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Ichigo's up to his nuts in Grimmjow's very nice ass when the thought pings. It just kind of strikes him all at once, right there on the in between outs. His chest is plastered to the hard plane of Grimmjow's back and his chin is hooked over his shoulder, and he stops like that, blinking down at his own sheets wrinkled in Grimmjow's fist.
"Wh–" Grimmjow's head pops up from where it was hung. He's breathing hard. "Stopping. Why are– Why."
Oh. He's scrambled. Ichigo doesn't have the bandwidth to appreciate that right now. Smug can come later, when he's not stuck on whatever trip this is. "How come it's always me fucking you, and never you fucking me?"
A beat. Grimmjow drops his head back down. "Are you–" He pushes backwards and the tendons strain in his hand. It's a really nice hand. He groans when Ichigo doesn't move. "Are you fucking serious?"
Is he? Jesus, he is.
Ichigo digs his chin into Grimmjow’s shoulder. "Yeah..."
"Right now?"
"Yeah."
"Kurosaki."
"Yeah," Ichigo says again. "What?"
"Holy mother of–"
Grimmjow’s hand snaps up. He fists Ichigo hard by the hair and drops. Yanks Ichigo down with him into the mattress and tilts them both into this wicked, dizzying arch. And his ass clenches in a searing strangle around Ichigo's dick—goes so tight it's like he's trying to dock the thing right off of Ichigo's body, rubber-banded around a dumb fucking dog's tail wag-wag-wagging away—and Ichigo moans, and then, somehow, all at once, every thought Ichigo's ever had is gone. Gone and splattered into a thick white drip.
Just like that.
———
No, shit, not just like that.
It's back like an itch.
Ichigo sighs and sinks down into the couch, rocks his heels against the armrest. The TV's ahead of him but it's black. There's a paused kind of quiet hanging around him. It's no good for thinking, so he hasn't been. He's been watching the hallway—the door to the bathroom, the slice of light pooling from beneath it. Just damp and waiting, because the shower won't fit them both and Grimmjow was too fucked up and fucked out to go first.
Ichigo made his a quick one, still buzzing a little, jittery in his hands. Grimmjow didn't. The water ran for a while. It's been shut off for a while, too. Sometimes Ichigo's real good at waiting.
His jaw twinges, suddenly. He unclenches it and realizes he's scowling so hard it's making his lip curl, and he thinks: what the fuck. He lets it go, forces himself smooth. What even is this?
And why is it always me fucking you–
He puts his head back.
–and never you fucking me?
Folds his arm over his eyes.
There's some depth to it but the edges are fuzzy, and he's not sure it sounds right, even in his head. The tiniest little dot and his eye gone and caught on it. Got a soreness to it and he wants to scratch. Pick at it like a scab, see if there's something in there.
Something somewhere. Maybe under it. Maybe right up against it. He can't leave it alone.
The bathroom door swings open. Ichigo hears it and doesn't peek, ears pricked in the dark of his elbow. Grimmjow moves so quietly but his clothes give him away. Denim-scratch and shuffle. Ichigo has a feeling he lets that happen on purpose. He came over in those tight jeans again, the ones that hug and go on forever. Leg and more leg. They stack around his boots, when he's in his boots. Nice ass, always. Ichigo doesn't know if they're fuck-me-jeans or what. Just that when Grimmjow wears them, Ichigo usually ends up fucking him.
He doesn't have to wear the jeans to get Ichigo to fuck him. He just has to come over.
He came over today with the sun still up, way too early for beer. It's the weekend. Ichigo's between classes until Monday and shifts until Wednesday, and then he can't stop for a while, but he's learned to enjoy that a little. The in-betweens are good, the crash and collapse, picking up to go on to the next thing. Even better when he's got the house to himself, when he doesn't have to close his door.
The sun is still up.
The couch jolts when Grimmjow drops his weight against the back of it, leans over on his elbows. He's got a sense to him when he's over Ichigo like this, even when Ichigo can't see him. Especially when he can't see him. Prickles like danger, and Ichigo's been a little out of his head since he was a kid, but goddamn if he doesn't snap to it like a dog chasing cars.
"Hey," Grimmjow says down to him, kinda quiet like he thinks Ichigo might be asleep.
"Hi," Ichigo says back. He pulls his arm down and folds it behind his head. Grimmjow's staring at him with his head on a tilt and a hickey peeking from the collar of his t-shirt. His hair is wet and silky in that shampooed and conditioned kind of way. Ichigo blinks at it. "You washed your hair."
"Yeah." Grimmjow blinks back at him, pauses just that long. "It needed it."
No it didn't, Ichigo thinks, but what he says is, "Sure," like he didn't just have his hands in it, his nose in it, his mouth in it. It was fine. Dye-rough and clean. He licks his teeth, mumbles, "You never wash your hair."
"What the fuck, yes I do."
"No, I mean–" He shakes his head. "Here. You never wash your hair here."
Grimmjow's nose wrinkles in a flash and he sniffs, flicks his eyes down Ichigo's face and back. "This time I did."
"That's fine," better than fine, "It's good. You can do that." It feels even quieter somehow, with just the two of them talking. Grimmjow's right above him and Ichigo gets a whiff of him and, "Fuck, you smell good."
Grimmjow snorts. He looks up at nothing across the room, shows Ichigo the scoop of muscle under his chin, the root of his tongue, flexing as he swallows. His larynx slides up and then down beneath his skin. "Yeah, well," he rumbles, and looks back down, and his mouth is flat in a curious way, "I used your shit."
Yeah, he did. He smells good because he smells like cucumber and melon and that goat's milk stuff that Ichigo's been trying to make last. The little scab-dot is still there, snagging at him to snag on it. And Grimmjow's just looking at him. Really looking at him, the way he does sometimes when shit's about to get messy, when he thinks he's about to get Ichigo's arm around his neck or his guts spilled all over the floor. It twinges something hard behind Ichigo's sternum, pulls his face back into a scowl. He can feel it happening. He closes his eyes for a second, wills it away, but the scab-dot is black like a migraine. It throbs like one, too.
