Chapter Text
Grimmjow snaps awake in a disoriented frenzy, body already in motion. He lands in a low crouch, his surroundings unfamiliar for one, long second before his mind helpfully provides him with memories of getting fucked unconscious.
Son of a bitch.
The cavern is empty except for himself. The fabric under his paws is different from the one he remembers ripping and messing up, and the tousled heap of cloth beside him and the wall at his back tell him he was moved in his sleep. Self-directed fury at being that helpless wars with utter confusion at Ichigo’s actions. He’s fine nearly killing Grimmjow while they fuck but makes him a cozy little nest after? What the fresh fuck.
It’s not that odd, points out a part of his mind that seems too sensible for comfort. He does remember Ichigo trying to pull back—no, push out—his reiatsu when Grimmjow was nearly insensate, and he did mumble some confusing bullshit, but Grimmjow’s memories of the whole business are hazy toward the end.
He feels fine though. Better than fine. Fucking revitalized.
The culprit’s obvious. Ichigo’s power is still clinging to his skin and churning inside him, distinctly foreign like it doesn’t even have the decency to be digested by Grimmjow’s own reiatsu.
Well, fuck him, Grimmjow’s keeping it.
Once he stands and starts moving, his body’s quick to remind him that, despite the quicker regeneration from the extra reiatsu, he did get fucked stupid. It’s not unpleasant as such; he’s had worse hurts. It’s the gnawing emptiness deep inside that bothers him, like a second hollow hole has opened up under the first.
Well, that and the…crustiness, which makes him wish he could temporarily turn back into a giant cat and lick himself clean. And that leads him down memory lane to Ichigo licking him clean, and no, hell no, this is getting out of control.
Line of thought firmly rejected, Grimmjow picks his way out of the furs. The cave system seems a lot easier to navigate now than when he rushed in. Could be Grimmjow thinking with his actual brain instead of his dick. Could be the odd, insistent pull at the center of his chest, leading him inexorably to an end he knows.
He still can’t sense Ichigo, and even the muddled memory of him pushing his reiatsu up to some level beyond Grimmjow’s comprehension is a mindfuck and a half, but he knows the path to walk to get to him, like something’s whispering secrets only his hindbrain can hear.
If Grimmjow had a lick of sense, he’d run in the opposite direction. It’s clear as anything that Ichigo truly doesn’t want to hurt him, but Grimmjow can smell crazy ten miles away, and this man is a few hundred hollows short of a full gillian.
He walks, following that writhing pull, and soon steps out of the cave. Moonlight spills over him.
And silhouetted by the edge of a low cliff is a familiar figure.
There’s no outward sign that Ichigo has noticed him, nothing as obvious as a flinch or the twitch of a hand, but Grimmjow can feel the air sharpen, raising the fine hairs on his nape. A flex of his will summons his armor, but the bone feels flimsier than it ever has.
He leans against the mouth of the cave, affecting an ease he doesn’t feel.
Ichigo remains as he is, head tipped up to the sky. Grimmjow stares at his profile, the pale skin and gleaming bone made eerie and ethereal by the bright moon. His hair is long and still, no longer whipping in the winds of his own power, and his clothes are dark and whole again, as if Grimmjow never tore them up. He looks so pristine that Grimmjow wants to drag him back to the cave just to mess him up again, and where that thought would have been drenched in blood and violence some days ago, now it’s—well, still bloody and violent but blended with flashes of heat and warmth and slick, shuddering sensation.
Evolution was a mistake, he thinks dully.
He shifts uncomfortably against the rock. He’s only ever been patient on a hunt, and this ain’t that. But something stays his tongue; Ichigo cuts a solemn figure on that ledge, and Grimmjow can’t shake the sense that if he reaches out in familiar violence, this man will turn into moonlight and shadows under his claws.
He finds himself aware of time in a way he never was before this bastard crashed into his life. It drags, every moment scraping against his patience like rusted nails. His tail lashes against his own leg, curling and uncurling around the calf. Ichigo doesn’t so much as stir.
Grimmjow snaps.
“Oi, what the hell is so fascinating about the moon? Don’t tell me you didn’t have one of those where you came from.”
Ichigo’s head turns toward him; his eye isn’t glowing anymore, but Grimmjow can feel it spearing into him, pinning him in place.
Fuck that shit.
He shakes off the tension in his muscles and stalks over, stopping only once he’s within arm’s distance—clawing distance, a laughably easy kill—of Ichigo. The intensity of his regard doesn’t lessen. If anything, it sharpens, growing heavier as it settles over Grimmjow like a shroud.
“It did,” Ichigo says softly, and it takes Grimmjow a moment to remember what he’s responding to. “Not toward the end. The worlds were…let’s call it cosmic soup. Plenty of darkness to go around, but no moon. Definitely no sun.”
That sounds…
Grimmjow shakes his head, as if he can physically eject the images from his brain.
All he asks is, “So what, you’re having your fill now?”
