she? It would be so easy… he had to even admit it himself. Just stab him, fire a cero… anything.

 

“Cirucci didn’t come here to kill you, sweetheart.” She finally murmured with a soft sigh, shaking her head, dark curls brushing across her face. She scooted closer to him, let the cloth sit in her lap and moved his arm, an easy task as weakened as he was, and pressed her soaked glove to his flushed forehead with a smirk.

 

“She could.” The Arrancar assured him. “It would be so easy, you know.” But she made no threatening move, all soft noise and comforting gestures that offset the cold and dangerous look in her eyes, in her very being.

 

“Gloating?” He asked, the indifference he had fought to create in his tone slipping beneath the shudder in his voice; he shivered when the cold, sopping glove met his forehead, water dripping from her fingers and trickling into his hair. The shiver began in his neck and traveled through him, that alone spinning his head around again, leading him to squint harder.

Instinct, and his need for any measure of control while even too sick to properly work his spine, had him fighting. Little movements, first, his forearms and palms pushing into the blanket, his back sliding up against the pillow. Ishida tried to sit up, to bend his head forward without even nudging away her hand. It was too troublesome, one thing at a time, and it felt good. He didn’t have the energy to deny it now.

 

He moved, urged the world to steady around his gaze and clarify the window. It was only the third floor, he mused. He wouldn’t ever be completely helpless. His fingers twitched, to test the gathering of reishi, not to the pentacle but for some minute concentration in his palm, to prove that he could accomplish the energy-boosted speed, or any such action. A dizzy spell struck him, hard.

His head fell back against the headboard, a bitter smile twisting his lips. “…’ve gathered.”

 

She smiled cruelly as she watched him try and show defiance to her, watch him try to sit up and attempt to escape her, watch him fail at controlling his reiatsu properly. It was a sweet feeling, able to sense his energy fluctuating weakly, fluttering, like a dying animal, something weak and frail. She liked that comparison.

 

“Smart boy.” Cirucci laughed lightly, pushing closer to him once more since he had managed to move away a bit, half-sitting against headboard and pillow. She took the damp cloth in her hands and placed it on his forehead with a soft murmur, a comforting gesture, that is, comforting until she noticed something.

 

“Shiro-Megane-Kun. She hissed, voice suddenly hardened and cold, though her touch was still cool, soothing, able to separate the anger in her voice from her hands that wanted to scramble at his throat.

 

“You got rid of it?” His neck was unbroken, unmarked by the small injury she’d left when she’d bitten him, a mark of her possession, her ownership.

 

“You aren’t allowed to do that.”

Ishida felt no need to console himself, but he could have: as frustrating as the situation was, him some infant bird without flight, caught in a hawk’s talons, a vulture’s, a silver-lining was not nonexistent. If this were to happen, at least he was not completely aware, alert, conscious of how badly off he was now. Musing within the coherence of his mind, Ishida hypothesized, was that why she had yet to kill him?

Swallowing was difficult; the cloth felt as if it melted into his head, a rush of iced focus, and the lump worked down his throat with the prominent bob of his adam’s apple. Her attitude change, it seemed sudden when everything was moving a little slower around him; he imagined the clock would tick at a different pace, too, if she were not there.

 “Hm,” he said, or failed to say what he had meant, without opening his mouth. I didn’t, his mind pointed out, she insisted, but delegating away responsibility for what he had supported wouldn’t do. Even now, Ishida would keep another out of it, if he could help it. This was his problem.

“…Am,” he noted, I am allowed, gritting his teeth as he suppressed another bout of nausea. “I don’t… require your permission,” he finished, once settled with his stomach.

 

“Yes,” Cirucci let her wet hand fall to his throat, stroking lightly, a gentle caress, “You do.” 

 

She released him with a sigh; let her body fall limp as she draped herself on her back across his legs. Tiring, sometimes. She shifted against him, moved when his knees dug into her shoulders, until she sprawled in sufficient comfort, hands twining behind her head, black hair in waves about her face.

 

“Why must you be so very difficult, Uryu?” She asked with another light sigh, kicking her feet idly, small boots he’d kissed not days earlier swinging merrily even as her skirt fell up against her hips with the motion of her bare legs.

 

“Cirucci is so very nice to you, she kisses you, and you’re so rude back. She wonders what’s going though your chivalrous little head sometimes.”