He twists his fingers in his own hair at the base of his skull, clenches his other hand, empty. It's too early in the day for this. He just got off with his face in Grimmjow's hair, smelling him smelling like himself, and that was good. Real good, even after the hiccup, the sudden scab-dot-thought that sparked off Ichigo's mind and ricocheted right out of his mouth. He thought it hadn't connected, blown off into nothing with his head and his dick. Just some good hard work, after that. Just hands and mouths and sweat and Grimmjow gasping, and Ichigo putting his back into it, after that.
Who started it? Who cares? Ichigo peeled Grimmjow outta those jeans and everything else, and then he pulsed into the condom so hard he thought he might knot up like a dog and get stuck. That good, yeah, and a little sticky. No-frills midday fuck. Ichigo wanted it. Grimmjow wanted it. He came over for it. Shit. Maybe he just wanted to come over.
Oh, fuck this. The longer hairs around Grimmjow's neck are already trying to curl, to flip upwards as the ends dry. Ichigo keeps seeing him unstyled and it makes him want to do something.
He chews his lip. Tells him, "Come here."
Grimmjow clicks his tongue and considers him. He doesn't like to be told what to do, except for when he does. Ichigo will ask if he has to. Ichigo will say please if he has to. Might even get up and take it, if has to. It's a long few seconds where Grimmjow only watches him. He's looking for something. Ichigo would probably give it to him if he knew what it was.
He must find it—or maybe he doesn't, Ichigo doesn't know. But he sighs, short from his nose, and pushes up. He slips around the side of the couch, cotton-soundless, and stands above Ichigo's head laid heavy on the armrest. Ichigo stretches his throat to keep an eye on him. Both eyes on him. He's so sharp, even with his shirt wrinkled from its toss to the floor, and Ichigo thinks he really shoulda given him a new one.
Grimmjow skims his fingers down Ichigo's jaw. Sends shivers all the way through him. He tips Ichigo's chin up a little higher with a nudge of his thumb. Then he bends down and comes here.
The kiss is slow and strange and upside down. It's new, but it's Grimmjow, and Ichigo knows how to kiss Grimmjow. Completely, wholly: try not to drown. With his eyes open he's got all this pale throat in front of him, collar bones, glancing up into the loose-hanging collar of his shirt. Blurry, but he can see the bruises he sucked into him. He scrapes his teeth off Grimmjow's upper lip like he would the bottom one and reaches up for him, wraps his hand around the side of his neck to get him to sigh, but he doesn't. He only strokes light at Ichigo's jaw. Ichigo puts his thumb against the highest hickey, the darkest one, and pushes into it.
Grimmjow breaks from him. "Nice," he says against Ichigo's chin, and then he stands up and is gone, "But you can't distract me with sex."
Like you distracted me? Ichigo's arm flops and he stares unseeing at the place Grimmjow just was. "I'm not distracting you with sex."
"You're trying." He's moving, and now Ichigo can't hear him at all. "It's not working."
"You won't let it?"
"No."
"Fuck," Ichigo breathes.
Somewhere in the kitchen, Grimmjow drags his knuckles across the counter. The fridge opens and he rattles around in there. He slams it closed.
"You wanna have another go at that shit, or what?"
"Which shit?"
Grimmjow says nothing and Ichigo can feel him glaring at the top of his head. He twists his neck to look at him. His fingers are going pale around one of the spendy glass-bottled sodas that Ichigo buys for himself. He stares Ichigo down as he cracks the cap off with his teeth. Doesn't blink when he spits it onto the counter. It clatters and spins out.
Annoyance pinches Ichigo across the bridge of his nose. "I was kinda hoping you'd forget about it."
"Bet you were." Grimmjow swigs from the bottle and his eyes are bright. "You haven't."
No, he sure fucking hasn't. How come it's always– Why is it always– "I was just... I don't–"
"It's not what you were really asking."
Ichigo's mouth opens on its own but nothing comes out. He makes it close. Then he makes himself say, "No, it was. I think it was."
"Jesus." Grimmjow huffs air and rakes his hand through his shiny wet hair. "Alright. Fine."
The tiny black dot that turned out to be a scab begs to be scratched, and Ichigo knows he's gonna bleed. He still can't see the edges of it. "So..?"
"So. Go ahead."
He doesn't sound like he means it. Ichigo sits up and lays his arm over the back of the couch to face him. Doesn't feel like a conversation he should have laid out on his back, belly-up like he doesn't give a shit. He does give a shit. He wishes Grimmjow would come back, take some of his space, get in his face. The couch and the counter between them feels like way too fuckin' much.
"Okay." Ichigo swallows. Winces. Asks, "Why is it– Why do I fuck you, but you don't fuck me?"
Grimmjow tips his drink back again, takes his time with it. Ichigo can see his tongue moving over his teeth through his lips and the twitch in his cheek. The drink is dark red, black cherry, and it stains his mouth. "I fucked you once."
"Yeah..." Ichigo remembers. "Yeah, you did. A while ago."
"At that birthday party."
"It was Orihime's." And it was a couple years ago, and they were still a little new to being whatever it is that they are, and it was a blistery-hot September and Grimmjow had a necklace that touched his chest through his unbuttoned shirt and swung when he moved, and he had some of Nel's seafoam green in his hair and it looked like shit, and, "You had girls all over you and you said you hated the music. I took you home with me." And he had bruises on his flank from a kick that slipped through. "It was good. Why don't we ever do that again?"
"Because you didn't like it," Grimmjow tells him, flat and slow with his arm stiff where he's braced against the edge of the counter, inside of his elbow dark with veins. He's rigid.
And there's a tone rising in Ichigo's ears, blood pulsing with the scab-dot. "What the fuck, no, I–"
"Think about what you're about to fucking say to me," Grimmjow snaps, "before you say it."
"Oh," Ichigo says, "Oh, you're pissed at me."
"You're gettin' me there."
Ichigo gnaws his lip. Some of his skin comes up and he peels it with his teeth, swallows it, tongues the sting. Thinks about it. It wasn't his first time or anything, and they weren't drunk, and it was fine, good, but he didn't get it. He didn't get whatever it is that Grimmjow gets when he's the one on his back, when he's stretched thin on fingers and cock, strung out so goddamn far he doesn't always wanna come back. Just didn't get it; didn’t get that. Didn't fall into the feeling of it. But he still came. Had a good time. They were in his bed and he pulled Grimmjow into him and wiped the glitter off his cheek, and Grimmjow smelled like his own cologne and sugar cookie body spray, and his mouth tasted like red bean paste. And spearmint, always. Ichigo doesn't remember much else.
