Bleach Fan Fiction ❯ Ishida's Second Choice ❯ Chapter 1

[ X - Adult: No readers under 18. Contains Graphic Adult Themes/Extreme violence. ]

Ishida’s Second Choice

by debbiechan

 

For Maria who gave me the story idea, for Kia who has turned nineteen, and for all the IshiHime fans who stick with this pairing during the IshiHime drought in the manga.

 

Disclaimer: I don’t own Bleach, but apparently I can not stop myself from writing Bleach fanfic. Someone call a lawyer. Medic. Social Worker. Anybody. I need help.

Description: Ishida x Orihime (what else do you expect from me? ^^) This story was written after a friend suggested that Orihime is not quite as innocent as she looks. I’m going off the canon track here to write a story where Ishida and Orihime hook up waaaay before anyone expects them to in the manga. Consider this: If Ishida discovers new "powers" in another arena of life *waggles eyebrows a la Groucho Marx* will he still take up his father’s proposal?

Warnings: NC17 S-E-X. Yes, you read that right. And this fic is an IshiHime. PLEASE DO NOT READ FURTHER UNLESS YOU KNOW WHO RYUUKEN IS OR UNLESS YOU DON’T MIND BEING SPOILED FOR MANGA OR ANIME.

 

 

 

Part One

Ishida looked at the classroom clock again. It was a quarter to eight and Inoue-san was usually here by now, chatting with friends in the hallway or flitting desk to desk with cheery good mornings for her classmates.

Ishida swallowed hard and felt his famous detached and icy demeanor cracking fast. Yesterday had been one of those days that, no matter how much he had wanted to take charge of it, felt like it was being written by some malicious author. Did Destiny hate him so much or was life this hard for other teenagers? No, no, it hadn’t all been bad. The interaction with Inoue-san had been … such a landmark.

He had kissed her because there was nothing left to lose. Why not risk losing a friendship that was tentative at best? He had never learned how to handle friendships comfortably, and without the cramped corridors of the Seireitei and the perpetual threat of Death forcing an unnatural intimacy between himself and Inoue-san, the two had been growing apart. School had started again. Inoue had started hanging out with her girlfriends, and there was no talk of the days and nights he and she had shared in Soul Society.

So after the monthly handicrafts club meeting he had been feeling… desperate? He had known it would be a whole other month before he could sit next to Inoue away from the shadow of Karate Girl. Perhaps he should have asked Inoue out to see a movie, but that was a social convention that would have strained his nerves. As polite a person as he was, Ishida sometimes felt hemmed in by propriety. His emotions felt caged. He missed blowing up Hollows with unfettered power and thought that he might just go insane if he didn’t do something proactive very soon.

"Dude! Where’s Kurosaki? He’s got my English homework!" That was Keigo’s voice. Keigo was a straggler who showed up often just after the bell. Ishida resisted looking at the clock again and pretended to be reading. Soon, soon, soon. He would see Inoue soon.

He was never so close to Inoue as right after handicraft club meetings. She always had a question about his sewing; she seemed so interested in whatever he had to say. They would walk together as far as the track field where Inoue would say "Sayonara, Ishida-kun" with that adorable smile of hers and go up the stadium bleachers to wait for Tatsuki’s soccer practice to finish. So yesterday, during that stroll with Inoue across the school lawn, Ishida did not wait to seize the moment; he created the moment. He knew he was a Quincy with no powers, but that did not mean he was a coward. What was the worst that could happen? That he would lose her? He was already losing her.

"Inoue-san," he had said, stopping in his tracks and taking her, gently, by the upper arm.

She had looked a little alarmed, even though she was used to Ishida’s dramatic way of speaking. Even he could hear the urgency in his voice.

"Inoue-san, please allow me to--" He had paused, blood roaring in his ears. There was no other way. He had faced Death with the same resolve, so surely he could face a beautiful girl. "Please allow me to kiss you."