 

Ishida grimaced; he could feel every muscle in his jaw as he did, his skin shifting on his face. The part of him that needed to protest her words, the part of him that recoiled at her touch, dissolved beneath the overpowering concerns of his body, sick beneath his spirit, relishing the moisture against his throat and her touch. He swallowed, again, his eyelids fluttering down. Pathetic, he thought, irritably. He felt her let go, felt her spread over his legs.

He couldn’t quite look down at her with alarm when his eyes opened again. Not quite an out of body experience, nor was Ishida exactly disembodied, but the many things that were wrong with this and her, that would have sent him into a fit, were difficult to focus on with the room shifting so. She looked like a mirage, hazy and undefined, making her legs less than appealing. What made her real was the pressure of her body on his legs, at half a minute unbearable, at a minute insignificant.

Ishida thought he would like to sleep, would like to beat the brain out of his skull, the way it reacted when he only shook his head. He looked to the window, to the black outside and what dim spots of light lingered on the glass from inside.

“Wish she wouldn’t,” he said, transfixed with the glass, his eyes going a bit glazed. Breathing in, shuddering out. “Don’t want you… Any of it. Just want to be left alone.” A mumble toward the end, but his brow furrowed, confusion piercing through his haze. Was that the truth?

 

“No one wants to be left alone.” Cirucci said quickly, suddenly, turning her face against his sheets to watch him, long lashes half lidded, her pale skin offset by the two black marks on her cheeks. She fell silent for a moment after that, unsure of what she’d said, or why she’d said it. 

 

… Of course no one did. Who wanted to be alone, anyway? She certainly didn’t, even if she insisted she could be fine by herself. She hated the ticking of the City clock. She pined for Il Forte back, so someone would warm her bed, so even if she awoke in the dark of night she wouldn’t be alone. She sort of wanted Wonderwyce back, so during the day she could have someone about to mind. She was grateful for her lovers, so that she could seek some company in them, even if most threw her out when they were done, incentive for her to try all the harder to please them, so she would be allowed stay longer. … No one wanted to be left alone.

 

“Shiro-Megane-Kun is stupid if he thinks he’s better off alone.” She muttered bitterly. She envied him, somewhat. His ridiculous ties to people, his foolish pride and his annoying chivalry. The kind of things that made people want to be around you, so you’d never be lonely.

 

“And Shiro-Megane-Kun should also hold that washcloth before it slips.” The Privaron closed her eyes a moment, stretched against his legs, and sighed again. Goodness, he wasn’t being very fun at all today. Maybe it wasn’t fun to play when he was sick, he wasn’t nearly as feisty.

 

Ishida found that it was a little easier to breathe. He felt a little less like the slightest motion would topple him, though the dizziness prevailed, the constant movement of the world, the instability of even lying still. It made it difficult to focus, to reason, to worry, to find his rage against the Arrancar who had chosen to lie back on his legs rather than kill him. Strange, that, and he looked down at her after the words had left her mouth, surprised, arching his eyebrows a little, the movement loosening the cloth’s wet cling.

He stared, shut his eyes hard and opened them again, sharpening her outline, steadying the color around her. The unfailing undercurrent of nausea dimmed his sympathy, here, and helped him rule out much curiosity. He stared, and she eventually spoke again, words he only just caught, but couldn’t begin to analyze as he was. His hand moved, sluggish but a little more certain through the air, and captured the cloth.

Familiar distaste as she moved mixed in with his nausea. Ishida rolled his head back on his neck, chin tilting toward the ceiling as he again looked back, a thin smirk wearing itself out on his pale mouth. “I’m better off alone,” he said, turning the cloth over; warmer water oozed down his wrist, against his bracelet. It was wrong, or something was wrong with it, his mind reeled against that belief and something older and in opposition. He humored neither and, instead, allowed the dizzy spell that came of shaking his head.

“You aren’t … doing a very good job. Gloating.” He shifted his right leg, bending his knee just enough to almost poke, a nudge, a reminder.

 

Cirucci opened her eyes again, looked at him as if he were disturbing her rest, not the other way around. She supposed she really should be trying harder, but goodness… what if he threw up? Nasty. And that would ruin all her fun in an instant.

