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thunderwitch.livejournal.com) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
tampered2007-07-09 02:58 am
thunderwitch.livejournal.com) wrote in tampered2007-07-09 02:58 am
Log; Complete
When; July 7th, evening
Rating; R
Characters; Cirucci {![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
thunderwitch} & Ishida {anti_buttons}
Summary; In order to get a bit of her dignity back after her dreams were witnessed by her would-be opponant, Cirucci takes advantage of the fact that she'sstalked him managed to find out where Ishida moved to and discovers a little something under his mattress. (We're anticipating "tl;dr", so, anyone who gets through this gets a cookie.)
Log;
Shiro Megane-Kun kept a nice apartment.
Cirucci’s thin fingers trailed lightly across the surface of his kitchen, cool wood, porcelain, and glass. It was quiet, he wasn’t home. She supposed that he really should have been keeping out better. For all he kept his little reiatsu hidden, it apparently hadn’t occurred to him that she’d spent days crouched on the top of the Opera House, waiting for him to pass through the square so she could follow him home, until she woke and left Dordonii’s to come here.
She hadn’t planned on coming so soon. But he’d… seen. He’d seen, even though she’s tried not to sleep, had made Alfons come and sit with her while she rested, having to have been awake in case the shinigami had decided to attack based on that worthless healer’s finger. But it hadn’t helped. Dordonii had seen. Alfons had seen. Tony had seen.
Shiro Megane-Kun had seen.
The Privaron tried to stifle the rage in her chest, slowly sinking on to the human’s couch, propping her chin on her arms, tucking her legs up under her. He would be back eventually. And she would be there. He’d see. He’d see.
>>>
Even with a project as complex as formal wear, Ishida did allow himself breaks. He fought the crick in his neck and the ache in his wrist, the dent of the needle in his callused finger tip, the drone of a machine that hummed in his skull even after he had removed the power.
Errands. Today: a few of the necessary groceries, including aspirin. Ishida was no stranger to headaches, but the one he had woken up with today had finally necessitated the purchase of pills. Out of decorum, of a simple understanding of proper public behavior, Ishida had not stopped to open the bottle and take a pill or five. His sensitivity to reiatsu, sharpened by a mix of paranoia and that age-old need for perfection as a Quincy, a hunter of hollows, lifted the hairs on his neck even as he entered the building.
She had not bothered in the least; her reiatsu completely unhidden. His remained stifled as he stood outside the door on the second floor. He wished, as his head began to pound, that he had taken the damn pill as soon as he’d purchased the bottle. Ishida considered the door, his door, sealing a lid on his imagination before it could fathom the many ways in which she might be waiting. Logic reminded him of the warnings he had received, of her intentions he had read, regarding waiting in the Square and tracking him.
That this did not surprise him, merely irritate with the immediacy of the problem and its likely after-effects, reminded Ishida of dreams, of I know where you are. She hadn’t been bluffing, then. He reached up, plastic sliding and scratching against his arms—sunflower yellow handles falling from wrist to elbow as he pressed his fingers against his forehead, dropped them to push up his glasses. His other arm curled around a heavy, large brown paper bag, Ishida set his jaw and opened the door.
On the couch. His eyes swept over her as if over air, and closing the door behind him, Ishida walked into his kitchen. He knew he had not quite succeeded in keeping the tension from bunching between his shoulder, clenching in his teeth. Plastic and paper rustled as he began to unpack the bags.
On finding the aspirin, quick, hard movements removed the cap, shook four into the palm of his hand, and tipped them back into his mouth.
>>>
She’d left her reiatsu open, not stifling it as she had when she had been stalking after him, stifling it so badly, masking it so deep, that she had sweat and the hollow hole in her torso had ached with it contained suchly. The Arrancar had wanted, was curious, to see if the human would walk away, ignore her and leave her there, or come in despite.
She was delighted that he had come. She hated to be ignored.
“Not going to greet me, Shiro Megane-Kun?” Cirucci murmured, her voice barely audible from the other room. She’d gotten comfortable, sprawled across his couch and idly kicking her feet, a façade of calm and relaxation despite the inner turmoil behind the mask, the tightening in her belly that told her to move, to attack, to release her blade and kill. But she held herself back.
She waited, coiled and ready to spring.
>>>
Ishida swallowed, replaced the cap, and resumed putting away his groceries, forcing his mind onto the mundane task when it wanted to wander toward the unmistakable one room over. Instinct, his senses, they hissed danger, get out!. Logic took confidence in hand and knew, if grudgingly, better. If he left again, she would no doubt stay until he returned.
He ignored her words, his eyes narrowing at an unsuspecting pepper in his hand. Doesn’t she have anything better to do, he wondered, made fierce and careless in his feigned cool as he shoved the vegetable into a lower, refrigerator drawer with much more force than was necessary. A shinigami to dismember?
Folding the paper bag as well as the plastic and storing them beneath the sink, Ishida straightened with the realization that he had finished with the groceries, and so, had to grasp for excuses to keep out of that room. He would not sigh, would not admit the frustration pulsing in his head. How irritating. Finishing Zaheela-san’s dress would have to wait. He was so close, but attracting the Thunderwitch’s attention to it would be much too troublesome.
The kitchen was of a reasonable size, a little cramped, a counter jutting awkward between table and kitchen wares. He circled, pulled out a chair with hands that gripped too tightly, and sat down.
Damn his need for order, for cleanliness: not a book was left on the table, not a scrap for distraction, all put away, shelved and organized. His meager collection since arriving in the City. He reviewed the rules of differentiation mentally.
>>>
A pout began to creep onto her face. He was ignoring her. Ignoring her, and he had no right. After what he’d seen, he had no right. She would have to work at him, she knew, but for him, for the human who’d stripped her of every dignity in some false nobility of mercy, she would work a little. At least she could go whine to Dordonii about it later if it didn’t work.
“Rude.” She called, slipping up from the couch and making her way towards the room she’d identified as his bedroom. “Shiro Megane-Kun had better manners, I thought.” The Privaron ran her hand down to the doorknob, turning it and opening the door.
“Don’t like your company?” Cirucci baited a bit, wanted him to reply, to be angry, to try and make her leave. She said she wished to own him, and she did. The Arrancar wanted him dependant, helpless, just as powerless as she had been, wanted his pride broken and his morality lost.
It never occurred to her that it could be because he had shown her just how worthless she could be.
>>>
Her footsteps, the direction of her voice, they told him where Cirucci headed. Ishida could feel his shoulders hitching up, aggravation increasing the tension, that ache--that, that may have contributed to his diminished patience. The ache so difficult, so constant, that it had synced so well with the ticking to make it difficult to realize that it had gone, that he no longer heard it.
Only a room, he told himself, a room that happened to contain his bed, clothing, happened to be where he slept. There was no need to think differently of it, to consider it private, after all, this was not a home. … Yet, Ishida found his hands had become fists, nails biting into his palms, knuckles against skin that might have been transparent.
Moving toward her; that would be allowing her to win. A rush to the room, some frantic attempt to get her away from it, no. Speaking, acknowledging her, would be her victory, but Ishida could see that pretending she wasn’t there would only get him so far. He raised his voice, disdain like ice.
“An uninvited guest, that is to say, an intruder, should not expect to be greeted with good manners.” Struggling to recall the Sum Rule, but…
>>>
“Cirucci dreamed you invited her.” The Privaron called back, leaving his door open, inviting, as she began poking around, having waited to do so until he was present in order to annoy and frustrate. Idly she looked in drawers, on shelves, in closets, occasionally pausing to investigate something, like his clothing.
“Such dull colors.” She noted, another random comment of an insult. She wasn’t quite sure how long she was willing to play, but she was afraid she was already getting bored with him refusing to play, trying to be better than her.
He was always trying to be better than her, and it drove her mad.
>>>
Was she—Ishida leaned in the chair, over the table, his neck craned, his ears straining over the slowly subsiding ache in his forehead. Rummaging through his things?! He nearly knocked the chair over with the involuntary lurch of horror that seized him, the desire to bury a burning face into his hands overwhelming for all that it was juvenile.
A forced swallow, a forced control, and Ishida stood up from the table. He ought to know better, he knew it, repeated it to himself as he walked out of the kitchen and toward the bedroom. Nothing to be ashamed of, of course not, not a thing, and there was most certainly not a flush peeking out of his collar, crawling up his neck and grasping for chin.
“That doesn’t count” he pointed out, his hand tightened on the doorknob as he stood in the frame. “As it happens, I do not select my clothing with the intention to garner your approval, Thunderwitch—they suit me fine. Now—“
Hard, too hard not to panic as he watched her getting into his things, for restraint and cool to slip through his fingers and a spastic demand to replace them. Out, out, OUT—“Leave.”
A useless order, of course. Ishida refused to speculate on how well he knew, or could predict, the Thunderwitch – simplicity, that was all, attribute it to her simplicity.
>>>
Ah, there he was~
Cirucci turned her head from where she was crouching by his closet, slender hands rifling through his clothing.
“She could probably suggest a few things.” The look on her face was obvious now that she’d gotten that rise, a wicked, smug, expression evident in the angle of violet eyes and the curve on painted lips, enjoying the sight of him, annoyed, angry, so very demanding. Such a dear, sometimes.
“Ah, well, she doesn’t want to leave yet, though.” The Thunderwitch left his closet with a small tsking of chastisement, and turned past his drawers to the bed, flopping down onto the edge and kicking her feet, idly running her hands over the sheets, picking at the corner and inspecting the fabric. But she was bored with that, slipping down to elbows and knees to look under his bed, back to him.
“Very clean in here.”
>>>>
Invasive. Reassuring himself--no, reminding himself of the plain fact that there was no privacy to be invaded, not a home, not his, merely substitutes until the day came that he left the City. Whatever it was, the thought did not help. The aspirin could not work quickly enough; his teeth began to hurt for how tightly they were clenched.
His eyes narrowed, his lips thinned, at that expression on her face. To be expected, he had known what she wanted, and yet, he couldn’t simply let her do it, allow her to think she could flounce around his bedroom unchecked. It made it that much easier to think trespasser, rather than girl, girl, a girl in his room.
“I would be only too glad to escort her out,” he retorted, voice hard, as if threatening physical force behind it. But, he wouldn’t have been—to allow her free reign was unacceptable, but to move closer, to take hold of an arm or wrist, rough contact he hesitated to consider toward a woman to begin with, hesitated more in this room—
Ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. She looked under his bed and Ishida tried, tried for indifference, looking just above her head and not at her, on all fours, the shortness of her skirt. Calm; composure, should be easy. “I’d like to keep it that way. Do you really have nothing better to do than to pick at my possessions?”
His tone meant to imply, through sheer, cold condescension, that it spoke very little of her, that she would resort to something so petty, so silly. A shift, doorknob finally released as he pressed his index and middle fingers lightly between his eyebrows. “A war to rush into, a shinigami to threaten?”
