tampered | LOG || ongoing

LOG || ongoing

When; NOW.
Rating; PG-13 for heavy drinking and, no doubt, lots of swearing and fighting.
Characters; Kurosaki Ichigo [

strawberried], Arisawa Tatsuki [

one_hit_k_o], and anyone else who wants to jump in.
Summary; Ichigo. Tatsuki. Lots of alcohol. Mix liberally and serve.
Log;

This had to be the first time Ichigo'd ever been in a bar. It was just like bars were supposed to be, seedy and dirty and smelling vaguely of vomit, and when he put his hands down on the counter, his fingers stuck a little to it.

He didn't care. He was planning on getting as drunk as humanly possible, and besides, didn't alcohol kill germs? Whatever. He had his best friend -- okay, yeah, best friend -- with him, and they were going to celebrate their birthdays in the way they wanted to. If they stepped on a few toes -- or, you know, punched out a few people, hurled on a few sidewalks, woke up with huge-ass hangovers -- along the way, well, too fucking bad.

That he was more than ready to kill about twenty four hours -- maybe more, with his most recent talk with Mats--Rangiku -- worth of brain cells tonight wasn't much of a factor. Really.

Glancing over at his partner-in-crime for the night, he raised his glass in a sort of half-hearted toast. Nothing like a little vodka to start off the night.

"Happy birthday to us."

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Two shots of the same to start with, once they'd parked themselves on stools at the bar, and she was glad she'd opted for pants given the look for the stool. Tatsuki raised her glass, almost in sync with Ichigo, and returned his look with a quirk of her eyebrows.

"Happy birthday to us," she echoed, pulling an ironic grin before throwing her head back and tossing the vodka. It burned her throat; after grimacing, Tatsuki gestured to the tender for another, two fingers in the air.

Some people might've said that celebrating a birthday by isolating yourself at a bar was pretty depressing. Tatsuki would've ignored them; while alcohol wasn't anything she had a lot of experience with, the City gave her more than enough incentive to try it out. Repeatedly.

Hell, at least she had good company.

"Hope yours wasn't too much of a bust," Tatsuki offered, propping an elbow onto the stick of the bar.

The ironic grin was returned before Ichigo shot back his drink, too, grimacing. He didn't mind the taste of alcohol too much, but there was no getting around the burn as it peeled down his throat. It would get better, though, as he got drunker. Perfectly fine with him.

Then he could forget more stuff. Stuff he wasn't thinking about. Stuff like going on a date with Ishida -- shit, just thinking out it made him want to vomit -- finding out his dad got hit on by -- wait. He was supposed to be forgetting.

And to forget it all, he'd need lots of booze.

Hurriedly, he took the proffered drink from the bartender, downing it in a rather ungraceful gulp. There. That was better.

"Not too bad," he grumbled, which was saying a lot for him. He'd actually gotten chocolate last night. And boob. Not from Ishida.

Shit.

"Hope yours is better, though."

Another drink down, where it burned less or seemed to because her throat still protested the last one. Crashing down the glass, without breaking it of course, Tatsuki motioned once again.

"Keep 'em coming," she urged the tender, tempted to snicker at how straight from a movie it sounded.

As long as they kept up and she could wipe her brain for the night, Tatsuki'd be content. There was too much to think about and she was tired of thinking about it, even if she'd managed to shrug off that annoying new habit she had of moping. With the help of Tsubaki-chan and a kitten called Shinobi.

"Good," Tatsuki approved, before shrugging. "Who knows? What'd make it great would be getting out of this damn place--with Orihime--and--"

A shot glass slid her way. Tatsuki snatched it up and like with the previous two, put it to work swiftly. And figure out a way to protect her from all your crazy shinigami shit. Though she scowled, she never finished her sentence.

Shit, they were liked a goddamn assembly line with these drinks. Ichigo choked down another shot and marveled at the thought; he couldn't even feel the effects yet, but he knew they were coming. Oh, they were coming, and he was going to like it.

Grunting his agreement with Tatsuki's instructions, he waited for the bartender to pour two more shotglasses, cheap liquor tumbling over the brim. He could've sworn he saw some sort of chemical reaction as the alcohol pooled on the countertop.

"And?" he found himself prompting her, with no idea at all how it came out of his mouth. He should've had a pretty good idea anyway, since all Tatsuki really cared about was keeping her nakama safe. They had a lot in common in that respect, and that was why he kept her around. Mostly.

He was supposed to be her nakama. Would she protect him as fiercely as she protected Inoue? Who knew? Tatsuki was a chick, and chicks were mysteries. Besides, he didn't need protection.

Why was he still thinking?

Frowning, he downed another glass before smacking it down on the counter.

Like cogs turning. Waiting for the next, Tatsuki rolled her hand on her wrist, concentrating on the feeling of her bones. Warm was starting to tingle in the tips of her fingers; her neck felt warm. It wasn't any harder to think, though, so Tatsuki braced herself for more.

It tasted like gasoline, or how she figured gasoline would taste. She could spit, light a match, and set the whole damn place on fire.

"Hn," she grunted, an immediate, surly response. Only after another glass had come and gone, with her thoughts beginning to take a sharp yet undefined edge, did Tatsuki consider her retort. A declaration.

"Fuck you."

Having turned more to face him, she jabbed her index finger in his direction. Exasperated, frustrated, but not accusing. "How come you got all of it, huh?"

Tatsuki forced her hand violently back through her hair, smacking her palm down onto the bartop for emphasis. "I don't envy all the bullshit you've gone through, and I don't even know the half of it, I figure. But..."

Her gaze flickered down to her hand, aching against the wood. Lifting it produced a sucking sound, and her fingers stuck to the next glass. "Why you? Those Hollows come around, start attacking people... then there're things called Arrancar, now our town's some target, Orihime's a target. ... Why... why'd you get the shinigami in your window?"

