Receiving And Bearing

Grimmjow Jaegerjaques hadn’t seen Kurosaki Ichigo for over a week after their last encounter out in the desert, rather physical and exceptional with regard to the way it had come to a sudden end. Grimmjow could feel the Vaizard’s reiatsu slipping out, barely controlled as he walked, skulking around Las Noches. The feeling of it was always easy for Grimmjow to seek out with his pesquisa, close to the two fucking Shinigami ‘overlords’ which had always stood at Aizen’s side, but uniquely unstable and untrained. Grimmjow bit his lip between his teeth lightly, just thinking about Ichigo’s waterfall feeling, the way he didn’t know how he felt to all of them. Strong fingers were itching to bury themselves in Ichigo’s white and black clothing and beat the fuck out of him a second time, bringing up purple bruises and red tears.



There it was again, flickering on the edges of consciousness like a cold flame.



Grimmjow took off after the warmth on his radar, walking with long, quick, excited, angry strides; hands dug deep into the gap of his swishing hakama. The way Ichigo was skirting around him like he could avoid Grimmjow forever when they lived in the same place; Grimmjow was beginning to become pissed off-- pissed off again, anyway, because for as long as he’d known Ichigo the boy had regularly pissed him off and the feeling seemed to be mutual.



Once bitten, twice shy was only supposed to be a goddamn turn of phrase, Kurosaki Ichigo. The situation and the pussy-footing, it was all a bit much to take for him, this sort of shit from the other man. All this bull after Grimmjow’d gone and actually not killed everyone the little bitch cared about, though admittedly the getting-on-the-big-titty-bitch’s good side thing had been beneficial (or maybe all humans were sentimental idiots, monkeys with over-active imaginations and nimble grips).



Grimmjow rounded a corner sharply, expecting what he was about to meet with, coming face to face with Ichigo sporting a sharp and irate expression. The guy just stood there staring Grimmjow in the face, expression panicked, an antelope walked out of tall grass and right into the path of the stalking lion.



Ichigo turned and bolted in the opposite direction.



What the fuck, thought Grimmjow.



Grimmjow’s threaded muscles coiled, calves tensed, one elbow pulled back, ready to race after the goddamn coward if he wanted to play this fucking game this fucking way. Ichigo kept running, Grimmjow’s eyes chasing his bobbing head like a predator—his knees bent for an attack.



A small, chilly hand grabbed at Grimmjow’s wrist before he had a chance to actually initiate a chase after his spooked quarry. Grimmjow growled low in his chest and threatening, whirling on whatever stupid little bastard had decided he was going to stop Grimmjow with a hand on his arm, like bringing an unimpressive little pocket-knife to the gun-fight.



It wasn’t some worthless bastard, Grimmjow suddenly realized, forced to look down at his black-haired head. It was Quatro fucking Espada. Well, shit, that was a bitch of a damper on his plans for the evening, wasn’t it? To chase down the orange-haired man at this point, Ulquiorra already having delivered a warning to Grimmjow, however politely—even Grimmjow wasn’t suicidal.



Ulquiorra cleared his thin throat, glooming up at Grimmjow with his crocodile tears and down-turned mouth.



“You have done quite enough already, Grimmjow. Walk after that boy right now and under these circumstances,” Ulquiorra stated calmly, calmly and with a hint of obvious threat, “and I will rend your skull from your torso under Lord Aizen’s orders. You’ve made him unreasonably upset and for no good cause. Do not test me a second time if you understand the seriousness that is involved in this situation you have caused.”



Grimmjow shook Ulquiorra’s hand roughly off of him, rolling his shoulder violently in the socket and spinning on the marble floors on slick sandals, moving away from the direction Ichigo had gone in. He turned reluctantly but somewhat obediently, burying his hands once again in the white folds of his hakama and doing his very, very best to look aggressively and innocently bored.



“I don’t have any idea whatthe fuck you’re going on about, Ulquiorra.”



Grimmjow smiled without teeth in it, wiggling his thin, short eyebrows. He rocked his hips gently, heels coming up and falling back down with a rhythmic tapping noise, an irritant—go away and leave me to my own business. Grimmjow hoped the behavior, to someone with such an anal retentive personality as Ulquiorra Schiffer, was so incessantly annoying and distracting as to be considered a benign sort of sonic terrorism. Maybe Ulquiorra would get the hint and get the fuck away from him; if he couldn’t get what he wanted from the Vaizard at least he could get something else.



