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Half the time he takes the train back to Karakura so he can get some of his readings done for the coming week and sometimes he just makes a Garganta and cuts the travel time to mere minutes. Just in case they need something, but he always makes sure to let his sisters know how he’s getting around. Sometimes, Yuzu wants him to pick something up, other times it’s Karin. And sometimes, especially more recently, the messages have included things like, “Don’t forget to tell Urahara-san to come, too!”
Or, “I’m making the salad Getaboushi usually eats half of, so make sure he knows he has to come to dinner.”
Or even, “Make sure to tell Urahara-san that we have our scheduled tea-making session this evening, so you should just bring him to dinner!”
Which raises a lot of questions that Ichigo is slowly answering. He’s gotten pretty far, on his own, but he really needs to start asking Kisuke his side of things. Getaboushi, he means Getaboushi, because if he keeps the distance in his head, he probably won’t overstep when he’s not paying attention.
But it seems like his sisters, even Karin who was initially wary, enjoy spending time with Kisuke Getaboushi. He’s not sure why it’s recently evolved into inviting the man to dinner. Sure, one time he dragged him with him because no one else was home and the Shouten was empty and eating alone sucked, so Ichigo had made curry and they’d spent the evening discussing complex kidou theory that Ichigo is still itching to put into practice in a spar. It might still blow up or otherwise implode, but hey, explosions mean progress!
But other than that, Ichigo isn’t really sure why dinners became a thing, especially since when he asked Kisuke Getaboushi, it only happened when Ichigo was there. Or well, Yuzu has offered, but Kisuke Getaboushi has only ever taken her up on the offer when Ichigo is around. On the other hand, Ichigo has absolutely no qualms in making him eat his sisters’ cooking at least once a week. Karin might not be as enthusiastic as Yuzu, but she can definitely still cook.
It’s not surprising, then, when he gets a text from Yuzu telling him to invite Kisuke over, she’s making his favorites.
He sends back a confirmation that he’ll tell him and goes back to his readings.
Unfortunately, it turns out that a number of his old classmates (or so Chad says when he ends up describing them later to complain about how they made him late and also all of them are out of high school, what the actual hell) and a sibling or two have Yakuza connections or something and they decide to jump him just as he turns from the station.
It doesn’t work nearly as well as they hope it to, but it definitely is going to make Ichigo late and honestly sparring with Kisuke is one of the highlights of his week.
He leads them on a bit of a chase, down one of the alleys that lead to part of the wrong side of town for Karakura. He really doesn’t appreciate the delay and is entirely willing to take it out on the poor suckers.
Poor suckers, because even in a human body, Ichigo honestly has too much power to not utilize in making himself faster and stronger than usual. Which is partially what necessitated the detour, but also if he has to explain to yet another police officer what happened one more time, he’s going to scream. And maybe cero something.
Regardless, they shouldn’t have jumped him.
Shaking out his hand, Ichigo sighs. He stares at the various prone forms now decorating the sides of the alley as well as that one nice pile of like seven people who are all the idiots who decided to try and use pipes.
Ugh, fine he’ll call them an ambulance....
So, it’s completely reasonable that Ichigo is late to his typical drop in at the Shouten.
“So yeah, sorry I’m late – some of the punks from school (and seriously, we’ve graduated high school, can’t they find better hobbies than trying to win against me?) decided that they’d have a better chance if they asked one of their older brothers, who just so happens to be a Yakuza grunt with friends,” Ichigo explains while taking off his shoes and shoving them to the side. He’s well aware that there are slippers he could use, but also: it’s hot out, and they’re just gonna go down and spar, anyways, so it really doesn’t matter if he’s in socks of slippers.
Sorry Tessai-san. He appreciates the thought, if not the additions he’s dead sure that Ishida added at some point.
The fact that the strawberries have tiny white or ice blue crosses for seeds was definitely a hint at who added the embellishments.
“Oh? How many?”
“Eh, like. I dunno, 20? Maybe 25.”