 

“Liar.” She spat, at his mention of being better off alone. If she hated being alone, it was obvious to her that everyone else should hate it too. That was the way she saw things. Anyone who thought differently than she had to be wrong. If she enjoyed something, others must, too. She let her damp fingers trail up his leg, swirling little patterns into his pant leg as they went, a small smirk coming to her painted lips even as she watched him carefully, eyes always sharp and focused, making sure he wouldn’t be ill on her, or pass out. Both would end things before they got interesting.

 

“Cirucci can try and gloat… harder.” She murmured, stopping on his thigh to tap her nails. “If that’s what Shiro-Megane-Kun wants?” Cirucci had an inkling suspicion he certainly did not want that. But she was glad he offered her that little bit of challenge. Otherwise she may have gotten bored, and one could not have a bored Privaron on their legs without suffering severe discomfort. Not that Cirucci would mind, she wouldn’t be the one uncomfortable.

 

He had no responsibility to keep her entertained. Ishida knew that. As much as he would have liked to fall asleep, as easy as it might have been to let her grow bored long enough for him to close his eyes and sink into the blackness behind them, sheer common sense surged, for once, against sickness. If he fell asleep, who knew what she would do to him?

Ishida suppressed a shudder and tugged the cloth from his head, it sagged with a wet flop against, around his hand, and he ignored her accusation—too much energy to argue, she was a brick wall he couldn’t stop walking into, full-body slam that left him bruised—and let it slip from his hand, over the side of the bed. It felt good, his body knew it, but he would, would, would refuse her attention.

Except, he couldn’t seem to make up his mind on that, or, it changed with the moment, whether his body had the say or the pride of his mind. Her fingers began up his leg and he couldn’t stop that shudder. His precision was off, the speed of his response, but Ishida did reach down to circle his fingers clumsily around her wrist. He blinked for a long period of seconds, and behind his eyelids was déjà vu, repetition, and insanity in the repetition.

“You know…” Ishida bit out, his arm beginning to shake with the simple effort of keeping rigid to fight her hand, “what I want.” Lest she choose to misinterpret it, he added, unable to keep the weakness from it, tired, the fire in his eyes lose in that, “Get off... get out.”

“Have half, because Cirucci’s generous.” She giggled, pulled away from him and set up, easing off the bed and stretching again. Goodness, he was making her sleepy. Stupid human boy. She bent with a small noise to pick up the washcloth from his floor, making her way back to his desk to wash it, dipping her hands in the cool water, cold, like the sullen feel in her bones, her body, that icy chill of death. A death she had chosen when she’d found out her inevitable fate at the Quincy’s hands. 

She didn’t realize her grip had been tight until her knuckles popped in the cold, made her temper her reaction even as she forced herself to recall the Il Forte. Recalled soft kisses along her jaw. "Would you let me kill you?" Recalled a gentle bite, hum low in the back of her throat, recalled thinking of what she feared, feared that this boy had spared her, feared he’d killed her, feared her very end above all else at that moment. "If need be, you would be the one to do it.”  Cirucci remembered that, an exhaled breath of speech. "I’d rather stay here dead than prey to a human.”

Then she recalled the snapping noise her neck had made under his hands.

“Shiro-Megane-Kun shouldn’t resist nursing.” She mused with a small smile, moving back to his side and sitting on the bed’s edge again, offering the cloth.

“What would Cirucci do if her favorite toy didn’t get better?”

Generous, she said, and Ishida would have snorted, had he not been acquiring a green tint at the latest surge of nausea, a feeling that crept up his digestive track, inciting his stomach and corroding his esophagus. His throat worked with the latest swallow, reflexive suppression of his now overworked gag reflex, and out of the corners of his eyes he watched the Thunderwitch over the bowl she had brought. 
 
An Arrancar, domestic and nursing. It really made one second-guess whether or not he was imagining things. His gaze shifted more completely to her, to where she wet the washcloth again and her hands squeezed, a reminder of the violence that was a constant beneath her simpering. He fell into repetition; hands fisting into the blanket, pushing down so to inch his back up, along the wooden headboard, breathing hard as he reached back to adjust the pillow at his back. 
 

 “Cirucci Thunderwitch should decide on a name,” he retorted, the first sentence that had come fairly easily, in a single breath, in some time. Ruined by the sour, almost petulant tone he took on after, looking down his nose at the cloth. “Find a new one, I… imagine, so why don’t you head off… now and start the search?”  
 
