Revive Me

I killed Hollows.

There was just the one, but I was riding a high. I wanted to experience as much as I could while feeling was still needling my nerves, while sensation could still fulfill me and the future seemed hopeful. Blue fire from his eyes, even days later, still ran in my veins and fueled me. I met eyes with confidence and strength that I rarely actually possessed, and it felt right. So I let my reiatsu flood over Karakura without thinking.

The Hollows swarmed and I smirked. One after another they died with pained roars, and only two gave me any trouble at all. I struck, I bled, I crashed, and I tore them down. I was satisfied, filled with the contentment of borderline exhaustion coupled with accomplishment. The Hollows eventually stopped appearing and the night settled, the dust settled. The earth pulled in around itself and everything else became muted while my blood sang. I was relieved of a burden; I shored up the weak foundation my emotions had started to build.

I know it doesn’t make any sense, but the emptiness, the stale air that’s filled me for so long went away after him. There wasn’t room for anything but light when he touched me, and I needed constant activity after. How could a devil give me salvation? I didn’t know, but I accepted it anyway. I needed to burn off the energy.
If only… if only I could have had a little more time. A little more time, and I wouldn’t have been hit so horribly hard. I could have stood against it.

My sandals scraped against the rubble of a building a Hollow had destroyed. I kicked at a big rock for no real reason, teenage spite I guess, and kept walking. I wondered what I had gotten myself into with Grimmjow; Soul Society had probably never even imagined the protocol for the situation I had created, and it wasn’t the first time I’d done that. They probably wouldn’t be happy about bending rules over me again. God knew what Grimmjow thought about it all.

My gaze followed down the top half of the building—it had been sheared off and landed heavily in the street—and it met a small dark stain. I frowned and walked closer to see. I picked up bits of debris and threw them aside. I did it quickly. I hoped I wouldn’t find anything and I could continue home as planned.

Something white--I found his little hand first. Soft and round and remarkably untouched. I moved more rubble aside until his body was visible, broken in the middle by a spear of concrete that I wouldn’t touch. Pale. Short brown hair and closed eyes. My mind was beginning to flicker. Even if Inoue could have healed him his spirit was already gone.

I touched the blood that dripped from his open mouth. I touched his chest around the wound that had ended his life. There was no reason a child should have been there. I was dispatching Hollows, my job, and I couldn’t have stopped this. Damn kid was somewhere he didn’t belong, his own stupid fault. Please, somebody say those words. He probably didn’t even have time to be afraid, didn’t see the Hollow or hear its screams. Say them to me, say it wasn’t my fault. Three or four years younger than me. It hurt.

Something sucked breath away like a demon from my lungs. It didn’t belong to me anymore. My blood demanded to be pumped faster but my heart couldn’t keep up. It refused to move. My ribcage became iron and so bitingly cold that it ripped away my body’s heat. I had forgotten reality, and this pain was my punishment. I should have considered myself lucky to be able to feel that pain, that was the reminder.

Everything I thought I had gained disappeared and became a hundred times worse. Worse than ever before. Grimmjow hadn’t fixed the emptiness of my heart, he had only disguised it. He had given energy to a machine with no thought. Like giving a treat to an unhappy puppy or putting a band-aid on an infected cut, it was a stopgap. He had revived my purpose, but I was still dead inside.

Hands grabbed at me and pulled me against the earth, inviting me to hell. Their touch was disgusting, befouling, and I deserved it. Cold gravel scraped my cheek while the demons groaned that I was too far away. Come closer, they pined. Ours now. I was worse than nothing, I didn’t deserve life; they were right. And then everything that was me, my cover ,my shield, me, fractured. Down the center. Split to the side. It groaned with stress, and I was cracking. Cracking, breaking.

Help me.

~

My feet carried me home, but I don’t remember how. My memory of getting to my room was like flipping a light switch on and off; snapshots of moments that were only enough to keep me from being scared of my new location, nothing more. My hearing was acutely affected. Almost everything was muffled and slow, except for my movements. Those were loud, obnoxious. They were offensive to me. I heard more sharp sounds and turned around to the source more slowly than I had intended.

