Chapter Text
When they turned towards a two-storey building with Kurosaki Clinic written above it, Uryu realized for the first time that he had had no idea where the shinigami actually lived up until that very moment.
It wasn’t that unusual to not be acquainted with the place of residence of someone you were only reluctant friends with, true, but considering the direction his life was travelling in the lack of knowledge was becoming strange. Going from the lightest, most distant of friends to owner and pet. Or at least to the outside eye. If Kurosaki ever got too many ideas that he was somehow in charge of Uryu, he’d make sure to correct him. The feline form had one advantage, as far as Uryu could tell, and that was claws.
Since every step Kurosaki had taken thus far had resonated and rattled in Uryu’s thin bones, when he started to slow down in view of the clinic it was immediately noticeable. At first Uryu passed it off as just habitual, since their destination was now in view. Curious regardless, he snuck a look up at Kurosaki’s face to check, trying his best to make sure the movement was subtle enough that he wouldn’t notice. While his expression didn’t look that much different from one of his usual scowls, he noticed extra pinching in the corners of his eyes and mouth. Uryu began to form the suspicion that whatever was going on, it was more than just habitual. Before he could figure anything else out, however, Kurosaki had reached the door and after giving a hasty knock slid it open.
“Welcome back, my son!” Isshin flew towards the two of them, and Uryū was once again aware of how small he was as a cat. There was an option to leave Kurosaki’s arms entirely and run away, to anywhere, to avoid the incoming collision, but that would involve…leaving Kurosaki. Something he was all too reluctant to do for reasons unbeknownst to him. So instead he just burrowed deeper, face into the folds of Kurosaki’s sweater, never finding the heartbeat underneath.
At least whatever impact might have come missed Uryū, more or less. The man’s voice was booming unpleasantly in his sharp ears, of course, but Kurosaki’s snippy response quickly put an end to the yelling and made the man descend into loud, ugly sobs. Uryū was curious, but the safety and refuge of the sweater was too nice to refuse. He simply had to infer from the snippets he heard.
“Now what’s this?”
This, Uryū quickly realized, was him.
“None of your business.” Uryū could hear the scowl in Kurosaki’s words without even looking.
“Not my business has ears and a tail.”
“You never care about anything else I do. Why take an interest now?”
“Because you’re trying to carry a cat in the house.”
That was something that Uryū wasn’t going to get used to easily. He hoped he wouldn’t have to. Being referred to as a cat was still strange, in great part because most of him still failed to comprehend that the label was referring to him. At first he poked his head out of the safe nest of Kurosaki’s arms, looking around for where the cat was and finding only his father’s stubbly face staring down at him.
Oh. Right. I’m the cat. Uryū took a look at Kurosaki Isshin’s face before he retreated again, and came to the conclusion that there was absolutely no resemblance. Kurosaki was lucky he didn’t look so homely. He must have gotten his looks from his mother, because at least he didn’t look like a humanoid goat. It was not flattering.
“Why, is there some new rule about no cats in the house that you conveniently forgot to tell me about?” Kurosaki’s voice was guarded.
“I never considered that there might be a need to make one.” Isshin was pinning Uryu with a powerful stare that belied the truth behind his casual, flippant actions. “I hardly expected you of all people to drag a stray anything into the house. Where did my strong, masculine son go?”
Kurosaki flinched at this comment, which made his arms twist in a strange way around Uryu. Once the immediate discomfort had abated, it left baffled questions: what about bringing any sort of animal home did Isshin not find masculine?
“He’s a stray. I wanted to take him in because he was starving and pitiful and, maybe, Goatface, I just wanted to do something nice for a desperate animal.” Ichigo seemed to be selling the narrative that Uryu was a stray he’d taken pity on very well. Even Isshin seemed to buy it well enough. The promise of shelter it offered wasn’t enough to stop him from cringing, though. Starving and pitiful? Uryu may have been scrawny, sure, but he wasn’t that bad, even if his paws and ears were a bit oversized for his body in his feline body. He certainly didn’t look malnourished or anything of the sort, even though he had regularly skipped meals as a human.
“All right. You can take the mangy rug in on one condition. If you leave him alone at any point in time, I’m within full rights to toss him out the window. Or, of course, if he doesn’t behave himself, I can always send him off to a farm.”