He nods slowly, reluctantly, feels the words out. "Fine, it... It was good. But I didn't like it. It wasn't you."
Grimmjow scoffs. "No shit it wasn't me."
"I've never liked it."
"That's why." He rolls his eyes and Ichigo's sure it's gotta hurt a little to be so goddamn bitchy. Against the rim of his bottle Grimmjow snarls, "Dipshit."
"Watch it," Ichigo bites back, and has to breathe against the quick hot anger that tightens like a belt around his chest. If Grimmjow were in arm's reach, Ichigo would be grabbing for him. Maybe that's why he's not. "Look, I just– I don't know, alright? Do you want to?"
"Do I want to, what?"
"Do you want to fuck me? Or be fucking me, or... whatever?"
Grimmjow's eyes narrow severely, thin down to two bright blue slices and scan Ichigo's face like he's looking for a trap. There isn't one. Ichigo just wants to know. In his head he's pushing his fingers around the scab and feeling the deep tender ache.
"I want," Grimmjow says slowly, intensely—and his eyes dart away, skitter so far off to the side that he starts to turn into it, jaw ticking, "I want what you want."
"Okay," Ichigo says. "Look at me."
Grimmjow's nostrils flare and the muscles in his arms flex as he grips the counter, but he snaps his head back around in a blink and Ichigo tries to hold him with just his eyes, his own fingers digging into the couch cushions. Come here, and Grimmjow comes. Look at me, and Grimmjow looks. It makes something quake in him that feels too big to fit between the folds and bulges of his guts, no matter how slippery.
Something snags.
Leave it alone. Goddammit, leave it alone.
"Easy," Ichigo says, to both of them, and he's fucking trying. "That's all it has to be, man." He's trying, but he doesn't think–
Grimmjow barks a laugh and it’s loud and fighting-mean. "I don't think that's fucking all, Kurosaki. What the hell is it you want, huh?"
You.
The dot's a spot, getting bigger, flaky hard edges jammed up under his fingernails, and he's staring at Grimmjow's pale eyes staring back at him, and he's really digging in, now, reaching for the pulled-tight sting that comes before real pain, and he's thinking: you. You. But the shape of it is all wrong: jagged and pulsing dried-blood black. He can't help it, can't do anything but get into it, and it makes him feel feverish and oily inside. Sick. The scab starts to peel but it's all wet under there.
It won't come out of him. He can't say it.
He says instead, "I wanna get what I like. I want you to get what you like, too." And he swallows hard at the way it turns in his stomach like it's not totally true. He doesn't know why. He's not lying.
Grimmjow swipes his thumb fast through the water beading on the outside of the soda bottle. He gulps again in the pause. A drop splashes into the ring left on the counter. "You know what I like."
Everything. Maybe anything. Some things more than others. Ichigo's teeth grind, gnashing at this stupid, useless ache and the clear sticky serous fluid drying in his fingerprints. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. You like gettin' your dick wet, and I..."
The bottle thunks down. "You what?"
"I don't know! It doesn't matter. I know what you fucking like and I'm not giving you whatever you're getting from everybody else, so–"
"Everybody else," Grimmjow repeats, and his tone is so blank that Ichigo hurtles up against it like a dog hitting the end of its tether. It whips him back and strangles him. He rushes with heat and then icy chill, and he just knows now that he's scratched too hard. He's gone and scratched himself open.
"Yeah," Ichigo says, wide-eyed. Here comes the blood.
Grimmjow's face closes in an instant. He shutters up tight, everything about him. His brow smooths out, all those pissy furrows he gets around his nose when he scowls and glares and snarls, and his mouth is just flat and shut. His eyes go half-lidded. Dark rings of cold in deep shade. Ichigo's breath catches. He can't read it. He knows the steps of Grimmjow's anger—his irritation and his petty bitchiness and his black-out rage—and this isn't it. This isn't any of it. This is that hard, sleepy-eyed danger from before they were anything. From before they knew how to touch each other in any way that felt good. From before they wanted to.
Grimmjow pushes the bottle away from himself, slides it smooth and slow through its own chilly wet. Ichigo can't look away. Can't even blink. Grimmjow doesn't let him. Not gazing at him like that. Like absolutely fucking nothing.
"Yeah," Grimmjow's mouth says. He stands away from the counter. "Okay. I gotta go."
Ichigo says, "Wait," but he's stuck in his spot, paralyzed by the depth of the hole he just threw himself into, the cold plummeting dark, and Grimmjow so thoroughly gone from him it's like he's already walked out the door. Blood all over him, now, from that tiny little dot that used to be a scab. Ichigo didn't know. Ichigo still doesn't know. Only that he has made a mistake.
Grimmjow's moving. Coming around the counter and out of the kitchen, and making absolutely no sound as he does, not with any part of him. His fringe falls forward from the rest of his damp hair, lightened to wispy baby blue. It's always the first to dry. It never stays where Grimmjow puts it.
"Wait," Ichigo tries again, scrabbling suddenly at the back of the couch to pull himself up, to get on his feet, to reach out and touch. To fix it, and he's thinking: don't. Don't go. Just come here. Just look at me.
But Grimmjow hasn't stopped looking at him, and that's how he freezes him. Locks him down with a look that glints. It's eyes and headlights. It's blinding glare and tires squealing somewhere, and Ichigo can't tell which of them is which.
Dead-voiced and real quiet, all the calm of a hammer cocked, Grimmjow says, "Stay there."
Ichigo swallows thick. He sinks back down into the cushions, fingers curled as fists. And he stays.
Grimmjow nods once, slowly. Then he stalks on long legs past the couch and down the hall, disappears into Ichigo's bedroom. Wallet. Keys. They jingle and it's the only sound. He comes back a moment later and he's so tall with his spine straight, his shoulders back, his chin up, snaring Ichigo again from that place up high. A single, hooded blink—and then he's in the entryway and he's pulling his boots on, bent over, tugging at the cuffs of his maybe-fuck-me-jeans so they stack the way he likes, and then upright and ruffling his hand through his fresh washed hair, shaking it out with the ends curled soft against his neck. And that's it.
The front door opens to summertime daylight.
Then the front door closes, and Grimmjow is gone.
He didn't look back.
