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An elbow knocks into Grimmjow's at the bar. He's got a snarl halfway out of his mouth before he turns and sees who it is. Then the snarl doubles up and twists into a grimace. He tucks his hands tighter around his glass and says, "Shit."
"If you were really unhappy to see me," the kid says back, settling his arms down against the bartop and leaning over, "I think you'd either leave or shoot me."
"Not worth the bullet."
"Suppose you know where the door is, then."
Grimmjow swipes his thumb across his mouth. Doesn't look over. "Both of them."
The kid smiles at him. He knows it because he can hear it when he says, "But you're not tempted a bit, are you?"
He's tempted. A bit. Not enough to say so. He swigs the last of his drink and pushes it out for more. Shouldn't trust the glasses in this place, it's a dive, but there's not a lot he can't stomach. He's not where he wants to be yet, anyways. The barman fills him back up. Grimmjow's arm aches when he drags his glass back.
The kid next to him asks for a beer.
"I don't owe you anything," Grimmjow says. It itches to sit next to somebody who knows what's under his sleeve, the damage there. He doesn't like the throb of healing-tender. He's glad the kid came up on his right side, wonders if he's smart enough to have done it on purpose.
"You don't." Kid cracks his bottle open on the edge of the counter. "You don't owe me anything. We're square. We were square before I found that shiny thing you left me."
Shiny thing, saved for a rainy day. Plenty rainy with all his blood gouting out of his bicep. Waking up was a surprise. There were more stitches in his arm than there were stones in the necklace. It was the best he had.
"What'd you do with it?"
"Returned it to its rightful owner."
"Bull."
"Yeah. I fenced it."
"Then I don't owe you shit."
"You listening? I just said you didn't."
Grimmjow grunts and gets some quiet in return. He works on his drink. Tastes like kerosene, strong enough to burn his nose. It's dusk. Starting to get loud, more people around. One of the smaller towns and he'd be worried, but this place isn't small. It isn't a town. It's a city. Cobbled streets, a whole building for theater and cinema. Far nicer saloons than this one. Clothes he can't afford and women he can. Just a face in the crowd. Nobody knows him here.
Nobody should have known him, here.
Hm. He slips his fingers under the band of fabric tied around his neck, feels the old, ridged scar. His arm gives another twinge. New. If the kid wanted him dead, he'd be dead. Could have left him to bleed or put a bullet in him. Robbed him blind. Could have dragged him to the law, if he thought he knew what he had. Digs at Grimmjow, a little, to have been that helpless.
"You're not from here," the kid says then. Sudden, like he's picking up some other conversation. Not so smooth. Out of the corner of his eye, Grimmjow sees him fiddle with his beer, then drink.
"No," Grimmjow replies, slow, "Don't think this is the kind of place you come from." Only come to. He looks over. Finds the kid looking back at him. Lots of Asians here — just the goddamn one with hair like that. "You don't come from here, either."
Kid smiles. "Yeah. But I'm closer to home than you're thinking."
Grimmjow shrugs. "No accent."
"Not much of one on you, either. Got a name?"
“'S that what we’re doing now?”
“Yes.”
Grimmjow cocks his head. Looks at him a little harder. He remembers the halo of his hair when he found him, sun behind him while Grimmjow bled and bled and bled into the dirt. Haloed again in lamplight, bent over him with a needle and thread. Half delirious in the growing cold, he hadn’t looked real. Like a body with its head on fire. Grimmjow thought he could warm himself on him like a campfire. Then he passed out for good.
He was just a man when Grimmjow woke up, dizzy from the blood loss but clear. Saw him slumped in the chair across that nice room that Grimmjow didn’t recognize and didn’t remember. Sleeping. Less than six feet from what he must have known was a killer. Trouble, at least. And Grimmjow had this muzzleflash of a thought like: shit, maybe he’s trouble too. So he dropped a string of jewels on the bed and left — and figured he’d never see him again.
Grimmjow rolls his glass along its edge and says, "Got one, sure. What'll you do for it?"
"Tell you mine?"
Not enough. "Mine's heavier."
"Well, I'll tell you anyways," the kid says and sips his beer, "Finish your drink and I'll buy you another one."
Trouble, trouble. Grimmjow tosses it back. It takes two swallows. He'll be tingling from that. "It's your dime."
The barman comes back and the kid pays out, just like that. He looks happy to do it. He leans his elbow back into Grimmjow's and his eyes are bright and kind of pretty when he says, "My name's Ichigo. You seem like you'd rather just call me Kurosaki."
"Kurosaki," Grimmjow repeats. He's right, if that's his last name. He knows names work differently over there across the pond. Kurosaki can't be more than a generation removed, no matter what he says about home. He likes how it clicks in his mouth. "Sounds like it means something."
"It does," Kurosaki says. He bites his tongue between his molars in half a smile. "It's still not enough, is it."
It could have been with one more drink, but Grimmjow's only just started his third. He shakes his head and Kurosaki laughs. Really laughs, warm along Grimmjow's side. Strange.
"Okay. I'll work on it. I'll tell you what my name means when you tell me yours."
Deal, but Grimmjow doesn't say so. He lifts his glass and clinks it against Kurosaki's bottle. Kurosaki doesn't try to get anything else out of him. Really, really strange, Grimmjow thinks. What kind of man are you, to laugh like that and then leave me be?
But he doesn't leave him be. Not really. He's only quiet. Everybody else gets louder. Grimmjow gets through his drink before it gets full dark out, feels as good as he wants to feel for the night. He pushes away from the bar and leaves.
Kurosaki follows him.
Grimmjow steps out and to the side, leans against a post and fishes a cigarette out of the tin in his pocket. Strikes a match off his boot and lights it. Kurosaki wanders after him, leans himself against the other side of the post. Still on Grimmjow's right. He's looking up at the sky. Grimmjow looks too and sees less stars that he's used to. He wonders what Kurosaki's used to.
Grimmjow smokes half his cigarette in the silence and waits to see what Kurosaki will do. He doesn't do anything. Like a goddamn ghost, hair like a will-o'-the-wisp. Grimmjow huffs a laugh at that. He licks his fingers and pinches his cigarette off for later.
"Come tell me what you want, then," he says. Starts walking. He doesn't quite know where he's going, only that he's gotta go somewhere.
