The pace picked up almost exponentially after that night of uncomfortable conversation; Urahara took a more active role in research, consuming and then explaining text after text that had stymied Uryuu for weeks-months-years as if they were beginner texts with straightforward information.
(Not that the man was very good at explaining, but they worked it out.)
(It was fine, it was fine, and if Uryuu had to abruptly get much better at parsing Urahara’s rambling explanations, it was fine because he was learning things at last even if he never expected to be learning it from a goddamn Shinigami.)
And, of course, with all the lessons in Quincy arts came the almost expected lessons in ward building, because even after their talk Urahara refused to be polite about shit and continued to shatter his wards every afternoon, give him advice, and then watch him rebuild them only to give him more advice. It got to the point where Uryuu would pointedly take the wards back down every evening after Urahara left in order to rebuild them differently, which… backfired in that Urahara seemed even more pleased with him afterwards.
(Which was weird.)
(Being pleased that it was now taking him about three seconds to shatter Uryuu’s wards instead of a single heartbeat was weird, wasn’t it?)
(He was going to add a second layer and incorporate some traps next, see if Urahara kept smiling at him after that, the bastard.)
(…not that he expected to catch Urahara in the traps or anything, but still…)
(Ugh, not the point.)
The point was, he was making progress. Progress that was finally starting to give him some actual hope.
Between the two of them, an array was starting to take shape, cobbled together from bits and pieces of other arrays and incorporating a tiny bit of Shinigami arts that they’d already tested and found relatively compatible. The thing was shaping up to look more like a goddamn art project than any of the arrays in the books they were going through, but according to Urahara that was ‘just a result of the method they were using’.
(What ‘method’, they were making this shit up as they went along.)
Meanwhile, things at work went… well, they went. Uryuu kept up with his patients and did what he could to make sure everything was done properly, but his heart — which had never truly been in it to begin with — was now truly disinterested in everything that had to do with his job. It was tiring, it was annoying, it was crowded and loud and obnoxious and everyone needed something from him and he was so, so tired of it all…!
It came to a head one night when Urahara breezed in, took one look at him, and practically bullied him onto the couch and then down so that he was stretched out across the cushions instead of sitting upright.
“Get some rest,” Urahara ordered imperiously, even as he tugged Uryuu’s phone from one pocket and then casually unlocked it and starting to flip through the screens. “You have vacation time, right?” he asked offhandedly as he raised Uryuu’s phone to his ear.
“Y-yes…?” Uryuu replied in confusion, too startled by whatever the fuck was going on to protest, even as he stared up at Urahara and tried to make sense of who the man was calling. On Uryuu’s phone. After asking about vacation time…?
“Oh good, otherwise I would have had to have some words with— Hello hello! I’m calling because— no. Yes he’s right here. No I’m not handing the phone to him. Look, you don’t need to know any whys, just that he’s going to be taking vacation for the next week. No, I don’t care. Find someone else to overwork, goodbye!” Urahara chirped into the phone before pulling it away from his ear and swiping to end the call in the middle of whoever’s rant on the other end of the line. “There!” Urahara declared cheerfully as he casually pocketed Uryuu’s phone as if it was his own. “Now we have a week of uninterrupted time to finish this and send you back, but first! Get some rest, you look like death warmed over.”
Uryuu blinked. Stared up at Urahara with slowly mounting dread. “Urahara… who did you just call?”
“Maa, maa, no one of import, don’t worry about it,” Urahara said with a wave of his hand. “I’ll take care of any problems, so go get some rest. We can keep working after you wake up and eat something.”
Uryuu hesitated, ready to argue, but eventually sighed at the steady, serious look Urahara was giving him and pointedly turned onto his side to face the back of the couch, putting his back to Urahara. “Fine,” he grumbled as he pulled his glasses off, set them atop the arm of the couch, then dragged a pillow over and tucked it under his head. “Be quiet and I will.”
Urahara made a soft noise of amusement but didn’t acknowledge him otherwise. Soon, he could hear the quiet sounds of rustling paper and flipping pages, as Urahara… began to work? Instead of leaving?
It was another weird thing amongst all the other weird things that the man had dragged into his life recently but it… wasn’t terrible.
It should have made him wary, should have made him uncomfortable, to have another person in his apartment with him while he was trying to nap on the couch but instead it just felt…
Unfamiliar. Odd. A bit… warm, maybe?
(…)
(Clearly he’d been spending too much time around Urahara if that was his only reaction to this new strangeness.)
(Oh well.)
Sleep came easier than he expected.
It was fully dark outside by the time Uryuu woke back up, and pretty dark inside his apartment. He slowly sat up, rubbing at his eyes, and squinted around at his dimly lit apartment, trying to figure out what time it even was. Had he slept so long that Urahara had—
“Ah, good morning!” Urahara’s cheerful — almost manic — voice broke through Uryuu’s thoughts, making him start and twist around to see—
“Why are you sitting over there in the dark?” Uryuu snapped as he squinted at Urahara, the man illuminated from behind by the light from the kitchen, then shook his head in exasperation and swung his legs down, feeling around on the couch arm to find his glasses again. “What even time is it, anyway?”