Ichigo sits there, raw and lost, and stares after him. He smells cucumber and melon and goat's milk. The soda sweats on the counter and goes flat.
———
Ichigo gets busy but he thinks about it. He can't seem to stop thinking about it. In class and it's Grimmjow's eyes; at work and it's Grimmjow's voice; study groups and it's Grimmjow's kiss, Grimmjow's touch, Grimmjow's fuck. Making dinner with Rukia, shooting the shit over bad kung-fu movies with Renji, on the phone with his sisters, on the phone with his dad, alone in his own quiet and trying to think of absolutely nothing and it's Grimmjow's face going blank. Going empty. Every single twitch of thought and feeling that Ichigo's ever read off of him: disappeared in a blink, stolen down into the dark. Lights out.
Grimmjow doesn't tap. Grimmjow never taps. But he tapped, then, against Ichigo with his mouth stained sugar-red, pissed at him at first and then something else. He yielded, and it was all wrong. It's still all wrong.
It has been. Maybe for longer than Ichigo's been aware of it, longer than he's been itching. A scab can only form from the ooze of the wound beneath it.
Everybody else.
Hell.
Ichigo scrubs the heels of his palms into his eyes until the starbursts behind his eyelids pop brighter than the lights above the mirror. Alone in his own goddamn bathroom and it's the hickeys he left on Grimmjow's neck, his collarbone, the meat of his chest. He's been keeping time with them in his head, marking days by color.
The day after and they must've been a little bigger than the shape of Ichigo's mouth, spread out and swollen, bright red with pink around the edges. New trauma, dead red blood cells, hemoglobin still fresh with oxygen. Day one, 24 hours, and Ichigo wanted to call. But he was sore, too, so he didn't.
Day two's the sweet spot, anyways. As bad as they were gonna get: purpling, hard to ignore, dark and turning darker. Oxygen's all gone. Woulda liked to stick his fingers in them, then, try to push the blood around beneath Grimmjow's skin, even though he knows that's not how it works. Then another day, day three, darker still, and here Ichigo did call– The apartment. Grimmjow still doesn't have a cellphone. Ichigo held his breath, counted the ringing in his ear. But nobody picked up—and Ichigo thought suddenly that that was for the best, because as soon as he heard the beep he realized his heart was pulsing in his throat like it was trying to climb out of him, and he hung up before the answering machine could paralyze him the way the silence in Grimmjow's eyes did.
Days four and five. Six. Hemoglobin's breaking down, phagocytosis, shifting down the spectrum into deep black-blue. Call again? Ichigo did. Nel picked up. He didn't know what to say; he didn't need to say anything. Her voice came through on a wispy sigh, a little weary: I don't think so, honey, not today. She was muffled and sometimes too loud, like she had the phone pinched against her shoulder to keep her hands free. Ichigo wondered if she was painting. Almost asked. Then she told him, cheerful again: I'm working on it.
Day seven. A full week. Edges turning green from the biliverdin, if they weren't green already. Grimmjow's young and healthy, but he's not a quick healer. He's just good at hiding his hurts. They've been apart longer but not by much, and not in a long time. Ichigo didn't know just how often Grimmjow came around until he wasn't anymore. Felt like he'd been feeding a stray cat, and then it was gone, and all he could think of was bitter rat poison and drooling dog-jowls and– His mind's a flash of dirty chrome again, spinning out. Reek of hot, burning rubber on hot, burning tarmac and dizzying fume-shimmer.
Day eight into nine into ten, into yellow into brown. Biliverdin into bilirubin and hemosiderin there in the macrophages. Fading. Just about done. And then what? He knew Grimmjow's work schedule. Thought for a delirious few seconds about intercepting him there. But then the cut of Grimmjow's blue eyes came back to him, half-hooded and faux-drowsy, and his voice rumbling stay, and, yeah, maybe Ichigo felt like he didn't know a good goddamn fucking thing but he knew enough to take that as the threat it was meant to be. Better not to push. Not like that. Not into claimed territory. As bad as he wanted to, shit, he's already fucked it all up once.
Ichigo braces his hands on the sink, squints his eyes open to see himself in the mirror. Blinks his own blurriness away. It's day thirteen and he thinks the bruises he sucked into Grimmjow's skin are all gone and healed by now. But Ichigo doesn't feel healed at all. He feels ripped, gushing blood, but he keeps making more of it and the edges aren't closing in. It's not gonna stop. Not until he can hold it together. Until he can get his fingers in it and plug it up.
Ichigo shoves a hand through his hair. He's tired and he looks it. He turns away from himself and flips the shower on to hot. Pipes and rushing water, loud, pouring into the big empty spaces of the room and the little hidden pockets of Ichigo's brain where he roils and twists. Despite himself. In vicious spite of himself.
He strips his shirt off, shoves his jeans and underwear down and gets pissed when a cuff gets caught around his ankle. Day thirteen, long overdue laundry day, and he found Grimmjow's briefs in his hamper, and he realized with a gut-punch that winded him that Grimmjow walked out his front door in his maybe-fuck-me-jeans with a clean pair of Ichigo's on underneath.
Wear my clothes. Use my shit. He feels possessed and queasy, acid in the back of his throat.
He steps under the shower spray.
He doesn't know when their good thing became not enough, not good enough. When the wanting turned thick and black and grew to match the size of him, then bigger, encompassing him, closing over the top of his head. There's nowhere left. It's all he is. All he can think about: Grimmjow and want and wanting Grimmjow. The things Grimmjow lets him do to him and the things he doesn't. There’s not a lot that he doesn't let Ichigo do to him. Maybe that's the problem. Makes Ichigo's head spin, his guts turn, his dick twitch. Swimming around in his own hollow skull with all this raw, sticky possibility. It grazes him and he flinches from it.
When they started this thing, it was easy. Trading orgasms. They didn't kiss the first time, or the second. They didn't kiss until suddenly they did. Then for a while it was all they did. Ichigo never knew he liked kissing as much as he liked kissing Grimmjow. Shoulda known, then, that some part of him was coming unglued.
He thinks he really doesn't care that Grimmjow doesn't fuck him.
Face tipped into the spray, Ichigo opens his mouth until it fills with hot clean water. It overflows from the corners of his mouth and he pushes it out with his spit in a stringy gush down his chin. He sighs, scrubs his hands over his face. Slicks his hair back. Starts to soap up. Goat's milk.