Moments of composure couldn’t change the overall feeling, a trembling weakness, powerless over reishi and body, all completely unacceptable in whatever mind. Especially with her there. It was almost too much to keep from closing his eyes, rolling back his head once more.

 

“Shiro-Megane-Kun can pick more than one name for Cirucci.” She snapped back in a slightly irritated tone, annoyed by his refusal. He really should be paying her more attention, his damned fluctuating energy was even annoying her at this point. Weak little things should either die and be done with it, or get better. Two options, not this silly middle-ground.

 

It was a smooth, slow, motion, grabbing his hips and pulling, taking him away from the headboard and his pillows and inserting herself, curling her bare legs under her, smoothing her skirt and pulling him back down again, wet hands firm and unyielding on his trembling shoulders, delighting in the feel of his weakened body beneath her hands, so easy to kill, it would-

 

“”Uryu should also relax more~ If Cirucci was going to kill you today, she would have done it already.” She pulled him down until his head rested in her lap, picking up the cool cloth and placing it on his forehead again, the only soothing practice humans used that she knew of, or, had heard of, rather. She was no healer. She slept with healers, for healing, but that was the extent of her medical knowledge.

 

The Privaron stopped suppressing her reiatsu, let it be a constant sense about her, and focused some in her hands on his shoulders. It worked with other Arrancar, reiatsu transfers. It was one way they could heal each other, of minor injuries, ways to stablilize upset energies. Should work with him, too, she figured. The “reiatsu medication” she’d tricked the human boy into giving the location with.

 

“You really should focus your reiatsu more, too~” She tsked with a condescending smirk, really, these young mortal things sometimes.

 

“What are you—“ No time to panic, to flail, to writhe and jump away, even if he had wanted to. The motion might have been deliberate in its slowness, but Ishida was slower, now, and even as his hands reached to remove hers, she had already moved behind him, and in a blur of lurching air, Ishida found himself on his back, his head cushioned against her thighs, black hair splaying over pale skin. Contrary to her words, he only grew more tense, and wouldn’t have relaxed even if he could have.

As alert as he had ever been while suddenly afflicted like this, he kept his eyes open as the cold wet of the cloth returned. The work for clarity among all the dizziness made it especially difficult for him to recognize what it was she was doing, her reiatsu building in her hands and folding into his shoulders.

 “Get away! …As if I’m not trying.” he snapped, though it was something of a lie, the extreme consequence of his earlier attempt a convincing persuasion to hold off. His seizing fingers pulled at the particles in the air, and a little, it was a little bit easier, the backlash less overwhelming. Ishida’s chest strained with his need to withhold from panting, to cling to regular breath, and he realized.

Understanding in whole, that, that would not come, because this was strange. He remembered when Kurosaki’s reiatsu had been overpowering, would have killed him, and channeling it through his bow. He remembered that kind of contact, not this. When he realized, everything hurt with how his muscles tightened, his jaw squeezed, his brow furrowed, and everything.

“Stop it,” he said, through his painfully tight teeth, lifting his head but unable to hold it long or move beyond that, the pressure of her hands too strong. “Stop it.”

It was not alarm that quivered in his voice, but resolute, frigid anger. Debt, he thought, wildly. A debt he had no intention of being in, not with her, not with anyone, Ishida loathed obligation. They always asked too much. This he could do without, but desperation now did not overrule the lessons of past experience, and a quick, hazy evaluation showed him, of all the ironies, that he needed this in order to be able to get away, even with some element of surprise. Fury joined the sickness that shivered down his arms.

 

“No~” Cirucci crooned softly, her hold on his shoulders firm, but not overly so, nails not digging into the skin as she let small tendrils of her own energy flow into him, balancing, stabilizing as his reiatsu synched with his. Forced intimacy between beings.

 

“Cirucci needs you whole and healthy, dear.” She didn’t want to own something so weak, possess someone who could be so easily thrown off by the fighting of others. Too sensitive, too easy to throw off balance, in spite of, no, perhaps because of his reserved nature, his pride and his rigid sense of honor.

 

She curled inwards and looked down, black waves of hair tumbling around his face in a dark curtain, meeting his gaze with a condescending smirk, pressing her lips against part of his forehead not covered by the cool washcloth, careful not to give him too much energy, didn’t want him able to escape her just yet. She did enjoy him helpless beneath her, though, it sent little shivers of happiness down her spine.