Uryū could feel Ichigo tensen again, even more this time, arms tightening, smell of fear rolling off him in waves. Really, compared to what Ryūken would have said, it didn’t seem that bad at all. Yet the effect it had on Ichigo was clear, and he turned around in his arms to press his nose up against the bare skin through his collar in some weak attempt at comfort.
“Goatface…you wouldn’t.”
“You take a damn cat into this house without warning, and I very well can and could. You and Mister Whiskers here are on very thin ice, mark that.”
“Mister Whiskers? What kinda idiot do you take me for?” For a moment, the soft and kind Ichigo that Uryu had been seeing for the past few days was gone, replaced by the same coarse, crude boy who he’d met just a couple months ago.
Briefly peeking out at the scene, Uryu could see that Isshin was pinwheeling his arms around and huffing, looking like an overgrown buffoon. If he wasn’t a cat, and Isshin wasn’t the man of what he seemed to want to be a cat-free house, Uryu might have even laughed. Taking the present circumstances into consideration, however, he felt rather somber about the whole thing and retreated back further into the safe cradle of Ichigo’s arms. They were strong, and deceptively wiry with muscle, and at the very least Uryu felt confident that he wouldn’t find himself accidentally dropped.
“You can do what you like, Ichigo,” Isshin said in a tone that suggested he was not, actually, allowed to do what he liked, “but I will make this quite clear: if this cat causes any trouble, he’s going. I’m expecting you sticking to him like glue means you’ll make sure he behaves, not that you’ll hang around to watch him getting up to…mischief.” He said the last word with quite the dramatic flair that suggested he believed it was in Uryu’s very nature to cause such frivolous issues.
“Fine. I’ll keep an eye on him. Now will you let me go by?”
It seemed to be with some reluctance Isshin moved to the side, letting Ichigo slip up the stairs and out of sight.
Once they’d reached the second floor landing, Uryu could feel some of the tension release from Ichigo’s body. He walked over to a door with a plaque with the number 15 on it—and Uryu could guess well enough whose room that was—and slipped inside, closing it shut behind him with a slam that seemed to bring him a great deal of relief.
Uryū shifted himself, looking around at what he guessed was Ichigo’s bedroom. It was reasonably sized, he supposed, although he didn’t have many bedrooms to compare it to and his own back in the Ishida manor had been significantly bigger. What stood out to him the most was how messy and cluttered it all was, even after Ichigo had been away from it for a couple weeks. Uryu dearly hoped this wasn’t the case for most of his peers, but regardless he found it distasteful and more than a little bit heinous. To entrust his life to someone this cluttered? It didn’t seem like a good idea.
“You’re going to be staying here for the time being, I guess,” he muttered, uncertainty clear in his voice. “I hope it’s okay with you. I just couldn’t let you stay there with Hat and Clogs.”
I didn’t want to stay there anyway, Uryū miaowed. Of course, as with all the other times, Ichigo could not have any idea what the intent behind this was, but he had to keep trying. And the truth was, as messy as the substitute shinigami was, his care was still preferable to Urahara’s on the grounds that Uryu could be fairly certain that here he wouldn’t wake up with monitors and tubes tacked onto him.
“You can sleep here with me,” Ichigo continued, letting his arms open slightly and giving Uryū the opportunity to leap onto the sloppy bed. His left ear flicked in irritation at the complete and utter dishevelled state of where he was expected to sleep for the foreseeable future, but soon the soft smell of Ichigo also reached him, rising from the blanket weave. Curious and desperate for comfort, he buried his nose into a wrinkle in the red sheet and soaked up the strong traces of his reiatsu, wood smoke and petrichor and a third thing he couldn’t properly identify. If he couldn’t be held by Ichigo all the time while stuck in this form—and he knew that was a foolish thought to entertain—this was a good second best. A purr rose from his chest in satisfaction, catching him by surprise. I’m never going to get used to that.
“I’m gonna have to figure out what to do with you,” Ichigo murmured. He sat down next to Uryū, making the weight of the bed shift slightly with both his presence and a heavy sadness that seemed to weigh him down.
Pulling his head away from the soft sheets that smelled like Ichigo, Uryū turned himself towards the genuine article and slunk over, whiskers brushing against his forearm before he went fully in, leaning his head against the cool skin.
“If I’m taking care of you now, maybe we should be on given name terms.”
Uryū hissed, baring his teeth. It was humiliating enough that Kurosaki was taking him in as a pet, and embarrassing that he found himself craving his presence so much, but he would not give in. Letting Kurosaki call him Uryū would be as good as admitting he was stuck this way forever. He would not.