Footsteps hurrying up beside him. "I'm staying at the inn. The, uh, not-so-good one a couple streets over."
“Okay.”
“Oh-kay. Where are you staying?”
“Not at the inn.”
“Not at any inn.”
“Mm.”
“Under a roof?”
Not if he can help it. He shakes his head.
"Where's your horse?"
"Where's yours?"
Kurosaki stops walking and Grimmjow thinks about carrying on — but only for long enough to take the extra step. Then he stops and turns. Kurosaki's looking at him with his eyes narrowed into a dangerous, cunning kind of shape. Wet and glittery. His eyelashes are dark, maybe black, but Grimmjow wonders if they're red. Not enough light to tell. They're between lanterns and all the day-time shops have closed. A cart goes by at a trot, bouncing on its wheels and its lamp swaying. Kurosaki's face is all dark below the bridge of his nose, but Grimmjow can hear him smiling again.
"Walk me to the inn. It's not far. We're already going the right way."
Grimmjow hums. It's not a yes, but it's not a no. And Kurosaki seems to know that, because he rocks up onto the balls of his feet and tilts his head.
"Come on."
He walks past. Grimmjow falls into step. He'd like the other half of his cigarette, but it doesn't dig at him too bad. He's warm and buzzy. Feels it in his teeth the way he likes, like he's rediscovering them with his tongue every time he swallows. Could still shoot straight if he needed to, better with his knife. Always better with his knife. The best. He doesn't think he's going to need it, pretty confident in that, but its weight on his belt is a good one.
He tucks his hands in his pockets. They walk for a while. The city stinks of smog and the far-off, oily waft of swamp. Every dirty gray color condensed into a smell. Too many people taking up too much space. No, Grimmjow's not staying here. Not under a roof or on a street. He'll pick a direction and walk. North or west — horseless, until he finds the opportunity not to be. He'll sleep when he hits dry ground, when all he can smell is tree-green and sweet clay. Where things like him fit right in.
His arm itches around the healing wound. He pulled the stitches a couple days ago. It'll scar like everything else.
They take a turn before Kurosaki speaks again. "I didn't follow you here."
"Followed something."
"But not you. I just found you."
Grimmjow believes him. The street's closed up, room for a wagon and nothing else. Backs of shops on one side and high fences on the other, stone and iron with wooden gates. So pieced together. A dog barks somewhere with an echo, then it's quiet again. "I wasn't looking to be found."
"No, but maybe you wanted to be."
"Hm."
"I would have, if I weren't the one doing the finding."
Grimmjow tips his head back and mumbles to the sky — something he heard a long time ago, maybe in a dream: "'You want more than you have.'"
"Yeah," Kurosaki says, "Something like that."
It's about then that Grimmjow realizes how alone they are. He steals a glance and gets snagged by Kurosaki glancing back. Then Kurosaki grabs him by the collar of his shirt, pulls him into a side alley, and kisses him on the mouth.
Grimmjow's hands are out of his pockets quick, but he's kissing Kurosaki back before he can reach for anything deadly. Mouth faster than his hands. Mind still catching up. Shit, what's there to catch up to? Kurosaki tastes like beer and Grimmjow's own tobacco. He presses Grimmjow up tight to the wall and Grimmjow touches his stomach through his shirt.
Kurosaki jerks his head back. Grimmjow can't see more than the fuzzy shape of him. He feels his breath on his face when he says, "Tell me– Tell me I didn't read this wrong."
Goddamn. Grimmjow's head hits the wall and he laughs, too big and loud because Kurosaki pushes him back a little harder. "Woulda earned your bullet if you read it wrong. Goddamn suicidal motherf–"
Kurosaki shuts him up with his mouth. He bites him for it and Kurosaki grabs him hard between his legs. Must realize then that he read it just fine, read it real well, because he breathes hard through his nose and yanks Grimmjow by his gunbelt. Smart enough not to undo it, goes for his button fly instead, gets his hand in there. Grimmjow does him back and eats the hiss right off his tongue.
It's a rough fumble in the dark. Spit between them to make it good. It is good. Kurosaki sounds like he likes that it hurts a little. Grimmjow does. Breathing ragged against his cheek. Grimmjow's got no height on him the way Kurosaki's got him bent, clung to his belt with his shoulders against the wall. He smells like the bar and sweat and travel-dust, and Grimmjow's fucking arm aches right up until he comes, and then nothing aches for those long, quiet seconds with his skull dug into the stucco.
Kurosaki too, from the hitch in his breath and the wet in Grimmjow's hand. He lets him keep it for a while, until the muscles in his back start to hurt and the heat vents off. They peel apart and Grimmjow wipes his hand on the wall, spits and wipes it again on his thigh, does his buttons back up. He steps back to the mouth of the alley and leans, figures it's a good time for the second half of that cigarette.
Still alone. Kurosaki's put himself back together by the time Grimmjow's got it lit. He holds it up to him like he'd smoke it himself, thumb and forefinger. Kurosaki holds his wrist and drags once, lets him have the rest with their elbows brushing. The coppery orange color of his hair is easy to make out, even in the dark. Grimmjow smokes until he burns his fingers. It's all just ash before it ever hits the ground.
"Still workin' on it?" he asks. He walks on the way they were headed and knows Kurosaki will be right with him.
He is. Matches him easily. Catches the thread of conversation after a few steps. "Yeah," he says back, "but I don't think you're that easy. That was just for me."
And me, Grimmjow doesn't say. He hums instead.
They walk the rest of the way in silence. The inn is where Kurosaki said it was and where Grimmjow knew it would be. Grimmjow walks him right up to the door, stops when Kurosaki takes the extra step towards it.
Kurosaki turns back. 'Course he does. Grimmjow tilts his head and waits.
"I'll see you around," Kurosaki tells him. Smiles crooked. Looks at Grimmjow's left bicep. "Let me check on that next time. I'll work on it."
And Grimmjow says, "Sure," and then Kurosaki is inside with the door closing behind him.
Grimmjow watches him climb the stairs through the window until he disappears onto the next floor. See you around. Grimmjow doesn't expect he will.
Nameless to Kurosaki and everyone else in this place, Grimmjow checks the set of the sliver-moon above. Then he turns up the street, north-west, and starts walking.