“Besides,” She murmured, bending again to kiss against his lips, briefly, one of her hands roaming slowly down his chest, toying with the zipper of his shirt, “You said I wasn’t gloating enough, didn’t you?” She was daring him to fight her even as she gave him comfort, a sweet place to sleep, to relax, to rest, to heal, wondering which one he would pick. Would he lay there with her, let her heal him, or fight her, pathetic and weak, just for propriety? She wondered.

“I don’t care what you need,” Ishida hissed, anger only increasing as his words came even easier. Not unpleasant, no, quite the opposite; he needed it. His mind built up an offense against it, declaring it foul, inventing its own nausea to drip into his body’s. Ishida’s stomach convulsed anew.
 
Her hair touched silky against his cheeks, and predictably, he glared. Ishida found himself staring at her neck when, for the third time in less than a week, Cirucci kissed his lips. He would have bit her if he didn’t think she’d enjoy it. 
 

Ishida focused on his breathing, focused on it as he focused on, gradually, superseding nausea and spinning walls to familiarize his fingers with reiatsu manipulation again. He imagined her hand as a snake, as a spider, as something repulsive and animal that moved on his chest, and encouraged his skin to crawl. How to surprise her. How to do it, and use it? The thought that struck him was terrible, and later, Ishida would claim that sickness had made him delirious. 
 
“Fine,” Ishida said, the word coming out as a growl. He moved in parts; first, one hand to slid over hers, to curl but not clench over the damp white of her glove, his fingers mirroring her hold but, longer, tips met over the zipper’s edge. He tugged down, guiding her hand with his. If she followed, if she let him let her unzip his shirt, she might lean closer again, close enough to… He pushed his shoulder up, bone against skin, against shirt, against her hand, but it was not to gain him escape but the ability to dug his elbow into the mattress, brace his not quite upright weight against it, and allow him the opportunity to press his lips into an topsy-turvy kiss with hers.

 

Her gaze widened somewhat, almost shock but more like surprise. Surprise was much quieter. She made a curious croon, a warbling almost avian in nature deep in her gullet. She didn’t speak, torn between vainly wanting to believe she had finally gotten to him and the more logical idea that he was trying to play her just like she was playing him.

 

She played it cautious, let his hand guide hers, slowly unzipping his shirt, letting him think he was in some sort of control, had to admit to a small degree of shock when he kissed her of his own volition. He must truly hate her, to sacrifice that dignity he claimed, that disinterest he affected, just to try and get rid of her. That thought, that he would despise her that much, made her smirk against his mouth a moment, soft, experienced, pressing back insistently, tongue flicking across his lips, leading him now, urging even as her grip on his shoulder did not lax.

 

Try a bit harder, Shiro-Megane-Kun. 

 

Sick or not, Ishida was no fool, and did not allow himself the belief that her surprise meant more than it did. He could not underestimate the Arrancar, she who was currently stronger, of sharper mind, and far more experienced in this.

He couldn’t help but be clumsy, to be unsure, and he let it show. If the Thunderwitch would be obsessed with control he would permit it, hoping to guide her into negligence, biding his time. His hand over hers stopped, his shirt opened, the zipper undone. The sensation of the kiss was made strange by the lingering way that his head spun, and her tongue sent a shiver down his spine that was disgust, or a reminder that he wasn’t well, or worst of all, want.

 

His neck stretched, and he missed; he kissed the left corner of her mouth, let a moment pass for hesitation, tilted to kiss the right. Ishida closed his eyes and almost smiled, ostensibly for her, but his mind had found neutrality in planning, in imagining success rather than living now. He thought the command, and released her hand, tracing his fingers down over wrist, along her arm, and leaving where sleeve began. His palm pressed down only centimeters from where he knew that hole to be, covered though it was in white. From his odd position of palm pointing toward her neck, his fingers were closest to it; bent up now at the joints like crooked spider legs, if he were to flatten them they would graze the edges.

“Cirucci…?” he murmured, stomach flopping against the revulsion that wanted to rise up. Begin it with a question.

 

The Privaron let her cool hand ghost across the planes of chest, flushed and hot from his bout of sickness, and taut muscles, she knew taut probably in disgust, she hoped in disgust even as she hoped in desire, twisted and dark emotions the only kind she was capable of, even her more kind moments tempered and underlain with that knotted and morbid logic that always ended in her own selfishness.

