Receiving And Bearing

Ichigo woke the next morning, eyes sticky with clogged tear ducts and throat thick with phlegm. His internal clock told him he’d been in bed for around 14 hours after falling into dreamless and restless sleep after staring for hours at the ceiling, silent. He had cried, too, softly to himself-- something he hadn’t done in years.



Not since he was a kid, not since his mother died.



He had overslept, overslept by quite a lot even for a person who spent a large amount of his life sleeping anymore, it seemed. Still, Ichigo felt so tired, so very tired and heavy-boned and listless. Grimmjow stirred just slightly beside him—when had they drifted together during the night, so that sweaty backs seared one another where they pressed lightly together under the thick black quilt? The quilt had slid down, exposing Ichigo’s long arms to the chilly air. The skin covering them was cold and fish-clammy as Ichigo rubbed his palms against his sweaty face, clearing away that sleep-dust that accumulated in the corners of the eyes. He sat up, orange hair dry and full of static in the desert air which permeated everything in Las Noches, whether hot or cold on that particular date. Ichigo ran a hand through the hair, crunching in the short, dry knots at the base of his skull where his head had moved fitfully against the pillows while he slept.



Ichigo felt unattractive, waking up this way, smelly and a mess, next to Grimmjow. He hated himself just a little for feeling like he had any right to worry about how attractive or unattractive he was suddenly; not when it had been a complete non-issue when he had been surrounded by people that he actually cared for.



Or maybe he didn’t feel attractive. Maybe Ichigo felt human and that was what bothered him the most.



Grimmjow must have finally started to rise to real consciousness, the sound of his voice suddenly hacking beside Ichigo. The maltreated lungs protested against the dry air of the stale room as Ichigo trailed a glance over to the shock of blue hair visible, still crushed into a pillow, and the rounded blackness the signified the rise of Grimmjow’s strong, broad shoulders. Closed blue eyes traveled across the underside of soft eyelids as Ichigo slid his own quilt off of his chest, watching as Grimmjow dreamt of something (and feeling a bit of the voyeur).



Ichigo hadn’t even considered imagining that Arrancar would sleep until he had spent some small time living amongst them in Las Noches. Ichig hadn’t considered that Arrancar would possibly dream, he further realized, until he saw with his own eyes Grimmjow actually in the process of it, just now. He supposed, in the long run, that sleeping was for the mind and dreaming was for the soul. Even an Arrancar had a mind he knew, however twisted, and as for souls, well. That’s what everything was, in Hueco Mundo. Ichigo found himself suddenly wondering as he stared what an Arrancar dreamed about while his body was quiet. Did an Arrancar chase rabbits, like a dog? Did they run away from Shinigami even when they were asleep?



Did they dream about Hollow sheep?



Then again, wasn’t it all very insignificant in the end, to bother sparing any of his time worrying about what a he shouldn’t trouble his head with, because they were sons-of-bitches in the end?



Grimmjow, though, he looked a couple shades of human lying there snoring, memento mori of a cuttlefish-bone hidden against the black fabric of the pillow, out of sight out of mind. No big, bitey teeth to gape down at Ichigo. Grimmjow even sounded unusually vulnerable, the way the breath left him in rattling gasps as he snored, having paid for his previous misbehavior with regard to Ichigo himself and come back for more punishment from Ulquiorra. It was sad, in a way, Grimmjow not even understanding why he was doing it (Ichigo was almost completely sure he didn’t understand)—he was like a child repeating the same bad behavior, sticking his fingers in the cookie jar after they’d already been smacked more than once. Ichigo sometimes felt he was the one being poisoned by Grimmjow's words and actions, rather than the other way around. Ichigo was attending the new school. Grimmjow was the naughty boy he’d first hooked up with, just by chance.



A saboteur and an infiltrator.



Pressing himself onto his knees on the bed, slightly tangled in his hakama, Ichigo loomed over the Arrancar’s softly breathing form on some self-endangering human whimsy or another. Ichigo maneuvered himself over the sleeping Grimmjow, hand planted firmly on the bed’s surface on the other side of Grimmjow. Ichigo’s naked chest brushed against the hardness of Grimmjow’s round shoulder still beneath the quilt. His stomach clenched and drew in involuntarily, the nipple tickled by the fabric aching. Ichigo realized immediately that he was horny. He hadn’t been horny since he’d come here, not like this really. He’d jerked off on his own occasionally, sure (he’d never even been big on that while alive—he supposed he blamed Kon in a way, for giving him the appetite in his formative years). Masturbation was one thing, though. Ichigo didn’t want to pull his own dick, he wanted to have sex with another warm body, just about anything would do. Grimmjow Jaegerjaques? An Arrancar and a killer?