“Uh…” Urahara paused, pulled a phone out of a pocket to look at, then said, “Three in the morning!” with far too much enthusiasm.
Uryuu froze, then heaved a sigh and settled his glasses in place. “Did you even eat anything? Or rest at all?” he grumbled as he forced himself to his feet and stumbled into the kitchen, flicking the lights for the main room on as he went. “Why the hell did you let me sleep that long, anyway?”
“Well, you clearly needed it,” Urahara said as he stood up and followed Uryuu, though at least he stopped to lean against the doorway instead of crowding into the tiny space with him.
“And what about you?” Uryuu asked again, as he pulled out two packets of ramen and fished out a pot to put them in. “If it’s three am, why the hell are you still here, much less awake?”
“Er… well… it just… didn’t seem like a good idea to just… leave? When you were sleeping?” Urahara tried, reaching up to rub at the back of his neck.
Uryuu rolled his eyes at that. “You lost track of time, didn’t you,” he said as he filled his electric kettle and set it to boil. When he didn’t get an answer, just a stretch of awkward silence, he snorted and turned around, leaning against the counter and giving Urahara an exasperated look. “Pretty hypocritical of you, considering what you’ve been nagging me about lately.”
“Maa… do as I say, not as I do?” Urahara asked with amusement.
“You’re the worst,” Uryuu decided, as he turned back around to measure out the now-boiling water into the pot, opened the ramen and dumped the noodles into the pot and then emptied the spice packets in atop it. “Whatever. Be that way.”
Urahara chuckled, and then Uryuu heard him moving away, followed by the sound of a chair moving and some papers rustling. “So, I’ve got good news and I’ve got great news, which would you like to hear?”
Uryuu paused stirring the ramen to toss a disbelieving look over his shoulder. “Isn’t that supposed to be you have good news and bad news?” he warily asked.
“Maa, maa, but why would I say that? I don’t have anything bad to say,” Urahara said in that weird, chirpy tone that meant he absolutely had bad news. When Uryuu just narrowed his eyes at the man and made a ‘go on’ gesture, Urahara laughed and said, “So, since you won’t decide, I’ll start with the good news: Ryuuken has a new favorite person to hate, and it’s me!”
“What?” Uryuu yelped, then cursed as he fumbled and sent the spatula clattering to the floor. “Urahara!”
“It’s fine, it’s fine! He just thinks I’ve kidnapped you in my desire to learn more about Quincy arts,” Urahara said breezily, flapping a hand in the air over his shoulder.
“Over a decade after the last time anything really happened?” Uryuu asked incredulously, as he tossed the spatula in the sink and fished out another to use. “Ryuuken’s not that stupid.” When Urahara just hummed awkwardly, Uryuu pinched the bridge of his nose and asked, “Urahara, what did you tell him?”
“Nothing bad! Just that Seireitei finally got off their asses and sent me materials I’d asked about years ago, and that I wanted a Quincy to look at things too, and since he clearly had no interest in any of it, I would obviously be turning to the only Quincy I knew who actually gave a damn,” Urahara rambled out, barely taking a second to breathe during his entire explanation.
Uryuu frowned as he carefully poured the ramen between two bowls, making sure to keep it split evenly between them. “And did you actually get anything from Seireitei, or is that part a lie too?”
“Would I ever lie?”
“Do you ever not?” Uryuu asked as he picked up the two bowls and carried them out to the table, glowering pointedly at Urahara until the man moved enough books and papers to make space for Uryuu to set the bowls down. Which he did. Before returning to grab utensils for both of them.
Urahara pouted at him, though he still accepted the chopsticks when Uryuu handed them to him and set to eating as if it was his first meal of the day. Which… knowing him, it might be.
(And Urahara had the gall to tell Uryuu how to take care of himself?)
(What a bastard.)
“So,” Uryuu said after they had both eaten most of the instant ramen in their bowls, “Since you’re the one who decided on a week, what’s your plan?”
“Ah, well…” Urahara paused to frown down at his bowl for a moment, then shrugged and continued with, “That’s the great news, actually: we’re close to having a solution that I think will work. I have a suspicion that it will need to be drawn on you in order to trigger properly, so we should sort that out first since it will need some time to charge.”
Uryuu gave Urahara a look. “Yesterday you said we’d still need to work on the design, and now it’s ready?”
Urahara lifted a hand to wiggle it side-to-side. “I was working on it while you slept,” he said as he pushed his empty bowl aside and reached out to pull a stack of papers towards him, shuffling through them until, with a small cry of victory, he pulled one free and held it out. “I went back over the parts that you’ve broken down already and then went through the books again to see the common ways they fit together, and I think this is a better balance than what we’d put together the day before.”
