It felt like he'd barely finished one summoning before it was time to start preparing for the next. It was a pain to have to personally gather more than a dozen super-specific ingredients from all over the world, like "moss growing on the north side of the third rock on the left past kilometer marker 17 on the B6 in Namibia." Okay, maybe not quite that exact, but they were specific enough that he had to spend four months of the year traveling.

He was lucky he managed to get a job at the only legitimate occult shop in a hundred miles. While he was off gathering and curing his own ingredients, he could ship more back to Karakura and get paid, without worrying about whether or not his job would be there when he got back. Really, the only downside was –

"Kurosaki-saaaaaaaan~!"

-the shopkeeper. And, oh yeah, the Vasto Lorde-class demon he had to summon once a year.

"It's good to see you, Kurosaki-san!" Urahara called cheerfully as the other witch stepped into the occult shop, the blond whipping out his ubiquitous fan and using it to hide his wide grin, "Your friends and family have been asking after you."

'Emphasis on the former more than the latter.' Not that Ichigo blamed them. His friends didn't know that demons were real, that once upon a time his parents had hunted them until his mother had gotten possessed by a demon that not even the Head Hunter could handle. That his father sold his firstborn to him in exchange for him leaving his wife, never expecting that the demon would cure Masaki's barrenness to force them to uphold their end of the deal.

His friends didn't know that that led to his parents being distant for most of his childhood, not wanting to grow too attached and then have him snatched away. That after they all left his seventeenth birthday party, his parents sat him down and told him the truth, giving him a year to say his goodbyes.

His friends didn't know that the night he turned eighteen, the Vasto Lorde had come for him, marked him as his own with two red stripes starting near his ear and curving across his left cheek, merging into one and ending in a point under the tear duct of his left eye. His friends didn't know that his continued existence in the world of the living was as tenuous as a spiderweb during monsoon season. One wrong move, one late summons…

(Okay, maybe he was a little bitter. And maybe he did blame his parents a little.)

(But only a little.)

"Sorry, Urahara-san," Ichigo replied, toeing off his shoes and padding into the shouten, "I had a hell of a time trying to get out of Vietnam. The weather was garbage the whole time I was there."

"Oh dear. But you made it back safely. It didn't affect the quality of the supplies, I trust?"

"No, not at all." The younger witch headed back into the depths of the shouten, aiming for his room.

It was pretty much exactly as he'd left it, although Ururu had probably been in to dust and store the supplies he sent back. Ichigo dropped his pack in a corner and laid down on his futon, letting out a deep sigh. He'd spent the past forty-eight hours fighting through one airport after another to get home in time. It was nice to be able to take a moment to just breathe.

But as much as he wanted to, he couldn't sleep until noon tomorrow. The witch heaved himself back to his feet while he could still muster the will, and shuffled towards the bathroom.

His purification bath had already been drawn, the nearly boiling hot water already perfumed with the necessary herbs and oils. He managed to call his thanks out to Urahara, and got a vague response before he started stripping.

Ordinarily Ichigo would have punt on the yukata hanging on the back of the door while the tub filled, but this time he went straight for the stool in the corner. Arrayed before it were four different buckets of four different woods, each perfumed with four different herbs and four different oils. Most people would have been put off by so much "death," but he had long since grown used to it. The witch sat down on the stool, hands palm down on his knees, back straight, and started his breathing exercises.

Then he started to bathe, dipping his wash cloth into the first bucket and starting to scrub away the dirt and grime of the day. When he finished, he emptied the bucket over his head, shook his hair out of his eyes, and went to soak in the tub. He did it three more times with the three remaining buckets, then rinsed himself off and donned the white yukata.

The shouten was empty by the time he emerged. Urahara and Tsukabishi had been there the first time he'd summoned the demon, stayed close by for a few times after that, but now they gave him his privacy. Ichigo was grateful for that; he didn't like knowing his employers could hear how much he enjoyed having sex with a demon.

The summoning chamber was already prepared, too, the circle laid out in binding chalk nearly filling the room, herbs laid out, braziers unlit. He went around and lit them with a pack of special matches Urahara left. Even before the scent of the aromatic woods filled the chamber, the air grew thick and heavy, and Ichigo's cock started to stir.

He was near, just outside the bounds of the material world, waiting for the summoning so he could push through and claim his prize.

Ichigo hurriedly shrugged off the yukata and left it in a corner outside the edge of the circle. He was careful not to smudge even the tiniest character despite his eagerness, and knelt in the open space at the heart of the circle. With the ceremonial knife laid there, he cut a finger and squeezed it to get the necessary number of drops into the bowl with the ingredients he'd spent so much time gathering, then stroked his cock a few times with his uninjured hand to ad his precum to the mix. Then he lit another match and dropped it in.