He had half-expected her to laugh. She was a giggly thing, after all, and despite her (rather submerged) intelligence and her eerie intuition about people’s true natures, she was constantly misunderstanding perfectly ordinary situations. She didn’t know anything about boyfriends and girlfriends beyond what she saw on television (well, did he?). And the girl thought she was in love with Kurosaki of all people.

He had expected to present an argument, to explain his feelings and intentions, but she was looking him with such bright-eyed interest and concern that he felt his prepared words slipping away.

"Okay," she had said and touched his cheek with her hand. "Okay" in a voice that was neither confident nor timid. The inevitability of the moment had caught up with them; she seemed to understand that a kiss between them had to happen sooner or later.

And so it was sooner: he had kissed her lightly, right on the lips. And as he brought his face away, she pulled it back with her hand. Her kiss was a more assertive one, and one moment they were standing kissing without their bodies touching, and the next moment their arms were around one another--as if their lips were urging other parts of their bodies to meet.

That had been only yesterday.

Ishida let out a soft sigh of impatience, looked from the clock to the small crowd of students loitering at the door and back to the clock again. Time was creeping. The whole world had changed since yesterday, and kissing Inoue-san had been just the first in a series of astonishing events.

Everything was so… unresolved.

During that enthusiastic kiss during which Ishida could have sworn he felt Inoue Orihime’s right hand rubbing his rear end, he had heard voices coming closer and so had leapt away from Inoue just in time to see Tatsuki and other players coming from the practice field.

A girl had broken her arm or twisted her leg (was it so terrible that of him that he could not remember which?), and there had been some jabber and fuss over how the whole team was going to fit in the coach’s van to bring the injured player to the hospital. Tatsuki seemed to have appropriated Inoue’s company for the rest of the day, so Ishida had mouthed "I will call you on the telephone" to Inoue’s flushed face and walked away.

But Ishida had not called. Not that he hadn’t meant to. Still heady from the kissing experience (he could not remember anything more specific than a tangle of arms and a moistness of mouths), he had stopped at his favorite bookstore and floated the aisles there meaninglessly for an hour. He had bought rice balls from a vendor thinking I have a girlfriend, I have a girlfriend, she kissed me back oh yes she did. And then, on his way home, a bizarre self-replicating Hollow as large as a Menos had attacked him. He had fought it as best he could with his limited abilities, and when feeling certain that it was the end, that he was going to die without ever having done anything significant in his young life beyond having finally kissed Inoue-san, a flash of orange light exploded above his head.

Hollow blood and pieces of Hollow flesh had splattered at his feet.

"Oh look at you, Hime! Did you forget to comb your hair?" Chizuru’s loud voice interrupted Ishida’s thoughts.

Inoue-san was here at school at last!

"It’s a cute look, though," Chizuru went on. "Tousled Hime hair! There’s a giant tuft of it sticking out here behind your ear. You slept with these hairpins on last night, didn’t you? Let me fix it."

Ishida looked up to meet Inoue-san’s eyes. They were red-rimmed, as if she hadn’t gotten any sleep last night or had been crying, and Ishida felt a surge of misery in his chest. He had gotten home so late after his encounter with his father that he hadn’t wanted to call Inoue for fear of waking her up.

I am going to be a terrible boyfriend. I don’t know how any of this is supposed to work.

His locking eyes with her seemed to reassure Inoue of something, though, and she cast him a weak smile.

"Inoue-san," Ishida began, "I’m sorry that I--"

"Goooooood morning, everyone!" It was that new boy with the bowl haircut and Hollow-aura. Ishida’s felt his face harden in suspicion at the mere sight of the guy.

"Oh, good morning, Hirako-kun," Inoue said faintly.

"How sweeeet!" cooed the boy. "You remembered my name!" He threw his arms around Inoue with such force that Chizuru, who had been playing with Inoue’s hair, was tossed to the floor on her butt. "Orihime-chan!" the Hollowish boy continued in his weird chirpy voice. "Orihime-chaaaaaan!"

And there was not a student watching the scene who did not see Hirako rub his chest up and down, two times, three times against Inoue Orihime’s front.

