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Kon notices it.
Of course he does. Not noticing such obvious things would be an insult to the immaculate technology he's born from, to his predecessor sheets of equations. He was made like this, child of groundbreaking and marvellous science— sharper senses, sharper reflexes, a body honed for combat. So of course, he sees it.
Not because it's Ichigo. Not because he's always looking at Ichigo.
He sees the slump of Ichigo's shoulders after he's done with his soul reaper duties for the day. He sees how Ichigo drags his feet after he's back from dealing with rogue hollows at three o'clock on radium dials, how Ichigo rolls his neck in the mornings after all-nighters when he thinks no one's looking.
Of course, Ichigo doesn't consider Kon. That he could be, that he is, looking. After all, Kon is nobody worth considering, really.
On some evenings, Ichigo doesn't demand his own body back from Kon at all. He stumbles in through the window and folds himself into half at the foot of the bed, still in his shihakushō, still breathing a little ragged.
Kon is still in Ichigo's body. Well, his Soul Pill is. Then again, Kon is just a Soul Pill, isn't he, so he really should say—
He stops himself before he can venture deeper down that line.
He wasn't built for this. Not for this, this softness of embraces, this unspeakable tenderness aching in his heart. He feels like he's going to explode one day, because he's not programmed for this, is he.
He isn't. That's why it feels like a victory, when he wraps his arms around Ichigo.
It feels like a victory when Ichigo presses his face further into his shoulder.
Kon trembles a little, what if he ruins this, he doesn't know how to do this, he shouldn't know how to do this. So he runs his fingers through Ichigo's hair, presses his cheek against the downturned head and feels Ichigo shudder, feels the tug in his shirt as Ichigo curls his fingers into a tense fist in the fabric.
Oh, it feels like he's flying.
He likes to put it this way, he knows Ichigo inside out.
It fills him with a strange amalgamation of pride, of purpose, and of pain.
Ichigo never breathes a word about it, of course he never does. But when he hastily transfers Kon into his body and runs for the next hollow, Kon feels the dull throbbing headache that Ichigo's been braving through the whole day, the sharp biting pain in his neck from when he fell asleep crooked at his table, too tired to drag himself to the bed. Kon can feel how his shoulders hurt and how the newest bruise aches and all he can think about is how Ichigo was smiling with everyone just a while back.
Kon wonders if Ichigo has gotten so used to the pain that he doesn't sense it anymore, if it doesn't at all register. If it has permeated bone-deep and now it's a part of him, always.
Kon almost smiles to himself. Knowing Ichigo, he probably thinks that he has no time for such trivial things, such menial matters when he has to do so much more, has to be so much more.
Kon really, really hates that place and it's people sometimes but he tries not to dwell on it much.
Instead, the next time Ichigo's out on patrol, Kon takes the body to a massage parlor. He takes a nice, warm bath, puts all the scented salts and essential oils he can lay his hands on into the water. He puts the body to sleep, sleeps until Ichigo comes back and yanks him awake and goes off about all the things he's fucked up during the day. Kon grins.
He puts it this way, he takes care of Ichigo, because someone has to do that. Then he argues with himself, it's not really Ichigo, it's just his body. Ichigo's body and Ichigo's mind and Ichigo's soul are three different entities, he's aware but he knows he's not the one who should try to tread the boundaries between.
He has only one of these, technically, and that too, not his own. Engineered. He really isn't the expert on this but at least he's doing something, unlike people with everything who don't know how to look past any of Ichigo's smiles.
It really isn't difficult. After all, it's Ichigo.
(Kon leaves a message on the palm, in glittering italic letters, in red and blue and all the colors of pens he can find: Dumbass. He chews on the end of a marker for a while and then adds an elaborate heart sign just for the heck of it. Dumbass ♡.
Ichigo doesn't say anything about the message.)
(He was so sure that would get Ichigo riled up.)
At night, he watches Ichigo sleep.
Except that everything looks skewed through the bead eyes of the stuffed toy, distorted at the edges, like the vignette crowding around threadbare outlines of old memories. Except that Ichigo doesn't sleep most nights.