Ulquiorra brought a slight hand to his forehead briefly, fluttering there briefly as if to block the state of irritation Grimmjow was forcing him into with the motion, the noise. His small face was blank but green eyes held that particular sort of pained expression that typically appeared when Ulquiorra had to Deal With Trash. Obviously, Grimmjow had been barking up the right fucking tree with his annoy-you-to-a-second-death gameplan.



“You’ve been following Kurosaki Ichigo around for the entire week. I have witnessed wounds on his person in which I have been not precisely confirmed, but have a strong and working suspicion that you are the cause. You are spooking him and it is completely inappropriate behavior. Stop doing this immediately; this is not a polite request.”



“And if I say I don’t wanna stop doing what I’m doing, even if you think it’s inappropriate? Aizen ain’t said anything to me personally, it’s just you. What if spooking Ichigo is what gets me off?”



“This situation is more important than your childlike need to possess everything you’ve ever wanted and kill anything that you can’t, Grimmjow.”



“The situation is clearly fucking retarded. There is nothing more important than Grimmjow Jaegerjaques in existence and we all know it.”



Ulquiorra glowered in his own stiff way, lips parting with a soft, deep-voiced sigh. There was no pleasure in this for Ulquiorra, no point in arguing with Grimmjow—it would only end in a one-sided, unresolved argument because Grimmjow did not give in unless he wanted to and Ulquiorra wasn’t authorized to take the actions he wanted to take against the other Arrancar.



Grimmjow knew Ulquiorra would like to see him dead in a ditch somewhere, second hole stabbed through his neck and leaking. Like the one he’d seen on Ichigo, three years ago.



“Oh, I’m fucking sorry. Is this an inappropriate time for egotism that isn’t Lord Aizen’s, Ulquiorra? Guess I just ain’t got any breeding like you two. Don’t know what you’re talking about with all this possessing everything I want shit, anyway, and the killing part at this point is out of the question and you know it. Ichigo gives me something to do me when there’s nothing to light on fire and he came to me. It’s not like I want to—“



“Do you take me for an idiot, Grimmjow Jaegerjaques?”



“Actually, Ulquiorra…”



Ulquiorra’s upper lip twitched in what Grimmjow recognized as fairly immense irritation. He grinned wide, tip of his tongue clutched between his teeth in amusement.



“Yeah. I do.”



“This statement is banal and unsurprising from one such as you. From this point further, Grimmjow, don’t expect your taunts to actually work to discourage me from doing my job. We are discussing business with serious consequences to Lord Aizen’s continuing plans which, no matter how lightly you pretend you feel about them, will still consequentially affect you. The Vaizard has to want to be here, or it will cause untold complications—if you discourage him with your selfishness he will become distressed. You will not ruin Lord Aizen. You will not ruin all of my work for him.”



Grimmjow blanched slightly at the cutting tones of Ulquiorra’s large voice, moving a foot away from the man with nervous steps, away from the reiatsu rolling off of his small form as a secondary warning. It told the blue-haired Arrancar very plainly what Ulquiorra’s current state of mind was, in as far as one could ever read him. It told Grimmjow the intent behind this conversation they were having, even if the man’s expression never strayed from vaguely displeased.



It all said: Trash, you’re trash.



“Ulqui—“



Grimmjow was the baddest motherfucker in this whole godforsaken place; hadn’t they told him that, years ago? He could have been the prince of all of them, could have been somebody huge were it not for Aizen—it wasn’t Grimmjow’s fault that Aizen had offered them all a life without the need to attack their own and assimilate them, justifying a draconian solution by removing that need. If he couldn’t be the strongest then Grimmjow could at least do whatever the fuck Grimmjow wanted to; Ulquiorra could get fucked. Grimmjow didn’t give a damn what he had to say or how he made him feel.



The dark little fact remained that Grimmjow didn’t want to lose another arm.



Ulquiorra used Grimmjow’s conflicted thoughts to continue onward with his heatless tirade.



