Receiving And Bearing

Grimmjow bit down on the tip of the toothpick settled between his jaws, rolling it in circles with his tongue, back-and-forth, back-and-forth. Comfort behavior, a focus for irritation. After Grimmjow’s encounter with Ulquiorra four days ago, he’d been nothing but raw nerves and oral fixations, anxious and impossibly angry with everything around him. It was one of those times during which Grimmjow wanted to reach out and claw the face off of everyone around him. He kicked the furniture because he felt it had gotten in his way and stubbed his toes. He punched Wonderwyce in the head for no reason and scratched his knuckles raw on the idiot’s front teeth (That had earned him another reason to be on Tousen Kaname’s bad side). Grimmjow even bit the inside of his cheek while chewing on his thumbnail.



The little bits of semi-intentional acute pain to keep his temper in firm check, in much the same way that a papercut would successfully distract from a broken femur, Grimmjow sought them out.



Ulquiorra typically told Grimmjow off if he spoke to the blue-haired Arrancar at all, whenever Grimmjow was doing something he deemed worthless or whenever he’d been instructed to. He’d been telling Grimmjow off since both of them were re-born from Hollows as Arrancar under Aizen’s watchful manipulations. They had the sort of personal temperaments that naturally grated against one another, having no smooth middle-ground. Cold and hot. If Ulquiorra was the Marianas Trench then Grimmjow was Mount Fucking Everest. Recently however, it was a different sort of interpersonal drama altogether which boiled between the two Espada. Ulquiorra’d said he’d snuff Grimmjow out and he was serious—Ulquiorra was always serious. Grimmjow on the other hand was seriously putting a moratorium on his own continued safety on home turf with his conscious actions. This was the third time he was walking on thin ice with Aizen and Ulquiorra and the weather was getting warmer by the day.



Grimmjow was scared to shit by this.



It made nearly perfect sense, in a way. Very little of the cruel and endangering things that human creatures did were out of instinct. Instinct didn’t understand the concepts of altruism and vindication. Instinct didn’t tell things to torture other creatures. It told them when they were supposed to stand and bare their teeth and when they were supposed to run the fuck away from everything around them until they couldn’t put one foot in front of the other anymore.



Fight or flee.



This ingrained sort of self-preservation was the strongest of all instincts and, unlike a Hollow, an Arrancar’s instincts were only half-bare to the world. It was what one gave up, for unprecedented force—‘higher’ intellectual function. Forced to do things to protect oneself that weren’t simply kill or be killed.



Politics.



Grimmjow shook his head, angry with himself and everything else. Teeth-grindingly frustrated. He walked down the hall with resounding, slow and deliberate steps, propelling himself at great length to Ichigo’s quarters near the center of Las Noches. Was it pathetic that he knew the way, in a castle that was miles across? Grimmjow would be okay, if he didn’t do anything to upset Ichigo badly—that was why Ulquiorra had had his pleasant little talksie, after all. All Grimmjow wanted to do was ask the Vaizard a few little questions that shouldn’t hurt too badly; he’d gladly tell Ulquiorra just that if the little bitch came to bark up Grimmjow’s tree again a few days from present.



With a large amount of hesitation, feeling quite like he was lying to himself, (being so goddamn polite about it all because Ulquiorra could be watching, watching from anywhere), Grimmjow raised his scratched knuckles to the tall, wooden door of Ichigo’s large quarters and rapped twice.



The sound was sharp and empty and basilical in the impossibly lofty halls of Las Noches.



“Yeah, yeah, I’m coming,” came the Vaizard’s cranky voice, more cranky than usual, from the other side of the door. Grimmjow could faintly hear noises of preparation, nosey mind deciphering them into meaning; opened cabinets, a shuffle of clothing, bare feet on stone after they’d moved away from the oriental carpeting. It was twenty or thirty seconds before the high door swung open to the interior of the room, Ichigo standing in the doorway in only his white hakama and an extremely perturbed pair of thin eyebrows, all dark around his eyes and heavy eyelids.



Sleeping?



Grimmjow tried his damnedest to force onto his sharp features a bemused, lackadaisical expression—one that would make it look like everything was going as per usual, like he’d just been walking past Ichigo’s living quarters on a chance.



“Grimmjow.”



“Huh?”