>>>>
“Holding off on that for the moment.” Cirucci reached for something under the bed, stretched low to grasp, but in reality was not going for anything, merely baiting, enticing, knowing it flustered him and knowing it bothered. “You know, too many citizens willing to throw themselves in front of some worthless shinigami,” The Privaron made an angry noise when the back of her head hit the wood of the bed frame, withdrawing to sit on her haunches.
“Surprised Shiro Megane-Kun hasn’t tried to kill her yet.” She noted, looking back at him with a deceptively innocent smile. “She not worth sparing again, or…?” It bothered her, to bring that up, to bring up her disgrace and her dishonor, but she always had to fall back on that with him, knowing that if she made a move at the wrong time, the wrong moment, he would be able to simply do the same as he had before. But, she also noted, he was not overly armed at the moment, fingers resting on the bed frame until the pads of her fingers brushed paper.
Naturally curious, and not at all concerned with the idea that humans often kept sensitive things under their mattresses, the Arrancar lifted the mattress easily, a strength of physical far belied by her petite frame, fishing out a magazine and pack of thin folded paper. She flipped it open, eyebrows lifting.
“Oh, dear.”
>>>>
She reached and Ishida would not look at how her dress shifted, the muscles beneath, no; his stony face belied the quick panic of his mind, groping for an answer, was there anything beneath the bed? No— and dryly, “How noble of you to resist, in light of that.”
He would have pointed out that the presence of those citizens would not change, but, her fall back—Ishida was beginning to tire of hearing it, about his sparing her, though it may have been the headache talking, that, and the intensity of his irritation to find her waiting in his apartment, looking through his bedroom. It may have been that, but Ishida was, without any doubt, with every certainty, tired of the Thunderwitch’s obsession. In the damned City, there seemed very little he could do to be rid of her.
“I won’t kill you just because you’re an interloper with no regard for personal space,” he snapped, temper flaring at this, inhaling, “Simply because I could and others would doesn’t mean I should. Though, I am beginning to think it’d be much less effort to spare you again then continue to deal with this absurdity, and if there was any—“
So taken in his miniature tirade, Ishida’s terrible inclination to hear himself speak at length, he realized, with widened eyes, what she meant to do a moment too late. That—he’d forgotten it, it wasn’t something he thought about, and cool fled through his fingers, or steamed from the heat rising to his cheeks as anxious panic took over.
“G-give that--” Ishida moved from doorframe to bedside in a stride; attempted to rip it from her hands.
>>>
Taken in a fit of excitement, the Privaron laughed aloud, a high-pitched avian noise, and twisted her hands away from him, a pause, before she turned her arms behind her back, hid it behind her, shoulders pressed against the bed frame and a coy smirk on her full lips.
“Ishida, “ She murmured, stifling further laughter, almost innocent in the fact that she was hiding it from him, taking pleasure in the flustered and panicked look on his face, in that she was playing with him like a child who had gotten caught stealing candy. Her innocent act and face that he knew too well hid steel and sharp edges.
“What’s that doing there, ahh?” Cirucci laughed again, more a giggle, wriggling happily in the discovery of what looked to her like something illicit enough, and at having forced him closer.
>>>
His fingers grazed a glossy page and—no, it was gone. Laughing, she laughed at him, and Ishida could have challenged a tomato in color. It isn’t funny! He nearly gasped, caught himself, took a halting step toward her as the instinctive, single-minded drive of getitbackgetitback wanted him to lean around her, reaching, wanted his arms and hands as close as need be, to fumble with hers and recapture it.
But she leaned against the bed frame and Ishida had not completely lost his head, instead he settled for a step back, edging away though he wanted to lunge forward in a manic scramble for the magazine. As if space would cool both skin and mind. Seeking a cool attitude was a lost cause, at this point, his face tight with an embarrassed, furious grimace. Made worse, all the worse by that look on her face, as if he was in the wrong and had caught him in something terrible when she, she had been the one to break in, to invade his privacy! No, not innocent, he had long known, more like a bully, tossing his knapsack to some goon a few feet behind him, except this wasn’t a knapsack, this was---
“I—I don’t have to explain that! N-not, not to you!” Unlike his typical responses of this kind, this lacked its cool superiority, it was hissy, quick and hotly spoken, alarm in its frequency. He held out an expectant (desperate hand), his chin lifted in some dubious attempt at long-lost self-possession. “Give it here, Thunderwitch!”
>>>
She bit her bottom lip, smirking around it, and brought the magazine out from behind her back, bringing up her knees, skin contrasted by the vibrant purple garters, for all the world acting exceedingly immature at the moment, shooting a look up at him through thick eyelashes, coy and inviting even as she was cruel.
“Looks like something~” Cirucci whispered, ignoring his demand for the magazine, flipping though it with fingers that wouldn’t still arching and dancing over images and pages with a sadistic little noise. She paused, flipped back and forth a few times, noticing the trend on the pages. She supposed it wasn’t all that bad, for a teenaged human male. They were all clad, these women, what were they, nurses?, albeit quite suggestive, but no wear near truly scandalous, however much he acted they were.
“You like women in white uniforms~” The Privaron crooned, turning the magazine against her chest to point at the pictures to him.
>>>
As Ishida resolved that another futile attempt on its recovery would only humiliate him further, and yet, could not prevent a strangled sound in his throat that never made it to word. The failed protest—it wasn’t something! The invitation in her striking eyes augmented both fury and embarrassment, and what Ishida wouldn’t have given to suck the blood out of his face.
Perhaps his overreaction had made it seem much more criminal than it had to be, but, Ishida could employ logic even through the blood swamping his head: the fact that it had been under the mattress had doomed him from the start. He let the seconds tick by as she flipped through it, not counted by an unseen clock but the hard drum of his heart in his red ears. Excruciating time, yet, employed to calm down, to think of it as less, to scramble back toward a stance that would enable him to shrug it off.
Ruined. Ishida outright flailed, or nearly, his arms seizing up in front of him, defensive. “I—“ His eyes fell to the images, prim white uniforms that were rarely practical in actual Hospital work, the crosses centered on their petite hats. “I do not!”
There was an implication he could read, or jumped to in over-defensive anxiety, the cruel tease in her eyes and the stark white of her dress, and Ishida would deny. Completely, completely different—not that he, to begin with, even..! His fingers twitched as his arms fell back to his sides, stiff and near-trembling.
“This—this is ridiculous,” Ishida huffed, his hand at his glasses, pushing them too hard up his nose. “I refuse to—“ another (harsher) sound not articulated. He turned to remove himself from the room, really, let her think she had some right! It was only—junk, material junk.
>>>
“You seem to~” Cirucci murmured, draped one arm up and over the edge of the bed, fingers tracing patterns into the sheets as she kept the pages displayed against her dress, knees up and legs akimbo, altogether sprawled, and she knew by experience what image she presented, what it seemed she offered by the mere stance and lay of limb and curve of spine.
“Or why else would Shiro Megane-Kun have this there, hmm?” She stopped a glower at his back, wanted to snap him back by Golondrina’s wires curling tight around his neck until it bleed, cut by that steel, but no, not yet. Not yet.
“Ah, and… didn’t he want it back?” She held it out, not too far from her body however, that he could snatch it and go, no, close enough that he had to approach her, come to her, within distance of a strike as if a dare to walk within range of something dangerous and beautiful.
“Because Cirucci thinks… mmm, what would people think?” She tutted, licked her lips, and dropped her voice low as a conspirator’s whisper. “What would O~ri~hi~me think?”
>>>
The second appeal to turning away: it removed her from his sight, the vision of her posture, the dance of her fingers on the sheets beneath which he slept, seated, provoking, the way the hem fell over her thighs and their shape. An explicit offer; Ishida rejected it with the curt pivot, the rigid line of his back.
“What – What I have under my—it doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he worked, the control of his voice somewhat diminished by the thread of boiling frustration beneath it. A frustration entirely for this situation, for her breaking in and proceeding to humiliate him in the most asinine of ways. Entirely.
His head turned, a minimal rotation, chin pointing near to her direction and down. His eyes, narrowed and dark with how very unamused he was, analyzing the placement of the magazine in relation to her body, to his stand. If he were to squint, Ishida could believe he would see the outline of a web, silken, beautiful for all that it was deadly, and the spider at its center. She thought him an easily manipulated fool, an underestimation he could not stomach, and yet, a sobering force on the frenetic nerves of his humiliation.
“It doesn’t matter,” he gritted out, and flinched, almost, in part restrained, at Inoue-san’s name. The blush that had been fading pink darkened once more. “Something as unimportant, as,” (filthy?) “Inane as that, I can’t imagine why sh—anyone would care.”
>>>
The Privaron shook the magazine, fluttering the pages against her breasts, black tinted nails pressed against the thick glossed paper. She ignored the flush on his face, though she took pleasure in it, levered her palm against the frame and slunk up to the mattress itself, perched lightly on the bed’s edge and still waving the magazine about.
“Ishida doesn’t care if they know?” She invited him to take it, flipping her hair back with a careless gesture, just wanted him to get close enough, just needed him to come in to range all flustered and embarrassed.
>>>
His body had turned to match the direction of his chin, not to face her entirely once more but the impetus toward the door lost. Behind his lenses his eyes closed, an ostensible show of grasping for patience, the muscle that jerked in the tightness of his jaw evidence of it. But, also; so that he would not have to look at her, to match sight to the sound of the pages, her perch, the vicious intent of a bird of prey beneath her veil of teasing, of dainty woman. What Ishida had known before he’d learned it, against the arm of her couch, in his last bed, against the wall before she tore his neck, snapped his wrist. It was not fear but practicality that maintained his distance.
“No,” he lied, even as the terrible thought of Kurosaki’s reaction hit him. “They?” he asked, newly derisive as his voice evened into neutrality, reminding himself of fact even as he informed her. He lifted his eyebrows, the red having faded again to pink. “I would remind the Thunderwitch that I have no friends within the City. When I leave this place, something like this … magazine and any juvenile stir you might hope to cause would be forgotten, as well.”
>>>
“Don’t lie,” Cirucci cautioned, rolling over on to her stomach and propping her arms under her breasts, idly flipping through the magazine, for all intents studying each picture, dog earring a few pages with appreciative murmurs.
“Ishida is friends with the bow wielder. With Szayel Aporro’s pet. With the science experiement. With darling Light.” Evidence of her intent to own everything about him, that she kept such tabs, small boots kicking lazily as she spoke.
>>>
“Acquaintances,” he dismissed, reminded, looking at a point on the headboard above her, to the left. It was near déjà vu, a memory of the Thunderwitch aloft on a pillar far above him. Here, at least, there was no Pesshe to destroy his bluff. Careful not to personify them with names, to indicate a degree of intimacy. He ticked them off, one hand lifted, four fingers, thumb already curled into palm. Bland, dry words, a complete difference from minutes before.