Kon keeps vigil.
When he really looks at himself, he wants to laugh. What's a six inch stuffed toy against the lacerating weight of nightmares engraved on shoulders too young? Ichigo's pillow is wet on far too many nights and Kon is helpless.
He wishes he could stop feeling so worthless. If he had a penny for every time he's felt like this, he'd repair the strings of Ichigo's old guitar and get the skateboard painted and its wheels oiled and he'd tell Ichigo to go be a teenager, to stop trying to fill in a gap that is not his responsibility. He'd tell Ichigo to breathe.
(None of this is his responsibility. He's fifteen and they're thousands of years old and failing and falling apart, frayed at the edges and rotten to the core and trying to mend everything by pushing the blame onto a human, a boy, he's only fifteen, he's only fifteen. He's their favorite scapegoat, whipping boy, punching bag, and— it makes Kon want to laugh— their trump card when they need him to be. Their golden key to easy victory. They teach him about the greater good and lead him to the fire. They sacrifice him and make it sound holy and everyone buys it because that makes it easy to keep lying to their mirrors, because they're all cowards, the bunch of them.)
(If he had a penny for every time he's felt like this, he'd have many but he can't buy a childhood.)
He wonders, at times, why Ichigo tries so hard not to make sounds. Why he bites down on his fists, why he pushes his face so far into the pillow that his body seizes from the lack of air. There's no one else in his room. There's no one. Kon is no one. He can be no one, if that's what Ichigo needs to just fucking let himself cry.
The screaming, though. That's different.
Kon pushes himself off the table.
It doesn't hurt when he hits the floor. Rayon and felt and polyester feel different than skin and bone and muscles.
He makes his way across the floor and heaves himself up the bedsheet and it's all the more difficult when the substitute badge is weighing his back down.
The transfer is smooth, for the most part, Ichigo doesn't even register the touch of the badge to his forehead, and his spirit form too, is thrashing on the bed when it separates from the body of flesh, arms flailing, mouth trying and failing to call for help. For help?
Kon wonders.
He tranfers the pill into Ichigo's body and spends a second trying to accustom himself to the sudden expansion from six inches to almost six feet, and spends the next half minute trying to fit himself on the bed, in the contours of a body locked into a foetal position, trembling.
Ichigo curls closer to him. Seeking warmth, seeking contact.
Well, he supposes, as he considers holding Ichigo's hand once, maybe it's true that there are none who wipe the tears of those that wipe everyone else's.
He considers holding Ichigo's hand once and despises himself because a small part of him wants to, when all parts of it should be because Ichigo needs it.
Ichigo holds his hand.
His grip is too strong and the calluses on his palm are too rough and Kon wonders if they hurt.
The touch spreads like a reverent brush against heartstrings— Kon feels the vibrant echo in the centre of him, like song echoing through water, flight echoing through wind and he allows himself to tighten his fingers, just a little.
Then, he realises, Ichigo's breathing has evened, creases on his sun-kissed skin softened into relaxed smoothness.
Kon brushes his thumb along the density of lashes, fragile folds of bruised eyelids, and it comes off wet. He strokes back unruly damp hair from Ichigo's forehead, stray lock by lock. He cradles Ichigo close, stretches his arms across him, and blood not his own sings in his veins, Please, keep him safe, let him rest his head on my chest and we will be like sailors, swimming in the sound of it, dashed to pieces.
Maybe this is what makes it all bearable, he thinks in one endless moment of epiphany, stealing small victories from grains of salt blooming like early galaxies on skin, stealing small victories when life isn't looking.
Maybe they coalesce somewhere, bloom into something bigger in the same way that infinitesimal folds into the infinite seamlessly, and that's why the heart of the universe has never stopped expanding.
He touches his lips softly to Ichigo's heated forehead and thinks, no one will take this away from me.
Ichigo holds him tighter and the night sails.
(The next time he's transferred into Ichigo's body, he finds words written on the palm as he unfurls the fingers: Right back at you.)
(It's a victory. Another of many. Kon laughs and laughs and laughs and then goes looking for pens.)
.