Receiving And Bearing

Kurosaki Ichigo sat at a long European-style dinner table, made of dark wood, obsessively polished (Ichigo wondered sometimes who did the polishing; weaker Arrancar maybe, like the ones that did the healing). Only one of the high-backed seats at it was occupied at the moment, and that was by Ichigo himself, decidedly not in the one at the head of the table. Aizen always sat at the head of the table, the Shinigami traitor keeping Ichigo where he was. The thought of sitting in that seat seemed anathema. Grimmjow Jaegerjaques had apparently chosen to forego sitting in a chair in general and, instead, sat on the table's smooth surface, one sandaled foot barely reaching the ground to support his weight as he leaned close to Ichigo, hakama spread out beneath him.



He watched Ichigo tear into the food he’d brought from the living world with a bored sort of predation, sharp and pointed face set into a cat-like stare as Ichigo finished off his second bottle of the sickly blue-colored soda. The color, Ichigo had told him when Grimmjow had finally handed the artificially flavored drink over, was quite reminiscent to Grimmjow’s eyes. It wasn’t exactly flattering, but what did Grimmjow expect? He nodded to himself as Ichigo reached for a piece of the dutch castilla still in its box, pleased, encouraging. It was the way that Ichigo would accept the little gifts without arguing that made it all worthwhile, no matter how Grimmjow had gotten ahold of them.



He never told; Ichigo never asked.



The other man dipped a finger into the thick icing on the cake first, pulling away a decent amount of spice-flavored, cinnamon-colored ganache and sticking it into his mouth, rolling his finger over his tongue, laving the digit to get the stuff off. After deciding the starchy confection was to his liking, Ichigo snatched a piece from the box, eating it with his hands even though there was a china plate and silver cutlery readily available, appropriated from Aizen’s personal kitchen. It wouldn’t be missed; Lord Aizen had more than enough fucking china plates and teacups.



Grimmjow smirked to himself. “Told you you fucking loved cake.”



Ichigo flipped him the bird with a middle finger covered in his own saliva.



“Whatever, asshole,” he said after swallowing with a harsh bob of his adam’s apple. The cake must have been dryer than Grimmjow imagined. Ichigo grabbed another glass soda bottle out of the six-pack cardboard case, uncapping it with his teeth, taking a long swig and clearing his throat. The pace at which he was tossing the sugar-smelling stuff down was finally slowing.



“I’d eat anything as long as it wasn’t more damn chicken, I think.”



“Heh,” snorted Grimmjow.



“’Heh’ what? What?” Ichigo eyed him suspiciously, brown eyes narrowed and brows pinched.



“Who says that’s chicken they’re feedin' you?”



Ichigo’s face blanched almost immediately, arm stopping in mid-air as it reached for a second wide slice of the sticky cake in front of him. Grimmjow laughed earnestly and out loud this time, sliding the box closer to Ichigo. Go ahead, take more. The guy was a fucking riot sometimes, his behavior so hilariously predictable, much better than the bitch that had been around before. Grimmjow knew she had an ability that could have been a huge benefit to Aizen, but then, she’d only used it in Hueco Mundo that once…



Used it on Grimmjow’s arm and his number.



“Just fuckin’ with you, red. Honest”



“Well then don’t,” Ichigo said, tone clipped and upset. Oh-ho, said Grimmjow’s expression even when he kept his mouth shut about, not threatened in the least by Ichigo’s snarl. Like a fat tomcat being growled at by a neutered chihuahua. Apparently satisfied by the fact that Grimmjow had at least stopped teasing him in admittedly disgusting fashions for the moment—which Grimmjow had never actually promised—Ichigo went back to the moment’s activity.



Consumption.



It was like that, in Hueco Mundo. If it was put in front of you, you ate it. You just wanted to.



Grimmjow reached a spidery hand into the inside of his open-breasted vest, searching for a small pocket. He found what he was looking for there and pulled out a single coffee-brown cigarillo, wrapped in a musty and vanilla-scented tobacco leaf. Expensive. Stolen. Grimmjow held the length to his thin nose, inhaling deeply. Fuck yeah, expensive. Who said only Aizen could have nice things?



He lit the tip of the thing with his finger, minute bala, worth the waste of reiatsu for the show of it. He gave Ichigo an ‘aren’t I goddamn impressive?’ sort of snicker before resting the cigarillo between his pale lips, weight and flavor pleasant against them.