Ishida was so stunned that he couldn’t move. Boys had always been finding ways to touch Inoue’s generous assets ever since middle school, but never had one been so overt. He felt himself wanting to rise out of his desk, but he couldn’t.

"You!" It was Keigo, pointing at the new boy and yelling in a voice even louder than his usual one. "You quit that now! You’re not friends with her like that! Hell, I’m friends with her, and I’m not--"

"Jeez, you’re hurting my ears," said Hirako. "Who the hell are you?" He turned to face Keigo, his arm squarely around Inoue’s shoulder. Ishida saw, with stupefaction approaching disbelief, that as Hirako’s hand held onto Inoue’s upper arm, his fingers were stroking past her short school uniform sleeve unto bare skin territory.

"Who the hell am I? Who the hell am I?" Keigo was starting to spaz. "Don’t you start with how you are on better terms with these people because you’re not! And let Inoue-san go! Can’t you see she’s suffering?"

Actually, Inoue did not appear to be suffering, but her hair was sticking up where Chizuru had been messing with it and her eyes were still red. She looked confused and maybe not even aware that the new boy still had his hands on her?

"Guys, do you hear this carrying on?" Hirako turned to smile at all who were looking at him. "C’mon, what’s the big deal?"

Ishida had never felt so paralyzed. Ordinarily he would stay back from scenes like this one, waiting for them to play themselves out non-violently, just as Grandfather had taught him to do, but… having now kissed this particular girl, didn’t he have some sort of obligation to--?

Before Ishida could ponder his dilemma further, Chizuru rose from the floor like an enraged Godzilla and began to roar about how Orihime was such a pure girl and one too nice to say anything to Hirako about inappropriate touching and that Hirako should prepare to die--

A rougher voice spoke. "This way, Hirako, we have to have a little talk!"

Ishida’s diminished Quincy senses hadn’t even seen Kurosaki enter the classroom and grab the new boy by the collar. Like everyone else in the room, all he saw was the orange-haired boy dragging the new boy, gulping and protesting, out of the room.

It just had to be Kurosaki, didn’t it?

Ishida slumped in his desk and unclenched his hands. The sense of defeat in his gut was like what he had felt yesterday--when Ryuuken had shown up to save his life. His father’s words came back to him: "You are an idiot … I have no interest in you, and you have no talent."

Ishida should have been the one protecting Inoue, not Kurosaki.

The classroom was abuzz with voices asking Inoue if she was alright, voices asking Keigo if he was off his rocker or what, and Mizuiro chiding Chizuru for calling the new boy on fresh behavior when she herself was the worst offender. Ishida didn’t even notice that Inoue was standing over his desk.

"Ishida-kun?"

He startled to look up and see her, those large eyes larger and those pink lips dewier than he remembered them being.

"Is something wrong? When you didn’t call last night…." Her voice trailed off and her cheeks flushed adorably.

"I’m so sorry, Inoue-san. Something happened. I met up with my father and--"

Her face brightened. "I knew it had to be something. There’s just so much we have to talk about, isn’t there?"

"Yes, there is." Although Ishida could not remember what, exactly. Inoue’s breasts were at eye-level, and the business with the Hollow kid had set his pulse racing. "I want--maybe after school today--"

"I promised to tutor Tatsuki in algebra after school, but we won’t be long. I’ll be going home right after that. Well, maybe after I stop by the grocery. Would you like to eat dinner with me, Ishida-kun? Everyone says I make the most horrible food, but I could make something normal for you if you just tell me what it is you like. Here--" Inoue had grabbed his pen and notepad and was writing her apartment address on it. Ishida had known where she lived for months now, but he didn’t stop her. "I should be home by four, and then we can talk all we need to and--"

Her eyes met his, and she had to be thinking the same thing, didn’t she? Her breathing wasn’t normal. Neither was his. Everyone knew Inoue Orihime lived alone, and here she was inviting him to her apartment, and--

They were going to make out like crazed weasels, weren’t they?

The bell rang. Ms. Ochi sauntered to the blackboard and began writing a list of assignment due dates. Students found their seats, and Inoue graced Ishida with the most marvelous smile right before she returned to her chair.