“All right, all right. Ishida it is. But I can’t call you that all the time, not around others. People will get suspicious.”
And no one will believe that I’m who I am and not just Kurosaki’s pet cat.
“Listen, I can’t leave you at home all day when I’m out at school and hollow-hunting.” Kurosaki ran his hand over the top of Uryu’s head, and he couldn’t stop the purr that rose in him at the contact. “You heard what Goatface said. He’s not gonna tolerate you in the house unless I keep my eye on you twenty-four-seven. That means you’re going to have to follow me around.
At least it’s a way of keeping my grades up, if I tag along to school with Kurosaki. Uryū knew it was a foolish time to be considering grades, but the part of him that thought this might all just be a temporary little caper and he’d be back again by the week’s end couldn’t help but spare them some thought.
“What should I call you around others?”
Not Mister Whiskers, Uryū miaowed. Anything but that.
“I could call you something super tough or macho.”
A sound that Uryū presumed must have been feline laughter emerged from him, even if it sounded more like he was miaowing straight into a fan.
“But I don’t know…It’s hard, when I look at you I just see Ishida. Weird to name someone you already know has a name.”
Uryū put his head in Ichigo’s lap, whiskers brushing up against the worn fabric of his pants.
“What would you like to be called?”
I liked to be called Uryū. A mewl. But you’re right, Kurosaki, I can’t use that name now. Ichigo couldn’t understand the language of cats, however, and much to Uryū’s frustration that was the only tongue he was able to speak at the moment.
“Well…Maybe I don’t have to do too much tweaking. Just a little bit.”
Oh, Ichigo’s hand was so nice and cool on top of Uryū’s head, fingers skritching at the skin. He loathed how nice it felt. Shinigami fingers were not supposed to feel so nice. If asked, before, he would have assumed they were icy cold and drained the life from you the instant they made contact. While Ichigo’s fingers were far cooler than what was normal for a human—really, all of him was that eerie chilled temperature—Uryū could almost feel warmth pouring into him at the contact instead of the other way around.
“I could call you Ryūji,” Ichigo offered. “Close, but not so close that people might expect. I think it would be awkward if people started questioning who exactly my new cat is. They probably won’t, but we can’t be too careful.”
A dragon in cat form. And I feel just as preposterous, too. All this fur wasn’t a nice match for the late summer humidity, and Uryū almost found himself wishing he’d grown draconic scales instead. What was it Kurotsuchi told me? That the serum made me take the form of that which my soul most resembled. Does that mean I was always like a cat, somehow? Or was that all just more shinigami bullshit?
“What do you think, Ishida? Does Ryūji work for you?”
It was overly and irritatingly familiar, but then again, cats seldom followed the same rules of etiquette that their owners did. As far as names could have gone, it was handsome and respectable and lacked any impression that Ichigo was just trolling him by picking a deliberately bad name. He could have gone much worse if he’d wanted, but he’d picked something…with what Uryū would like first in mind. A purr rose in his throat, and he looked up to see Ichigo staring down at him with his bright amber eyes, seeking approval of his choice.
Hoping its meaning would be clear enough, Uryū let out a mew and tried to smile with his snout.
“So you like it, then?” Ichigo’s harsh face lit up in a bright look, scooping his pleasantly cool hands under Uryū’s feline body and carrying him upwards, closer to his chest. Being so close to Ichigo’s body—to Kurosaki’s body, because he had been referring to the shinigami by his given name this whole time for some ridiculous reason, being a cat didn’t mean he suddenly had permission to act so casually around him—made him shiver pleasantly. He was starting to suspect the serum had done more than made him into a cat. There was no other way this sudden clinginess he felt towards Kurosaki made sense. He’d become weak.
Weak to being pressed up against the thin cloth covering Kurosaki’s corpse-cool chest, head half pressed against his ribcage and searching for a heartbeat he couldn’t find. This was so nice, to be held by someone like this.
“I’m not going to let Goatface have you. If that means I have to drag you around everywhere until Hat and Clogs figures out how to de-cat you, well then so be it.”
Can he call anyone by their actual name? Uryū let out a mrrow of amusement.
“If I have to spread the story that I’m emotionally reliant on Ryūji the cat, then that’s what I’ll do.”