———
A new town, proper-small this time, and a week later, and Kurosaki turns out to be right. He sees Grimmjow around — sees him before Grimmjow ever sees him back, if the way he's leaned up against the hitch is any indication. Grimmjow walks out of the gunsmith's and stops on the threshold, looking at the slope of Kurosaki's shoulders and the back of his head. No jacket in the heat with the sun beating down. The knob of his spine at the base of his neck has its own shadow.
Grimmjow sniffs. His fingers flex around the rifle in his hand. He steps down off the shop porch and walks by Kurosaki and the first two horses. Comes around the third one and slides his rifle into its saddle scabbard. When he looks up, Kurosaki's there at his horse's flank. He puts his arm up and leans his elbow on the strong meat of her rump. She's a little too tall for it, or Kurosaki is too short. He looks like an idiot.
Grimmjow blinks at him and says, "She kicks."
Kurosaki drops his arm. "Oh," he says. He walks behind Grimmjow at her side and stops at her head, strokes his hand down her long neck beneath the flop of her mane. "Does she bite?"
Should have asked before touching. Grimmjow pulls the knot on her girth and gives it a yank. Her ears flatten and she jerks her chin down, snaps her teeth nice and loud. "Sometimes."
To his credit, Kurosaki doesn't flinch. Just rubs on her neck until her ears relax. Magic hands, maybe. "What's her name?"
"Ain't got one."
"You're riding a nameless horse?"
Grimmjow grunts. Nameless man on a nameless horse. He doesn't need to fiddle. He shoves his hands into his pockets and rests his shoulder against his saddle, feels and hears the horse sigh.
"And she's yours?" Kurosaki asks. He's looking at the horse. Her big, dark-lashed eye. There's a longarm slug over his back. Grimmjow wonders what he's been shooting with it.
"As good as."
"She stolen?"
"No," Grimmjow tells him, "Not this one."
Now Kurosaki looks at him. He doesn't look very different in the daylight. Got a mean set to his brow that Grimmjow likes, even when his mouth twitches into that half-smile — like he's got it all figured out ahead of time. "Ahhh. Part-time horse thief... What else?"
"What do you mean, what else?"
"Part-time one thing, must be part-time another thing."
Grimmjow's eyes roll and he puffs air from his nose. "Kurosaki–"
"Oh, you remembered."
How could he forget? "What're you, then? Part-time doctor, part-time–" He doesn't know. "Boozehound?"
Kurosaki laughs. His fingers thread through the horse's off-white mane. "No, my father's the doctor. And I think you're the boozehound. I only had the one."
"Guess that's your answer, then. Untie her for me."
Kurosaki unties the reins and hands them over. Grimmjow reaches past him to throw them over the horse's head.
"It's not a real answer," Kurosaki says, "I told you before, you're not that easy. Where are we going?"
Grimmjow stops with his hand on the saddle horn and his leg halfway up. Looks over his shoulder at Kurosaki. "We."
"You said I could check your arm."
The wound on his bicep is a thick pink pucker that stings when he sweats. "My arm is fine."
"Take me for my good company, then."
Dug in like a summer tick. That stings too a little, right in some awkward place where Grimmjow can't reach. "Good company," he repeats.
"Good enough. Got a camp?"
Not yet, but he's got a spot. High and dry with some shade. He lifts his boot into the stirrup, a good ways up there, and hauls himself into the saddle. He feels the pull in his arm, but more than that he feels the punch of Kurosaki's eyes burrowing into him. "Got a horse?" Grimmjow asks down to him, stood there in Grimmjow’s shadow.
"No."
"Then you're walking." He pulls back and his horse tosses her head, a fussy nod, before she does as he asks and walks on. "It's not far."
When he looks, Kurosaki is adjusting the strap of his longarm and jogging after him, squinting in the sun — or maybe it's just another smile.
Shit. Somethin' about that just not of this earth.
They walk in silence for a while, out of town and along the wheel-beaten road. They move off to make way for a wagon, then a herd of sheep headed back the way they came. The shepherd tips his hat and Kurosaki nods back. The sheepdog makes Grimmjow's horse pick her head up high and snort. She doesn't mellow down until they're far down the road.
"What're you following?" Grimmjow asks, sudden to himself but maybe not to Kurosaki.
"What's your name?" Kurosaki asks back.
Grimmjow doesn't say anything. He's not sure why. He could tell him. He thinks he'd even like to tell him, but it's a game now and Kurosaki's letting him set the rules. Grimmjow never gets to set the rules. Grimmjow never gets to hear his name said in someone else's voice, either. Not in any voice except–
The scar around his throat itches. He rubs at it through the scarf that keeps it hidden.
He's curious. "What do you call me in your head?"
"Do I have to call you something in my head?"
"You do. You like names."
"Yeah. I call you a couple things. They're not all in English. I don't think you'd like any of them."
That's probably true. Kurosaki doesn't say anything more and Grimmjow doesn't ask. He's distracted. He leans his weight on his forearms crossed over the saddle horn, feels the sway of the horse and thinks about Kurosaki following something that isn't him. What is it, then? Why's he here? Why was he there, in that big paved pit of civilization? And there the first time, when Grimmjow was hot and bleeding from a fight he started for somebody else.
It cuts at his brain like arrow fletching, whizzing by. He can't catch it.
The sun's hot. Smells like horse sweat and dry grass.
Not long before he turns off the road into short prairie brush and up a wooded hill. He hears Kurosaki's boots scuffling after him, thorns snagging him. The trees stay sparse enough to ride through. Then the branches get lower and Grimmjow stops and slides down, leads the horse and Kurosaki on foot.
It's not steep, but the distance and the heat pulls his breath a little quicker and beads sweat along his temples. The trees clear up towards the top, stand apart in an open ring with the sky blue and cloudless above, half shaded. Grimmjow cracks his neck and sighs a good sigh. Home sweet home.
He ties the horse off to a tree and tells Kurosaki, "Build a fire if you want one."
Kurosaki hums. He keeps his gun on his back and starts building a fire.
Grimmjow drinks from his canteen. He watered the horse in town, but there's a stream a little ways down the other side of the hill, game trails connecting here to there. Grimmjow watches Kurosaki and thinks he'll have to make the trek at least once before nightfall. He frees his bedroll from the back of the saddle and throws it down close to the space Kurosaki cleared. Drops himself to the dry leaf and pine litter, folds his good arm back and pillows his head on the bedroll. Looks to the sky and listens and waits.