Ichigo makes a sound that could be classified as laughter if one were drunk and drugged and also never heard a person laugh before. Grimmjow has; he’s heard Ichigo laugh, wild and mad but also soft and sweet. He remembers it trembling in his ears and pouring over his skin like warm honey.
“No,” Ichigo says. “No, I’ve had quite enough of Hueco Mundo’s moon. Not that she doesn’t have her charm.”
“Charm,” Grimmjow echoes flatly.
Ichigo’s mouth quirks up in one corner. He says nothing else, and neither does Grimmjow, for all that his tongue burns and claws itch. And when Ichigo turns away, from Grimmjow and the moon, to stare into the sprawling darkness under them, Grimmjow just sighs and joins him, their shoulders almost brushing. He doesn’t realize what he’s done until he’s already there, leeching the warmth Ichigo seems to exude, and by then, his hackles rise more out of habit than any real concern. Ichigo’s had ample opportunities to devour him—and devour he did, but only in ways Grimmjow’s still feeling in his gut.
But it’s hard to reconcile the man beside him with the one who teased and taunted Grimmjow, who made him bleed and stitched him back together, who touched him with a soul-deep hunger any hollow would recognize.
He’s quiet. Not the silence. Not even the pensive expression. It runs deeper, and Grimmjow doesn’t know how he knows, and he’s not even sure he wants the knowledge, this newfound perception that goes beyond an eye for the interplay of flesh and power under skin and bone, but it’s there and he’s left with the profoundly useless knowledge that Ichigo feels wrong like this.
He grinds his teeth, swallowing a snarl. His tail is curled tight around his own thigh, hard enough to bruise a weaker hollow.
In the end, though, Ichigo puts him out of his misery.
“Aren’t you curious?”
“Huh? About what?”
“About what happened to that world.” Ichigo pauses, gaze flitting to Grimmjow and then away, and adds, softer and graver, “To you.”
“Nothing happened to me, unless we’re counting all the bullshit you pulled.”
Grimmjow scowls, but it’s wasted on Ichigo, who’s carefully not looking at him. There’s a tension in his frame that quivers in the air.
It’s not like it’s never occurred to him to wonder, after those first few cryptic remarks resolved into a picture bigger and clearer than a stupid-powerful hollow with a few screws loose. But what’s the point? Grimmjow’s here. He’s real.
He scowls harder at Ichigo. The shadows seem to be writhing around him now, and Grimmjow’s used enough to his bullshit to recognize the light-sucking color of his reiatsu. He takes a cautious step back, which is about as useful as leaping into the path of those dark, cleaving attacks.
Ichigo doesn’t attack though. He just glares into the darkness like it killed his fracción.
Grimmjow lets out an explosive sigh.
“Figured he’d died anyway,” he admits with little grace. Ichigo’s suddenly as still as stone. Grimmjow grits his teeth and soldiers on: “With the way you look at me, it’s fucking obvious.”
“You’ve always been sharper than you like to act.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean, dickhead?”
Ichigo doesn’t respond, nor does he lose any of the tension. Even his reiatsu is ominously still, like a building storm. Strangely, Grimmjow doesn’t feel threatened. But he also doesn’t like the bony white of Ichigo’s knuckles or the flat, thin line his mouth has become.
But when Ichigo speaks, his voice is steady. “He died fighting.”
And—it’s not him. Grimmjow knows that. He’s pretty sure he knows that a hell of a lot better than Ichigo, whose ghosts haunt his eyes and his mouth, painfully clear now that Grimmjow knows what to look for.
It’s not him, but Grimmjow preens anyway, chest puffing up. And Ichigo sees it, finally looking at Grimmjow right in time to catch the strange pride he can’t crush. He smiles, the expression wan but real.
“Should’ve known you’d be happy about that,” he murmurs.
“‘Course I am. Ain’t surprised though. No version of me’s gonna go out like a dog. I’m Grimmjow fucking Jaegerjaquez.”
“Yeah,” Ichigo rasps, with another burst of that not-laughter. “Yeah, you are. But it doesn’t…it doesn’t bother you?”
Grimmjow scoffs. “Why would I? I’m not dead. The strong survive, and the weak die. It’s how it’s always been. He died, but I won’t.”
It’s nothing as generous as the blink of an eye or the span of a breath. Ichigo is standing a careful distance away from Grimmjow and struggling to look at him, and then he’s not, his thunderous face mere centimeters away and the air reeking of ozone and petrichor.
Grimmjow doesn’t leap away; he doesn’t so much as twitch, keenly aware of the wicked-sharp claws resting delicately against the small of his back.
“He wasn’t weak,” Ichigo hisses into Grimmjow’s face. “He was never weak.”
Grimmjow says nothing, stubbornly holding Ichigo’s gaze until the furious lines of his face untwist. He doesn’t back away, but the claws fondling Grimmjow’s spine turn into fingers. Ichigo presses his palm to the skin there, cupped gently over the ridge of bone. His eyes are soft and terrible on Grimmjow, staring at and through him.