“That shit’ll kill you, you know” Ichigo muttered, face patently unimpressed, tiny smear of icing at the corner of his mouth.



“Sorry, but I think you’re too fucking late. Dropped the ball there ages ago,” replied Grimmjow with no small amount of wicked humor. He took a long drag on the cigar, embers at the end flaring to life. Trickles of blue smoke escaped from his nostrils, coiling up to the arabesque heights of the dining chamber they were loitering in together. Ichigo shook his handsome head, apparently out of an appetite for sticky, sugary shit for the time being. Grimmjow watched with a wrinkled nose as Ichigo moved his tongue to the pocket of his cheek, shuffling around the mealy leftover bits of cake that stuck between the soft flesh of his face and his gums.



“It’s still disgusting.”



“Hypocrite,” cackled Grimmjow, large heavy puff of cigarillo smoke leaving his lungs, puh. “You do what you like, I’ll do what I like.”



“What’s that supposed to mean?” Ichigo said, challenge evident in his deep voice. Grimmjow wasn’t going to bite this one yet and get himself in trouble with the guy, not until he’d finished with his smoke and maybe poked Ichigo until his face burned with impotent anger and embarassment. It did that a lot these days and Grimmjow noticed every. Fucking. Time.



“Look, red, you’re sitting over there calling me disgusting while you eat that shit. It’ll probably give you cancer like everything else. Like hell it’s any different if I cough up black gunk, yours is gonna come out of you just the same, unrecognizable shit. How can you stand it? Acting all alive like that, especially in a place like this—having to eat to survive like them Hollows out in the desert and being full of half-digested, putrid crap that’s in the middle of your meat-sack of a soul all the time. It’s fucking inefficient and nasty to boot. You’re a fucking hypocrite.”



The face beneath the orange hair paled a few shades from its normal peach-flesh hue, even with the previous pink blush. Grimmjow could practically see the blood drain away from the Vaizard’s face. That must have meant Grimmjow was right.



“You know, if you’d just let Lord Aizen use—“



Ichigo cut him off in record speed.



“You know what? At least I don’t eat people,” Ichigo sneered, a bit of the temper Grimmjow remembered from years ago flaring up behind the other man’s deep brown eyes.



“Neither’ve I in at least fucking months, red, it’s not so bad. You should know this by now. You should know we don’t have to eat them since Aizen made us like we are. I can just leech everything you could possibly need from the environment here, whole fucking place is made of reishi. It’s all the same when you break it down to the basics, y’know? Like that cake you were eating.”



“I’m going to go take a long nap,” Ichigo growled decisively and stood with a violent, abrupt motion, chair scraping shrill against the marble floor as the younger man moved it out of his way, shaking his head at Grimmjow. Ichigo's lowered eyes looked almost betrayed, although Grimmjow figured he should’ve seen it coming. This talk. Ichigo turned and left the room, white hakama hissing around his long legs as hestalked out the door, weight of his sealed zanpakutou adding an irritated swish to his gait. An extra noise to convince the world of his dissatisfaction at the circumstances he was in.



“Don’t follow me. Don’t bother me.”



Sometimes, Grimmjow liked watching Ichigo run away from his taunts and pokes and prods almost as much as he liked watching Ichigo reel back and punch him him in the face. There was a satisfaction in nervousness that there wasn’t in an angry response.



“Grimmjow,” muttered Ulquiorra’s soft voice, the man appearing from Aizen-fucking-knows-where, leaving Grimmjow to be irritated at the fact that he was worried how long the other Arrancar had been around, to eavesdrop as he did so very fucking well or to sense the buzz of Ichigo’s uncomfortable reiatsu. “You’re being too close with the prisoner.”



“Oh, bite me,” Grimmjow instructed Ulquiorra firmly.



Ulquiorra chose wisely to ignore Grimmjow’s taunts, rolling off of his back like so much insignificance, slit pupils staring disaffectedly through the door Ichigo had taken upon leaving.



“While I approve in general of the affect you’ve had on the boy, for whatever reason it may have been caused, remember Grimmjow that you are not his babysitter nor his confidante and he is not a toy for your personal entertainment. He is a political pawn, and he belongs to Lord Aizen. Watch yourself, don’t get involved.”



“Lord Aizen can bite me with you,” Grimmjow snorted, more truth in the statement than either one of them were really comfortable with, finally sliding his leg off the table and shaking his voluminous white clothes out.



Looming over Ulquiorra’s slight form.