Emotionally reliant. A small shiver of happiness ran down Uryū’s spine. Even though he knew it was just a story and not the truth. No one had ever even pretended to be emotionally reliant on him before, and it was a baffling concept for him to get used to.
A soft disturbance moved Kurosaki’s chest up and down, and Uryū looked up curiously to see what was the matter.
Shock of all shocks: Kurosaki was crying.
If you’re practising for the role of me being your emotional support cat, Kurosaki, I daresay you’re doing an excellent job. Uryu mewed gently, but his eyes were still fixed to the silvery droplets streaking down Kurosaki’s cheeks, ears twitching as distressed breaths heaved against him.
Very poor for an emotional support cat, Uryu had no real idea how to deal with people in distress like this. He himself had only ever fended off the threat of crying with angry words to himself, and resorted to punishment if that wasn’t enough. He had never seen anyone else cry in front of him. This was such a uniquely alien situation he had no idea what he was supposed to do. Discomfort made him want to slip out of Kurosaki’s arms and under the bed until the fit of melancholy was over, but logic told him that a good ‘emotional support cat’ wouldn’t abandon someone like that. Even less so when they were in possession of complete human intellect.
A shame that human empathy hadn’t been packaged along with that when he was born.
To make matters worse, Kurosaki didn’t say anything for the longest time as he let himself breathe tiny sobs. Uryu had absolutely nothing to work with.
It was only after what felt like a whole day of watching the substitute shinigami get all soggy with emotions that he finally reached up to his cheek and with one hand rubbed away the tears. Uryu waited for an explanation, anything, but all he got was a quiet “I’m sorry, Ishida.”
Once the hand came back down, both Kurosaki’s arms wrapped around Uryu tighter than ever before, and he felt himself being pressed up close to his chest and neck like he himself had once done with his beloved stuffed quincy doll years ago, before Ryūken had found it and thrown it out.
This much, Uryu could understand, and as much as he felt that he should be more indignant at being Kurosaki’s cuddle toy, the shinigami—no, the boy—seemed so sad he couldn’t muster even a drop of irritation.
He miaowed, and hated himself for not being capable of saying anything else. Especially when there was so much to know, so many questions to ask.
The realization that Kurosaki wasn’t just brawns and bravado and scowls and shinigami blasphemy was a revelation to Uryu that he was having a hard time processing.
𝄪
It didn’t take Uryū long to come to the conclusion that riding along in a shinigami’s backpack was, without question or exception, the most humiliating thing he had ever done in his life.
His head was poking out of the back, facing the opposite way that they were moving, and the sensation made him a little bit dizzy. Twitching his whiskers in displeasure, he let out a miaow of protest that seemed to fall on deaf ears.
Kurosaki, you idiot! At least turn me the right way around if you’re going to stick me in here!
Of course, the whole solution would have been amended if Uryū hadn’t followed along to school at all, but that was in his mind at least absolutely ridiculous. He needed to keep up with his grades somehow, even as a cat. He would not lose his top spot in class to this absurd serum that was still pulsing through his veins with no signs of stopping any time soon.
Yes: the reason that Uryū was suffering through the indignity of being inside Kurosaki’s backpack was to maintain grades. Not because he didn’t know what he’d do if he spent the whole school day separated from him. Uryū was many things but he was very proud to say that clingy was not one of them.
The best excuse of them all, on Kurosaki’s front, was that he didn’t trust Uryu alone at his home with Kurosaki Isshin unsupervised. That was, like the best excuses always were, grounded firmly in fact. Neither of them wanted to learn what might happen if Uryu was left in the former shinigami’s hands, and they agreed to not find out as long as they could help it.
Of course, that didn’t mean Uryu liked the arrangement any more. If cats could pout, he most certainly would be as he examined the schoolyard from the vantage of Ichigo’s backpack.
“Heyyy, Ichigo. Nice to see you again!” A grating voice Uryū wasn’t familiar with, it made his ears flatten against his head unconsciously.
“Hey, Keigo.” Ichigo didn’t sound particularly enthusiastic about being confronted by this person, yet he addressed him with the familiarity of a friend.
Ah. I recognize the voice now. It was one of those irritating friends of his I met on the rooftops that day. Curiosity piqued, Uryū turned around to look over Ichigo’s shoulder and had his suspicions confirmed: Asano Keigo, a young man he didn’t know much about aside from the fact that he didn’t particularly approve of him.