“The bow wielder and I both frequent the archery range.” Index bowed. “The ... cat girl and I have discussions relating to the City and similar mechanics, but aside from her… irritating devotion to healing, the connection ends there.” Pinky. “I ally myself, nor count myself close to no shinigami,” Middle. ”and I barely know Yagami-san… indeed, after witnessing a dream of his, I would hesitate before becoming any closer than that.” Ring.
“Why should it matter what they think?” Ishida shrugged, regretting for once the size of this apartment. A little larger than his last, there was no desk in his bedroom, nor a second chair.
>>>
Cirucci did not raise her gaze from the magazine, held up her own hand, gloved in white that cut off at the first knuckle, needing bare skin to manipulate Golondrina’s complex wiring.
“You go with him to the archery range.” Index bowed. “You won’t call her Szayel Aporro’s pet, which she is, and you’re making her a dress despite her constant whining about “woe, do I really have to wear a dress?” Her voice affected a cringing simper with that. Pinky. “You attacked her freak of a father, and probably feel some masculine care for her.” Middle. “You care enough to warn him about me on a personal scale, and continue speaking with him. Ring.
“That’s why.”
>>>
He had no room for surprise at her attention to detail; aside from a few errors, it had all be rather obvious. No, it was more irritation, evidenced by the thin line of his mouth. He kept tabs on the Thunderwitch out of what could only be common sense, but this, this was an unappreciated mark of her obsession. It would have been best left alone, yet, Ishida could not help nitpick.
“Wrong,” he sighed. “It is useful to compare talent, to set mark by. I call them by name because that is how humans interact formally, I am making her a dress because I enjoy it, and I—“ His voice lost that now tired neutrality, becoming hard, a brief, fierce edge that written journal comments could not adequately express “—I did not attack Kurotsuchi Mayuri for his daughter.”
A return to feigned indifference. “I would warn anyone foolish enough to ask you to dinner about you, Thunderwitch. Do what you will with the magazine, only kindly, do it out of my apartment.” And off my bed! He gestured to the door.
>>>
She finally turned from the magazine, licking a finger idly and turning a page that had stuck to another, watching him blandly.
“I like it here.” The Privaron stated simply, for added emphasis, stretched out across the bed with a small murmur of satisfactions, spine arching and hands twitching in the motion above her head. What was unsaid?
Make me.
>>>
It did figure: as soon as he had mastered the art of looking at the magazine without blushing, no less in another’s hands, a woman’s hands, the Thunderwitch took over his bed. The sinuous bend of her spine accompanied by that sound; both an aggravation at how she flaunted the challenge, and something else, best ignored, best left for when night fell in an empty room and he rigorously forgot the afternoon, where her skin had touched. Arrancar, Privaron, not— he swallowed.
Wisdom: Walk out. Problem: She could very well wait. Moving apartments time and time again was infeasible when this would be the result. In sheer physical strength, the Privaron outmatched the Quincy. Question: Why should the Quincy be forced to rely on physical strength?
His patience had run dry, the set returned to his jaw and withholding a sigh as he considered the pendant, ever-present against his palm. “I’ll only say it one more time, Thunderwitch. You’ll find then how good my manners have been. Get out.”
>>>
“Going to shoot me, Ishida?” She almost dared him, though, hidden carefully behind her pride, behind her temptations, was a hint of fear.
“Going to shoot me right here, on the basis of not moving? Not because I’ve killed, not because I’ve attacked you, but because I won’t get off your bed?” Cirucci very nearly laughed, but it would have been too light for this, too high-pitched and grating. She looked back to the magazine with an idle glance, slowly shifted. She slipped onto her knees, rear in the air, legs spread a bit, breasts pressed against the mattress and her arms stretched out in front of her, head laid calmly against them, watching him, smirking coyly, an obvious imitation of one of the images printed.
“Because this doesn’t appeal to you?”
>>>
He would not, did not dignify her taunts, her goading with an immediate reply. It was the end of leniency, a refusal to be caught up in another web of limbs, exhaustion and the headache that had never quite gone away, pounding back in the wake of his panic.
To his shame, he recognized the pose, could have recited the page number and the statistics, the story of Miss Margaret Sheldon. Ishida recoiled, the reaction less energetic than the previous, but there, tightly bound by his drive for control that drove a terrible pain where jaw hooked beneath ear. Tightly bound, tightly wound; Ishida swallowed again and wrenched his eyes from her, from her body, from that imitated smile ruined by the look of her eyes.
“That has nothing to do with it,” he forced the words, even as his resolve weakened. Insane, insane, how could he even ready a bow against her while she was doing such a thing?!
>>>
“Then what’s it about, hmm?” The Privaron hid her delight momentarily by turning her head, turning the page, moving again, a roll onto her back, one arm above her head, over dark purple nearly black hair that tumbled down about her face, a sweet face when she wished it to be, her other hand lain limp beneath her breasts, both legs tucked up, one under the other in a smooth line from thigh to calf.
She was almost daring him, daring him to attack her while she was in a position so vulnerable, head tipped back with neck exposed, stomach exposed, a subservient position that seemed so adverse to violence or pain.
>>>
Miss Alisson Song, a fan of dog races, her favorite food teriyaki. Ishida had liked her hair the best of all of them, but it was hard to remember, to concentrate on color, length, imagined texture and yield should his fingers be trailing through it. Hard, with a twisted embodiment not feet away, dark hair spilling onto his sheets, body exposed on his bed. Tucking his hand into a fist that lacked determination when, really, he needed it most—Ishida began to feel uncomfortable in the worst way.
It wasn’t about that because damn it, damn him, he couldn’t raise the bow against her, monster acting woman, mimicking docile, feminine poses. Gritting his teeth wouldn’t do him any good. At the wall; he turned his face, his chin, as if to admire the blank space, white paint. Easier.
“I tire of your games, Thunderwitch,” he said, words plain and blunted, suddenly spilling out from the frayed edges of his earlier blasted nerves, the ache in his skull. “I have no patience for this. I would not kill you, but I would attack, to ensure your departure. Whatever you’ve deluded yourself to believe, I do not belong to you, I owe you nothing for the battle you lost, and this pathetic--“ an emphasis on the word, a dangerous one, as Ishida recalled well what happened the last time he had used such a word, “fixation you have, to the extent of noting my relationships with others in the City, waiting on the Opera House, stalking me—it’s old, Thunderwitch.”
Bolstered by the words and the strength of his frustration, how sincerely sickened he was of it, Ishida looked back at the Privaron reclining on his bed and did keep his glare hard. “I refuse to tolerate it any longer.”
>>>
Indeed, as he’s predicted with that word, had he been looking, he would have noticed to undeniable stiffening to muscle and posture, poor, poor, pathetic, Privaron echoing in the back of her skull and bringing her blood to a simmer, harshly pushed aside to focus not on his words, but on the way he held himself.
His pride was something she planned to own one day, as part of him, and it was a proud man he was, but she began to smile, genuinely smile, at the shameful lilt his body took now, the slight hunch to the shoulders stiff and unyielding, the rigid jaw line that spoke of will struggling, and, ahhh, the taught muscles in hips and legs, indicative of the fact that no matter how he thought about it, he had to know she’d won, eliciting such from him and in doing so, staking that much more claim on him and his pride.
“I’m old, Shiro Megane-Kun.” She reminded gently, let her voice ebb from the wicked edge with a sigh, dropping from the seductive pose to simply curl on her side, head pillowed in the crook of gloved arm, watching softly, though this, too, was an innocent sort of pose, something vulnerable and weak, for as much as she hated to appear so, she made sacrifices to get what she wanted.
“When you were born Cirucci had been dead and heartless years and years.”
>>>
His words, the little speech, had not had quite the effect he wanted. While they may not have impressed her, there was no volatile reaction, no desisting from her posing on his bed.
Ishida realized, with belated aggravation, the tie to his stance, that words were only as impressive as the man who spoke them, and it was too late, even as he pushed back his shoulders and sought for a less incriminating tension. The truth curled within her smile; it was in defiance of that, even with the evidence of his physical defeat in front of him, that he corrected that binding hunch. Without breaking his gaze he would straighten, relax his hands, staring his shame in its face as if to say—it would take an infinite lot more to wound his pride in anything but the short-term. The weakness of the body, not of the mind, not of the spirit.
Canting his head to the side, Ishida regarded her, the old Privaron striking her young pose, her body rounded in on itself; his expression unreadable. The young had defeated the old, once, and the old would not forget it. Ishida was unimpressed with age. “Then you are old, Cirucci Thunderwitch. You are old; I don’t care and I’m not interested.”
>>>
“Fine, don’t care.” Her eyes closed, another defense against his shooting her, for, truly, she wondered, would he shoot someone who wasn’t even looking at him? A small sigh, a bit of a nuzzle into elbow and sheets, and she shifted a bit as if seeking a more comfortable spot.
“I’m tired, and you don’t care, but that’s fine, too.” It was a pouting voice, not quite a whine or tease but hinting at them for interpretation. By all appearances, she planned on sleeping right then and there, free arm moving lazily, blindly, groping for the magazine and closing it with a small pat.
“Cirucci won’t tell.” The Privaron noted, patting it once more. “It will be our secret, Shiro Megane-Kun.”
>>>
An aggravating fact: Ishida could not relax completely around the Thunderwitch – not that he ever relaxed completely around anyone. In her presence he was never unguarded, a necessary paranoia for her next move. Learned from her as his enemy, and from their encounters within the City. This, her claim to be tired, her yielding of the magazine, this peace set off an alarm.
Had Ishida possessed less composure, less etiquette, he might have snorted. Very generous of her when for the Thunderwitch to do something so petty as reveal what Ishida kept under his mattress would have given her very little reward.
He could, at least, interpret the obvious with accuracy. He asked it flatly, unable to claim shock at her audacity. An obvious answer to his question: “What are you doing?”
She couldn’t—actually—be planning to fall asleep. In his bed. Ishida would not gape, would not again recoil, but he could not have looked less amused. Foolish; he took a step closer to the bed. “Get up, Thunderwitch, and get out.”
>>>
“M’tired.” Cirucci mumbled, making an irritable noise and turning around, body still curled on her side to face the wall, as if to deny him his right to decide what she did in his bed, though in reality it was to hide the smirk. He’d come closer. Just a bit closer, just a bit more, and she could have her last little reward, her last little chip at his pride, and be on her way.
“You go away, let me sleep.” Her voice was heavy, breathy, though the words were cunning, aimed at making him just off guard enough, just thrown off enough, to allow her fun, shifting still to be seeking her comfortable spot, one hand pushing dark hair back behind her ear as she settled once more with a small sigh of cold, dead, breath.