Kurosaki and Hirako had not come back to class, but Ishida wasn’t wondering too much about what was going on with those two. Let Kurosaki pummel guys right and left for so much as breathing on Inoue-san, but Ishida was the one who was going to see her this evening! There had been nothing rejecting on Inoue’s face a moment ago. Nothing fretful or even remotely resembling a "bad news but I love Kurosaki-kun" look. Ishida smiled into his textbook. Ishida was in.

And as for the matter of his father’s dire proposition, the one that had haunted him all last night? Its significance dwindled in face of the prospect of kissing Inoue again. Ishida could still hear Ryuuken’s disdainful words after rescuing his son from the giant Hollow, but how could they compete with the picture of Inoue’s rosy face?

"You are an idiot. What did I say? I believe my words were: I have no interest in you, and you have no talent."

Ishida had expected his whole day to be weighed down by that voice. Instead, it was if his whole future was now being buoyed up by one smiling girl.

**

That afternoon Ishida made it to Inoue’s apartment before she did. He was sitting on the front steps when she rounded the corner, holding two large grocery bags. She beamed when she saw him, and because she could not displace her grip on the grocery bags to wave at him with her hand, she waved her elbows at him.

Ishida thought that Inoue Orihime was the world’s most enchanting human being.

"You never got to tell me what you liked to eat," she said. Ishida took both bags from her and didn’t bother to check out their contents. Let the girl serve dishwater soup for all he cared; he wasn’t here for the food. "I wanted to sit by you at lunch," Inoue went on, "but everyone was crowding me, and everyone was still talking about Ryo’s broken ankle, and I just never seemed to--you know? Ishida-kun, if we are going to be people who kiss, then I suppose we should sit next to one another during lunch."

Ishida felt his face burn. "We’re going to be people who kiss?" It was so exciting just to hear her say those words.

"That’s what you were going to tell me, right?" Her eyes met his and shone with that gentle understanding others rarely got to see. "Right before you kissed me, you were going to tell me why you thought we should be the sort of people who kiss, right? Boyfriend and girlfriend?"

"Inoue-san…" Ishida felt himself struggle for words. Inoue was unlocking the front door to the duplex hall. "I did think that, yes. I wanted to know what you thought about the matter, though, before--"

"That’s just like you," Inoue said with a giggle. "On television, the guy always just grabs the girl and kisses her, and then she knows that he’s the one. It seems only proper to ask beforehand, but I was thinking about it, and what if the girl says ‘no’ and the guy really is the one and the girl never finds out? Do you suppose that there’s a secret code that only boyfriends and girlfriends who are meant to kiss know before they kiss the first time?"

They were inside Inoue’s tiny apartment. Already Ishida had no idea what Inoue was talking about, but the movement of her mouth was making him want to press his lips against hers. "Secret code?" he asked. He set the grocery bags on the kitchen table.

"I mean, I should say ‘no’ to anyone who asks to kiss me, right? That’s what Tatsuki is always talking about when she says I should be suspicious of boys. But what if the perfect person wants to kiss me, and I think I don’t really want to kiss him because… because…." Inoue turned her gaze to one side and flushed a deep red. "Because I like somebody else. In this case, shouldn’t there be a secret code to let me know that the person who wants to kiss me is someone who I will want to kiss back--even if I don’t think that’s what I want at first?"

Ishida felt his heart doubt. "You like somebody else?"

"No!" Inoue raised her palms. "I mean yes, I did, but I don’t really seem to anymore. It was like you pushed a button that activated the secret code!"

Ishida had a vague flashback to Inoue’s mecha visualization of herself in social studies class.

"I had imagined kissing you before," Inoue said.

Ishida felt his insides melting.

"But I had no idea," Inoue said, stepping closer, "that kissing you would make me feel…."

"I felt it too," Ishida began. Her presence was pulling on him like a magnet. "I had no idea that--"

"That the secret code would explode!" gasped Inoue, and she threw her arms around him.