The circle flared with ruddy light, and Ichigo felt something akin to a rock being dropped into a pond, as if experienced from below the surface. All his senses skewed and swam, then settled.

He was no longer alone.

A taloned hand, whiter than snow, was making short strokes over his chest, the razor-sharp tips just barely teasing his skin. Warm, damp breaths ghosted over the back of his neck. He'd appeared in his more human form this time; Ichigo could tell based on the fabric separating his back from the demon's chest.

"Happy birthday, Strawberry."

No matter how many times he'd heard it before, the demon's echoey voice always sounded strange, and despite the hated nickname, the witch leaned back against him. "Shiro," he groaned as the demon's other hand snaked between his legs to tug at his cock.

The demon's horned mask cracked open, letting his long, pointed tongue snake out and lick a swipe up the side of the mortal's neck, catching the remnants of his bath and the beginnings of sweat. The next thing Ichigo knew, he was on his back on the futon set off to one side in the center of the circle.

The demon loomed above him, the light from the braziers flickering eerily over his black mask, turning all of him dark amber in the low light. Shiro grasped his injured hand, stuck his cut finger between the parted teeth of his mask, his long tongue licking away the blood and a small infusion of power sealing the self-inflicted slice. Then he released the human's wrist to slide his hand down the other's arm, then over his chest to his heart. "This is mine, isn't it?"

Ichigo moaned in response, the slightest brush of the demon's power setting him alight.

"Isn't it?"

"Yes – yes, yours," he panted, arching into the demon's touch.

"That's right, good boy." The demon dragged his talons down the other male's chest just hard enough to raise red lines without breaking even the tiniest patch of skin. Ichigo hissed quietly, then tugged on the demon's clothes. Shiro barked out a laugh. His hakama and modified kosode were gone in the blink of an eye, leaving him as naked as Ichigo, save for his horned mask.

The witch groaned aloud when the demon lowered himself enough for the erections to brush, making the other grin behind his mask. "My, my, sounds like ya want somethin', Strawberry."

"You know," Ichigo gritted out, fighting to form thoughts through the unnatural pleasure, "it really kills the mood when you call me that." He knew the futility of trying to move the demon when he didn't want to be moved, so he moved himself instead, wrapping his legs around the other's waist and lifting his hips to grind them closer together. Both of them moaned that time.

"Mmm… wanna get right to the good part, huh?" His gold-on-black eyes sparkled with mirth. "All right. It's been a while, so I s'pose I can oblige you." He trailed a talon down the witch's chest, over his muscled belly (and it'd be all too easy to push through and gut), teasing over his cock, then dipping down between his legs to just barely press into his hole.

Ichigo writhed as the demon's power swept into him, leaving him empty and slick – but not stretched. Shiro liked to do that himself. He pushed his fingers one by one into the witch, stretching him open, but not fully. The mortal like a little bit of burn with his pleasure.

The demon thrust sharply into him, making Ichigo scream and arch under him. Shiro heaved the witch's legs up onto his shoulders, then continued pounding into him, sharp jabs of his hips aiming for the other's prostate. Ichigo screamed again, then kept screaming, clawing at the demon's back with one hand and fisting his cock with the other. "SHIRO! Shiro, please!"

"Such a sweet berry," Shiro hummed, still sounding incredibly put-together. He batted Ichigo's hand away, then took over stroking his dick, adding a touch of his power to make the witch scream louder. His voice gave out before he did, but three strokes later he came so hard he passed out.

Ichigo woke on his side, his back to Shiro's chest. The demon was still knotted with him so he hadn't been out long, just long enough to miss Shiro coming. He shivered a little as a fresh spurt painted his insides with heat.

"Welcome back to the land a' the living, Ichi," Shiro hummed behind him, running a proprietary hand down his side, "Did ya have a nice nap?"

The witch clenched around him in response, eliciting a groan.

"Oh, is that how it's gonna be?" Shiro growled. Quick as a flash, he rolled so that Ichigo was on his stomach under him, then ground his hips down.

Then it was Ichigo's turn to groan, hands fisting the futon's sheets.

The witch didn't know how many times they fucked that night, only that when it neared dawn, Shiro finally pulled out of him, and a deluge of sticky black seed spilled out after his cock. The demon grinned and brushed a talong around the rim of the human's loosened hole. He stirred fitfully on the futon, mostly out of it.

Shiro turned the human's head, and pressed the teeth of his mask against Ichigo's lips in a parody of a lover's kiss. "See ya next year, Ichigo," he chuckled, then vanished as the sun peeked over the horizon.

A/N: For those who might not have known, in both Japanese and Chinese, one way of pronouncing "four" is "shi", which is a homophone for "death."