>>>
“No, you aren’t,” he replied, voice sharp and prying. Should have known better, did know better. Ishida had not lost his mind, had not lost his earlier sense of knowing the wisdom of distance, and was not quite convinced by this play at being tired when only moments before she had been animated, sliding into to poses intended to make him fidget and squirm. No doubt this had a similar goal.
His frown grew, exasperation denting into his cheeks as he considered the Privaron. His gaze flicked down to the sheets, covers ends that had been tucked beneath the mattress until she lifted it. Perhaps he could grab the end and, with a sudden, upward motion, roll her off?
As soon as he had thought it, he shook his head. Ridiculous. And he wouldn’t fear getting closer to his own bed, another step, impatience sending his hand toward her shoulder, as if to shake, as if she were a girl and not a Privaron, though with less polite caution, less gentle force, as he would have intended with a girl.
>>>
It took a supreme force of will to keep still that long, to feign low and shallow breath that began to even, to deepen, as if she were giving in to sleep, giving in to being tired and ready to drift off.
Of course, she wasn’t. She had been tempted, somewhat, to let him simply shake her shoulder with no retribution, no other course of action but a sleepy “go away” and a tighter curl against the wall, a burying of her face into the sheets, just to see if she could get him more off guard, but no, she couldn’t help herself.
Cirucci’s hand snapped tight around his wrist, wrenched him down even as she moved herself onto her back again, pulling the male, larger than her but physically weaker, down to her, on top of her, taking the opportunity to take her aforethought of prize, a fervent brush of lips and kiss, not against his neck in the claim she drew in pain but more personal, on his mouth, her hand still on his wrist and her other fisted in his shirt.
>>>
Not a surprise, no—his eyes barely widened, this time, and Ishida did not pull back, sinking weight into heels to dig down to risk his wrist for his body. An expected reaction and he fell almost too easily—he might have legitimized it later with one thing and refused to with another.
Yielded, at least, insofar as he had anticipated it and made no great resistance against it; accepted futility once she had taken hold of his wrist. The wrench had him with one knee, balancing, digging into the bedspread as the second balance, his hand, splayed out five-fingered as it fell, a few inches from her neck. He had expected her to go for the neck. She didn’t, and Ishida surprised, no, horrified himself, that another he would not legitimize:
He almost kissed her back. Did. Reflexes split between disgust and the shame of want, but want had never been so sickeningly strong. If before he had wondered, absently, if his bed would smell like her, he could inhale now and make of it as wonderful, or terrible, like the chill of her lips, how cold her hand felt locked around his wrist.
Her lips met his and he did not turn his face, his cheek to her mouth, but let her, pressed into it for a moment, pushed chest against fist as if he meant to draw closer. The shock of it hit; his mind caught up, Ishida tried, then, to pull away.
>>>
Cirucci moaned against his mouth, a noise not wrenched or unbidden but given with the express purpose of exciting, arousing, tempting him, though she allowed him to pull away slightly, hand in his shirt and around his wrist preventing him from moving too far, just enough that he could separate their lips, though as she spoke, her breath still ghosted across the underside of his jaw, his throat, her own voice a throaty warble of sound.
“Ishida,” She knew enough about bedding males not to call him Shiro Megane-Kun at this moment, knew better than to force too much. She’d come for that one attack on his pride, one set goal, and she’d reached it. Everything else now was a bonus prize for her own wounded ego damaged by others stepping in to her dreams. “Shouldn’t have to just look at pictures~”
It was a blatant offer, evidenced by the arc of spine to press her chest against his, the bare thigh slinking up his hip, and a rational mind behind the tempting exterior that was reveling in his weakness.
>>>
The betrayal of the body; Ishida resisted it, even as her moan rushed blood down—not toward his cheeks, and for once, he’d have rather been blushing. Her breath, a cool, moist whisper that made him grimace even as a shiver thrilled down his spine; more weight shifted against that knee. He leaned back against her hold, his shirt straining, no buttons popping because, well, he didn’t wear buttons, but threads straining—
“No.” He grit out, infuriated with the waver in his voice. His eyes clenched shut, before they could sweep down, drink in the sight of her, the swell of her breasts and the shape of her face, round eyes and long lashes and an expression that should have disturbed, should have helped remind him of her nature, like the skull in her hair, yet, oddly, bizarrely, served to excite. “I don’t want-- any of it—“
His breath came, quicker, the quiet gasp in and hissing out as she pressed, and her leg slid, his skin beneath cloth felt on fire. Ishida’s mind spun past the headache, and principle, logic, disgust (for Ishida, not for her, why not for her, a monster) fought. His hand, beside her neck, jerked up to clasp against her shoulder and push her down, try.
>>>
Unwilling to let go quite so easily, she decided to press a little more, following the press of his hand down but her fingers slinking up to change hold from fabric to his own shoulder, pulling him with her in a ridiculous game of tug of war.
“Yes, you do.” The Privaron chided gently, kissed softly at the underside of his throat instead of biting savagely as she had in the past, gentle touch of lip and tongue, warm and inviting, a stark contrast to any vicious image she’d created. “You say you don’t,” Her leg wrapped around his waist, heel against the inside of his thigh, noting his arousal easily as close as she fit herself against him, “But you do.”
Idly, she wondered if she could snare him this time, which would be a great advancement on the “breaking his pride” front. Maybe. But Cirucci set those thoughts aside to writhe a bit against his hips, a cruelly sensitive touch of hip grinding against hip, trying to shove his mind, young, hormonal despite his maturity, past logic and into the instinctual.
>>>
He could feel his arm forced into the bend, elbow curving out as she pulled him with her, despite his attempt to push away. Ishida shuddered as she kissed his throat, forcing his head back, his neck curving toward spine and adam’s apple in a taught bob. His shoulders, bones, and muscle and skin, pulling back, and he did want it.
Shamed, for once clumsy fingers under the blanket, long, cold showers. Ishida wanted it, pent up and wound tight, sixteen years old and hungry for her curves, the taste of her tongue. But he shook his head, rebelling against body, needing a shield and considering the pendant, the bow that could deflect. “No,” he muttered, and said it again, a muttered chant that groaned when she pressed into him. His wrist jerked against her hold, one leg slipping from bed to floor and using a foothold as leverage.
Shaking fingers slid, relaxed on her shoulder, fell over sleeve to cold skin. A clumsy, involuntary caress, his eyes shut so hard he saw spots of red, flares of red as she ground and his hips jerked in response. No, but yes; desperation began to focus on the pendant, on the energy to flare up as a pentacled, web-like bow, anything, the defense his human muscles could not provide, a necessity now before he lost his head.
>>>
Cirucci smirked against his throat, murmured, crooned little moans against his skin and in between soft traces of pattern up jugular, windpipe, jawline, slipped farther up against him so that her breasts pressed along his chest even as she squirmed, hips grinding lightly against him, against his arousal, seeking to push just a bit more, just a bit more-
But then she felt the energy gathering, felt him preparing to form that bow, the arrows that haunted her even still, and while she did not panic, she did reevaluate her position, gave a throaty laugh against him before biting on his neck as he expected, but not hard, not enough to break skin, just enough that the skin beneath tensed in preparation for such but did not come to it. Her hand left his shoulder to ghost up to his face, caressing gently as she fit against him to kiss briefly at his lips before she released her hold on him, flopped back onto the mattress, propped on her elbows.
The Privaron’s chest heaved, a flush to her own skin if only from the arousal she’d dredged up in her own body, hair a bit disheveled and panting for breath she didn’t quite need, watching him carefully, nearly warily, drawing her legs back together and smoothing skirt.
>>>
The pressure of another body, before imagined and now felt, too real, and suppressing instinct left Ishida dumb, unable to react but to strain back, repulsion, revulsion in his scowl but badly acted. Gritting his teeth didn’t prevent the unevenness of his breath, small sounds choked in his throat, louder as she ground. Her bite, his hiss, a muscle spasm of desire, but his neck couldn’t stretch any farther back. Defense, desperation:
In anticipation of her kiss he rolled his lips back over teeth.
She let go and Ishida staggered back, panting, stumbled almost to the wall. The bow flared around the shape of his fist, quivering fingers biting short nails into his hand as he raised his arm, the large bow aimed in her direction. Ishida forced himself to stand straight, tall, even with his arousal obvious, forced his other hand ‘s back over his mouth though his tongue wanted to lick over it. His hand fell, trembling fingers wanting to trail over his neck, callused tips finding a pattern in her kisses, instead gathering reishi from the air, forming a ready arrow for the firing.
“Get… out,” Ishida demanded, his voice a gravelly gasp, eyes catching on where her skirt covered thigh and smooth skin before focusing on her eyes.
>>>
“Going to shoot me now, Shiro Megane-Kun?~” She was proud, too proud of her handiwork, head held high, eyes clear and focused, meeting his gaze levelly and without fear, without panic, though she hid her fear of those arrows where he refused to look, in her hands on her thighs and skirt hem, the smallest trembling in the pale fingers when she recalled the piercing of Seele Schneider in her breast. But she was too emboldened, slipping off his bed and coming to stand before him, not too close, but close enough that she could reach if she tried, the level of his arrow at the hole in her torso, her saketsu chain.
“You can’t do it.” Her voice was low, almost deadened, saddened, as if he was a disappointment, or maybe she was, she couldn’t tell. “I’m too human to you, Shiro Megane-Kun.” Her lips, slightly fuller from insistent kisses against his skin, moved slowly, with purpose, and her fear still kept hidden in the slight trembling in her hands by her side. “I care about you too much, hmm?~” The word care was a stretch. Oh, she cared alright. No one else was allowed to hurt him, no, that was her job. No one was to shame him, break him, no, that right belonged to her, and even now she was reveling in the shame he displayed.
“Don’t worry, though.” A gloved hand came up, the shaking suppressed just long enough for cold fingers, a reminder that she was dead, to brush against his knuckles, before she removed herself from his arrowsight, sauntering out the door and out of his apartment with a self-satisfied smirk on cruel painted lips.
“It’s our little secret.”
>>>
Can’t? A laughable thought, an insult to his ability, to the coldness of his heart and his resolve. And yet, even as he had sneered, even as blue eyes sparked and narrowed in something like hatred, hatred for her, for himself, for the third time. Even that, but he hesitated—the arrow a burn, the reishi string digging into his fingers. Then, it was too late. She was gone, even that smirk, especially that smirk, increasing the pressure below.
Frustration could have released the arrow and watched something shatter, but control, the need for it pulled his hand back in a slow released that let the energy dissolve. Another step back and Ishida slumped against the wall, her words cycling through his head—the headache gone, the ticking returned, a pulse like the blood, a throbbing like—
Not human, too human? The secret he loathed to know. Ishida resolved: if she dared show her face in his apartment again, he would shoot her on sight. The determination didn’t help him in the present, with skin sensitive and body flushed with want. His breath still broken, Ishida dropped his hand, fingers hesitating at the waistband of his trousers. No—refusal a fist. Waiting until his breathing had neared normality, Ishida walked in studied steps to the bathroom, leaning over the tub to turn the water to a frigid spray.