They were kissing again, and Ishida was wondering how he had ever managed to survive his pitiful existence without this sort of pleasure in it. He felt wildly happy. He wanted to stop kissing for a moment to tell that to Inoue, but her mouth was dominating his. He turned his face slightly, and she continued to kiss his cheek, his chin, his jawline. Being taller, he managed to pull his lips away from her reach, but now she was kissing his neck, tugging at his school tie with one hand and pulling his shirt hem out of his pants with the other hand. "Inoue-san!" He was alarmed now. "What--what are you doing?"

"You smell like I could eat you up!" Inoue breathed. She had managed to find his custom zipper and had undone his shirt. Her hands were now palming his bare chest. They felt warm and tickled him somewhat. Ishida felt a gurgling rise in his throat, and a weird little laugh escaped his lips.

Inoue stopped smooching his collarbone and looked up at him. "You giggled!"

"No, I didn’t mean--" Ishida was afraid he’d insulted her somehow. "It’s just that--I’m sorry. I’m a little sensitive to people touching me, and--"

Inoue was smiling, looking delighted. "Why, you’re ticklish! That’s so cute!"

"Is it?" Ishida’s voice was weak. Inoue was grazing her lips over his nipples and the tickled feeling was turning into a different sort of feeling altogether. How did she know to…?

He leaned forward to capture her mouth with his, and this time their kiss was so intense that the couple fell to their knees on the floor.

"Ishida-kun."

"Inoue-san."

"Ow."

"What?" Ishida tore away his lips away from perfect rapture to see that Inoue was frowning and rubbing her knee.

"I landed hard," she said.

"Oh," Ishida looked around the spare room. "We shouldn’t be on the floor, really." There was no couch, no bed--no, wait! Apparently Inoue slept on a futon that hadn’t been rolled up and put away this morning. Slipping one arm around Inoue’s shoulders and the other under her knees, Ishida swooped her up easily--the way he had on a Seireitei rooftop when he had saved her life. Only without his powers the act was happening in real time, and Ishida felt acutely aware of the luscious form in his arms. His foot pushed the futon from its crumpled position against the wall and kicked it flat across the floor. Then he lay his girlfriend on the soft mattress.

Long auburn hair spread against the sheets, pleated skirt hitched up to reveal the whitest, longest legs, one knee-sock up and the other down--she was the most delectable girl in the whole school, and she had invited him, Ishida Uryuu, over to make out!

"Ishida-kun!" said the most delectable girl of Karakura High and held out her arms. "I’m tingling all over, and if you don’t kiss me again I’m going to die."

He fell against her, and time seemed to turn inside out. Ishida felt like his very skin was being transformed by Inoue’s kissing. She was exploring places with her mouth that he had never thought of as significant parts of his body before, but as soon as they were touched by Inoue, his shoulder, his ears, the underside of his wrist--these became charged erogenous zones. Then he realized that he had not been kissing her as much as she had been kissing him, and he set about rectifying that error right away.

But first he had to take his glasses off.

He had not anticipated that doing so would trigger an ecstatic sequence of tiny squealing noises from Inoue-san. "Oh! oh!" (squeal) "Look at you!" (another squeal) "Ishida-kun, you are so handsome without your glasses!" (squeal, squeal) The ridiculously high-pitched sounds should have been grating on his delicate Quincy nerves, but Ishida found himself wanting her to make more of those sounds. He kissed her throat, smoothed his hands over those large soft mounds that were the fantasy of every boy at Karakura High, and his finger caught against …

a button.

Perhaps he had discovered the true purpose of these damned accessories. Buttons were a deterrent to smooth foreplay.

"Inoue-san?"

"Yes?" Gods, how sexy her voice sounded. Was she even aware of the way she was squirming against his ribs?

"Inoue?" He was about to ask what he suspected was a dorky question. Reaching to make the moment more special, he decided to call Inoue by her first name. "Orihime?"

It worked. Her large eyes blinked, and she sat up on her elbows and stared at him. "Yes?" Her lips formed a tiny, appreciative smile. "Yes, Uryuu?"