Uryuu took the paper from Urahara and frowned down at it, needing a moment to figure out the twisting design; it wasn’t that much different from what they’d last settled on, but… Urahara was right. Something about the new design just felt… better. Cleaner. “And you think this will work?” he couldn’t help but ask as he traced the design with a fingertip, feeding a faint trace of reiatsu into the design and sensing the way it reacted to that power. The flow also felt better, with fewer snags and counter-currents than the last one. It was an encouraging sign.
“If it doesn’t send you back, at least it won’t kill you?” Urahara said with a faint smile.
“Encouraging,” Uryuu snipped back at him, a touch annoyed at how flippantly Urahara was acting, before sighing and setting the design down. “So… this is the design we’re going with?”
“Unless you want to spend another day on it, yes,” Urahara answered even as he pushed his chair back and started gathering up their dishes. “I’m not sure how much more we can improve it without a significant amount of further research, and I figure you’d prefer to leave sooner rather than later.”
“I… well… yes, but…” Uryuu hesitated, staring thoughtfully down at the design while considering his options; on one hand, spending more time on the design might result in something better, but on the other, the longer they waited the more likely it was that someone else would figure things out. Especially if Uryuu was going to be going around with a charging array drawn somewhere on his body, which would be a beacon to anyone with reiatsu senses.
So he took a breath and looked up at Urahara as the man returned from the kitchen, gathering his resolve as he said, “This will be fine.”
Urahara’s eyebrows rose a bit, but his expression quickly settled into something cheerfully confident as he said, “Well then! With that decided, I’ll go out tomorrow morning and get what I need. I figure the best place to put it is on your back—”
“Wait, if you’re drawing this on me, is it going to, well… be permanent?” Uryuu abruptly asked, glancing between the design and Urahara. “I mean, if I go back, will it just start charging up again?”
“It won’t,” Urahara said with confidence, reaching out to pat Uryuu’s shoulder. “That’s part of the design that I changed, which makes it one use only. I don’t know if the design will remain on you, since I’m still not certain whether you’ll return as yourself or just merge with your past self, but even if it does it won’t continue gathering reiatsu after it’s used.”
Uryuu wrinkled his nose and absently shrugged Urahara’s hand off his shoulder as he considered that. “Well… alright then. I’m assuming that your past self will help if anything goes sideways?”
“Probably!” Urahara chirped, giving Uryuu one his most annoying (most fake) smiles in the process. “So long as you explain everything to him. I’ll give you a letter, which might make it back with you—”
“Urahara, am I going to show up naked?” Uryuu interrupted, scowling up at the man.
“Nooooo?” Urahara tried, then paused, shrugged, and added, “Maybe? We’re working with a lot of ifs here, you know! I think the array should, technically, return you to your past state with your current memories, but I’m not certain if your Schrift will interfere with that or not, and it’s not exactly something I can test. Worst case, you’ll possibly be naked, sorry! More likely case, you’re just going to show up in front of your past self just the way you left here. Which is why I’m going to write a letter to my past self for you to try to take with you.”
Uryuu huffed in exasperation, resisting the urge to rub at his chest where he could still feel the dull sensation of the Schrift burned into his soul; it wouldn’t surprise him if that single difference did mess with whatever Urahara had planned. Though, if he was being honest… maybe going back in time as the adult he actually was would be the better option anyway. Then he could just… give his past self some advice and deal with some of the coming problems before they actually became problems.
(Like Yhwach?)
(The bastard would still be asleep so long as Uryuu showed up before his past self was seventeen, which should mean that he could just… take out the hidden Quincy forces before they became a problem.)
(And maybe toss a Hollow at Yhwach while the bastard was still asleep?)
(He could probably entice Grimmjow into helping him with his Quincy problem…)
(Hmm…)
“Alright, alright, stop trying to plot when you don’t even know when or how you’ll show up,” Urahara chided as he ruffled Uryuu’s hair and finally stepped around him to sit back down. “So, for the rest of the night—”
“You are going to sleep, I am going to stay up for a bit and then also sleep, and then we can do more in the morning like normal people,” Uryuu grouched, leaning forward to stare pointedly at Urahara. “You’ve been awake how long? I’m not letting you draw an experimental array on my back while you’re sleep deprived.”
Urahara pouted at him, but Uryuu just continued staring while gesturing pointedly at the couch, until the man finally sighed and got back up to go slouch over to the couch.
“Mou, Ishida-kun is being mean,” Urahara huffed as he threw himself down and draped an arm over his eyes. “Fine, fine, I’ll rest for a bit.”
Uryuu rolled his eyes at Urahara’s dramatics and got up to flick the lights in the kitchen and main room back off. “Good. If I suspect you haven’t, I’m not letting you draw anything on me until you have, so go to sleep.”
And with that, he stalked past the couch and towards his bedroom.
Hopefully, the next day would be better.
(Well… at least it couldn’t be worse…)
(Right…?)