“Hey Shinigami,” his voice drawled arrogantly. Utterly comfortable in who he was and what he was doing, it seemed. Lucky him. He stepped inside my room wearing a smirk and his blindingly white clothing. Grimmjow Jeagerjacques. “Y’made kinda a big fuss tonight, don’t y’think?” He asked while he put his hands in his pockets. His presence pushed on the room, and his reiatsu pulled down on my body.

Fire. Was he fire? Fix me, my heart screamed inside. Revive me, it begged. There is so little left, so little left. And you have so much. Share with us, just a little…

Was my heart so desperate that it would humiliate itself with those words? Was it so dry and starving that it would beg an Arrancar for what it needed? I could feel it pumping belatedly, weakly. Fire, it bellowed. Its last word. Grimmjow was full of it. Sinful demon, mockery and affront to life itself, and if he or someone like him didn’t fucking decide to be merciful, I was going to lose it.

All of this ran through my breaking mind while I stared dully at the Espada. He grew impatient and his expression darkened. His eyes heralded action, and he stepped forward with purpose to grab my hair and drag my mouth to his. His mask was rougher than sandpaper and I was hyper-aware of the sensation upon my cheek. My own lips were chapped; Grimmjow’s were smooth. Vanity, probably. His kiss was deep and hot, so maybe he wasn’t here to solve an inconvenient problem in a hurry. His body pushed at mine with the strength of its soul. Souls. Whichever it was, I was realizing, I needed him again. If it was through sex then so be it, but Grimmjow, just fucking look at me, give me life, because there really is nothing fucking left.

I was thinking all of it without acting again. I wasn’t reacting or kissing him back, and it pissed him off. He grabbed my arm with his other hand and tightened his grip until it was bruising. It was like waking after not setting an alarm; brief laziness followed by sudden, instant, painful awareness that you were late and you better fucking hurry. I pressed my mouth against his and sought his tongue with all the passion that I could, and his grip softened. His hand stroked my arm then, slow and erotic. Forgiveness? He must’ve wanted to seem impressive, magnanimous to me. Something in that twisted mind that loved causing pain wanted to seem worth it to his vision of me. It worked. I noticed it and let the idea slide past my mind like oil. I just wanted him to keep touching me, because the ache was beginning to dull.

I reached up with my hands to touch his face while I kissed him. I wanted so much more, the connection, the power, the eyes. But Grimmjow’s eyes opened and he recoiled in something like confusion; it wasn’t what I wanted to see. His brow was furrowed. What had he seen? His hands released my hair and arm in order to grip my wrists and pull them back from his face. His eyes studied my hands intensely, and it belatedly occurred to me that I should have done the same. My strange vision shifted down to look at them. My hands were red—they had smeared across Grimmjow’s face.

Oh, I remembered. Blood.

“Shit Kurosaki,” he cursed loudly. “What the fuck is this? Is this your blood?” A moment and I didn’t respond. He shook my hands in front of my face. “Is this your fucking blood Ichigo!?” My mouth opened, and I thought I had an answer. But my heart was screaming and clawing at my throat, and I couldn’t say a word. “You fucking idiot,” he snarled, and threw me towards my bed. I gasped, because my eyes couldn’t keep up with such rapid movement; it was the light switch again, turning my mind off and on. The world was spinning and before it had a chance to stop, Grimmjow had grabbed me again and was turning me over, tugging on my haori, lifting my legs and deftly checking my whole body with his fingers.

Finally the onslaught of images slowed, and I was able to just stare the ceiling. Grimmjow was standing above me.
“You’re not bleedin’ to death. None ‘a your wounds coulda’ got all that blood on your hands, so why don’t y’tell me where it’s from, and what the fuck is wrong with you,” he growled. Some distant, clinical part of my mind was impressed with the speed and thoroughness of his inspection. To do something like that, I must have been…alarming. More strange thoughts that took such precious seconds to hear.

I lifted my hands to look at them again, and a sharp pain stabbed beneath my breastbone. I winced, and began to wipe the blood on my haori. The pain lessened.

“Kurosaki!” Where I lacked the will to move, it seemed my body still kept its instincts. Grimmjow made an angry noise deep in his throat, and then pulled his arm back to punch me. My detached gaze was still upon my right hand even as I my left rose and calmly caught his fist. It sparked anger in my head. Emotion, unfamiliar and heady, and I leapt at it for all I was worth. I needed to protect it, kindle it.