“And it took you half an hour to put them out of their misery?”
“Shut up, Getaboushi, don’t make it sound like I killed them! Jeez. Besides, I had to lead them away from the station, first. And wait for the ambulance.”
“Maa, maa, I said nothing of the sort – knocking them out is certainly putting them out of the misery! When they’re conscious they have to deal with themselves, don’t they?”
Ichigo snorts. “No, that’s my misery, and also, wow. Someone pissed you off today, didn’t they?”
“Nothing of the sort!” Kisuke batts the accusation away with an errant hand, before heading deeper into the shop. “Now, spar? I must say if it’s taking you thirty minutes to take care of twenty humans, you really must have been slacking, Kurosaki-kun. What if they were Hollows?”
Ichigo rolls his eyes and follows him.
“Then I’d have Zangetsu and not be worried about killing them. Seriously, you do know that actual human bodies don’t just dissipate into reishi, right? They hang around and, like, rot.”
“Only if you’re not trying hard enough~!”
“How about, I’m not trying to kill them?”
“Seems a bit of a waste, but I suppose that’s fine for now.”
“For now? Fuck you, let’s spar.”
“Gladly!”
Ichigo pops out of his body and takes the half second to lean it against a convenient boulder, which of course means that Getaboushi has decided to take advantage of his distraction and attack him.
Working on his situational awareness or something.
He’s not going to say that he’s dad’s pulled that bullshit before. He’s not gonna say that – he ducks a kidou.
Fuck it.
“Damnit, did you decide to channel your inner Goat-Face today, Getaboushi?”
“I’m sorry,” he replies mildly, “I couldn’t hear you over your surprise at kidou.”
“Oh, instead of a spar it’s a kidou battle, is it?”
Urahara ducks a small Getsuga Tenshou, “Well, we never agreed it wasn’t.”
Ichigo catches Benihime on the edge of the shorter Zangetsu, and swipes with the longer. Urahara dodges out of the way, bringing left hand up to cast.
“We never agreed it was, either.” Ichigo lunges, leading with the longer Zangetsu to bat Kisuke’s hand out of the way before he can send a modified Byakurai or something equally nasty and practically impossible for Ichigo to cast.
“A spar is a spar!” Ichigo growls.
“Is a spar~!”
Ichigo doesn’t roll his eyes. He doesn’t.
He does, however, concentrate on his index finger, firing off what could charitably be called a bala. If only because the only cero he could produce was technically a Gran Rey Cero.
“Better than before, but still too slow.”
“Oh really?”
Things get rather trickier to keep track of from there.
Of course, after kicking each other around the so called training room, which Ichigo still maintained was a pocket dimension because it had its own weather, Kisuke then proceeded to add something new.
“So, now that you’ve gotten your desire to stab me out of your system –”
“Never mind, now it’s back.”
“– how about sparring in gigai and your body?”
Ichigo eyes him suspiciously. “Why?”
“Well, if it’s going to take you half an hour to deal with twenty regular humans...”
“For fuck’s sake – fine! Next time you can just come along! I don’t have time tonight – Yuzu’s got something she wants me to help her with, so either we move the brawling to another time or just come find me the next time I’m late!”
“I’ll hold you to that, Kurosaki-kun! It’ll be a date!”
“Whatever,” Ichigo blushes a bit at the thought and bites his tongue to prevent himself from calling Kisuke, Kisuke. He doesn’t think he needs that with the rest of what’s gone on tonight. Still....
“You coming for dinner?”
“Oh, has Yuzu-san finalized her newest recipe?”
“Nah, she just messaged me at school to tell you that she’s inviting you to dinner today. Something about you having a standing invitation these days that you don’t use, so I’m playing messenger.”
“Well, I suppose I shouldn’t decline then.”
“Good,” it was one thing to refuse a direct invitation, but considering Ichigo doesn’t always want to go to dinner with his family (see: Goat-Face in large doses), he sympathizes for not taking advantage of standing invitations. “Otherwise, we’d be here even longer because I’d have to beat you up for disappointing my sister and then tell Karin about it so she could get Jinta and Ururu to harass you, too.”