Some clouds roll in. Just thin wispy things. Reach up and break 'em with your fingertips like cobwebs or fog or a dream. Mind made of gossamer, spun so thin, thin, thin.
Kurosaki makes a good fire in good time. Grimmjow didn't know if he would. The fire burns low and neat. Could put coffee on later, if he wanted.
Kurosaki kicks him in the thigh and says, "Sit up and show me."
Lots of shit Grimmjow could show him. Maybe a little he could be shown back. He sits up and Kurosaki's already knelt there digging in his satchel. He's taken his rifle off and leaned it against a tree. The horse has cocked her hip and gone to sleep.
Grimmjow yanks his shirt out from its tuck and starts unbuttoning. He pulls his left arm from the sleeve and holds it out. Kurosaki takes his wrist before he looks up. When he does, it’s with the same intensity Grimmjow can’t quite remember from the first time he played doctor. He felt it though. He feels it now.
The wound is closed, but it’s ugly. Maybe Grimmjow pulled the stitches too early. There was no time to be kind to it, and it’s in a bad spot, right inside his bicep where his skin pulls and stretches. His soft, pale underarm, parted under the knife like butter.
Shitty place to get stabbed, Grimmjow thinks. Shittier place to bleed out. Hardly anyone bleeds out from their damn arm. Not if it’s still attached. But the knife cut deep, and blood will get out however it can get out. Blood doesn't care.
Kurosaki leans over him on his knees. He turns Grimmjow's arm and prods at the shiny pink ridge of skin. He pushes at one end hard enough to make Grimmjow grunt. It's a deep-tissue ache that twists into real pain, but not the ripped open kind. Kurosaki hums. He's got his tongue stuck in the corner of his mouth, scowling.
"Not too fine," he mumbles, and reaches back into his bag for a little jar of something creamy.
Grimmjow doesn't know what it is but he doesn't move. It smells herbal. It feels almost like nothing when Kurosaki smears it over the scar. All it's going to do is stick his sleeve to his skin and rub off. He doesn't say so.
Kurosaki tucks his ointment away and looks at him for a too-long moment. Then he nods to the horse and says, "If I told you you weren't going anywhere for a while, would you unsaddle?"
Grimmjow's nostrils flare. He twitches somewhere inside and knows better than to show it. "No."
"I didn't think so. You live wild now, probably born that way, but you used to travel rich, didn't you?"
Grimmjow says nothing. Seems to say everything.
"Yeah," Kurosaki smiles with half his face, "You've got the teeth for it."
His hand around Grimmjow's wrist gets tight. Grimmjow narrows, all of him all at once, legs tensing to get up and move, but then Kurosaki kisses him. He just does it. Just reels him in a little and opens his mouth, and Grimmjow opens back, and it's so much like the first time that Grimmjow wonders if it's the only way Kurosaki knows how to get what he wants. Or maybe he just likes kissing.
He makes a noise that sounds like he likes kissing. Grimmjow shrugs his other arm out of its sleeve and Kurosaki touches his chest, explores. Must feel the older scars there. The dark ones and the pale ones. Grimmjow lets him suck on his tongue.
Kurosaki swipes his rough hand up to the hollow of Grimmjow’s throat. Then higher, to that black band of fabric around his neck. He edges a finger under it.
Grimmjow yanks his head back and snatches Kurosaki's wandering hand. The bones shift in his grip until the knuckles pop. He breathes hard through his nose, and Kurosaki blinks at him like a lizard with its teeth full of meat.
The blink is all he gets. Kurosaki shoves him hard and Grimmjow's back hits the dirt and Kurosaki comes down on top of him. Yanking at his belt, yanking at his fly. Hair hanging down so Grimmjow can't see his eyes. Grimmjow bucks and kicks. Yanks back at him. Leather and metal buckles and scratching denim. Kurosaki trying to turn him over and Grimmjow trying to turn over. Knees under him and jeans bunched below his ass and Kurosaki's chest hot through his shirt.
Spit.
Kurosaki mounts him like a dog and fucks him like one. Sticky-dry. Hurts. Deep and immediate. Hurts. Grimmjow shouting and then biting, and Kurosaki rutting and panting in his ear. Knees in the dirt. Elbows in the dirt. Kurosaki pressing him down and pressing him out and Grimmjow drooling around his teeth stuck in his own fist.
Bad. Good for how bad it is. His eyes sting so he squeezes them shut and he grunts and breathes and snarls, and Kurosaki jerks him around like that while he packs black dirt under his nails.
Pretty good.
Kurosaki rips him up.
Kurosaki groans with his chin dug into Grimmjow's shoulder and comes in his guts. Grimmjow scrambles to nowhere when Kurosaki grips him, works him, and then he comes too. Into the dirt with all the rest of him.
Kurosaki's button fly bites the back of Grimmjow's thigh. Smell of loam soaked far up his nose into his head. He pulls his teeth out of his fist and lets his head hang for a while, rests it there in his elbow. Lips touching the little leaves and twigs and things, stirring them when he breathes. Breathes hard.
It's a dirty, stinging hurt when Kurosaki climbs off of him. Grimmjow flops over and gets his pants back up. Sky hasn't changed a bit, but he's down for the next hour or so, just because he can afford to be.
He likes the stick of sweat drying on his chest.
From somewhere up above him, blood on his cock, Kurosaki says, "Hey."
And Grimmjow sighs long and slow and tells him, "If you apologize, I will kill you."
"No, I–" Bark of a laugh. "I wasn't going to. I don't apologize for much."
"Hey yourself, then."
"I was just gonna ask about that."
Sounds like it came with a nod or a point. Grimmjow slants his eyes over and finds Kurosaki sitting at his hip, a little rumpled, and staring at his banded neck.
"No," Grimmjow says.
"No?"
"No."
"Huh. Must be exactly what it looks like, if you don't wanna talk about it. Is it the only scar you don't want people to see?"
"Oh, Christ."
"Gallows or tree? They drop you or hoist you or... put you on a horse and stick it with fire?"
"What the hell's the matter with you?"
"How long'd you swing?"
Grimmjow knees him in the kidney and folds an arm behind his head. "Shut up. What's it matter? Go get me a cigarette. Least you could goddamn do."