Ulquiorra shook his big, doleful head, not a single hair straying from its proper place. “Your opinions notwithstanding, and I want you to know that they rarely are, that Vaizard boy is a captive; a prisoner, not a tourist. It has been three years, Grimmjow. These are not ground rules you should have forgotten, no matter how long or short you feel the time has been. Know your place as a captor and an imprisoner. This isn’t a game to be played in your fashion, he’s not here for you to contemplate, although your efforts at making him feel happy about himself are noted.”



Ulquiorra shook his head, turning on a point and leaving the room in the same direction Ichigo had gone.



“And get rid of whatever it is that’s littering the table immediately.”



--//--//--



When it was time to feed the boy, Ulquiorra attended to the chore himself, without argument from the lower Arrancar. Ulquiorra had done the same with the woman, Inoue Orihime; by now they knew his purposes. He pushed the small serving cart into the private room and slid in behind it as quietly as ever. Ichigo lifted his head, glaring indolently at Ulquiorra from under the heavy black quilt of his bed, high, with an ornate headboard. Uniform as anything else in Las Noches.



“It’s time that you should eat something,” Ulquiorra said with the sort of excessive politeness which he always used when speaking with Ichigo; voice formal and cool. The boy had never really taken to Ulquiorra, but then, Ulquiorra was not as fond of him as he had been the woman. She had, of course, slapped him, but the Vaizard’s relationship with Grimmjow Jaegerjaques, the memory of an embarrassment from a lesser Espada and an incomplete fight. Ulquiorra was not typically one to feel vindictive. Perhaps this was why the boy made him uncomfortable.



Then again, there was no need to be fond of anyone else in the long run, not his Arrancar brothers and sisters and decidedly not the puzzling creature that was Kurosaki Ichigo. Ulquiorra put up with his petulance chiefly because it was his duty and personally because there was something intriguing about the bits of Kurosaki which he kept hidden from the universe’s watching eyes, consciously and subconsciously ashamed of them. Of himself. Of the place he’d insinuated himself into amongst the halls of Las Noches.



“I’m not very hungry,” Ichigo groused, pulling the blanket back over his head in an attempt to dissuade Ulquiorra from staying in the room any longer than strictly necessary. It was a familiar game. Ulquiorra detested games. He was strangely still not nearly as easily dissuaded as any of the numerous Arrancar looking after the prisoner.



“You’ll eat your dinner. You’ve been locked away for the entire evening. This is abnormal behavior for you, Kurosaki Ichigo,” Ulquiorra sighed. He walked slowly over to the bed, ripping the blankets from Ichigo’s nearly naked body with a fluid movement of his thin wrist. Ichigo curled up in a ridiculously human attempt to preserve some form of misguided dignity, Ulquiorra having seen the creature naked in the past. His green eyes traced the Vaizard’s form, eventually catching what they were searching for.



“Roll over. Please.” Despite the please, it was a demand.



Ichigo wisely did as he was told, slowly and unwillingly but clearly not wrongheaded enough to argue the little point openly with the dark-haired man. There were short, straight red welts along the length of Ichigo’s upper back and neck. Ulquiorra reached out and ran cool, soft fingers over the benign but fresh fingernail scratches.



Ichigo’s body winced away from the touch from below the Arrancar’s soft, effete hands.



“Grimmjow Jaegerjaques?” murmured Ulquiorra’s calm voice, not a question but a confirmation.



“It’s not like that,” Ichigo said, rolling away from the hands, face growing red. “It’s not like what I know you’re thinking, so don’t get on his case again.”



“Oh?” Curiosity on Ulquiorra’s part. Was the prisoner protecting the Sexta Espada for some idiotic and futile reason? Though, Ulquiorra could admit with only a small level of bitterness, Kurosaki’s behest concerning the life of the blue-haired Arrancar had worked on Lord Aizen.



“He wasn’t fighting with me again or anything. He wasn’t…trying to choke me, they’re just little scratches, right? Not that it’s any of your goddamn business anyway, Ulquiorra.”



Coming to the defense of one’s own oppressors all of a sudden? The boy certainly was trying to protect Grimmjow from consequences for his actions; it was intriguing indeed. There was a possibility that Ulquiorra’s plan was coming to fruition, after all these years. Push your boundaries, Grimmjow Jaegerjaques. Please do.



“So you say.”



Ulquiorra turned on his sandaled white heels, leaving the room as silently as he’d come.