Rating; R
Characters; Cirucci {
thunderwitch} & Ishida {anti_buttons}Summary; In order to get a bit of her dignity back after her dreams were witnessed by her would-be opponant, Cirucci takes advantage of the fact that she's
Log;
Shiro Megane-Kun kept a nice apartment.
Cirucci’s thin fingers trailed lightly across the surface of his kitchen, cool wood, porcelain, and glass. It was quiet, he wasn’t home. She supposed that he really should have been keeping out better. For all he kept his little reiatsu hidden, it apparently hadn’t occurred to him that she’d spent days crouched on the top of the Opera House, waiting for him to pass through the square so she could follow him home, until she woke and left Dordonii’s to come here.
She hadn’t planned on coming so soon. But he’d… seen. He’d seen, even though she’s tried not to sleep, had made Alfons come and sit with her while she rested, having to have been awake in case the shinigami had decided to attack based on that worthless healer’s finger. But it hadn’t helped. Dordonii had seen. Alfons had seen. Tony had seen.
Shiro Megane-Kun had seen.
The Privaron tried to stifle the rage in her chest, slowly sinking on to the human’s couch, propping her chin on her arms, tucking her legs up under her. He would be back eventually. And she would be there. He’d see. He’d see.
>>>
Even with a project as complex as formal wear, Ishida did allow himself breaks. He fought the crick in his neck and the ache in his wrist, the dent of the needle in his callused finger tip, the drone of a machine that hummed in his skull even after he had removed the power.
Errands. Today: a few of the necessary groceries, including aspirin. Ishida was no stranger to headaches, but the one he had woken up with today had finally necessitated the purchase of pills. Out of decorum, of a simple understanding of proper public behavior, Ishida had not stopped to open the bottle and take a pill or five. His sensitivity to reiatsu, sharpened by a mix of paranoia and that age-old need for perfection as a Quincy, a hunter of hollows, lifted the hairs on his neck even as he entered the building.
She had not bothered in the least; her reiatsu completely unhidden. His remained stifled as he stood outside the door on the second floor. He wished, as his head began to pound, that he had taken the damn pill as soon as he’d purchased the bottle. Ishida considered the door, his door, sealing a lid on his imagination before it could fathom the many ways in which she might be waiting. Logic reminded him of the warnings he had received, of her intentions he had read, regarding waiting in the Square and tracking him.
That this did not surprise him, merely irritate with the immediacy of the problem and its likely after-effects, reminded Ishida of dreams, of I know where you are. She hadn’t been bluffing, then. He reached up, plastic sliding and scratching against his arms—sunflower yellow handles falling from wrist to elbow as he pressed his fingers against his forehead, dropped them to push up his glasses. His other arm curled around a heavy, large brown paper bag, Ishida set his jaw and opened the door.
On the couch. His eyes swept over her as if over air, and closing the door behind him, Ishida walked into his kitchen. He knew he had not quite succeeded in keeping the tension from bunching between his shoulder, clenching in his teeth. Plastic and paper rustled as he began to unpack the bags.
On finding the aspirin, quick, hard movements removed the cap, shook four into the palm of his hand, and tipped them back into his mouth.
>>>
She’d left her reiatsu open, not stifling it as she had when she had been stalking after him, stifling it so badly, masking it so deep, that she had sweat and the hollow hole in her torso had ached with it contained suchly. The Arrancar had wanted, was curious, to see if the human would walk away, ignore her and leave her there, or come in despite.
She was delighted that he had come. She hated to be ignored.
“Not going to greet me, Shiro Megane-Kun?” Cirucci murmured, her voice barely audible from the other room. She’d gotten comfortable, sprawled across his couch and idly kicking her feet, a façade of calm and relaxation despite the inner turmoil behind the mask, the tightening in her belly that told her to move, to attack, to release her blade and kill. But she held herself back.
She waited, coiled and ready to spring.
>>>
Ishida swallowed, replaced the cap, and resumed putting away his groceries, forcing his mind onto the mundane task when it wanted to wander toward the unmistakable one room over. Instinct, his senses, they hissed danger, get out!. Logic took confidence in hand and knew, if grudgingly, better. If he left again, she would no doubt stay until he returned.
He ignored her words, his eyes narrowing at an unsuspecting pepper in his hand. Doesn’t she have anything better to do, he wondered, made fierce and careless in his feigned cool as he shoved the vegetable into a lower, refrigerator drawer with much more force than was necessary. A shinigami to dismember?
Folding the paper bag as well as the plastic and storing them beneath the sink, Ishida straightened with the realization that he had finished with the groceries, and so, had to grasp for excuses to keep out of that room. He would not sigh, would not admit the frustration pulsing in his head. How irritating. Finishing Zaheela-san’s dress would have to wait. He was so close, but attracting the Thunderwitch’s attention to it would be much too troublesome.
The kitchen was of a reasonable size, a little cramped, a counter jutting awkward between table and kitchen wares. He circled, pulled out a chair with hands that gripped too tightly, and sat down.
Damn his need for order, for cleanliness: not a book was left on the table, not a scrap for distraction, all put away, shelved and organized. His meager collection since arriving in the City. He reviewed the rules of differentiation mentally.
>>>
A pout began to creep onto her face. He was ignoring her. Ignoring her, and he had no right. After what he’d seen, he had no right. She would have to work at him, she knew, but for him, for the human who’d stripped her of every dignity in some false nobility of mercy, she would work a little. At least she could go whine to Dordonii about it later if it didn’t work.
“Rude.” She called, slipping up from the couch and making her way towards the room she’d identified as his bedroom. “Shiro Megane-Kun had better manners, I thought.” The Privaron ran her hand down to the doorknob, turning it and opening the door.
“Don’t like your company?” Cirucci baited a bit, wanted him to reply, to be angry, to try and make her leave. She said she wished to own him, and she did. The Arrancar wanted him dependant, helpless, just as powerless as she had been, wanted his pride broken and his morality lost.
It never occurred to her that it could be because he had shown her just how worthless she could be.
>>>
Her footsteps, the direction of her voice, they told him where Cirucci headed. Ishida could feel his shoulders hitching up, aggravation increasing the tension, that ache--that, that may have contributed to his diminished patience. The ache so difficult, so constant, that it had synced so well with the ticking to make it difficult to realize that it had gone, that he no longer heard it.
Only a room, he told himself, a room that happened to contain his bed, clothing, happened to be where he slept. There was no need to think differently of it, to consider it private, after all, this was not a home. … Yet, Ishida found his hands had become fists, nails biting into his palms, knuckles against skin that might have been transparent.
Moving toward her; that would be allowing her to win. A rush to the room, some frantic attempt to get her away from it, no. Speaking, acknowledging her, would be her victory, but Ishida could see that pretending she wasn’t there would only get him so far. He raised his voice, disdain like ice.
“An uninvited guest, that is to say, an intruder, should not expect to be greeted with good manners.” Struggling to recall the Sum Rule, but…
>>>
“Cirucci dreamed you invited her.” The Privaron called back, leaving his door open, inviting, as she began poking around, having waited to do so until he was present in order to annoy and frustrate. Idly she looked in drawers, on shelves, in closets, occasionally pausing to investigate something, like his clothing.
“Such dull colors.” She noted, another random comment of an insult. She wasn’t quite sure how long she was willing to play, but she was afraid she was already getting bored with him refusing to play, trying to be better than her.
He was always trying to be better than her, and it drove her mad.
>>>
Was she—Ishida leaned in the chair, over the table, his neck craned, his ears straining over the slowly subsiding ache in his forehead. Rummaging through his things?! He nearly knocked the chair over with the involuntary lurch of horror that seized him, the desire to bury a burning face into his hands overwhelming for all that it was juvenile.
A forced swallow, a forced control, and Ishida stood up from the table. He ought to know better, he knew it, repeated it to himself as he walked out of the kitchen and toward the bedroom. Nothing to be ashamed of, of course not, not a thing, and there was most certainly not a flush peeking out of his collar, crawling up his neck and grasping for chin.
“That doesn’t count” he pointed out, his hand tightened on the doorknob as he stood in the frame. “As it happens, I do not select my clothing with the intention to garner your approval, Thunderwitch—they suit me fine. Now—“
Hard, too hard not to panic as he watched her getting into his things, for restraint and cool to slip through his fingers and a spastic demand to replace them. Out, out, OUT—“Leave.”
A useless order, of course. Ishida refused to speculate on how well he knew, or could predict, the Thunderwitch – simplicity, that was all, attribute it to her simplicity.
>>>
Ah, there he was~
Cirucci turned her head from where she was crouching by his closet, slender hands rifling through his clothing.
“She could probably suggest a few things.” The look on her face was obvious now that she’d gotten that rise, a wicked, smug, expression evident in the angle of violet eyes and the curve on painted lips, enjoying the sight of him, annoyed, angry, so very demanding. Such a dear, sometimes.
“Ah, well, she doesn’t want to leave yet, though.” The Thunderwitch left his closet with a small tsking of chastisement, and turned past his drawers to the bed, flopping down onto the edge and kicking her feet, idly running her hands over the sheets, picking at the corner and inspecting the fabric. But she was bored with that, slipping down to elbows and knees to look under his bed, back to him.
“Very clean in here.”
>>>>
Invasive. Reassuring himself--no, reminding himself of the plain fact that there was no privacy to be invaded, not a home, not his, merely substitutes until the day came that he left the City. Whatever it was, the thought did not help. The aspirin could not work quickly enough; his teeth began to hurt for how tightly they were clenched.
His eyes narrowed, his lips thinned, at that expression on her face. To be expected, he had known what she wanted, and yet, he couldn’t simply let her do it, allow her to think she could flounce around his bedroom unchecked. It made it that much easier to think trespasser, rather than girl, girl, a girl in his room.
“I would be only too glad to escort her out,” he retorted, voice hard, as if threatening physical force behind it. But, he wouldn’t have been—to allow her free reign was unacceptable, but to move closer, to take hold of an arm or wrist, rough contact he hesitated to consider toward a woman to begin with, hesitated more in this room—
Ridiculous. He was being ridiculous. She looked under his bed and Ishida tried, tried for indifference, looking just above her head and not at her, on all fours, the shortness of her skirt. Calm; composure, should be easy. “I’d like to keep it that way. Do you really have nothing better to do than to pick at my possessions?”
His tone meant to imply, through sheer, cold condescension, that it spoke very little of her, that she would resort to something so petty, so silly. A shift, doorknob finally released as he pressed his index and middle fingers lightly between his eyebrows. “A war to rush into, a shinigami to threaten?”