 

“Hmm?~” She moaned lightly, a noise unnecessary, but for the benefit, though she had trembled lightly at how close his fingers lay to the sensitive gap in her torso, a hole vacant and empty, but undeniably one of the Arrancar’s weakest points, sensitive not only to pain, but to the gentle caresses of a lover, something she could count on to wrench groans from even her more spiteful lovers, such as the Octava.

 

Her breath was hot against his neck, both their gazes on the undersides of the others throat. And it was then she was reminded of the mark that had been healed, taken from his skin, her possession wiped away. It just wasn’t done. Cirucci arched her pale neck down, bit hard and sharp at his exposed throat, felt the quiver and pulse of his blood and had to exert a supreme effort of will not to let her hand on his chest reach up and rip at his jugular, let the blood run out, spill across his skin, hers…

 

She licked a small bit of red from her lips, lifting her neck a bit to meet his gaze and mouth, black hair still falling about their faces.

 

“Yes?~” She breathed again.

 

His skin drew back from her touch, pulling in against his ribcage, shying from the stroke of her hand. His breathing became harder, uneven, shaking out from his lungs, quivers in his shoulders, the tips of his fingers, his eyes swimming and losing focus on the curve of her throat, for a moment. It lost him the triumph of her first tremor, the effect of the proximity of his fingers in delayed comprehension. Pain brought him back.
 
With his control diminished, Ishida did not merely flinch as she bit his neck, but a sound from deep in his throat accompanied his gasp, and dizziness almost had him again. His fingers jerked out, flat, less deliberate, less drawn out than he had intended, for the ultimate goal of distracting her long enough. Sickness almost ruined it, a reflexive reaction of frustrated rage that again, again she had done it.
 

 “Cirucci,” he said now, not a question, but her name made broken, interrupted by his breathless struggle for oxygen. Ishida clenched his eyes shut against the sight of his blood on her lips, disappearing into her mouth, but opened them again as he pressed his fingers against the hole’s outline. 
 
“I want,” he began, incited by the feel of his blood dripping, again, down his neck, watching with some (worrying) satisfaction as she gasped. He slid his hand further, the heel of his palm now following around the rim, his fingers dipping into cloth that sagged beneath them.  His voice fell to a whisper “… to show you something.”
 
She trembled, and it satisfied him because the tables had almost turned, but Ishida did not smirk, not when her hand on his shoulder lost the intensity of its clutch, not until her eyes closed. “

 

It might have been her reiatsu, it might have been the build of focus, the build of energy toward this. Quickly, he dipped his hand beneath his shirt and collected four of the silver ginto tubes from the strap hitherto hidden beneath the flap of his shirt. She had not closed her eyes long, might have opened them onto his rolling them in his palm as he began to speak, concentrating on what little reiatsu he could to allow their function,
 
“Battle formation of the air,” he said in pants, jerking up the hand against her to push against her collarbone, below her neck, to slide himself off the bed and away from her as he flung the tubes at her with a jerk of his wrist, “please accept this holy offering. Haizen.” 
 
Energy exploded, rectangular and cutting, from the ginto.

 

She had allowed herself to be distracted, the course feel of white fabric being pressed against the thin skin enough to make her tremble, small body shuddering lightly as his fingers had traced around the edging of the empty space, couldn’t help her eyes closing for the briefest moment and letting a gasping shudder of breath escape her when those fingers had dipped inwards, plying against hypersensitive skin, where all her reiatsu was concentrated, where she was most vulnerable to both pain and pleasure.

 

But then reiatsu had spiked and his hand had left what distracted her, lulled her to complacency, and her eyes had snapped open, pushed away by a weak hand and facing something that was capable of damaging her.

 

The sonido she kicked into was pure instinct, the reverb sound from the waves she had displaced echoing in the air even after his attack had slammed into the wall, leaving it quite the worse for wear. The Thunderwitch found herself perched lightly on his desk, legs crossed, appearing casual, but if she’d had a heart, it would have been pounding.

 

“Shiro-Megane-Kun~!” She nearly crowed, but kept it to a light giggle, watching him carefully. “You almost did something!”