“Yes, yes, I remember from the last time you invited me.”
Ichigo nods firmly. Even he was a little wary of just what Ururu could cook up when she was motivated – apparently her specialty was horror (which made sense given Kisuke’s favorite way to leave messages) and she was incredibly good at creating a wide variety of...slimes.
Not to say that Ichigo didn’t appreciate some bizarre goop as a prank, just...usually goop doesn’t leave a thick slime trail of ominously glittering red that hardens like ice all over anything organic, nor can it move under its own power and make odd sounds that he could have sworn were words.
And then if anyone tried to dispose of her creations, she’d nod slowly and look forlorn and even Jinta had to back off these days, because if Yuzu heard, then she’d be disappointed.
Thankfully, Nemu apparently likes them and thinks they’re pets. Once a prank is done, the slimes are quickly boxed or scraped up and sent to her.
If they ever combine or otherwise ban together to rule Soul Society, Ichigo is leaving them to it and moving to Heuco Mundo. It’s not worth the disappointment he’ll face if he fights them.
And with that thought, Ichigo turns away and calls, “Dibs on the onsen!”
“Ah, I see how it is. ‘Age before beauty,’ is it?”
Ichigo snorts. Like the jerk isn’t older and hotter than he is.
“If that’s what you want to call it – I’m not the one who’s broken a century or two, though.”
“How cruel to remind me of my spent youth!”
“Shave and you’ll get it back.”
The sniping continues as they rinse off and bathe quickly. There’s only so much time before Yuzu’s mandated dinner time.
It’s nice, though, relaxing like this. Verbal sparring has always been fun with Kisuke, even when his cryptic-ness could piss him off something fierce. He’s gotten better at figuring out what Kisuke means, these days, though, and is more than willing to engage in banter when the other man is feeling like a troll.
Really, though, it’s nice to see Kisuke relaxed enough to banter for fun and not as a misdirection. It’s also just fun to engage with someone who will give back just as good as he gets.
Ishida does as well, but these days they’re both busy and if they get too far into things the entire conversation either devolves into shouting about techniques or Ishida stops and looks like he decided to drink pure lemon juice, swirl his mouth with milk, and then eaten ten umeboshi and forgotten that they were the pitted kind. It’s quite the face and Inoue always looks torn between delight and concern when she sees it.
Chad and he just don’t have that kind of relationship, and engaging with his classmates is occasionally hit or miss.
So his meter for morbid jokes is a little off these days, sue him.
This is a very long way to say, he very much enjoys bantering with Kisuke. His sisters put up with it in good humor, although occasionally Karin looks like she either wants to laugh or makes a fake barfing face. He sticks his tongue out at her and she snickers before turning back to help with moving things to the table. At least Goat-Face isn’t here tonight. Although, after that one extremely awkward dinner, Yuzu has been quite good at coordinating things to ensure that if Kisuke is over, that Goat-Face isn’t. He definitely appreciates that.
What he doesn’t appreciate, however, is how the first thing Yuzu says once they’ve all sat down is, “Isn’t your anniversary soon, Ichi-nii?”
Ichigo spits “My what?!”
His poor soba.
“Yes! You and Urahara-san have been dating for almost six months now! Will you two be doing something special for your 6th month anniversary?”
Ichigo stares at his sister, then slowly turns his head to stare at Kisuke, who’s doing a good job covering his own surprise, because of course he is.
“Uh, no?”
“Why not?”
“Yeah,” Karin pipes up, looking surprisingly serious considering the topic and how she currently could generally be found to be raging about how not everything is romantic and people could “just be friends, damnit.” Ichigo doesn’t miss high school at all.
“Six months is important, you should do something besides trying to beat the stuffing out of each other and whatever else you get up to at the Shouten.”