“I—“



You don’t want me to come in kid, but you’re going to anyway, thought Grimmjow as he trailed an incisive look from Ichigo’s face down to the black band around his thin waist. Ichigo was going to let Grimmjow talk and not slam the door in his face, because this was how Kurosaki Ichigo functioned. Ichigo’s curiosity always got the better of him and he would flutter down like a skinny pigeon to inspect whatever on the ground caught his morbid attention. The guy was just as angry with the rest of the world as Grimmjow was, but Ichigo had some stupidly human form of self-preservation plans.



Decorum kept the skinny little pigeon alive when it was amongst the cats; why should they eat today what you could save for tomorrow, if the pigeon was willing to fill the time with entertainment. There were other pigeons much easier to catch, ones which didn’t jump through hoops for you and that were more worthwhile to eat.



Ichigo jumped through hoops anymore.



“Come in out of the hallway before Ulquiorra sees you and we both get chewed out. Don’t just stand there.”



Ichigo moved slowly out of the way with heavy steps on his bare feet, waiting for Grimmjow to enter the room. Grimmjow did, sauntering over and throwing himself without permission or pretense into Ichigo’s red armchair. Ichigo shut the door behind him, swiftly and with impeccable silence, mechanisms in the doorknob barely making a noise as they clicked together, clack, holding it in place once more.



He stared at the rug on the floor, face full of dread and percolating irritation.



“You’ve been avoiding me, red. You’re not even being careful about hiding it or the way you been doing it, so it’s starting to really get my goddamn goat.”



In truth, perhaps it was better that Ichigo was inept at hiding his true intentions in any circumstance. The presence of his uncontrolled reiatsu removed all stealth from a situation, all secrecy. Grimmjow surveyed Ichigo intently with glass-like eyes, toothpick miraculously balanced on his wet lower lip, sticking to the skin as his tongue finally stopped the back-and-forth, back-and-forth. Ichigo fidgeted under his heavy and faithless gaze.



“Now, I don’t really think I deserve all this bullshit about you running away every time you catch sight of me, what with everyone else in this godforsaken place breathing down the back of my shirt with their haughty attitudes, so it makes me kinda sad that all of a sudden our relationship is like this, where you don’t even want to sit and talk with me no more.”



Ichigo looked rightfully confused as to where this extremely one-sided conversation was going, not being able to get in a word edgewise, let alone form any conjectures about What It All Meant, Grimmjow Jaegerjaque having showed up at his door in the evening. This was the way Grimmjow had planned it, even if the plan had been rather loosely involved.



“You don’t want me to get ticked the hell off about this shit, do you, red? I know I wouldn’t want to make a crazy guy pissed at me because I was avoiding him.”



At that, Ichigo’s lips pressed together straight, white and tight. Grimmjow snickered from his seat on Ichigo’s armchair.



“Relax. I’m just taking the piss out of you.”



“Well, it wasn’t very funny given the circumstances, so stop taking the piss out of me.”



Ichigo reluctantly turned his back on Grimmjow, running a hand through his fuzzy apricot mop of hair. He settled at the edge of his bed seven or eight feet away from Grimmjow (out of arm’s length and that was what Grimmjow noted about the distance the most), looking across the room at Grimmjow with a dark, serious expression on his face. Ichigo reached a rough hand up and scratched at his ear, tugging at the love nervously.



“I’m not about to kick you out of here, though. Not immediately anyway. So before I decide I want you out of my fucking sight, if you’ve got something to actually say instead of screwing around with me, do it.”



Screwing around wasn’t a bad idea, come to think of it.



“The bitch is just under the impression that you don’t really want me around you much anymore. I guess everyone around here, leastwise Ulquiorra, thinks I’ve been trying to hassle you and make you uncomfortable. Wonder who could possibly’ve given him that impression, eh Ichigo?”



Grimmjow pronounced each syllable of the other man’s name harshly, teasing and sarcastic. He wanted Ichigo to spill. He wanted Ichigo to reveal whatever Ulquiorra, that little fucker, had been saying to him lately.



“Maybe,” Ichigo said, rolling his brown eyes, “Ulquiorra got that impression that we’re not getting along—which is probably true and I think it might be a good thing--because of the gaping bite wound you left on my neck, you stupid asshole. And the scratches, the broken ribs? No fucking clue how Ulquiorra would think we were in a fight, not at all.”



Grimmjow thought sarcasm didn’t suit the kid, but then, Grimmjow wasn’t fond in general of being on the receiving end of somebody else’s big-for-their-britches attitude.



“Yeah, about that thing with us in the desert…”



“Fucking don’t do it ever again?”



“Promise I won’t maul you ever again. ‘Less, of course, you ask me to.”