>>>>
“Holding off on that for the moment.” Cirucci reached for something under the bed, stretched low to grasp, but in reality was not going for anything, merely baiting, enticing, knowing it flustered him and knowing it bothered. “You know, too many citizens willing to throw themselves in front of some worthless shinigami,” The Privaron made an angry noise when the back of her head hit the wood of the bed frame, withdrawing to sit on her haunches.
“Surprised Shiro Megane-Kun hasn’t tried to kill her yet.” She noted, looking back at him with a deceptively innocent smile. “She not worth sparing again, or…?” It bothered her, to bring that up, to bring up her disgrace and her dishonor, but she always had to fall back on that with him, knowing that if she made a move at the wrong time, the wrong moment, he would be able to simply do the same as he had before. But, she also noted, he was not overly armed at the moment, fingers resting on the bed frame until the pads of her fingers brushed paper.
Naturally curious, and not at all concerned with the idea that humans often kept sensitive things under their mattresses, the Arrancar lifted the mattress easily, a strength of physical far belied by her petite frame, fishing out a magazine and pack of thin folded paper. She flipped it open, eyebrows lifting.
“Oh, dear.”
>>>>
She reached and Ishida would not look at how her dress shifted, the muscles beneath, no; his stony face belied the quick panic of his mind, groping for an answer, was there anything beneath the bed? No— and dryly, “How noble of you to resist, in light of that.”
He would have pointed out that the presence of those citizens would not change, but, her fall back—Ishida was beginning to tire of hearing it, about his sparing her, though it may have been the headache talking, that, and the intensity of his irritation to find her waiting in his apartment, looking through his bedroom. It may have been that, but Ishida was, without any doubt, with every certainty, tired of the Thunderwitch’s obsession. In the damned City, there seemed very little he could do to be rid of her.
“I won’t kill you just because you’re an interloper with no regard for personal space,” he snapped, temper flaring at this, inhaling, “Simply because I could and others would doesn’t mean I should. Though, I am beginning to think it’d be much less effort to spare you again then continue to deal with this absurdity, and if there was any—“
So taken in his miniature tirade, Ishida’s terrible inclination to hear himself speak at length, he realized, with widened eyes, what she meant to do a moment too late. That—he’d forgotten it, it wasn’t something he thought about, and cool fled through his fingers, or steamed from the heat rising to his cheeks as anxious panic took over.
“G-give that--” Ishida moved from doorframe to bedside in a stride; attempted to rip it from her hands.
>>>
Taken in a fit of excitement, the Privaron laughed aloud, a high-pitched avian noise, and twisted her hands away from him, a pause, before she turned her arms behind her back, hid it behind her, shoulders pressed against the bed frame and a coy smirk on her full lips.
“Ishida, “ She murmured, stifling further laughter, almost innocent in the fact that she was hiding it from him, taking pleasure in the flustered and panicked look on his face, in that she was playing with him like a child who had gotten caught stealing candy. Her innocent act and face that he knew too well hid steel and sharp edges.
“What’s that doing there, ahh?” Cirucci laughed again, more a giggle, wriggling happily in the discovery of what looked to her like something illicit enough, and at having forced him closer.
>>>
His fingers grazed a glossy page and—no, it was gone. Laughing, she laughed at him, and Ishida could have challenged a tomato in color. It isn’t funny! He nearly gasped, caught himself, took a halting step toward her as the instinctive, single-minded drive of getitbackgetitback wanted him to lean around her, reaching, wanted his arms and hands as close as need be, to fumble with hers and recapture it.
But she leaned against the bed frame and Ishida had not completely lost his head, instead he settled for a step back, edging away though he wanted to lunge forward in a manic scramble for the magazine. As if space would cool both skin and mind. Seeking a cool attitude was a lost cause, at this point, his face tight with an embarrassed, furious grimace. Made worse, all the worse by that look on her face, as if he was in the wrong and had caught him in something terrible when she, she had been the one to break in, to invade his privacy! No, not innocent, he had long known, more like a bully, tossing his knapsack to some goon a few feet behind him, except this wasn’t a knapsack, this was---
“I—I don’t have to explain that! N-not, not to you!” Unlike his typical responses of this kind, this lacked its cool superiority, it was hissy, quick and hotly spoken, alarm in its frequency. He held out an expectant (desperate hand), his chin lifted in some dubious attempt at long-lost self-possession. “Give it here, Thunderwitch!”
>>>
She bit her bottom lip, smirking around it, and brought the magazine out from behind her back, bringing up her knees, skin contrasted by the vibrant purple garters, for all the world acting exceedingly immature at the moment, shooting a look up at him through thick eyelashes, coy and inviting even as she was cruel.
“Looks like something~” Cirucci whispered, ignoring his demand for the magazine, flipping though it with fingers that wouldn’t still arching and dancing over images and pages with a sadistic little noise. She paused, flipped back and forth a few times, noticing the trend on the pages. She supposed it wasn’t all that bad, for a teenaged human male. They were all clad, these women, what were they, nurses?, albeit quite suggestive, but no wear near truly scandalous, however much he acted they were.
“You like women in white uniforms~” The Privaron crooned, turning the magazine against her chest to point at the pictures to him.
>>>
As Ishida resolved that another futile attempt on its recovery would only humiliate him further, and yet, could not prevent a strangled sound in his throat that never made it to word. The failed protest—it wasn’t something! The invitation in her striking eyes augmented both fury and embarrassment, and what Ishida wouldn’t have given to suck the blood out of his face.
Perhaps his overreaction had made it seem much more criminal than it had to be, but, Ishida could employ logic even through the blood swamping his head: the fact that it had been under the mattress had doomed him from the start. He let the seconds tick by as she flipped through it, not counted by an unseen clock but the hard drum of his heart in his red ears. Excruciating time, yet, employed to calm down, to think of it as less, to scramble back toward a stance that would enable him to shrug it off.
Ruined. Ishida outright flailed, or nearly, his arms seizing up in front of him, defensive. “I—“ His eyes fell to the images, prim white uniforms that were rarely practical in actual Hospital work, the crosses centered on their petite hats. “I do not!”
There was an implication he could read, or jumped to in over-defensive anxiety, the cruel tease in her eyes and the stark white of her dress, and Ishida would deny. Completely, completely different—not that he, to begin with, even..! His fingers twitched as his arms fell back to his sides, stiff and near-trembling.
“This—this is ridiculous,” Ishida huffed, his hand at his glasses, pushing them too hard up his nose. “I refuse to—“ another (harsher) sound not articulated. He turned to remove himself from the room, really, let her think she had some right! It was only—junk, material junk.
>>>
“You seem to~” Cirucci murmured, draped one arm up and over the edge of the bed, fingers tracing patterns into the sheets as she kept the pages displayed against her dress, knees up and legs akimbo, altogether sprawled, and she knew by experience what image she presented, what it seemed she offered by the mere stance and lay of limb and curve of spine.
“Or why else would Shiro Megane-Kun have this there, hmm?” She stopped a glower at his back, wanted to snap him back by Golondrina’s wires curling tight around his neck until it bleed, cut by that steel, but no, not yet. Not yet.
“Ah, and… didn’t he want it back?” She held it out, not too far from her body however, that he could snatch it and go, no, close enough that he had to approach her, come to her, within distance of a strike as if a dare to walk within range of something dangerous and beautiful.
“Because Cirucci thinks… mmm, what would people think?” She tutted, licked her lips, and dropped her voice low as a conspirator’s whisper. “What would O~ri~hi~me think?”
>>>
The second appeal to turning away: it removed her from his sight, the vision of her posture, the dance of her fingers on the sheets beneath which he slept, seated, provoking, the way the hem fell over her thighs and their shape. An explicit offer; Ishida rejected it with the curt pivot, the rigid line of his back.
“What – What I have under my—it doesn’t have anything to do with you,” he worked, the control of his voice somewhat diminished by the thread of boiling frustration beneath it. A frustration entirely for this situation, for her breaking in and proceeding to humiliate him in the most asinine of ways. Entirely.
His head turned, a minimal rotation, chin pointing near to her direction and down. His eyes, narrowed and dark with how very unamused he was, analyzing the placement of the magazine in relation to her body, to his stand. If he were to squint, Ishida could believe he would see the outline of a web, silken, beautiful for all that it was deadly, and the spider at its center. She thought him an easily manipulated fool, an underestimation he could not stomach, and yet, a sobering force on the frenetic nerves of his humiliation.
“It doesn’t matter,” he gritted out, and flinched, almost, in part restrained, at Inoue-san’s name. The blush that had been fading pink darkened once more. “Something as unimportant, as,” (filthy?) “Inane as that, I can’t imagine why sh—anyone would care.”
>>>
The Privaron shook the magazine, fluttering the pages against her breasts, black tinted nails pressed against the thick glossed paper. She ignored the flush on his face, though she took pleasure in it, levered her palm against the frame and slunk up to the mattress itself, perched lightly on the bed’s edge and still waving the magazine about.
“Ishida doesn’t care if they know?” She invited him to take it, flipping her hair back with a careless gesture, just wanted him to get close enough, just needed him to come in to range all flustered and embarrassed.
>>>
His body had turned to match the direction of his chin, not to face her entirely once more but the impetus toward the door lost. Behind his lenses his eyes closed, an ostensible show of grasping for patience, the muscle that jerked in the tightness of his jaw evidence of it. But, also; so that he would not have to look at her, to match sight to the sound of the pages, her perch, the vicious intent of a bird of prey beneath her veil of teasing, of dainty woman. What Ishida had known before he’d learned it, against the arm of her couch, in his last bed, against the wall before she tore his neck, snapped his wrist. It was not fear but practicality that maintained his distance.
“No,” he lied, even as the terrible thought of Kurosaki’s reaction hit him. “They?” he asked, newly derisive as his voice evened into neutrality, reminding himself of fact even as he informed her. He lifted his eyebrows, the red having faded again to pink. “I would remind the Thunderwitch that I have no friends within the City. When I leave this place, something like this … magazine and any juvenile stir you might hope to cause would be forgotten, as well.”
>>>
“Don’t lie,” Cirucci cautioned, rolling over on to her stomach and propping her arms under her breasts, idly flipping through the magazine, for all intents studying each picture, dog earring a few pages with appreciative murmurs.
“Ishida is friends with the bow wielder. With Szayel Aporro’s pet. With the science experiement. With darling Light.” Evidence of her intent to own everything about him, that she kept such tabs, small boots kicking lazily as she spoke.
>>>
“Acquaintances,” he dismissed, reminded, looking at a point on the headboard above her, to the left. It was near déjà vu, a memory of the Thunderwitch aloft on a pillar far above him. Here, at least, there was no Pesshe to destroy his bluff. Careful not to personify them with names, to indicate a degree of intimacy. He ticked them off, one hand lifted, four fingers, thumb already curled into palm. Bland, dry words, a complete difference from minutes before.