“You will not cause the prisoner any more undue stress from this point forward, Grimmjow. You cannot control a flighty rabbit, you will never catch it unless it is in its cage. If your base, Hollow-throwback lack of libido control harms Lord Aizen’s bigger picture in any way, even small—“



Ulquiorra stepped forward on nimble feet, dainty in their sandals, faster than Grimmjow could even think about moving away again; before Grimmjow could blink. He backed Grimmjow slowly against the wall, step-by-step, until the cool fabric of the back of Grimmjow’s open vest slid against slick white tiling of it. Ulquiorra threaded one reedy arm through the void, the empty space in Grimmjow’s abdomen, pinning him there physically.



Had he been watching the two of them, somehow, with his sneaky removable eyes? As they’d rolled across the sand and tore one another angrily?



The unused hand grazed over the center of Grimmjow’s hakama, moving upward to cup his testicles, brushing against soft genitals. Ulquiorra circled the other arrancar’s groin with a feather-like touch, light and surgical and unemotional. Grimmjow whined, noise embarrassing and high in his throat as Ulquiorra’s small hands stirred blood into his cock with the intimate contact after so many years without it, even in a human shape. It was still pleasurable, even with the omnipresence of Ulquiorra’s zanpakutou, hilt pressed painfully against Grimmjow’s boney hip. Grimmjow wanted to be a million miles away from Ulquiorra, didn’t matter where. His instincts shrieked at him incessantly. His arm itched in its socket; memories of a time when it didn’t exist.



“I will personally cut off your genitals and feed them to you, whether or not I’ve been directed to.”



Ulquiorra pushed himself off of Grimmjow without another word or wasted movement, whisking himself down the hallway silently. He left Grimmjow breathing hard and confused, angry and impotent with a hot face. Grimmjow slid slowly down the wall, curling upon himself with long limbs.



Grimmjow sat on the cold ground as his heart slowly came back down from a racing pace, chest tight, legs spread and bent, supporting his shaking wrists with feet flat on the floor. He leaned forward, blue hair hanging and head between his knees. Ulquiorra wanted Grimmjow to stay away from Kurosaki Ichigo. When Grimmjow was honest with himself (which he rarely was), he came to three shocking and nauseating realizations-- after ten minutes of staring into space and focusing on the cool of the wall behind his back.



Three realizations.



The first of these realizations was that Ulquiorra could and would kill Grimmjow if given the chance, no matter how huge Grimmjow talked. Ulquiorra was only holding off on it for personal merits and whatever twisted things that gave the small man motivation. Grimmjow was never big on math, but he could at least understand single-digit numbers. He’d only beaten Ulquiorra the first time they’d fought (the only time) because Grimmjow was not above being dirty.



The second realization was that there were only two things in all of the universe on any and every plane-- past, present and future-- that Grimmjow honestly gave a damn about. He gave a damn about himself, being the most important thing in all of the universe in his opinion, and he gave a damn about Kurosaki Ichigo.



The final realization came five minutes after the others, and was the most important of them all. At this point, three years after the fact, Grimmjow Jaggerjack could not stay away from Kurosaki Ichigo if he honestly and exhaustively tried to.



Grimmjow’s gut turned and he bent over further, dry heaved, indescribable taste of acid at the back of his throat. It was painful to vomit when you had no stomach. There was nothing for the body to force out, and so it kept trying to expel nothing until ribs creaked. Grimmjow doubled over violently, forehead nearly hitting the hard floor. His throat protested and his chest burned, heaving dangerously with each gag and the subsequent spurt of harsh coughing. There wasn’t a damn thing in the whole damn world he could do about the sick feeling Ulquiorra’d left him with except sit there and let it pass, take it like a bitch.



He wondered if this was what people talked about, when they talked about things like being scared to death, this angry and hopeless feeling weighing his shoulders down. Ulquiorra’s serpentine eyes stared at him, in the depths of his mind, worse for their complete lack of satisfaction and mirth about the way Grimmjow’s head bowed low to the comforting cool stone. Those green eyes--



This was the kind of shit that drove people crazy.



Grimmjow, he wanted to stand up and march across Las Noches after that dick who’d skittered away and tell Ichigo all about what Ulquiorra had just done, so that the Vaizard could shoot Grimmjow down when he said he was going to smack Ulquiorra until he had some sort of expression on his china-pale face. Shaking and supporting his weight on the wall with his palm, Grimmjow glared with intent in the direction Ichigo had fled, sickly smirk plastered on his sweating face.



He wanted to go to the other man, but for the moment that was out of the question. He hated himself for it.



“Fuck. Fuck.”