Years at the dojo. Ichigo'd know. Sure, it was fun and Tatsuki liked it, had reasons other than protection in mind. Her once upon a time goal for the future had nothing to do with helping other people. But when the shit hit the fan, only one thing mattered, and suddenly years of dedication meant all of shit.

Another swallow of vodka. She dropped the glass and closed her hand into a fist. An admission, on a tongue loosened by gasoline. "It really... pisses me off."

Ichigo felt his eyes go wide, his vision a little blurry at the edges, and for fuck's sake, this was one of those moments where he actually wanted to be sober.

Okay, maybe not, because some heavy shit was going down, if the dark cloud hanging over Tatsuki's head was any indication, which it was. He wasn't particularly good with reading people, but her surly mood was enough like some of his own that it wasn't too difficult to sniff out. At least now he knew how much he knew, which was to say too much, because dammit, he actually cared enough about her and Keigo and Mizuiro and hell, everyone, to want to keep them out of the shit he caused.

But he'd be damned if a part of him knew exactly what she was talking about. Figuratively, because he lived through what she was talking about, and just, well, fuck it. Whatever. His head was starting to feel fuzzy, like someone'd jammed a cotton ball or twenty up his nose and let it float around his brain.

At least he was drunk enough -- okay, maybe not drunk, but buzzed enough to be able to blame all this on the alcohol in the morning.

"You know," he said, much of his conviction ruined by the slight slur in his voice, "fuck you too."

There. Now they could start this conversation off on the right foot. He swigged on another drink, barely tasting the liquor anymore. How many had they had now?

"And fuck if I know," he admitted. Admitted, because fuck him if he hadn't asked himself why me every single damn day of his life. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added -- mused, more like, because it'd just occurred to him as he said it, "Maybe 'cause Dad's a shinigami too."

And suddenly, a lot more pieces clicked into place. Hot damn.

Fuck you too. Tatsuki grinned so hard it made her cheeks hurt, too hard, strained, the effort to beat back the depression of being useless and knowing it. It felt like something in her chest would explode, until it fizzled out instead.

Keep 'em coming, she'd said, and two more glasses waited in their reach. Tatsuki waited, blinking rapidly, and peering at a point past Ichigo's head. There was a big, burly guy hunched over five stools down, looked like he was six feet tall while sitting. The tattoo on his wrist said--she squinted, until her attention was jerked back to Ichigo.

"Yeah," she acknowledged, blinking again, now slow and stupid as she scratched the side of her neck. "You really got the whole package deal, huh?"

It was too much. All this inadequacy springing out of nowhere, new feelings, stupid feelings, before this Tatsuki'd never felt inadequate, not a day in her life. That might've been a lie, but she worked too hard to settle for inadequate, and how could she work at this?

Tatsuki shook her head, hard. The point of this was to not think that kind of shit, and from the way her head swam after, Tatsuki allowed herself a surge of triumph.

"So, you little liar," Tatsuki announced, then, after a long pause, the pent up emotion of her previous words replaced with a too bright challenge. "You could see ghosts! Back then."

Another grunt, her hand back to her neck, "But, I guess I'd of thought you were losing it, if you'd said so."

Her smile was too fake for him to believe, and really, fuck her if she actually thought he didn't know, didn't understand com-fucking-pletely what it felt like to be useless. Before that shinigami in the window, he was in the exact same bind, seeing things he shouldn't be seeing and wanting to save people that were already doomed.

"Don't say it like that," he said, voice hard, hating the thick thing caught in his larynx, choking him. He took another shot, letting it burn away the lump in his throat. She must really think he was the biggest, luckiest bastard in the world, when really, all that shit hitting the fan right now? His fucking fault.

If he'd never had a shinigami for a father, if he'd never seen a ghost in his whole damn life, hell, if he hadn't been in his room the night Rukia floated onto his desk, then none of this shit would've happened. No hollows, no arrancar, no nothing hanging around Karakura and picking on his friends. Innocent people. All because he was too damn stubborn to be a normal kid.

That was why he had to fix all the shit he broke. Okay, maybe just kind of kick it around a bit. It worked with the TV.

"Yeah, shut up," he said, by way of something like a grunt. At least she'd dropped the subject. He swallowed down another drink, glad that his head was starting to feel warm. Comfortable. "Could see ghosts all my life."

No reply, no indication that Tatsuki had noticed the catch or not. If she had, like one man to another, it was the sort of thing you ignored, coughed to pretend you hadn't heard, let the other guy save face unless he got too pathetic at which point it was time for a quality shaking. Loosen some teeth.

But she sure couldn't fall behind, like a shadow, a blink of deja vu, in the afterwave of his drink she had hers in hand, thrown back, the burn in her eyes now, watery and sharp, something to savor.

It wasn't like that, not quite, but Tatsuki wasn't a mind reader. She hadn't meant to say 'package deal' like he'd won a sweepstakes, filled out a form and was picked just above her, a phone call to the house that his dad'd freak out over. She didn't know the whole story, a fucking pain in the ass fact she'd been forced to swallow, but what she knew she could resolve in the direct way with which she was accustomed: weird shit was happening, people were in danger, Ichigo could do something, she couldn't.

"Weird," Tatsuki mused. It wasn't inferiority--a hard swipe of the back of her wrist under her nose, though it wasn't running--never to Ichigo. And she could see that it was wearing him thin in the worst way, not something to envy.

"Started seeing them this past spring. They're so annoying!" Tatsuki scowled, grinding the knuckles of one hand into the palm of another. "Dunno how you got by, shit, your whole life."

She shook her head. No wonder he'd been talking at thin air, weirding the other kids out.

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LOG || ongoing

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