Ichigo clicked his tongue, making noises of patent disgust. Color rose on the tips of his ears for a moment before Ichigo looked away from Grimmjow, refusing to meet stares. They sat in uncomfortable silence for more than a minute, large and ornate mantle clock ticking the seconds out cruely.



Eventually, Ichigo squirmed on top of the black quilt, long arms moving around his sides to try to rub at an imaginary itch on his naked back, strong sword-trained shoulders straining. He grabbed inelegantly for a spot just out of his reach, unsuccessful but stubborn, something Grimmjow was seeing a pattern in. The heat from his irritation, Grimmjow’s uncomfortable presence staring across at him, brought red to the tips of his ears.



Another blush of anger.



It physically hurt Grimmjow to watch the idiot acting so vulnerable and human in front of him and not take advantage of the situation. All this just because of a boner. It made the Arrancar’s heart-rate sprint and his palms grow disgustingly clammy.



Grimmjow crossed the distance with practiced speed, looming over Ichigo and wrapping his spidery hand over a shoulder around Ichigo’s broad back, dragging one blunt nail down the center of it where it dipped at his spine, until he found the spot Ichigo was trying to reach with no results. The other man shuddered beneath Grimmjow’s weight and the scrape at the small of his back. Grimmjow smirked, running his nails further, spreading out over the smooth, hairless skin and leaving short white trails. Ichigo sighed. Grimmjow moved his mouth to the Vaizard’s ear, teeth bared and brushing just slightly over the thin skin and cartilage as he spoke, eyes smiling at the corners.



“That’s twice now that I’ve scratched your back, Kurosaki Ichigo. I’ll be waiting for the return-favor and I’m sure you know by now that I don’t forget a debt.”



Ichigo tore his head away from Grimmjow at the feel of hot breath and slick incisors on the sensitive skin of his ear. He snatched the scabbard of his sealed zanpakutou off of the surface of the bed, having been sitting positioned beside it the whole time, and shoved the tip roughly between them. It put uncomfortable, dangerous pressure on Grimmjow’s scapula, pushing the Arrancar away forcefully—only a few inches, but a few inches was all that Ichigo needed to separate the touch. Grimmjow could have resisted the push of course, but the other man’s eyes were black around the edges as the darkness bled back into them, challenging. Yellow irises.



Grimmjow moved himself away with a push off of the bed with his palms, stepping up and away, his own eyes wide with surprise.



He wondered how he’d never noticed the sword laying so close-by on the bed before, having never had a problem previously knowing when sharp, pointy objects were nearby. Was it possible Grimmjow’d just gotten to the point where he didn’t bother to keep an eye on Ichigo’s hip and hand? He wondered how Ichigo had thought to have the sword on the bed while sleeping in the first place.



Was it always there when Ichigo slept?



“Grimmjow,” Ichigo hissed, voice full of false, threatening bravado. Deep and clipped. “I like your company on a really shallow level, because it’s better than going fucking insane on my own in this place. But if this situation were even slightly different than it is, I want you to know that I would not cross the goddamn street on a Sunday to say hello to you.”



Grimmjow stood his few feet away, staring at Ichigo with a grimace on his face, lips curled up in repulsed amusement. Ichigo stared back through swirling, mismatched eyes until the Arrancar threw his blue head back and howled, laughter shaking his chest.



So that’s what it was, was it?



Fucking hilarious. Fucking perfect.



“So you admit you don’t hate me, then.”



Grimmjow dragged a palm across his face as his laughter died down, hakama billowing as he left Ichigo alone in his room, moving away from Aizen Sousuke’s prisoners quarters.



He left the center of the castle. He left the lookout towers. He left the building entirely. Grimmjow walked firmly until he came to a jagged black rock standing on its lonesome, surrounded by mournful little white crystal-trees. Kurosaki Ichigo, all-around good guy and former progressive hero to the Shinigami, had just verbally and to Grimmjow’s face admitted that he liked the Arrancar’s company, in more words and with more conditions (but still out loud). Ichigo’s behavior—little stares and uncomfortable silences--revealed that he liked other parts of Grimmjow, too, and that he absolutely fucking hated himself for it.



Ulquiorra Schiffer was, of course, going to bleed Grimmjow out and mount his head on a pike in the sands of Hueco Mundo as a warning to any other misguided Adjuchas, bastard Hollows out there that went ahead and did what they pleased.



Grimmjow didn’t stop laughing for two goddamn hours.