Ichigo had said it himself. He was still a virgin, twenty goddamn years old and lonely.



Grimmjow, who Ichigo could only just admit to considering, lay on Ichigo’s own bed shifting every few seconds, movements still sore and labored. On closer inspection, a thin trail of spittle collected unattractively in the cup of his hidden half-mask, which had been tilted away from the pillow by now. The whole fucking situation made Ichigo feel painfully fifteen and curious and even more horny, and Ichigo knew what Grimmjow would say if he told him it was wrong to have the guy help him get off just the once. He knew what Grimmjow would say if Ichigo said he couldn’t because Grimmjow was horribly disgusting, and very much the enemy still, and a man to boot (Ichigo told himself vehemently that he wasn’t gay, though the phrase sounded silly even to his own mind).



Grimmjow would say, what’s the fucking difference? They were both made of the same shit, in the end. Ichigo was also somehow starting to see the sense in this kind of reasoning.



It was obscene.



Grimmjow stirred into wakefulness without Ichigo noticing, caught up in his idiotic internal monologued turmoil as he was, the edges of Ichigo’s vision blurring as the black seeped in with agreement to the thought of taking Grimmjow ‘down for a hard and fast lay’ as Ichigo tried to put up a resistance, so used to just…



Ichigo was so used to just letting the world happen around him with as little involvement as physically possible, trapped in Hueco Mundo in a prison of his own making (but Inoue was safe). Ichigo didn’t notice the blue-haired man staring until the opened blue eyes caught his attention—those eyes that the Arrancar had, the sharp and wet ones that glowed like a cat’s, for no understandable reasons. Eyes that stalked you wherever you went.



“It’s morning,” Grimmjow whispered and startled Ichigo as he pointed out the dreadfully obvious, wake-thick voice with a specific, dangerous sort of hint in it, one which might have been called encouragement from anyone else. He must have noticed, then, the way that Ichigo had crawled to lean over him, the red blush spreading across Ichigo’s pectorals and slowly working its way down his abs and up his neck.



“And I ain’t left yet. So we know what I’m planning on doing. I’m planning on not getting the fuck out in the morning. The question is, red, what the fuck are you doing? You gonna throw my ass right out of here?”



“No, I’m not going to kick you out, not until you do something stupid and you will. I’m telling you good morning,” Ichigo replied to Grimmjow’s poking and prodding words in a curiously warbling voice; biting, quick and ephedrine. He recognized it, that manic, scratching tone; it was easily explained by the blackness dripping into his eyes, filling up his vision in some places and then fading into transparency. Ichigo thought, I wonder.



I wonder why these are my words that I’m speaking, and not his horrible words coming out in these high tones.



Ichigo spoke in that voice not his own, but the Hollow inside of him remained silent, pressed deeply into the corner of Ichigo’s consciousness. He moved the hand that was planted on the bed by Grimmjow’s side to press against the rise of his shoulder, shoving the larger man over onto his back, prostrate with one of Ichigo’s broad hands pressing the side of his well-wounded ribcage roughly into the bed. Grimmjow’s thin eyebrows knit together in momentary pain from the shuffling of his broken bone, Ichigo’s hand still digging at his partially healed wounds.



With purpose.



“Shit,” Grimmjow cursed, but lay exactly where he was without moving or shoving Ichigo bodily away. It must have been that Grimmjow knew what would be coming—a practical fait accompli--and Ichigo knew he’d been wanting it because Grimmjow had pretty much just fucking told him so. Out there in that desert that seemed to be the cause of so much interpersonal drama for such a thing devoid of life. It was all playing into Grimmjow’s crude plans, admittedly. Those plans, they were lacking in any real depth of thought and were completely without charm, but they worked well enough. The plans made Ichigo want it from Grimmjow. Or maybe Ichigo was making Ichigo want it.



Other pieces of Ichigo; the ones not fit for polite society, which filled his eyes with reaching dark fingers. He didn’t give a damn though about what was fit for polite society, not right now when every nerve in his body was telling him to take advantage of Grimmjow Jaegerjaques for no other reason that they were two men, at what men do. Where nobody Ichigo used to know could see.



Ichigo pressed his mouth roughly against Grimmjow’s, ignoring the flakes still left from the cracks, Ichigo’s soft, pliant weight against the Arrancar’s thin ones which tasted of day-old blood stains and electrolyte. Grimmjow grabbed Ichigo’s lower lip between his teeth as Ichigo tried to pull away with a sudden jerk, full of second thoughts and nervous virginity. He was one, after all, and he wished that he wasn’t now. He’d never meant to Save It For Someone.