And he was punching Kurosaki on the shoulder.
With fury rising fast inside him Uryū opened his mouth and hissed, baring his fangs and making his message as clear as he possibly could to the other boy.
“Hey!” Asano backed off, as he should have. Uryū would have bitten if he’d tried that again. Why, he wasn’t sure; while he found the boy irritating there was no particular reason to bite him. Something about being around Kurosaki so much was making him act strangely, and had been ever since the serum had taken effect and he’d changed into a cat. The fact that Asano had punched Ichigo on the shoulder was now unthinkable, and Uryū wanted to make sure he knew it.
“Since when did you have a cat, Ichigo?” Asano tilted his head sideways as if to size Uryū up, and for a brief moment the realization that he was naked flickered through his head until he remembered that he was completely covered in fur.
“Since summer break,” Ichigo said with a shrug. “What’s it to you?”
“You must really like him if you brought him all the way to school.”
Ichigo’s face shifted into a scowl. “Goatface doesn’t like him very much, and won’t let him be in the house without my supervision. I was worried that if I left him alone…I dunno.”
What was left unsaid gave Uryū chills, no doubt about it, but he had gotten even more confused by how freely Ichigo had cried about it. He had never expected before all this had began that he would ever see the shinigami shed a single tear, and to see such a frank display of emotion had simply been baffling. When he talked to Keigo now, he had none of that softness anymore, of course, just his usual cool disinterest. But Uryū could smell his nervousness, both at being caught and the questions that might ensue. There was still no sign of his heartbeat, but he hardly needed that to tell him how Ichigo was feeling with his new senses.
“Cute cat, Ichigo.” Mizuiro hadn’t bothered to look up once as far as Uryū could tell, so he had no idea how he’d even managed to figure out that he was a cat.
“Yeah. He’s quite a charmer isn’t he?” Keigo let out a wolf whistle and walked closer.
When he tried to scratch Uryū behind the ear, however, there was a definite feeling of personal space being violated that he responded to in kind, flattening his ears and letting out the loudest hiss he’d mustered yet. He couldn’t help sizing up Keigo’s hands and thinking about where might be best to bite if he came any closer.
Luckily, Uryū didn’t need to resort to drastic measures. Ichigo went there first, swinging a fist into Keigo’s stomach with none of the friendly playfulness of Keigo’s previous punch. This strike was pure anger and distaste, and Uryū could feel all the emotions crackling off of Ichigo, smell his anger even if he couldn’t properly sense his reiatsu anymore.
“Leave Ryūji the fuck alone!” The words were growled through gritted teeth, eyes alight with fury, in that moment Ichigo looking more animal than Uryū did.
“Ow! Ichigo, you’re supposed to hit jokingly! Lightly! Not pummel me like that.” Keigo nursed his stomach where a bruise was most likely already forming, something that filled Uryū with a snide bit of satisfaction.
“And you’re supposed to keep your damn hands to yourself.” Ichigo began walking away from both of them, backpack bobbing up and down with Uryū shifting inside.
“And who the hell’s Ryūji, anyway?”
“I think it’s the cat.” Mizuiro finally looked up, towards Ichigo in question. “Am I correct?”
“Ryūji is my cat.”
Kurosaki thinks he owns me? Uryū couldn’t hide his miaow of indignation. Sure, it was all an act, but he couldn’t let such ideas fester in his head lest his human life, once he was reverted back to normal, become a complete insufferable mess.
“So you’re protecting a stray cat, now, huh?”
“Yes.” Kurosaki began walking past them into school, his voice clipped and terse.
“What about protecting your friends?”
“The cat doesn’t talk back.” Kurosaki’s response was strangely hollow and Uryu was struck by just how distant and detached he sounded.
“What about your friends, Ichigo?” Keigo had begun bawling, hand still to his stomach as if the wound had been grave enough to leave a gap for entrails to hang out. “More or less important than the cat?”
“Are you seriously juvenile enough to get in a competition with a cat?” Kurosaki asked him listlessly, not waiting for an answer as he slid into the classroom.
Although Uryu immediately brushed this all off as Kurosaki deflecting, and turned his attentions towards the class, he couldn’t help but notice his thoughts kept wandering towards the encounter. While he’d never said that he prioritized Uryu over his human friends…at the same time, actions could speak louder than words when given the chance and their meaning that morning had been clear enough. Even if Uryu couldn’t understand quite why they meant that.