He thinks what he really cares about is Grimmjow fucking people that aren't him.
What, is that it?
Is that all it is? All this is? You got a problem with that now? All of a goddamn sudden. You were fucking other people too, once upon a time. It's not his fault you stopped. Not his fault nobody compares; that he isn't everyone; that you can't even look at anyone without looking for a little bit of him. Not his fault how deep you crave. How sick you feel. Not his fault you got a fucking warp in your axle.
All that shit you wanna do? It's bad, huh. Nobody broke you but you.
Fuck, Ichigo thinks. Maybe he just came out this way.
He hears it again in Grimmjow's voice, the hum and scrape of his throat, barking: what the hell is it you want, huh, what do you want, what do you WANT?
The answer has not changed. Time only makes him more desperately, wretchedly certain.
He wants Grimmjow and he wants him entirely. Completely. Wholly, the same way they kiss—but not quite, no, because Ichigo wouldn't drown.
But he'd drown Grimmjow.
He wants to. There it is. He wants it. The thrashing, struggling, pressing into each other; quick jerk; hard shove; slow writhe. However he can get it. Every way he can get it. It's fight-night all over again, forever. He's incurable and stuck on it, limping in tight anxious circles. He wants.
Wants to hold every piece of Grimmjow in his cupped hands, and then clasp them. Wants to make him small, and fold him tight, and pack him down. Wants to hide him. Smother him. Lock him down. Close the lid over him, heart-shaped, and stick a knife through it to keep him there. Impale him into himself.
Wants to do all the shit Grimmjow lets him do and all the shit he doesn't. The shit they're already doing. The grabbing and the marking and the choking. And petting him soft. And kissing his chin when it's there to be kissed. Fumbling drunk and fumbling sober. The no-frills midday fucks and filthy late-night ruts.
He wants to sleep in Grimmjow's bed. He wants Grimmjow to sleep in his bed. He wants to cuff him to it, too. He wants that solid feeling, that real feeling—and the heat of him everywhere, the smell of him everywhere.
Ichigo knits his fingers together over the back of his neck and pulls his head down. He looks down at himself unblinking, watches the water beat his chest. The white soap-foam slides along the length of him and off, swirling between his feet and then into the drain. His cock's rising. He feels too big for his skin and uncomfortable in it. Can't help himself. He sighs like defeat. He grazes his wet thumb just light over his wet belly and quivers and burns.
The first time Grimmjow touched him just for the sake of touching him, it was here, in a shivery drag beneath his shirt where he was too hot and tacky with sweat and grew hair. Around a corner, against a wall, somebody's party winding down behind them, and Grimmjow was all looks all night. He bared his white teeth at Ichigo, and when Ichigo scowled back at him he scratched his blunt thumbnail through the trail above Ichigo's belt. He glinted clever-mean and Ichigo liked it. He asked Ichigo if he was a fag. Then he slid his hand into Ichigo's jeans to find out.
Goosebumps raise the fine hairs across Ichigo's body like a flash of hot-cold nausea. He swallows too much spit and skims his fingers along the side of his cock, barely there but feeling it. Feeling Grimmjow's hard grip on him. Any grip on him, as long as it's Grimmjow's. Grimmjow's anything. He doesn't care. Hand; ass; thighs; mouth.
Mouth.
He's got a filthy one. Snarling and scowling, and smirking and smoking. Spearmint tongue. Ichigo wants to carry his lighter or be it. Ichigo wants to hold his cigarette between his lips and take it away as he pleases. Wants to decide—wants to say when. Ichigo wants to say never and make him crave and shake and sweat, and push him hard until he begs. And then he wants to say okay and make it all sweet and smooth in one long lash-fluttering, eye-rolling drag.
Breathe when I tell you, he thinks, touching himself and barely breathing. Sigh when I tell you. Burn when I tell you.
Give me your tongue, he thinks, and sees it in his awful, fucked-up mind like a double exposure over his own hand fisted around his cock. Grimmjow: gorgeous like a kick to the head, and his pink tongue laid out over his bottom lip, and how he'd look up at Ichigo like he's never been anything but everything to him, and how he'd glisten in the haze like cheap rented porn. And then he sees his fingers and Grimmjow's menthol cigarette balanced between them. He's holding it his own way and his knuckles are hard. Then he flicks ash over Grimmjow's face and it falls in delicate white flecks turning dark, and it freckles Grimmjow's cheeks. Then Grimmjow's nose wrinkles and his tongue starts to point and curl. He's toothsome like a big cat yawning or a dead one grinning on the asphalt. His mouth doesn't close. Neither do his eyes. He's not going anywhere. He's leaning up for it. Ichigo is giving it to him.
Ichigo's thumbing the slit of his wet dick.
Ichigo's thumbing the filter. He points the red-hot cherry down to Grimmjow's wet tongue. He stubs it out.
In his head, Grimmjow on his knees pants hot over Ichigo's hand and his tongue squirms, but Ichigo's looking at his eyes and they well up. His eyes well up so shiny and raw and clear blue. Grimmjow doesn't blink and doesn't look away and Ichigo doesn't either. He can't. A tear pulls from the corner of Grimmjow's eye and rolls down his cheek.
"Oh, fuck you," Ichigo hisses through the din of the water beating down. "Fuck you, fuck–"
He sucks steam and instead of smoke he smells soap and clean-body and sex-body. His hand drags. Tightens. Twists. It's no good. He's lost, and he aches to remember: Grimmjow washed their sex off in this shower. And then he got cold and empty and went away, but before that, before, he was warm and open and here. He was here. He soaked where Ichigo's soaking and dripped where Ichigo's dripping. Maybe he touched himself, too. Maybe he wanted to feel where Ichigo felt. He scooped slippery lube out of himself, and maybe he sighed, and maybe he groaned. He washed his hair.
Ichigo squirts conditioner into his palm and drops the bottle with a clatter. He can't feel it in his hand until he squishes it through his fingers. It froths thick and milky. He jerks out of the shower spray to save it and braces himself—forearm on the wall digging a bruise into his elbow because he's so dizzy and his knees feel so weak he thinks he can't keep himself up. Then he puts his hand back on himself and he's hot and tight but the conditioner is a cool, kissing soak, and the glide is so smooth he almost sobs. His head thuds forward onto his arm. All he can see is white but inside his eyelids it's bruise-dark, red to purple to green to brown, and blue. Forever blue. Every blue. All those fucking blues, hell–
Ichigo anchors down on his feet spread a little wider. He jerks his fist over his cock.