He prefers the anger, the claws.
“Ichigo,” he says evenly. “Look at me.”
Ichigo blinks. Looks. Grimmjow can see him drag himself back to the present, those eyes growing both duller and sharper somehow. He still doesn’t back off and only touches Grimmjow more, his other arm rising to trace the thick scar he carved into Grimmjow. Still, Grimmjow could, probably, shake him off without getting his spine ripped out for his trouble.
He doesn’t.
After a while, Ichigo tips forward, forehead coming to rest on Grimmjow’s shoulder. The bone there doesn’t seem to bother him, but he’s careful with his own mask fragment, horn angled carefully away.
It’s a worse trap than that cage of sharp fury and sharper claws.
Grimmjow flexes his hands and flicks his tail and stays very, very still.
“None of them died because they were weak,” Ichigo says, so low that only their proximity lets Grimmjow make out the words. “It was me. The weak one—it was me.”
That kills Grimmjow’s confused petrification.
“You were weak?” he asks, incredulous. “Bullshit. You’re the one who’s still alive.”
Ichigo’s breath seems to shudder through him. “Because there was nothing—no one—left there. I still don’t know what I did, how I… I was running, Grimmjow. Sometimes, I think I’m still running.”
“So?” He shoves at one bony shoulder, but he might as well be trying to move a mountain for all the good it does. “Everyone runs. That’s how you fucking survive until you grow big enough teeth to rip apart whatever made you run.”
“Well, mine grew in too late.”
“You’re not getting it, dumbass. There’s no too late. You’re still fucking alive.”
Ichigo makes a strangled noise and drags his nose up the column of Grimmjow’s throat, shifting casually from whatever the fuck they were doing to a full-on embrace, chest to chest, cheek to cheek. His arms lock around Grimmjow’s back, but leave his own free, and Grimmjow’s left with the choice of clawing at this motherfucker or returning the embrace, because he’ll vibrate right out of his skin if he just stands there like a doll for one more second, and he chooses the less suicidal option and crushes Ichigo’s slighter frame against his chest. Let the bastard choke. Would serve him right.
Except Ichigo just sighs and kind of…melts into Grimmjow.
He stares down at his arms; the wicked blades jutting out of his forearms seem to be mocking him.
“You’d see it that way,” Ichigo mumbles, right into Grimmjow’s ear.
“It’s the only damn way to—"
“I was supposed to protect them,” Ichigo cuts in. “And you hated it, but I wanted to protect you too.”
“Like hell do I need you to protect me.” He squeezes harder, and Ichigo lets out a satisfying grunt. “Get this into your head, Ichigo—I’m not your goddamn ghost.”
Ichigo’s silent for a long time—long enough that Grimmjow’s arms lose their tension, gentling the crushing hug into, well, just a hug, which leaves him captivated in a horrified kind of way, hyperaware of where they’re pressed together and the heat emanating from Ichigo.
It’s different from fucking. It’s nothing like fighting. But there’s still a warmth in Grimmjow’s gut, tugging at the edges of his hollow hole, and he half wants to fling Ichigo down this cliff and half wants to press closer, right through skin and flesh and bone.
“You’re not,” Ichigo says, jolting Grimmjow out of his trance before he does something very stupid like kick Ichigo in the balls or kiss his fucking horn. “But you’re still mine. Don’t die again.”
“Don’t order me around, asshole,” Grimmjow snaps back on instinct before the other part sinks in. “And I don’t belong to you.”
“Why, got someone better waiting around?”
It’s teasing, which is such a stark change in tone that Grimmjow’s spine crawls, but he also hears the fairly ominous undertone to it and knows, with gut-deep surety, that if Grimmjow did have a mate stashed away somewhere, they wouldn’t live to see the next full moon.
Grimmjow likes that—a mate who’s strong and vast and hungry. The pleasant warmth in his belly stirs into a sharper heat.
“I ate all the other idiots who tried to fuck me—dick first,” Grimmjow tells him, smiling with a mouthful of teeth. “You’re real special. So calm down, lover boy.”
That, of all things, is what makes Ichigo pulls back and gape at Grimmjow.
“You ate—” Ichigo’s voice is very high. Grimmjow tries and fails to understand why he’s so shocked about this, of all things; how exactly does he think adjuchas work? “Why didn’t I know about this? You never—wait, is this why you kept asking me if you’re on the menu?”
“You’re a shitty hollow,” is all Grimmjow tells him. “Now take me back to your weird cave and fuck me some more. Let’s see who’s on the menu.”
“I’m judging myself,” Ichigo says, visible eye dazed and face a little flushed, but in a rush of air and power, they’re back in that damp darkness, and Grimmjow’s being shoved down onto the furs, a heavy weight settling atop him.
Ichigo’s eyes glow, shadows flirting with their edges.
This time, Grimmjow’s the one who rears up and raises his reiatsu, a siren call that’s answered with hot, heavy hands and sharp, tearing teeth.