Kurosaki doesn't go but he does get him a cigarette. Pulls it out of his own bag and holds it out. Grimmjow reaches for it and he jerks his hand back, tilts his head. Says: "Make sure it doesn't feel like an apology."
"It doesn't. I might kill you anyways."
Kurosaki smiles and lets him have the cigarette. Grimmjow holds it in his mouth with two fingers, rolls onto his side towards the little campfire, and lights it with his face as close as it needs to be to the burning embers. When he rolls back, the air on his cheeks is cold and the smoke goes down smooth. Kurosaki doesn't make a sound.
Grimmjow closes his eyes against the bright daytime and bends his leg to rest it against Kurosaki's side. He's there. It hurts him to move even that much. Around his cigarette he asks, "Still buying my name from me?"
"Little at a time."
"Hm."
"I'll stay for dinner."
Dinner is peaches and pears out of a can. He wants the sweet and he doesn't want to share. "You feed yourself."
"I will."
"Okay then."
"And I'll stay for the night."
Grimmjow thinks about it.
"It's my fire," Kurosaki says.
"Tell me what you're following."
"Tell me your name."
Grimmjow rocks his head back and forth against the ground and that's that.
Later, when the time comes for the world to turn dark, it takes Grimmjow a long, long while to fall asleep.
Then he wakes in the morning and Kurosaki is already gone.
———
Grimmjow slogs out of the lake and collapses into the reeds, cattails snapping under his weight and scrabbling hands. The flower heads burst into white clouds of fiber and seed, and Grimmjow coughs water out of his lungs. Then he hauls himself further up the bank, out of the silt and into the grass. He doesn't like being wet.
He doesn't like drowning.
He catches his breath and thinks about what a funny word that is. Drowning. Drown. Somebody holds your head underwater: you drown. You hold somebody's head underwater: you drown. You drown, they drown. Interchangeable.
Grimmjow doesn't fucking like drowning.
Damn good at it, though.
He sits up and folds his legs under himself and drips. In the calm, flat waters of the lake, a body bobs facedown. The mounds of the back of the head, the shoulders, the back, brown hair and brown jacket, look like strange driftwood. The fish have already started. They don't wait long. They'll eat away the eyes and eyelids and lips, the tongue, and then the driftwood-body will look even stranger.
Grimmjow imagines he didn't like drowning much, either.
There's a harsh ripping noise and it startles him. He turns fast enough to spray water from his hair. But it's just that nameless horse of his. Head down, shredding the grass between her teeth. Bite, rip, chew, bite, rip. She stops chewing and her nostrils get big and round. She points her rain-drop ears right at him. Then she snorts, whips her tail, and carries on.
He's surprised she's still here. She shouldn't be. He wouldn't be, if he were her. He wouldn't be if he didn't fucking have to be.
Oh, hell. What a little piece of paper can't make you do, huh. Addressed to him at the train station, every train station, in the same curling copperplate script it always is. Asking him so, so nicely to start a fight or end one. He always ends one. A name and a location and sometimes, just sometimes, a direction. Bang or no bang in smarter words than he can come up with himself.
No bang.
Best regards.
S. A.
The drowned driftwood-body is rocking along. Goodbye, adiós, sayonara. Grimmjow tips back into the grass and laughs. He laughs hard and loud, and he keeps laughing until his stomach hurts and he can't get enough air to fill himself back up, and then he just wheezes through his teeth bared at nothing.
His noose-scar itches. He puts his hand over it and feels skin. He lost his scarf somewhere in the drowning. The itch is worse where the scar curves up towards his ear, where the knot sat off-center and cinched with his thrashing.
You can hang for a long time if your neck doesn't break. Most times, with a proper hanging, your neck does break. Drop, snap, dead. Almost a bang. But when they hoist you, when they find a good strong limb on a good strong tree, and they toss the rope over, and they put the loop over your head, and they start hauling– When they hoist you like that, they don't want your neck to break, so it doesn't. No bang.
On his knees, on his feet, on his toes and stretching, hands tied at the wrists behind his back. On air. Kicking.
Kicking for a long time.
Three bangs, then, and his kicking weakens into twitches in the growing dark. The light of the world shrinking smaller and smaller. A fourth bang that frays the rope above his head until it snaps, and then he’s on his toes-feet-knees again and crumpling flat.
Grimmjow didn’t know what any of that meant at the time. All it meant to him was air.
Here’s what it means now.
It means his name, his whole damn mouthful of a name, inked in an elegant, flowing hand on the back of an envelope. In dark blue, always, with the tails of the J's intertwined and a look about the letters like they might move between blinks. It means knowing what's inside and hating it. It means hating it and checking for mail at the train stations once a week anyways. It means never straying too far. It means funny drowned driftwood-bodies.
It means traveling rich for a while. It means learning bite and sic, and it means learning heel too. Then it means living as wild as he can get away with.
It means never telling anyone his name. Why should he? No one ever asks.
Kurosaki asked.
Kurosaki keeps asking.
Kurosaki is chasing something that isn't him.
And Grimmjow would like very much to tell him his name, but he hasn't earned it yet.
Fuck. Kurosaki isn't here. The body in the lake is here. That fucking horse is here. And Grimmjow– Grimmjow's got nowhere to be but here.
So he lays on his back in the grass with the taste of lake in his mouth and laughs himself sick, because this is what it means for the devil to save your life.
He reaches in and puts his hand on your soul.
That’s all.
———
Sun's going down in a tired little logging town with its hills all sheared bald and the smell of pinesap sharp and thick, and Kurosaki is waiting for him across the street.
Gotta be waiting for him. He's got his arms folded across his chest and he's leaned under the summer-sizzling of a powerline pole, looking at Grimmjow with his head on a tilt and his hair falling a little too long between his eyes. He's handsome that way. It pisses Grimmjow off.
Everything pisses him off.
He's been pissed off for days.
He hitches his horse where he's at. He looks back at Kurosaki and licks his tongue over his teeth. He still tastes lake water. It won't go away. It ruins his smokes.
Kurosaki's eyes drop to his mouth, and Grimmjow thinks to himself: okay. Alright.
He walks across the street. Kurosaki straightens up and squares his feet. Grimmjow hauls off and clocks him hard across the jaw.
Kurosaki hits him back.
Then they both hit the dirt.