He grimaces with his teeth in his lip and it hurts. Everywhere. Worse in his guts all twisted up—and in his chest drumming hollow, and his balls pulling tight, and every muscle in his back and his thighs quivering like Grimmjow's tongue under that hot little ember, his little burning pain. All pink and shiny spit, and the black streak of ash Ichigo would leave behind.
Stay there, Ichigo thinks, feverish and groaning and humping into his slick hand. Stay there. Don't move, don't swallow, stay there, let me see. That's all mine. Everything on you, it's mine. The blood burst beneath your skin, the drool down your chin, the wet on your cheeks. The clothes on your back. The shine in your hair. The stain on your filthy fucking mouth.
He can smell Grimmjow's skin. His silky, damp hair.
Something squeezes and he lights up. He comes imagining his come over the bridge of Grimmjow's nose above his open mouth. There's nothing slicker, nothing shinier. He's out of his body and out of his head, out of his goddamn mind and trying to seed himself in Grimmjow's. For a second he's in there. He's where he wants to be and for a second it's blissful.
And then he crashes back into himself with the wound-wet slap-thud of meat and flesh and heavy bone. His fingers slip and slide around himself until finally he can't take it anymore. He pants hoarse against the wall and his forearm burns. He drops it to hang limp. His throat hurts like it's his face that got fucked, or like he's getting sick.
He feels sick. He is. Has been. It won't wash out. He swallows around the scrape and pulls his head out of his arm. He's slippery and soaked and alone.
He stays in the shower until the water runs cold, and then a little longer. He gets out, scrubbed pink, when he realizes he'll never feel clean.
———
Nel told him she was working on it. He doesn't know what that means, but she called him last night. She dialed from the apartment number, and Ichigo dove for his cell so fast he ran himself out of breath, fumbled the flip and almost hung up before he could say hey. He didn't mean to sound so disappointed when it was her voice that came through. Didn't mean to feel it, either. He thinks she knew. She let it slide.
She asked if he had a free day to give to her. He said he did, and the whole time they talked he strained his ear for a voice in the background. For movement, music, anything. Signs of life. He didn't hear any.
He didn't ask. Nel didn't offer.
The park is nice. He's only ever been here with his sisters in the spring, in cooler weather, plucking petals out of their hair. Not very crowded. It's almost too hot to be out today. But the paths are dappled with shade from big pines and maples, and beech and camphor trees. It's a mostly green place. Summer has scorched higher branches bald, crisped the leaves, but he can barely see them through the bright, blinding spots of sunshine.
His feet are sore from the walking. He does a lot of it at work, but Nel is like a lightning bug. She took him shopping downtown and let him play pack-horse. She spoiled herself—told him she was spoiling herself like a warning—and handed her bags off like she was doing him a favor anyways.
She was doing him a favor. It feels good to be useful, even as a coat rack or a cart. A taxi. She asked him to pick her up. Said she wasn't up for the metro today. Too crowded, which might have been true, but she said it with a look that equalled a wink. It's startling, sometimes, to be known so well and so casually. Nel's got her strangeness, some stuff she doesn't show, but with Ichigo she’s easy.
He missed it. Nel was his friend long before Grimmjow was ever his... Whatever Grimmjow is.
Next to him, Nel slows and stretches her arms above her head, rocks up onto her toes in these clunky white platform sneakers. She ends up taller than him and he straightens out of his slouch to make up for it a little. He's been graciously unburdened. Her bags are all stuffed into the backseat of his car. But he should have worn shorts or something. His balls are sticking to him. The hair around his neck and temples is damp with sweat, and Nel's skin is shiny.
"Hmmm?" she trills suddenly, cattish, and Ichigo realizes she's been talking to him. She's been talking to him all day, nonstop, boundlessly cheerful in that way she usually is. She's joy embodied. And he's been listening, really—not like a brother but like a friend who wants to hear her, because he does want to hear her—but he must have fallen off somewhere, and now she's stopped on the path and turned to look at him over the heart-shaped rims of her sunglasses—and they're not actually related, Ichigo knows they're not, but the way she eyes him, even smiling and kind and hazel, looks so much like Grimmjow that Ichigo forgets for a second.
"It's okay." She must've plucked something out of whatever expression is on his face. She always sounds so earnest. She dimples at him and takes his arm. "You knew this was coming. Let's take a break. Oh, we can watch the boats!"
There's a pond, or maybe it's a lake, and Nel hauls him down the sloped path to a bend along the shore, trees right up against it with benches between them. Suddenly it's cooler. Tiny breeze off the green water glittering in the sun. Ichigo smells it: like algae and hot mud.
Nel skips ahead and sits, tucks a long, pale leg under herself. Her shorts are tiny. Her tank is tiny and miss-matched with the straps of her bra. Her sunglasses are purple and the lenses cast warped hearts over her face like stained glass. She's wearing a candy necklace like a kid. She's been nibbling hard sugar beads off of it all day. The blue ones have stained her skin right above the scooped neck of her shirt, and guys keep fucking looking at her.
Ichigo used to look at her, too. A little. The first time Grimmjow caught him at it, Ichigo thought he was gonna skin him alive and then rim him like a margarita glass. Lime and chunky sea salt. Or get simpler and beat him to death with his own castrated dick, or something. But he didn't, and now it's Ichigo catching eyes on her it makes him want to tackle somebody.
The bench is stone and almost cold from the shade and it feels good. Ichigo sits beside Nel and sighs, relieved as much as wary. He didn't know what was coming, if anything. Hadn't dared to hope. Doesn't know what he would've done if it turned out to be nothing. It could still be nothing. It could all be fucked—he fucked it. He sees a pale white flash of his shower wall and his come on it and his fingers twitch. He hooks his elbow over the back of the bench and tries to settle down.
"Nel..."
"In a minute." She sits forward like she’s got ears to perk, and when Ichigo looks at her he can only see the divot of the scar bisecting her forehead because he knows it's there. She penciled her eyebrows light today. She points out at the water and then smiles at him. "I've never been in one of those! They're so cute. Who ever thought of that?"
"I don't know," Ichigo says, and smiles back when she looks away.