“We’re not dating though?” Ichigo nearly squeaks, turning what was supposed to be a pointed statement in regards to this misunderstanding into a question.
“Uh, yes you are.”
“No, Karin, we’re really not. Wait, we’re not, right?” He looks at Kisuke who nods his head.
“As far as I was aware, we weren’t dating.”
“Okay, yeah, good. See? Not. Dating.”
The twins exchange looks and nod slowly to each other. “Alright, we must have misunderstood,” Yuzu says with a sigh.
“Uh, yeah.”
“In our defense though,” Karin adds, “You did invite him to dinner.”
“Yeah? And? I’ve invited all of my friends to dinner. Or they’ve crashed a dinner.”
“You made him dinner.”
“And?”
“You made him curry. The only people allowed to know the curry recipe are family and you brought him over, when none of the rest of us were here, and made him curry.”
Well. Yeah. But, it’s not like he taught him how to make it or anything.
“He didn’t look though!” Besides, Chad’s had the family curry, too! And no one asked if they were dating!
(Okay, so he was fending off odd looks for about a month afterwards, but no one asked or anything!)
And Rukia’s had it, too, and she’s definitely a friend. A cool one, when she isn’t being super annoying, but definitely a friend. She’s also notoriously bad at keeping in contact, not that Ichigo really helps matters, because he’s also not called her back after that last voicemail update he got from her like two months ago. Still. A friend.
Eating the curry is nowhere near as important as the making of it. And also it may or may not actually be a recipe he found right after his mom died, wrote it down accidently in her recipe book, because that’s where he’d always helped her put new recipes, and started making it routinely because it turned out to be something that both of his sisters liked. And then when Yuzu started cooking, he might’ve told her it was their mother’s recipe because well. It sort of was.... He appreciates the girls’ dedication to The Family Recipe. He also feels slightly guilty, because the curry recipe is meaningful. Just. Not in that way to him. Because he made it up.
Kisuke nods again. “Kurosaki-kun told me it was a family secret that your mother created and that he wouldn’t share the secret with me. So I continued working on the schematics of the terraforming device for Heuco Mundo and was suitably distracted until he was finished and then we ate. I didn’t realize that eating it was also included in the family only umbrella, or I would have insisted we eat out instead when he had me over.”
Sometimes, Ichigo really appreciates that Kisuke can make the truth sound like a lie. This time, though, he definitely accidently made it sound like they were getting up to things. ‘Distraction’ was probably not the best word he could have used, unless....
But also, though....
“I mean, by this point you’re kinda family – or like, a close enough friend to be family, so.”
“What?”
Ichigo shrugs. “I mean, you’ve definitely had my back pretty much the entire time – no, your plans don’t matter here because a) I would’ve agreed anyways to rescue Rukia and Inoue is all on me, b) Aizen and Yhwach were already aware of me so countering them just makes sense, and c) you’ve already apologized for the powers thing and you got me them back so, again, forgiven even if you won’t bring it up. You also let me crash at the Shouten whenever, sometimes in the back of your lab on your spare cot, and you’re always willing to spar with me, even when there are times when you’re otherwise incredibly focused on your newest McGuffin and incarnating it somehow.” Ichigo pauses to see how his litany is being received, because it’s important that Kisuke understand this, relationship or no. He seems stunned, if the way his jaw muscles are just slightly slack and his eyes just a tiny bit wider than usual.
“You’re always willing to keep trying to teach me kidou even though I still suck at it and you’re busy, and we have discussions that can last for hours about the various things you’re working on. You’re still stuck on that one knotted bit of kidou for the new barrier spell and it’s frustrating you because you pointedly didn’t use barriers in our spar today. Also you come to dinner at least once a week, although that’s more my sisters than me, you still always come if I’m here and invite you and I appreciate it.
“So yeah, you’re practically family.”
There’s a moment of silence as everyone present processes what he’s just said and Ichigo tries incredibly hard to not blush.
If that could be his newest superpower of the week and if it could randomly manifest right now, that would be great.