They brawl in the street, down and dirty with elbows and fists and knees. Nobody steps in to stop them. They just walk around. The sun throws their writhing shadows long and jagged in the wheel ruts and hoofprints, and there's a breeze coming off the river. Grimmjow can't feel it. He feels Kurosaki bucking him off, slamming him onto his back, and cracking his elbow down over Grimmjow's mouth.
His lip bursts against his teeth and his mouth fills with blood. He grins around it and beats on Kurosaki's ribs until he grunts and rolls off. Grimmjow climbs on. Grimmjow gets thrown off. Turning over and over and over each other. Kurosaki on top again, but he puts his arm down too close to Grimmjow's face, his soft freckled forearm below the fold of his sleeve, and Grimmjow twists his head and bites.
Kurosaki cusses above him and knees him in the gut. He doesn't let go. Kurosaki twists his other hand in his hair and yanks. He doesn't let go. Kurosaki lifts him up an inch and then beats his skull into the hard-packed dirt, once, twice, and Grimmjow still doesn't let go, even when his vision shudders with the last bone-jarring thump.
Kurosaki stops and Grimmjow listens to both of them breathing.
"Fine," Kurosaki says. He lets go of Grimmjow's hair and shakes his bitten arm back and forth, jostling. "Do you feel better now?"
Maybe. Not really. Grimmjow tongues the chunk of flesh between his teeth. Sweat-salt and sun-warm. His own blood. He clamps his jaw tighter when Kurosaki shakes him again. Wrinkles his nose at him.
"You're like a bear trap. And you kick like a mule. What else do you do?"
Just about anything. Anger rises hot from his stomach to the spaces behind his eyes, and Kurosaki must see it there building because he blinks his lizard's blink and pulls slow on his arm and says: "I'm going to get off of you now, but you have to let go. Then you should come with me. Yes?"
Fuck you, fine, yes. Where are we going? Fuck. Grimmjow gnaws and Kurosaki grunts out a hurt little noise, and Grimmjow finally unlocks his jaw.
Kurosaki climbs off him and stands and pokes at the mess of a bite on his arm. The blood is all Grimmjow's. He didn't feel anything pop. Looks like a dog mauling, anyways. Grimmjow gets his feet under him, wipes his mouth on the back of his hand, feels it sticky. Lip hurts. That's fine. He pinches the split with his teeth and makes it stab a little sharper.
Kurosaki rolls his shoulders and shakes out his wrist. He hums something like half a song under his breath. Walks without looking back and Grimmjow follows without needing him to.
To the inn. Inside and up the stairs, last door on the right, paid for already.
No kisses. Grimmjow doesn't want 'em. He kicks the door shut behind him and shoves Kurosaki from the chest. Kurosaki latches onto his shirt and pulls him along. His legs hit the bed and he stumbles, falls, kicks Grimmjow on the way down but it doesn't matter. He bullies himself between Kurosaki's legs, hits the hardwood on his knees. Hard enough to rattle up the bones of his legs, a solid thunk. Hands at Kurosaki's belt.
"It'd be nice to use a bed, some time," Kurosaki is saying above him, sitting on the edge of the mattress, "Really use one, I mean. I think I could lay you out and go slow. Slower– Mm. Slower than this." He lifts his hips. "Could make it last a long time. Put you on your back and keep you there until you liked it. Until you said you liked it, you stubborn bastard. You're so quiet. Where'd your bark go? You've still got a tongue in there, I know. I felt it."
Felt it; feel it. Grimmjow puts his tongue on Kurosaki's hard cock and curls, and then there is no more talking.
Kurosaki circles his hands around Grimmjow's skull, and Grimmjow closes his eyes for it and goes to work. There's nothing to see. He doesn't need to see. This is all feel. And if Kurosaki wants to try something, Grimmjow can bite him off at the root, but it's–
It's a little late for that.
Feel and taste and taste and feel. A nice little loop to wrap himself up in. His mouth is a good seal sinking down, and it stretches the split in his lip until it bleeds fresh and dribbles down ahead of him. Tasting himself, himself, Kurosaki, himself, the bead bursting flat and red. Arms around Kurosaki's hips and clutching the back of his shirt. He claws and waits for Kurosaki to choke him, but Kurosaki doesn't choke him, so Grimmjow chokes himself. Nose to his stomach.
Kurosaki gets it, after that.
And now Grimmjow does feel better. Oh, he's peachy. Mouth full, tongue pressed. A rope bit burning the corners of his mouth and Kurosaki yanking on it to gag him quiet and still.
Not too still.
Not too quiet, either, but that can't be helped. Grimmjow thinks Kurosaki likes it anyways, the spit-wet noises and the shake in Grimmjow's breath whenever he can get it. He leaks onto Grimmjow's tongue whenever he misses a beat.
Bitter. The lake and its calm lapping waters are so, so far away.
Kurosaki comes deep enough down his throat that he can't do anything but swallow or suffocate. He swallows. Kurosaki holds him there for a while like maybe he wants him to suffocate too. But Grimmjow doesn't know how to suffocate. He's forgotten.
His eyes don't open until Kurosaki lifts him off and thumbs his busted lip. He thought it would be too bright, but the sun is gone. The only light is a thin orange beam puddled under the door. Room on fire like Kurosaki's head was, once. Flickering lamplight. Grimmjow blinks in the dark. He's slow to move, but he finds his limbs again. Licks Kurosaki's thumb before he pulls away from the curl of his fingers under his chin.
Not a word. Maybe that's okay.
Grimmjow leaves him sitting on the mattress like that. Just gets up and opens the door and walks out. Closes it behind him. Down the stairs and then he's gone.
Maybe that's just fine. Maybe he got what he wanted.
———
It keeps happening.
All of it.
Fletching on an arrow whizzing by. Scoring his cheek open under his eye. Little feather splinters.
He could catch it if he thought about it. Maybe he's caught it once already.
Come on, now. It doesn't have to be so hard.
———
"Your horse," Kurosaki starts, then pauses. Grimmjow can hear the way his mouth stays open and then clicks shut.
Grimmjow waits for him to pick it back up. He always does. Talking to Kurosaki is a lot of letting him talk. He stays bent over his rabbit, working his knife along the bones of its small face. The skin is so thin here, sucked tight to the bone. Not the worst thing to put a hole in the face, not like caping a deer. Coats and boots and things don't keep the faces, the ears, the dark bristly whiskers. But good work pays better, and Grimmjow has very steady hands.