My eyebrows snapped together and I turned to look at Grimmjow.

“You’re being rude,” I growled and sat up. My voice didn’t sound like my own, and the Espada’s eyes smoldered black heat with suspicion.

“Rude. I’m being rude, right, okay, fuck you punk,” Grimmjow pulled his hand back, looking exasperated, but still scrutinizing. When he pulled away from that touch, it felt like my shoulders slumped and energy fled my muscles. Fix me. Breathe on the coals. If this was the first time Grimmjow had ever felt concerned for someone, I needed to bring the old Grimmjow back. I needed to remind him of the six on my collarbone.

I grabbed his jacket and yanked him down roughly. I moved in and paused before kissing him and sliding my tongue in next to his. I could still feel it in his kiss, that he was hesitant. So I did what I knew Grimmjow would be unable to resist. It was my action first, but I did everything I could to make myself seem submissive. I leaned back slightly, I arched my chest up towards his. I made my lips soft and giving. He was ignoring what he’d come here for, because… My mind shifted and brushed past the reason. It was jarring, like a zap to the brain when I tried to remember. All I knew was that I had to remind him, and he couldn’t deny me for long. I put my hand on his abdomen, just above his chain of fate hole, and moved it slowly upwards until I could rub his chest. He was leaning closer, but he wouldn’t move to the bed. He wouldn’t touch me.

It was frustrating me. Part of me didn’t mind, since at least frustration was feeling, but it wasn’t enough. I moved my hand down from his chest to his pants, and slowly wrapped my hand around him through the material and began to rub. Even if he thought I was crazy, I thought he wouldn’t be able to resist an offer like that.
I was right. He groaned quietly and shoved me down onto the bed, his body blazing hot against the iciness of my own. He didn’t bother with much more, and before I could comprehend it our clothes were pushed aside and he had slammed into me. I bit through my lip to stop my scream. I still remembered my little sisters, that at least one of them could see and most definitely hear Shinigami. I was elated I could still think of others.

He looked down on me from above this time, and even though it was just primal, visceral pushing and shoving, even then his eyes let out a charge. Even though it hurt, I was already starting to feel more alive. I made him go harder, challenged him, borderline taunted. It worked and it hurt, I was out of my mind. But maybe the cure to being out of your mind was pushing it out just a bit further.

His earlier concern had disappeared, and he was again treating this like the bizarre rival-catharsis sex it was. I needed vitality from his very bones and he needed to release it before he exploded.

After we finished, I didn’t pass out. I was surprised I got away without any barbs for that, but at least at that moment, Grimmjow seemed tired. His sweat-slick body covered my own and he made no attempt to move. The pain was lessened, it was not so insistent. Better, but still strange. Maybe that’s why I pursued things further. Maybe that’s why I moved down to his hips and did something I never thought I’d do. Maybe that’s why he stayed for one more time. The same electricity passed through our skin, the spark inside me returned to a blaze. A flawed fire, but better than I had been without him. My skin was no longer so cold and my vision not so odd. The night was still a zap in my memory, but I was good enough.

I knew that those were the least of my problems, because I knew what the life of Grimmjow, his attitude and personality were doing . I was falling into some twisted half kind of love. Part lust, part childlike admiration, part dangerous infatuation were a poultice on my wounds. I was doing something absolutely stupid, absolutely retarded, and desiring the spirit of Grimmjow without accepting the full reality.

Luckily I knew my feelings were such stupid horseshit that I was able to easily ignore them. I didn’t know if it would stay that way, how long I could suppress those feelings, but I would try to stop them from galloping off a cliff while I watched mutely. It wouldn’t be that hard to explain to my own feelings why they needed to shut up.
All the same, as I nodded off and he was leaving, I pulled him close to whisper a thank you. I don’t really remember the look he gave me, I think my eyes were already closed. I think I had the crazy sexta Espada convinced that I had gone a little crazy too.

It was pretty funny.

Then he was gone, and my breathing was easier. My skin felt warm and infused, and I even felt content. I still felt… strange. But I felt strange with other feelings, alongside life. So strangeness wasn’t important enough to keep thinking of as slipped into sleep. Not important at all.