 

Failure. In parts. Ishida had thrown his arm over his head and rolled farther from the collision of her sonido and his Haizen, not that there was far to go in his cramped room. The sound popped in his ears; roared through his ear drums. Energy meeting energy, deflection, the sound of plaster cracking, shook his disturbed, only weakly stabilizing reiatsu and Ishida hunched close to the ground.

On all fours, his shoulders shoved back as his neck craned forward, his palms burned against the carpet, and Ishida dry-heaved, his stomach trying desperately to get rid of what wasn’t there.

 

“Almost,” he croaked, when he could, and did not look at the devastation of his wall. The moment she had walked through the door, Ishida had known he would need to change location. Shaking so hard he could barely move, Ishida worked to stand, his hands at one time hard against his knees as he bent over them. Upright, he leaned back against the wall opposite what was once his desk, opposite her. Ishida lifted his right hand, pendant dangling in air as he opened his palm, five fingers, stretching out his arm but unable to hold it rigid in front of him. A staying gesture, a pathetic buffer, whatever it was, his weak voice did not lack conviction.

“Get out,” Ishida said, his left hand dipping under his shirt, fingers fumbling over the remaining ginto.

 

The next sonido was calculated, no instinctual move driven by survival, by being caught off guard. One hand slammed into his right, pushing it back and over his head, her other catching his left and pinning it against his chest even as she used her frailer frame to push him back, pinned securely against the wall he’d leaned upon, having to stretch up against him to even put her mouth close to his ear.

 

“My Shiro-Megane-Kun.” She murmured, his own blood still on her lips. Her hand pinning his left released, chest pressed against his to hold his there as her still damply gloved hand reached up and snatched the glasses from his face, snapped them to fold neatly with a light laugh.

 

“For my collection.” Cirucci explained, reaching down between her breasts to wrest the last silver tube from him, taking full advantage of his weakness, his illness, sickness, to get her dominance. She held the two trophies in between her fingers even as she stood on the tips of her small booted feet to kiss him, tasting of his own copper flavored life. 

 

The hand on his right wrist snapped to the side with a sudden wrench, accompanied by the sound of bone breaking.

 

“Mine.” Her voice had dipped dangerously, promises of more pain, of more exploitation and weakness to come, should he not heed her. He’d sacrificed his dignity this day, in kissing her of his own accord, in having to resort to playing her game. But she wanted more. Always wanted more.

 

“Cirucci will come back more if you keep trying to get rid of her marks.” She murmured gently, a stark contrast to the senseless act of pain she had just committed, lapping lightly at the bleeding bite on his neck even as her hips pressed harder against his, pinning him flush to the wall for the brief second before she released him and stepped away, flouncing out of his room, his apartment, without another word, glasses and ginto in her hand.

 

She hoped he would forget this lesson quickly so she could teach it again.

 

Any other day, the sonido would have been ineffective. Any other day, his hirenkyaku would have had him well out of reach, and any number of shots could have been fired in the meantime. His arms were caught, stuck, and Ishida knew he barely had the energy to keep on his feet, never mind pull free. There could be no good to this, but at the least, he was too ill to react bodily to her proximity. His breathing lifted his chest against hers and Ishida felt only, unsurprisingly, dizzy.
 
His vision went completely as she took his glasses; Ishida’s eyes widened onto blurs of color. He tasted his blood before he was screaming, the sound tearing out of him in a brief yell as he heard and felt the bones snap. 
 
“Not” he snarled, forced his voice through the pain and spinning, because he wouldn’t be hers, wasn’t and wouldn’t ever be, possession would require submission and that, that he would never give. He looked, bleary-eyed, at an indistinct focus of the marks on her cheeks, lost as she licked his neck and his eyes rolled into his head, body shuddering out from his hips when hers ground.
 

Ishida’s legs gave out. He sank to the ground in her wake, his arm falling, wrist hanging limply in his lap, and he cradled his arm close. He would kill Kira, he thought first, reaching for his neck and wanting again to vomit. Then, prioritized; he would need to move, move out while sicker than a dog, half-blind, and unable to do much with his wrist. 
 
Disgust with himself for involuntary weakness mixed with the watery pride of having, at least, accomplished one thing: he had prevented her from healing him, which in the mixed up pride of his head, was better than a broken wrist and his spectacles. Let her think her trophies meant anything. He owed her nothing. His chin bowed to his chest, Ishida laughed, not a little delirious.