Kurosaki Ichigo: Wing Bind's Worst (and mostly feral) Headache

4

    Iron and dark chocolate. It washed over his taste buds as he slowly came to consciousness. A sharp contrast, and unnerving, but it made Ichigo safe—it felt safe. The iron—the blood surrounded him like a blanket, smothering him in its protection.

  Ichigo sighs quietly and turns onto his side. He didn't know where he was, but he was surrounded by warmth and safety. So, he isn't scared; he can't be scared.

  This feels like creepy geta-bōshi, even though creepy geta-bōshi never smelt or felt like blood and only ever felt like chocolate. Though, he's never been able to taste it before. It feels better with the blood than when he just felt like chocolate. He was probably hiding it then... Stupid geta-bōshi.

  Ichigo breathes out sharply before he buries his head further into his pillow. His head hurts. A lot—worse than a lot.

  He barely hears a rustle of fabric over the deafening heartbeat in his ears before there's a hand gently placed on his forehead. It's rough and covered in callouses. Ichigo makes a small noise, almost like a whine, before the hand carefully moves to press against the side of his throat.

  "Ichigo-kun, can you hear me?" Geta-bōshi speaks quietly, almost like he's afraid of hurting Ichigo with his voice.

  Ichigo hums into the pillow. He doesn't want to move; moving makes his head hurt more and he doesn't want that.

  "...g'ta-b'sh'..." Ichigo's words slur and jumble together, barely coming out as actual words. He furrows his eyebrows and nuzzles further into the pillow at the heavy ache in his throat.

  "Go back to sleep. I'll wake you when you're better," Geta-bōshi says instead of an answer, still speaking softly. He raises his hand back up to place it on top of Ichigo's head.

  Ichigo whines loudly when the hand pulled back. There's a soft intake of breath and a beat of silence before geta-bōshi places his hand back on Ichigo's head, threading his fingers through the soft orange strands.

  Some kind of noise—almost like a purr, but probably not. He isn't a cat after all—leaves Ichigo's throat as he pushes back against the hand.

  "....th'nk y'...." Ichigo hums again, already feeling his dreams try to pull him back. All he could feel was safe. But... but there's something missing. Something's wrong...

  The blood and dark chocolate spike before becoming almost syrupy in guilt. "It... it is the least I could do... Ichigo-kun."

  As he falls back asleep, Ichigo has a flitting feeling of dread. There's no scent of autumn rain during a soft morning; Ichigo can't feel it anywhere.

  He's unconscious before the fleeting thought can process.

°°°°°

    It's only been a few days since the Hollow attacks against Kurosaki-san and Ichigo-kun. And, while the first day had been completely draining and full of high possibilities of death, things have finally been calming down. Thankfully.

  Ichigo-kun woke up completely delirious right after Benihime had finished stabilizing his soul, and he was in complete hysterics. An expected reaction for what they had to do to get the boy's soul stabilized.

  The near-death experience with the Hollow, and the... dragon, had awoken Ichigo-kun's latent reiryoku. In pure instinct to survive, his soul had forcefully awakened his Shinigami side. Unfortunately, the Hollow that had transferred to the boy had combined with his Shinigami side and had to be awoken too. His soul was even more unbalanced than before with only three parts of his soul awake. It had to wake up the Quincy side as well. All of this within an couple hours.