It wasn’t like it needed to be saved or anything—you just didn’t get the chance to get rid of it when you were busy chasing dead people around with giant, pointed chunks of metal. When it was always raining, in the little city of your soul. It never rained in the city anymore. There were gates around it, keeping Ichigo out, and he couldn’t manage to break through. He was trapped, across the river, living in some soul-shack and trying to shout across the distance to the inhabitants from his patch of bare earth.



An Aizenville of one.



Grimmjow tugged. Ichigo could feel his own lip bruising purple under the light pressure of Grimmjow’s large incisors, rolling the lip between them. Grimmjow pulled away slightly, moving to drop hickies along the length of Ichigo’s strong neck, biting out a devil’s tattoo and sucking to make sure it lingered there for days. Ichigo shirked away from the gnawing and the hard breath from Grimmjow’s nose, pressing the Arrancar’s sharp face away from his own with a disgusted snort. Ichigo leaned far back and wiped the moistness off of his sore lips and the warm spots on his neck with the back of his hand. Who could ever tell the consequences of his actions; the tragedies that could be born of even trivial decisions?



“Don’t bite,” Ichigo hissed. “I’ll beat the shit out of you if you give me any more hickies.”



“Sure. Whatever the fuck you say.”



“Because I hate you, Grimmjow.”



“Right.”



“You messed-up, sociopathic fucking subhuman.”



“I appreciate the way you’re sparing my feelings, here.” Grimmjow axe-wound smiled up at him, eyes glowing little slits of water-color.



“Please.”



“Now that’s what I like to hear.”



Grimmjow smirked, coughing once again as his lungs tried to lubricate themselves, wet now that he wasn’t sleeping with his mouth slightly opened. Ichigo kissed him again, on the tip of his sharp chin, tongue laving off the salt from a night’s worth of sweating; the taste of another person encouraging very carnal feelings Ichigo never knew he could have, especially for some Arrancar piece of trash, said that voice in his head as it shifted into wakefulness—the Arrancar piece of trash that, mind you haven’t forgotten, had treated Kuchiki Rukia’s dainty body like a plaything.



Ichigo wanted to take it out of Grimmjow’s flesh, with interest for time and suffering. The Vaizard paused momentarily, a familiar, itching sensation welling up with intense pressure beneath his sinuses, blurring his vision—he could hear the blood beneath his temples, feel his eye as something twitched hideously in the peripherals of his sight. The Hollow’s mask leaked out slowly, oozing from his eye socket thick, like pus. It formed itself into a pointed snowflake's skeleton over his eye, red patterns like gashes in the neck of a zebra after the lion’s all done. Ichigo wrapped his shaking fingers around the edges once he’d mastered his surprise and the way his stomach churned at the feeling, yanking and scrabbling with short nails helplessly.



“That’s a good look on you, red. But if you were thinking what I think you were thinking…”



Grimmjow’s voice was building in strength, hissing in a deathly kind of self-amusement. Grimmjow leaned his head back and exposed his tightly muscled neck, catching Ichigo’s attention with purposeful, bastardly body language that said, I’d just like to see you try to take me lightly, even in the state I’m in.



“If you were thinking what I think you were thinking, you are sorely motherfucking mistaken about the status of our complete lack of a fucking relationship, Kurosaki Ichigo. So roll over like a good bitch!”



Ichigo sneered down at Grimmjow through black sclera and ochre irises, letting go of the dusty mask. He’d realized the futility of trying to rip it off himself when it wasn’t fully formed, wasn’t able to be slid off and on like a lightswitch. Ichigo slid his hand down to press the knuckles of a fist harshly against Grimmjow’s forehead, indelicate touch bruising and sharp against the thin skin which covered the Arrancar's skull, snapping the neck back further against the black pillow. Ichigo could Grimmjow’s heavy heartbeats in the bones of his fist, the drumming against the other man’s temples which matched his own for speed and volume.



“I wasn’t, you sick fucking deviant. I don’t want to do anything like that. Especially not—not after a monster like you, what you did to my friends…”



“Say it,” Grimmjow hissed, adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed spittle down painfully, act difficult from his position, head bent nearly fully back under Ichigo’s rough touch.



“Go die.”



“Say it.”



Ichigo let go suddenly, hands going back to his face, working at the sharp edges of the mask with renewed anger and equal hopelessness. Maybe it would work this time, the tugging? Maybe it would. The valleys and peaks of the white mask cut into the soft centers of his palms, blood spilling out from a tiny, fresh cut.



“And Ulquiorra, he fucking raped you, Grimmjow. I’m not going to screw you right after something like that, above everything else that gives me a good reason to tell you to get the hell out of my room. I have a conscience.”



Grimmjow laughed, a noise which was high in his nose and hysterical.



“You think I actually give a shit about that? Fuck your conscience, Kurosaki Ichigo. I’m a fucking Hollow.”