"You still–" Kurosaki stops again. Grimmjow feels every roll of his shoulder and rise of his ribs sitting like this — back to back, Kurosaki lounging against him with his legs kicked out in front of him. "You still have her."
Grimmjow tucks his big knife along the tiny eye socket, working the eyelid free. Beady black eye peeking up at him like a slow, strange un-blink. Down to the tear duct. Thin, thin, thin skin. "Is that a question?"
"It's an observation with a question implied."
Grimmjow turns the rabbit over to get at its other eye, readjusts it across his lap. Fleshy pink carcass with the leg stumps mid-leap over one knee and its hide turned inside-out over the other. The horse is grazing on the other side of the campfire, untethered. He trusts her not to go too far, now. He trusts he can shoot her dead if she tries to bolt with his tack. She snorts and stomps against the flies, but it seems an awful lot like she's hearing his thoughts. "I still have her," Grimmjow mumbles, "What's the implication?"
"I thought you'd be on to a new one, by now."
"Is that a question?"
"I– Okay. Why do you still have her?"
"Sentiment."
"Really?"
"No."
Kurosaki's head knocks against his. "Horse thieves are supposed to fence the horses they thieve."
"This one wasn't–"
"I know. So you could sell her easy. Nameless and all."
Both eyelids free, working down to the mouth. Hard part's done with. "She's too green for selling."
"The kicking and the biting."
Grimmjow grunts. "Rearing problem."
"What?"
"Rearing problem. Catch her wrong and she tries to dump you."
"Oh. I've never seen her do that."
Whenever Kurosaki finds him, he never has a horse. Grimmjow imagines there's a lot he hasn't seen. "Well, she does it."
"And how do you..." Grimmjow feels him turn his head, looking over both their shoulders at the side of Grimmjow's face. "How do you fix a rearing problem?"
Grimmjow sniffs and wipes his face against his sleeve. Then he slices his knife through the cartilage holding the rabbit's nose to its skull and the whole hide is free. He folds it flesh-down against itself and starts gutting the carcass for dinner. "Piece of lumber or a big stick," he says, "Sit up there with it. If she comes up, you come down. Right between the ears. She'll quit."
"That's awful," Kurosaki says. Sounds like he means it, but he laughs a little in the silence that follows and his skull rocks against Grimmjow's. A different kind of laugh from the ones he usually makes. Grimmjow wonders what it means.
His fingers are waxy from the fats. The wet rabbit guts bead right off of him. He throws them as far as he can away from camp. "Better she learn early."
"Is it?"
Grimmjow understands the words but not the tone. He says nothing. He slices off the front legs under the shoulderblades, one at a time. Scrubs them clean enough in his pot of water. Throws them onto the campfire grill still wet, dripping and sizzling on the hot metal and hissing into the logs. He has to bend forward to reach and Kurosaki goes with him, all his weight along Grimmjow's spine. Then back upright, feeling it in the flex of his abs. Lazy.
"What color do you call that, anyways?" Kurosaki asks after a while.
Grimmjow looks at the horse. Dark legs and pale face. Pretty, mottled body. He doesn't know why Kurosaki gives a shit. He can't even see her from there. "Gray," Grimmjow tells him, and pops the rabbit's femurs out of its pelvis so he knows where to run his knife. The noise is like cracking his knuckles.
"Gray. Simplest thing about you is your horse."
Yeah, maybe. Something has to be.
Kurosaki slumps down so his head is on Grimmjow's shoulder and he heaves a big sigh.
Grimmjow butchers the rest of the rabbit — the hind legs and the nice back meat with the spine. He throws the pelvis and head and ribcage with the guts, sends the pecking crows squawking and screeching. They don't complain for long.
The meat cooks. Grimmjow watches it and the fire and waits for the smell to get Kurosaki off of him.
It does eventually. Slowly and with a day-weary groan, but he knows Kurosaki is hungry. He's hungry too. The bare, gamey meat appeals to him bone-deep, makes him salivate enough to swallow. Butter and sauce and wine couldn't spoil him for this, even if he does still keep his teeth sharp and clean.
Kurosaki settles next to him and they eat. It's not enough for the two of them, but Kurosaki brought apples. One already went to the horse.
He's picking strips of thigh apart, fingers tougher against the heat than his mouth, when Kurosaki asks, "What do you call me in your head?"
"Kurosaki."
"I like how you say that. Just Kurosaki?"
"Mhmm."
"What'd you call me before you knew my name?"
Feels like a long time ago. Suppose it was. That wound on his arm is a good, solid scar now. Hurts when it rains, achy-sore, but a lot of him hurts when it rains.
It comes to him quick. Before he was Kurosaki, he was: "Kid."
Kurosaki shakes his head, talks around a meaty swallow. "You can't call me kid. If I'm kid, you're kid."
"You looked like a kid."
"You looked like a kid. Passed out and bleeding all over everything. You're not any older than me. So if it's about age you can just–"
"Ever kill anybody?"
Kurosaki twitches mid-chew. Grimmjow only sees it because he's looking right at him. His jaw works slow and he swallows, sucks on his teeth and wipes grease from his mouth with his sleeve. Drops his elbows to his knees. Eyes on the fire so Grimmjow's only seeing half of him.
"Not yet."
Grimmjow doesn't blink. "Plannin' on it?"
"You could say that."
"He deserve it?"
Kurosaki nods. Then he looks up and catches Grimmjow's eyes like a gun to his head. Everything. "Yes. Yes, he deserves it."
Grimmjow's never known what anyone deserves. Fucked up, maybe, that he believes that Kurosaki does. Fucked up, maybe, that he doesn't realize he believes it until he's nodding back. There's a tingling between his eyebrows, that part of his face that's always so goddamn angry. Lean forward, he thinks. Meet the barrel, cold and calm like a kiss to the forehead.
So he nods, and says nothing, and Kurosaki's mouth crooks into his half-smile. He turns back to the rabbit. He chews the bones clean and licks the juices from his fingers.
They don't talk about anything important.
Like always, Kurosaki is gone by morning.
———
Grimmjow walks into the station and the clerk knows him. He tips his head to the side and Grimmjow goes around to the other window, leans there with his arms crossed and waits. He's never been the biggest, and he doesn't look the meanest, but it's still early morning and nobody cares too much to get close to him. The clerk slides him his letter upside-down without turning, and Grimmjow takes it and stuffs it into his satchel and leaves without a word.