“The bow wielder and I both frequent the archery range.” Index bowed. “The ... cat girl and I have discussions relating to the City and similar mechanics, but aside from her… irritating devotion to healing, the connection ends there.” Pinky. “I ally myself, nor count myself close to no shinigami,” Middle. ”and I barely know Yagami-san… indeed, after witnessing a dream of his, I would hesitate before becoming any closer than that.” Ring.
“Why should it matter what they think?” Ishida shrugged, regretting for once the size of this apartment. A little larger than his last, there was no desk in his bedroom, nor a second chair.
>>>
Cirucci did not raise her gaze from the magazine, held up her own hand, gloved in white that cut off at the first knuckle, needing bare skin to manipulate Golondrina’s complex wiring.
“You go with him to the archery range.” Index bowed. “You won’t call her Szayel Aporro’s pet, which she is, and you’re making her a dress despite her constant whining about “woe, do I really have to wear a dress?” Her voice affected a cringing simper with that. Pinky. “You attacked her freak of a father, and probably feel some masculine care for her.” Middle. “You care enough to warn him about me on a personal scale, and continue speaking with him. Ring.
“That’s why.”
>>>
He had no room for surprise at her attention to detail; aside from a few errors, it had all be rather obvious. No, it was more irritation, evidenced by the thin line of his mouth. He kept tabs on the Thunderwitch out of what could only be common sense, but this, this was an unappreciated mark of her obsession. It would have been best left alone, yet, Ishida could not help nitpick.
“Wrong,” he sighed. “It is useful to compare talent, to set mark by. I call them by name because that is how humans interact formally, I am making her a dress because I enjoy it, and I—“ His voice lost that now tired neutrality, becoming hard, a brief, fierce edge that written journal comments could not adequately express “—I did not attack Kurotsuchi Mayuri for his daughter.”
A return to feigned indifference. “I would warn anyone foolish enough to ask you to dinner about you, Thunderwitch. Do what you will with the magazine, only kindly, do it out of my apartment.” And off my bed! He gestured to the door.
>>>
She finally turned from the magazine, licking a finger idly and turning a page that had stuck to another, watching him blandly.
“I like it here.” The Privaron stated simply, for added emphasis, stretched out across the bed with a small murmur of satisfactions, spine arching and hands twitching in the motion above her head. What was unsaid?
Make me.
>>>
It did figure: as soon as he had mastered the art of looking at the magazine without blushing, no less in another’s hands, a woman’s hands, the Thunderwitch took over his bed. The sinuous bend of her spine accompanied by that sound; both an aggravation at how she flaunted the challenge, and something else, best ignored, best left for when night fell in an empty room and he rigorously forgot the afternoon, where her skin had touched. Arrancar, Privaron, not— he swallowed.
Wisdom: Walk out. Problem: She could very well wait. Moving apartments time and time again was infeasible when this would be the result. In sheer physical strength, the Privaron outmatched the Quincy. Question: Why should the Quincy be forced to rely on physical strength?
His patience had run dry, the set returned to his jaw and withholding a sigh as he considered the pendant, ever-present against his palm. “I’ll only say it one more time, Thunderwitch. You’ll find then how good my manners have been. Get out.”
>>>
“Going to shoot me, Ishida?” She almost dared him, though, hidden carefully behind her pride, behind her temptations, was a hint of fear.
“Going to shoot me right here, on the basis of not moving? Not because I’ve killed, not because I’ve attacked you, but because I won’t get off your bed?” Cirucci very nearly laughed, but it would have been too light for this, too high-pitched and grating. She looked back to the magazine with an idle glance, slowly shifted. She slipped onto her knees, rear in the air, legs spread a bit, breasts pressed against the mattress and her arms stretched out in front of her, head laid calmly against them, watching him, smirking coyly, an obvious imitation of one of the images printed.
“Because this doesn’t appeal to you?”
>>>
He would not, did not dignify her taunts, her goading with an immediate reply. It was the end of leniency, a refusal to be caught up in another web of limbs, exhaustion and the headache that had never quite gone away, pounding back in the wake of his panic.
To his shame, he recognized the pose, could have recited the page number and the statistics, the story of Miss Margaret Sheldon. Ishida recoiled, the reaction less energetic than the previous, but there, tightly bound by his drive for control that drove a terrible pain where jaw hooked beneath ear. Tightly bound, tightly wound; Ishida swallowed again and wrenched his eyes from her, from her body, from that imitated smile ruined by the look of her eyes.
“That has nothing to do with it,” he forced the words, even as his resolve weakened. Insane, insane, how could he even ready a bow against her while she was doing such a thing?!
>>>
“Then what’s it about, hmm?” The Privaron hid her delight momentarily by turning her head, turning the page, moving again, a roll onto her back, one arm above her head, over dark purple nearly black hair that tumbled down about her face, a sweet face when she wished it to be, her other hand lain limp beneath her breasts, both legs tucked up, one under the other in a smooth line from thigh to calf.
She was almost daring him, daring him to attack her while she was in a position so vulnerable, head tipped back with neck exposed, stomach exposed, a subservient position that seemed so adverse to violence or pain.
>>>
Miss Alisson Song, a fan of dog races, her favorite food teriyaki. Ishida had liked her hair the best of all of them, but it was hard to remember, to concentrate on color, length, imagined texture and yield should his fingers be trailing through it. Hard, with a twisted embodiment not feet away, dark hair spilling onto his sheets, body exposed on his bed. Tucking his hand into a fist that lacked determination when, really, he needed it most—Ishida began to feel uncomfortable in the worst way.
It wasn’t about that because damn it, damn him, he couldn’t raise the bow against her, monster acting woman, mimicking docile, feminine poses. Gritting his teeth wouldn’t do him any good. At the wall; he turned his face, his chin, as if to admire the blank space, white paint. Easier.
“I tire of your games, Thunderwitch,” he said, words plain and blunted, suddenly spilling out from the frayed edges of his earlier blasted nerves, the ache in his skull. “I have no patience for this. I would not kill you, but I would attack, to ensure your departure. Whatever you’ve deluded yourself to believe, I do not belong to you, I owe you nothing for the battle you lost, and this pathetic--“ an emphasis on the word, a dangerous one, as Ishida recalled well what happened the last time he had used such a word, “fixation you have, to the extent of noting my relationships with others in the City, waiting on the Opera House, stalking me—it’s old, Thunderwitch.”
Bolstered by the words and the strength of his frustration, how sincerely sickened he was of it, Ishida looked back at the Privaron reclining on his bed and did keep his glare hard. “I refuse to tolerate it any longer.”
>>>
Indeed, as he’s predicted with that word, had he been looking, he would have noticed to undeniable stiffening to muscle and posture, poor, poor, pathetic, Privaron echoing in the back of her skull and bringing her blood to a simmer, harshly pushed aside to focus not on his words, but on the way he held himself.
His pride was something she planned to own one day, as part of him, and it was a proud man he was, but she began to smile, genuinely smile, at the shameful lilt his body took now, the slight hunch to the shoulders stiff and unyielding, the rigid jaw line that spoke of will struggling, and, ahhh, the taught muscles in hips and legs, indicative of the fact that no matter how he thought about it, he had to know she’d won, eliciting such from him and in doing so, staking that much more claim on him and his pride.
“I’m old, Shiro Megane-Kun.” She reminded gently, let her voice ebb from the wicked edge with a sigh, dropping from the seductive pose to simply curl on her side, head pillowed in the crook of gloved arm, watching softly, though this, too, was an innocent sort of pose, something vulnerable and weak, for as much as she hated to appear so, she made sacrifices to get what she wanted.
“When you were born Cirucci had been dead and heartless years and years.”
>>>
His words, the little speech, had not had quite the effect he wanted. While they may not have impressed her, there was no volatile reaction, no desisting from her posing on his bed.
Ishida realized, with belated aggravation, the tie to his stance, that words were only as impressive as the man who spoke them, and it was too late, even as he pushed back his shoulders and sought for a less incriminating tension. The truth curled within her smile; it was in defiance of that, even with the evidence of his physical defeat in front of him, that he corrected that binding hunch. Without breaking his gaze he would straighten, relax his hands, staring his shame in its face as if to say—it would take an infinite lot more to wound his pride in anything but the short-term. The weakness of the body, not of the mind, not of the spirit.
Canting his head to the side, Ishida regarded her, the old Privaron striking her young pose, her body rounded in on itself; his expression unreadable. The young had defeated the old, once, and the old would not forget it. Ishida was unimpressed with age. “Then you are old, Cirucci Thunderwitch. You are old; I don’t care and I’m not interested.”
>>>
“Fine, don’t care.” Her eyes closed, another defense against his shooting her, for, truly, she wondered, would he shoot someone who wasn’t even looking at him? A small sigh, a bit of a nuzzle into elbow and sheets, and she shifted a bit as if seeking a more comfortable spot.
“I’m tired, and you don’t care, but that’s fine, too.” It was a pouting voice, not quite a whine or tease but hinting at them for interpretation. By all appearances, she planned on sleeping right then and there, free arm moving lazily, blindly, groping for the magazine and closing it with a small pat.
“Cirucci won’t tell.” The Privaron noted, patting it once more. “It will be our secret, Shiro Megane-Kun.”
>>>
An aggravating fact: Ishida could not relax completely around the Thunderwitch – not that he ever relaxed completely around anyone. In her presence he was never unguarded, a necessary paranoia for her next move. Learned from her as his enemy, and from their encounters within the City. This, her claim to be tired, her yielding of the magazine, this peace set off an alarm.
Had Ishida possessed less composure, less etiquette, he might have snorted. Very generous of her when for the Thunderwitch to do something so petty as reveal what Ishida kept under his mattress would have given her very little reward.
He could, at least, interpret the obvious with accuracy. He asked it flatly, unable to claim shock at her audacity. An obvious answer to his question: “What are you doing?”
She couldn’t—actually—be planning to fall asleep. In his bed. Ishida would not gape, would not again recoil, but he could not have looked less amused. Foolish; he took a step closer to the bed. “Get up, Thunderwitch, and get out.”
>>>
“M’tired.” Cirucci mumbled, making an irritable noise and turning around, body still curled on her side to face the wall, as if to deny him his right to decide what she did in his bed, though in reality it was to hide the smirk. He’d come closer. Just a bit closer, just a bit more, and she could have her last little reward, her last little chip at his pride, and be on her way.
“You go away, let me sleep.” Her voice was heavy, breathy, though the words were cunning, aimed at making him just off guard enough, just thrown off enough, to allow her fun, shifting still to be seeking her comfortable spot, one hand pushing dark hair back behind her ear as she settled once more with a small sigh of cold, dead, breath.
>>>
“No, you aren’t,” he replied, voice sharp and prying. Should have known better, did know better. Ishida had not lost his mind, had not lost his earlier sense of knowing the wisdom of distance, and was not quite convinced by this play at being tired when only moments before she had been animated, sliding into to poses intended to make him fidget and squirm. No doubt this had a similar goal.