There are swan boats drifting out there, paddling around. A handful, and too far to see who's in them, so instead of boats they look like giant fantasy birds gliding smooth and bright. They're so white under the beating sun that they glow with it. They seem like they should be honking—making swan sounds. Ducking their heads for food. But they only float. There are other birds chirping. The breeze shuffles through the brush. Behind them, the path has been deserted.
Nel asks, "Have you ever been in a swan boat, Ichigo?"
"Once, yeah, when I was a kid."
"By yourself?"
"No," Ichigo snorts, "With my mom. She liked them, too."
"Oh!" Nel doesn't dim at all. It eases him. "Was it fun?"
"For a while. But I, uh. I ate too much, before, and it was really hot. Hotter than today I think. Felt like it. So I got sick."
She laughs, like bells, and flips her hair over her shoulder to do it at him. "You got sick?"
"Real sick."
"In the boat?"
"Over the side."
"That's terrible! Your poor mother, you ruined her date."
"I know." Ichigo leans into the dreamy, long-ago warmth of it, of his momma's hand rubbing his back. "I knew it then, too. And then I cried."
"Honey," Nel coos. "You must've been the sweetest little boy. At least you fed the fish."
"Fed the–" Ichigo coughs a laugh. "Jesus, yeah. I guess so."
One of the swan boats makes a slow, meandering turn away from them, tail feathers stuck up high. A green leaf with burned edges falls into the water and catches Ichigo's eye. He counts the ripple-rings that spread from it. It's shaped like a compass needle. It rotates around and around and drifts away. Nel scuffs the heel of her shoe against the ground like she's trying to swing her leg, scraping up the dry dirt to what's moist and cool beneath. He hears her hum and knows she's choosing an approach. All he can do is wait. Then she turns to face him, fits her arm against his on the back of the bench, and rests her cheek in her long, delicate hand.
"You really fucked up, you know."
Ichigo tips his head back and squints up at the trees and doesn't see much of them. The sun makes his eyes sting. Forgot his sunglasses in the car. His misery unfolds. He can hear it in his own voice saying: "Yeah, I know I did."
"Are you okay?"
"No," Ichigo says honestly. "Is he?"
"No," Nel says back mercilessly. "But it could have been worse. No benders, if that's what you're wondering."
Ichigo doesn't know what he's wondering. Grimmjow's threshold for worse is very high. He nods and closes his eyes to the sun, world of bright blood-red inside his eyelids. "Sorry."
"Ichigo," Nel laughs, lisping it like she does when she wants him to smile, but she sounds tired, too. "You don't have to apologize to me. Do you even know what you're sorry for?"
Ichigo wrinkles his nose and chews on the inside of his cheek. Says nothing. Wishes it were enough to just be sorry. For anything.
Nel stares at the side of his head, his temple where he's beading sweat and tickling, and lets his silence pull long and breakably thin. Then she hums. Decided on something. Grimmjow does that too, sometimes: marks his conviction with his voice. It's attractive in both of them. Ichigo wonders who picked it up from who. If there's a difference. If it matters.
Nel sets her nails against his bicep and strokes up and then down, and it feels nice and he never wants her to stop. Like playing with his hair, but it's too hot for that. "Ichigo," she says again, and now she sounds every year she's lived, deepened and tempered by the bad ones, the ones she masks with liquid foundation and cream concealer. "Ichigo, do you remember the first time you met him?"
Ichigo hauls his head up and looks at her. He meets her hazel gaze over the top of her deep purple shades, and he realizes he doesn't. Not the day, though there must have been a day. Instead it's like Grimmjow has always been there, except for when he wasn't. Ichigo doesn't know what he ever did with himself, when Grimmjow wasn't. He blinks. Tells her: "Not the first time. I was always with you and he was around. We overlapped. Went to some of his fights. And then he... He just happened, I guess."
"I bet he did," Nel snarks. "It's good he got to you first. You remember that, don't you? The early days?"
Wall at his back and hand down his pants and every flash of eyes and teeth and tongue.
Remember that?
"Yeah," Ichigo says, and swallows hard. He can’t hold her eyes with that sticky shit in his head—all that heat that turns wet, the ember hissing in slick spit. He tries to make out the reflections in her lenses so maybe she can't see the quake that rattles through him or the gulp and throb of his pupils. "Hard to forget."
"What'd you think?"
"What–" Ichigo's chest pangs and he's exhausted, suddenly. He doesn’t understand, he doesn’t know—he’s right back where he started, weeks ago, clueless and cut loose. And he's sick of being lost. Sick of spinning out: slip-sliding and scrambling for solid footing. Just tired of it. Needs to take something into his hands, to hold it and know that he’s got it. Right now he feels like he's got not a damn fucking thing. "I don't know what you mean, Nel."
"I mean," she tugs his sleeve, draws her nails in circles over his shoulder, peering at him still, "What did you think of him? What was he like?"
"He... uh–"
"Be honest."
Ichigo laughs without meaning to and it comes out rough. "He was trouble. Bad news. He really pissed me off, Nel. Drove me fucking crazy, and–" Still is. "I don't know. I thought he was loud—before I realized that he wasn't, really. He just turned heads. Always had eyes on him and he knew it. And sometimes he'd look at people or look back at them and it was... It was like..."
Now Nel is smiling a small and private thing. "Like what?"
"Like." Ichigo cracks the knuckles on his right hand and then his left. He turns his head back to the dark green water. "Like he was hungry. Like he was starving, maybe."
Like he'd been chained up and forgotten for a long time, Ichigo doesn't say. Water bowl dried and crusted. Always had that feel about him, deprived of something, even with people all around him; with lipstick smeared on his neck in two different reds; with a limp in his swagger. Always looking, looking back, a little too intent. Dirty metal chain clinking with his eyes set on everybody else.
Nel says, "He doesn't anymore."
"Nel."
"You see so much, Ichigo. You know that? He used to look at everybody like that, at anybody he thought he could get something from, because he..." She pauses over something, fingers going still on his arm, and then moving again. "Well, he just doesn't anymore. You haven't noticed?"
Has he? Fuck. "No."
"But he's always looked at you like that."
Ichigo digs his tongue into his molars and shivers very faintly. He shakes his head and doesn't know why. It's what he wants to hear, and maybe what he needs. It's what he dreads, too. It slices him and stings like a cut.