He mounts his nameless horse and nudges her up the road out of town. Over the train tracks, past the signpost that points this way and that way and that way. He lets her pick at the crossroads. It doesn't matter. They amble down the road at a swaying walk, loose rein, collar of his jacket popped up around his neck. Mornings are cooling off, weather's changing. Days will start moving earlier and earlier, then shorter and shorter. He'll need a good, proper coat. He'll need better boots. He'll need a thicker tarp for a tent. Nothing he's gotta worry about yet.
In this moment, slouched lazy with the strap of his bag digging heavy into his shoulder, Grimmjow feels like he's never been in a hurry to do a single goddamn thing.
The sun burns the fog away. They haven't passed anybody in a while. The bird-song calms into its second verse.
Grimmjow leans his elbow on the saddle horn and digs for the envelope with his name on it. He pulls it out and looks down.
His name. Dark blue.
Different hand. Simpler and slanted.
He blinks once. Twice. He rips the envelope open and unfolds the letter inside.
Two lines in the dead center before the closing, telling him:
S. A. is dead.
Don't worry your pretty head about it. Just be good, kiddo.
Ta,
Gin.
Bang-bang, bang. Bang. His noose-scar flares up and cinches tight. His hand flies to it, claws the scarf away, feels the rough, ruined skin and squeezes. His own hand around his throat, just to protect it from anything else. The paper flutters and he realizes that his hand, both hands, are shaking. Tremors. He breathes fast and faster. Then he closes his eyes and makes himself slow down.
The horse has stopped. Her ears flick, head low. She cocks her hip and the slow, shifting imbalance of it forces him back outside his letter, his noose, his scar. Back into the open morning air with the sun still rising. Breathing, heart beating. Feet in the stirrups.
He folds the letter. He slips it back into its envelope and presses the ripped edges flat. He tucks it back into his bag. He puts both hands flat against the horse's neck, feels the tickle of her mane over his left with his scarf tangled around his fingers.
Sosuke Aizen is dead.
Cold and stiff. And what else? Grimmjow doesn't know. Not right now. But, mind suddenly woozy with the shaky pitch of a fever, he thinks maybe it means no more letters. No more copperplate script and pretty, dancing J's. No more bite and sic and heel.
No more fights — no more blood under his nails for anybody but himself.
No more lake in his mouth.
Sosuke Aizen is dead.
Grimmjow sits back and takes up the reins again. He taps his horse forward and she jerks her head like she fell asleep, then walks on. He lets her pick at the next crossroads. And the next.
He hasn't seen Kurosaki in almost three weeks.
———
He doesn't need to find him because Kurosaki has always found him first. Always. He doesn't expect that to change and it doesn't.
Sitting cross-legged on the riverbank in the shade of a mountain, doing absolutely nothing besides watching the water move. It's low and slow. He's got the horse on a lead, bridle on his shoulder, letting her graze bitless. He knows now that he can get it back in her stubborn damn mouth if he needs to. She mills around behind him, weight sinking the soft earth around her black hooves, shiny with water. Dripping off her belly and the saddle girth. She forded the river for him like she'd done it a thousand times. When she tugs the lead, he tugs back.
Kurosaki comes up from behind. He sits down next to Grimmjow and turns his head to look at him. All that attention loaded onto the side of his face. His ear, his jaw. His neck and lingering like always on the band of black cloth.
"I didn't know if I should find you again," he says, quiet, "But I figured, if you really didn't wanna see me..."
Grimmjow sniffs and then blows air slow, slow, slow out of his nose. "Yeah." He doesn't know what else to say.
Kurosaki doesn't seem to know either. Not for a little while, looking at Grimmjow looking at the water, horse pulling at the end of the lead until he hauls her back, sends her eating the other way.
"So, are you going to?"
"Going to," Grimmjow repeats.
"Shoot me?"
Now Grimmjow laughs. It bursts out of him quick and harsh and he doesn't like the way it sounds out of his own mouth. "No," he says, rubbing the lead under his thumb, "No, I'm not going to fucking shoot you."
"Okay. It's just– I know it's complicated, but I think you'd have a couple good reasons. To shoot me, I mean."
"Do you want me to shoot you?"
"Not particularly."
"Did you lie?"
"No." Grimmjow can feel him looking hard now, sees him leaning forward out of the corner of his eye. "Not once."
"Yeah. I believe you."
"Can you tell me that again? And look at me?"
Grimmjow looks at him. His eyes are kind of big and his mouth is flat, and his hair is a coppery mess. Freckles. Maybe he keeps them year-round.
"I believe you," Grimmjow tells him. He means it.
It gets him a smile he doesn't think he's earned. This slow, creeping thing that spreads uneven until it's crinkling Kurosaki's eyes. And then he laughs, all air, and leans into that last inch of space between them. Presses his shoulder tight to Grimmjow's, knocks their knees. Touching like he has to be. So much trouble. Grimmjow turns back to the water. The shadow of the mountain moves like a cool dark sheet pulling back. The sunlight will be on them soon, just for a little while.
He's thinking of Kurosaki's hair in the sun when his mouth moves and suddenly he's asking, "What's your name mean?"
Silence for a second. Grimmjow wonders if he's waiting for him to take it back.
Then he says, "My first name, Ichigo, it means–"
"No. I don't call you that. I want the other one."
Still smiling, lips peeling back from his teeth, biting the bottom one. Sharpens him to a dozen deadly points. "Kurosaki?"
Grimmjow nods.
"Kuro is black or dark and saki, my saki, is... a place, kind of."
"A dark place to go?"
"Yeah. Someplace at night, maybe."
"I like that," Grimmjow mumbles.
"I thought you would." He leans harder into Grimmjow's shoulder, winding down. "I thought you'd probably like it a lot."
Grimmjow does like it a lot. It was a good deal they made. Even weight.
"My name is Grimmjow."
"Grimm-jow," Kurosaki says back, slow. Feeling it in his mouth.
"Jaegerjaquez.”
“Hm.”
Grimmjow laughs. That's fine. He wouldn’t know if he was saying it right anyways. Nobody ever taught him.
"That doesn't sound like it means anything."
"I don't think it does," Grimmjow says, and rests his chin in his hand, "Not a goddamn thing."