“Ichi-nii, some people just call that ‘dating,’ or ‘one step before marriage,” Karin mutters from his left.
“Karin! Come help me with dessert,” Yuzu demands and drags her sister to the kitchen.
It’d be thoughtful if the kitchen weren’t right next to the dining room.
“Kurosaki-kun....”
Ichigo huffs, crossing his arms as if to ward off his lingering embarrassment that his sisters were present for his...not quite a confession. Was it a confession? It felt like it.
“I think you can call me ‘Ichigo’ by now.”
“Ichigo-san then.”
“Yeah?”
He stares him, and there’s still a mask up, because Ichigo’s sisters are still present and listening, even if they’re in the kitchen, but. Oh.
Ichigo leans forward slowly, because it’s one thing to routinely fall asleep in someone’s presence, and sling arms over shoulders, but the face is another thing entirely, especially for Kisuke. Especially after the Quincy.
He gently presses their foreheads together.
“It doesn’t have to mean anything more than what we’re already doing, you know.”
“Maa, I think I’m a little too touchy of things that are mine to not put a name to this.”
“Oh, I’m yours now?” Ichigo grins and his feels his eyes flash gold as his Hollow reiatsu rises.
“As I am yours.” The smile that crosses Kisuke’s face is sharp and bloody and full of enough teeth to satisfy the Hollow in Ichigo’s soul.
“Good.” He breathes it, softly over Kisuke’s face. Allows it linger between them like a promise. Ichigo’s not really sold on the whole kissing thing, but he’s pretty game to try anything once, as long as they’re each other’s. Especially at the moment, when Kisuke’s declared he’s his.
Just in a different setting.
“Mmm, ‘good’ indeed.”
“Good. So, uh, dinner.”
Kisuke smirks, “Oh, I see how I rank.”
Ichigo pulls back with a scowl. “You know the rules for dinner – we’re not breaking them now. Also, those two will definitely be worse if we do.”
“Maa, you would know best, Ichigo-san.”
Fuuuuuck. Is it normal to want to bowl someone over, drag them off to a nest, and purr on them for like, 2.5 million years? Probably not, but god that’s what Ichigo wants to do at the moment.
“Dinner.”
“Alright.”
“You two can come back now!”
The twins wander in, and while both of them have crumbs on their sleeves from setting up whatever dessert is (it’s a surprise every week, but it’s always something Goat-Face hates so he doesn’t feel too left out), they’re both wearing too many of the crumbs to have been doing anything but listening in.
“So happy anniversary?” Karin asks with a smirk.
“Didn’t get that far, tabling that discussion for later, because dinner.”
“Oh, I’m glad you both finally talked about it! I made the preparations for – well, you’ll find out after dinner. But I’m glad for both of you!”
Ichigo sighs, but smiles at his sisters. “Thanks you two.”
“Of course, Ichi-nii! We want you to be happy! And Urahara-san definitely makes you happy!”
“Yeah, if he can make you less grumpy, it’ll be a miracle.”
“Rude, Karin.”
“Rude, but true. Plus, you can use him to get all those people at school to back off on asking you out. You were complaining about it literally yesterday.”
Kisuke visibly perks up at the idea of tormenting college students.
“Within reason, please. The way my luck goes, it’ll somehow end up blamed on me and I’m not interested in having to transfer.”
“Of course!” Out comes the fan. “I would never jeopardize your education, favorite student of mine.”
“Uh huh. Sure. That’s your major concern.”
“Whatever else could I be concerned about?”
“Dinner. Be concerned about dinner.”
Kisuke grins, “Only if I get to be concerned about dessert, too.”
Oh god.
“Why did I agree to this?”
In the background, Karin and Yuzu are both laughing at him. But it’s not the bad kind, and, yeah, okay, he can say it.
Kisuke makes him happy. He’s pretty sure he makes Kisuke happy, too.
And that's a wrap!
Comments and kudos welcome!
~Fins