"May I remove your blouse? I--I want to touch you the way you were touching me."

She nodded so eagerly that Ishida felt a little hesitation--was he taking advantage of her trusting nature? He began work on the tedious row of buttons, and after he painstakingly got past two and was being rewarded with a glimpse of lacy bra, Inoue lost patience and tore the two sides of the shirt apart herself. The buttons fell ping-pinging on opposite sides on the room.

"That was neat!" she exclaimed. "That was like Superman! Is there a big S on my chest? From the way people stare at it sometimes you would think there was. A big S for Super… Super… hmm, what would I be super at?"

Ishida had lain each of his large hands over the large breasts. He was about to enter territory he had only ever explored in his most secret imagination. "Super sexy," he said in a breathless whisper, and with his expert knowledge of clasps, he easily undid the double fastener at the front of Inoue’s bra.

Her softness spilled into his hands.

He fondled her as gently as he could, not wanting to seem like the over-eager pervert, but after a few seconds of stroking, Inoue arched her back and let out a little sigh, as if begging for more sensation. So he kissed them. Gently at first, the way she had grazed his own nipples, sending waves of excitement from his torso to his toes, but then Inoue started to make a low groaning sound, and Ishida felt the urge to tug at her nipples with his mouth. They were pink and alert, glistening with his saliva, and the more he sucked at them, the louder her groans.

"Ishida-kun!"

"Are you alright?" he breathed. "Am I hurting you at all?"

"No," she said and clasped his hips with her thighs. Her crotch was pressing directly against Ishida’s erection. "This is … amazing. This is better than by myself."

Ishida was not sure he heard correctly. Inoue’s school shoes were tapping his lower back, and her hips against his were inducing of a crisis of sexual need. "By--by yourself?" Why had he always assumed that girls, especially sweet and innocent seeming ones like Inoue, didn’t masturbate?

Inoue began rubbing her crotch up and down against his.

It was all happening so fast. Ishida had not anticipated getting this far on his very first make-out session. "Inoue-san!"

"You mean Orihime," she whispered. "Will you lick me down there?"

"Orihime." He didn’t know how he was managing to form words. "How did you find out about that?"

"Chizuru has all these manga," she said. "She gave me lots of them because she wanted to teach me all about sex, but I never really understood them. Then… then … not long ago…." She stopped her grinding against Ishida’s body to look him in the face. She cupped his chin with one hand. Her chest was heaving with deep, distressed breaths. "Not long ago I started getting these feelings."

"Feelings?"

"About boys." Inoue smiled. "I don’t think Chizuru would be happy to hear about that. But I--I--" Seized by some sort of urgent arousal, Inoue narrowed her eyes and threw her head back, exposing her white throat. The unstudied naturalness of the gesture was riveting. Ishida was sure he had seen that pose in girlie layouts and to see Inoue replicating it was just … too much.

"Ahhhh," Ishida threw his own head back and felt his hips slam forward into Inoue’s body. Oh no, he thought. He had ejaculated right in his pants.

"Ishida-kun? Are you alright?" Inoue was staring at him with blatant worry.

"I’m sorry." Ishida said. Was he going to have to explain what had just happened?

"You’re wet!" Inoue noticed. Her thighs loosened their grip on his body. "You did what boys do? But I wasn’t even doing anything to you!"

"I’m sorry," Ishida repeated. He had never considered the possibility of this happening at all; he had never expected Inoue Orihime to be such a steamy girl.

The blissful dream blew away and memories it had been blocking returned. "You are an idiot… You have no talent." The cold inadequacy he had felt when his father shot that Hollow over his head. The guilty misery when Keigo, then Chizuru, then finally Kurosaki all rose to defend Inoue Orihime while he, the one who had kissed her, sat frozen in his desk.

"Ishida-kun? What’s the matter? What’s the matter?" Inoue’s soft hands held his face, and Ishida felt his shame burn under her touch.

 

 

Next time: Part Two! How does being Inoue Orihime’s lover figure in Ishida’s decision whether to accept or deny Ryuuken’s proposal?