His frown grew, exasperation denting into his cheeks as he considered the Privaron. His gaze flicked down to the sheets, covers ends that had been tucked beneath the mattress until she lifted it. Perhaps he could grab the end and, with a sudden, upward motion, roll her off?
As soon as he had thought it, he shook his head. Ridiculous. And he wouldn’t fear getting closer to his own bed, another step, impatience sending his hand toward her shoulder, as if to shake, as if she were a girl and not a Privaron, though with less polite caution, less gentle force, as he would have intended with a girl.
>>>
It took a supreme force of will to keep still that long, to feign low and shallow breath that began to even, to deepen, as if she were giving in to sleep, giving in to being tired and ready to drift off.
Of course, she wasn’t. She had been tempted, somewhat, to let him simply shake her shoulder with no retribution, no other course of action but a sleepy “go away” and a tighter curl against the wall, a burying of her face into the sheets, just to see if she could get him more off guard, but no, she couldn’t help herself.
Cirucci’s hand snapped tight around his wrist, wrenched him down even as she moved herself onto her back again, pulling the male, larger than her but physically weaker, down to her, on top of her, taking the opportunity to take her aforethought of prize, a fervent brush of lips and kiss, not against his neck in the claim she drew in pain but more personal, on his mouth, her hand still on his wrist and her other fisted in his shirt.
>>>
Not a surprise, no—his eyes barely widened, this time, and Ishida did not pull back, sinking weight into heels to dig down to risk his wrist for his body. An expected reaction and he fell almost too easily—he might have legitimized it later with one thing and refused to with another.
Yielded, at least, insofar as he had anticipated it and made no great resistance against it; accepted futility once she had taken hold of his wrist. The wrench had him with one knee, balancing, digging into the bedspread as the second balance, his hand, splayed out five-fingered as it fell, a few inches from her neck. He had expected her to go for the neck. She didn’t, and Ishida surprised, no, horrified himself, that another he would not legitimize:
He almost kissed her back. Did. Reflexes split between disgust and the shame of want, but want had never been so sickeningly strong. If before he had wondered, absently, if his bed would smell like her, he could inhale now and make of it as wonderful, or terrible, like the chill of her lips, how cold her hand felt locked around his wrist.
Her lips met his and he did not turn his face, his cheek to her mouth, but let her, pressed into it for a moment, pushed chest against fist as if he meant to draw closer. The shock of it hit; his mind caught up, Ishida tried, then, to pull away.
>>>
Cirucci moaned against his mouth, a noise not wrenched or unbidden but given with the express purpose of exciting, arousing, tempting him, though she allowed him to pull away slightly, hand in his shirt and around his wrist preventing him from moving too far, just enough that he could separate their lips, though as she spoke, her breath still ghosted across the underside of his jaw, his throat, her own voice a throaty warble of sound.
“Ishida,” She knew enough about bedding males not to call him Shiro Megane-Kun at this moment, knew better than to force too much. She’d come for that one attack on his pride, one set goal, and she’d reached it. Everything else now was a bonus prize for her own wounded ego damaged by others stepping in to her dreams. “Shouldn’t have to just look at pictures~”
It was a blatant offer, evidenced by the arc of spine to press her chest against his, the bare thigh slinking up his hip, and a rational mind behind the tempting exterior that was reveling in his weakness.
>>>
The betrayal of the body; Ishida resisted it, even as her moan rushed blood down—not toward his cheeks, and for once, he’d have rather been blushing. Her breath, a cool, moist whisper that made him grimace even as a shiver thrilled down his spine; more weight shifted against that knee. He leaned back against her hold, his shirt straining, no buttons popping because, well, he didn’t wear buttons, but threads straining—
“No.” He grit out, infuriated with the waver in his voice. His eyes clenched shut, before they could sweep down, drink in the sight of her, the swell of her breasts and the shape of her face, round eyes and long lashes and an expression that should have disturbed, should have helped remind him of her nature, like the skull in her hair, yet, oddly, bizarrely, served to excite. “I don’t want-- any of it—“
His breath came, quicker, the quiet gasp in and hissing out as she pressed, and her leg slid, his skin beneath cloth felt on fire. Ishida’s mind spun past the headache, and principle, logic, disgust (for Ishida, not for her, why not for her, a monster) fought. His hand, beside her neck, jerked up to clasp against her shoulder and push her down, try.
>>>
Unwilling to let go quite so easily, she decided to press a little more, following the press of his hand down but her fingers slinking up to change hold from fabric to his own shoulder, pulling him with her in a ridiculous game of tug of war.
“Yes, you do.” The Privaron chided gently, kissed softly at the underside of his throat instead of biting savagely as she had in the past, gentle touch of lip and tongue, warm and inviting, a stark contrast to any vicious image she’d created. “You say you don’t,” Her leg wrapped around his waist, heel against the inside of his thigh, noting his arousal easily as close as she fit herself against him, “But you do.”
Idly, she wondered if she could snare him this time, which would be a great advancement on the “breaking his pride” front. Maybe. But Cirucci set those thoughts aside to writhe a bit against his hips, a cruelly sensitive touch of hip grinding against hip, trying to shove his mind, young, hormonal despite his maturity, past logic and into the instinctual.
>>>
He could feel his arm forced into the bend, elbow curving out as she pulled him with her, despite his attempt to push away. Ishida shuddered as she kissed his throat, forcing his head back, his neck curving toward spine and adam’s apple in a taught bob. His shoulders, bones, and muscle and skin, pulling back, and he did want it.
Shamed, for once clumsy fingers under the blanket, long, cold showers. Ishida wanted it, pent up and wound tight, sixteen years old and hungry for her curves, the taste of her tongue. But he shook his head, rebelling against body, needing a shield and considering the pendant, the bow that could deflect. “No,” he muttered, and said it again, a muttered chant that groaned when she pressed into him. His wrist jerked against her hold, one leg slipping from bed to floor and using a foothold as leverage.
Shaking fingers slid, relaxed on her shoulder, fell over sleeve to cold skin. A clumsy, involuntary caress, his eyes shut so hard he saw spots of red, flares of red as she ground and his hips jerked in response. No, but yes; desperation began to focus on the pendant, on the energy to flare up as a pentacled, web-like bow, anything, the defense his human muscles could not provide, a necessity now before he lost his head.
>>>
Cirucci smirked against his throat, murmured, crooned little moans against his skin and in between soft traces of pattern up jugular, windpipe, jawline, slipped farther up against him so that her breasts pressed along his chest even as she squirmed, hips grinding lightly against him, against his arousal, seeking to push just a bit more, just a bit more-
But then she felt the energy gathering, felt him preparing to form that bow, the arrows that haunted her even still, and while she did not panic, she did reevaluate her position, gave a throaty laugh against him before biting on his neck as he expected, but not hard, not enough to break skin, just enough that the skin beneath tensed in preparation for such but did not come to it. Her hand left his shoulder to ghost up to his face, caressing gently as she fit against him to kiss briefly at his lips before she released her hold on him, flopped back onto the mattress, propped on her elbows.
The Privaron’s chest heaved, a flush to her own skin if only from the arousal she’d dredged up in her own body, hair a bit disheveled and panting for breath she didn’t quite need, watching him carefully, nearly warily, drawing her legs back together and smoothing skirt.
>>>
The pressure of another body, before imagined and now felt, too real, and suppressing instinct left Ishida dumb, unable to react but to strain back, repulsion, revulsion in his scowl but badly acted. Gritting his teeth didn’t prevent the unevenness of his breath, small sounds choked in his throat, louder as she ground. Her bite, his hiss, a muscle spasm of desire, but his neck couldn’t stretch any farther back. Defense, desperation:
In anticipation of her kiss he rolled his lips back over teeth.
She let go and Ishida staggered back, panting, stumbled almost to the wall. The bow flared around the shape of his fist, quivering fingers biting short nails into his hand as he raised his arm, the large bow aimed in her direction. Ishida forced himself to stand straight, tall, even with his arousal obvious, forced his other hand ‘s back over his mouth though his tongue wanted to lick over it. His hand fell, trembling fingers wanting to trail over his neck, callused tips finding a pattern in her kisses, instead gathering reishi from the air, forming a ready arrow for the firing.
“Get… out,” Ishida demanded, his voice a gravelly gasp, eyes catching on where her skirt covered thigh and smooth skin before focusing on her eyes.
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“Going to shoot me now, Shiro Megane-Kun?~” She was proud, too proud of her handiwork, head held high, eyes clear and focused, meeting his gaze levelly and without fear, without panic, though she hid her fear of those arrows where he refused to look, in her hands on her thighs and skirt hem, the smallest trembling in the pale fingers when she recalled the piercing of Seele Schneider in her breast. But she was too emboldened, slipping off his bed and coming to stand before him, not too close, but close enough that she could reach if she tried, the level of his arrow at the hole in her torso, her saketsu chain.
“You can’t do it.” Her voice was low, almost deadened, saddened, as if he was a disappointment, or maybe she was, she couldn’t tell. “I’m too human to you, Shiro Megane-Kun.” Her lips, slightly fuller from insistent kisses against his skin, moved slowly, with purpose, and her fear still kept hidden in the slight trembling in her hands by her side. “I care about you too much, hmm?~” The word care was a stretch. Oh, she cared alright. No one else was allowed to hurt him, no, that was her job. No one was to shame him, break him, no, that right belonged to her, and even now she was reveling in the shame he displayed.
“Don’t worry, though.” A gloved hand came up, the shaking suppressed just long enough for cold fingers, a reminder that she was dead, to brush against his knuckles, before she removed herself from his arrowsight, sauntering out the door and out of his apartment with a self-satisfied smirk on cruel painted lips.
“It’s our little secret.”
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Can’t? A laughable thought, an insult to his ability, to the coldness of his heart and his resolve. And yet, even as he had sneered, even as blue eyes sparked and narrowed in something like hatred, hatred for her, for himself, for the third time. Even that, but he hesitated—the arrow a burn, the reishi string digging into his fingers. Then, it was too late. She was gone, even that smirk, especially that smirk, increasing the pressure below.
Frustration could have released the arrow and watched something shatter, but control, the need for it pulled his hand back in a slow released that let the energy dissolve. Another step back and Ishida slumped against the wall, her words cycling through his head—the headache gone, the ticking returned, a pulse like the blood, a throbbing like—
Not human, too human? The secret he loathed to know. Ishida resolved: if she dared show her face in his apartment again, he would shoot her on sight. The determination didn’t help him in the present, with skin sensitive and body flushed with want. His breath still broken, Ishida dropped his hand, fingers hesitating at the waistband of his trousers. No—refusal a fist. Waiting until his breathing had neared normality, Ishida walked in studied steps to the bathroom, leaning over the tub to turn the water to a frigid spray.
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ALSO A COLD SHOWER 8DDDDDDD
YOU GUYS = WIN.