"Ichigo," Nel sighs, still kind, still gentle with him even though she shouldn't be. He thinks she really fucking shouldn't be. "He looks at you like he's never looked at anybody. Who do you think everybody else is?"
Ichigo whips back around to her and she blinks at him huge and cunning and calm, and his brow crinkles and sweat creeps down the side of his neck and he asks, "How much did he tell you?"
"Not too much. I puzzled it out. Geez, honey, this is really eating you, huh."
It's not a question. Ichigo tries to answer regardless—tries to say no or yes or it's fine or anything at all, but it doesn't feel safe. He thinks if he opens his mouth something honest might come out– Something terrible and awful and true. He's terrified of it. He's so greedy for it it makes him dizzy. There's no way he can tell her, no way can put it into words for her. There's no way back from it and he's so doomed. He's so fucking fucked and Nel is watching him and waiting patiently, even though it wasn't a question, and he's just–
Nel, he thinks with sudden desperate fervor–
I wanna live in the back of your little brother's throat, Nel. I wanna rip him open and plug him full of myself. I wanna watch my come spurt from his nose. I think maybe I wanna piss in his hair.
Ichigo sucks hot summer air into his lungs and shoves it all back down and down and down, all these wants he's got, stuffs them all back down into the oozy black wound where they came from. He prays for another scab to form and already itches to scratch it.
"Yeah," Ichigo breathes, finally, "I, um." Pump the brakes. Snag on something new. He shakes himself. "What were you going to say, before? About... He looked at anybody, because– Because what?"
"You know him," Nel tells him, and that's an awful and awesome truth all on its own. "You said it already. He's always been hungry like that– Even as a brat, from the first day I met him. You know him, Ichigo, he takes what he can get."
His own voice, pissed off, frustrated, snapping: I'm not giving you whatever you're getting from everybody else.
Nel sees him flinch and pushes harder. "But he doesn't look at anybody but you. When's the last time you caught a mark on him that wasn't yours?"
"I–"
"Think about it."
When's the last time Ichigo had his hands on a body that wasn't Grimmjow's? "I don't know."
"Boyyys," she groans, and her eyes roll hard. "He's never been a sure thing before. Not for anybody, y'know. Not the way he's trying to be. You told him he still wasn't."
Ichigo's mouth goes dry. He's kind of tingling all over. He swallows and pulls his lip between his teeth and chews on it. Nel pouts her pretty doll mouth and taps her knuckle beneath his chin.
"Don't do that, sugar, you'll hurt yourself."
"Sorry," Ichigo mumbles. He feels like he's nailed down in his body and floating out of it, fizzing like black cherry soda. "I didn't mean it like that. I didn't know he– What the fuck, a sure thing?"
"Ichigo, he smelled like you when he got home."
Because he washed his hair in Ichigo's shower with Ichigo's shit. And after that he got dressed in Ichigo's briefs, and then he came out and let Ichigo jab at him until finally he hit something that hurt.
"Oh." Ichigo slumps, sliced at the spine and useless, made abruptly very small under Nel's careful gaze and the truth he should have seen as soon as it popped him right in the teeth. "I really did fuck up."
"Uh-huh."
He fucked up so bad he made Grimmjow tap. Grimmjow, who'd rather go down bloody, who'd rather take a nap. Who coulda beat Ichigo's face in and looked like maybe he wanted to, and who Ichigo has never been scared of a day in his life—except when he was leaving, when he turned his back and walked away, out the door, gone.
Oh, Ichigo wants him bad. Ichigo wants him so bad.
Fresh urgency. Ichigo sits up and turns to face Nel head-on, mirrors her with his hand on her arm. Says, "I need to talk to him."
Nel's face splits around a slow, creeping grin. Ichigo can't say he's never been scared of Nel before. When she smiles like that, the smartest thing is to be terrified. She catches his bicep in her nails, freshly french-tipped and sharp. She squeezes just shy of hurt. "Yes, you do. And I have an idea about that, but there's something you need to hear first." She leans in, big eyes reflecting everything that doesn't fit in her glasses. Raises her eyebrows at him. "Okay?"
"Okay," Ichigo nods. She could rip the meat off his arm and he'd say okay.
"You're listening?"
"I'm– What? Nel, yeah, I'm listening."
"You're really, really listening?"
"Come on, Nel."
"Come on, Ichigo!" Little-girl lisping again, shaking him a little.
"Okay!" He feels his brain start to tumble and flinches away from her claw-grip. "Yes! Really-really."
"Okay," she repeats, and then shifts into something more serious, more deadly, even as she glitters and gleams and purses her mouth and leans in like she's got a secret to tell him. "Well, here’s the thing... You may be licking him now"—he chokes and she points one perfectly sculpted nail at him, shuts him up—"but I promise you: I licked him first. And I can take him away from you. And I will, if I have to. Don't burn him like this again, okay? Just because he didn't have to have his stomach pumped doesn't mean he wasn't still a nightmare. Do you hear me, Ichigo? A night-mare."
"Shit, yeah. I hear you, Nel, I’m s–"
"And do you know what you’re sorry for, now?"
He thinks he does. Sorry for burning him—Grimmjow, who is Nel's but who must be Ichigo's, too. Sorry for stinging him. For taking away something he didn't know was there. Something he should have. Could have. Sorry for making a mess—the one Nel knows about and the one Nel doesn't, and that's the bite that stretches across Ichigo's face and makes him frown, makes him ache in his skull. Sorry for putting her in the middle of them. And sorry, maybe, for making her choose, though he knows it probably wasn't much of a choice. He believes her: she’ll take Grimmjow away from him. She’s the only person who can.
Ichigo looks into her eyes and blinks once and nods. Doesn't say it again because he doesn't think he needs to. Sorry for being a dumbass. What else is new?
Nel peers at him for a second, judging, weighing his soul—he can feel it—and then dimples and scuffs her big white sneaker-heels in the dirt, takes her talon-nails away to pet him again, like he did a good job. "So what are you doing on Friday, then?"
It's whiplash but he's quick when he needs to be, shifting gears with a clunk and catch. "Anything," he says, too eager and not very smooth. He means it. Anything.
"Oh, good," Nel chirps. "Honestly, next time you want to be jealous you should just take him clubbing."
Ichigo's face flames. His mouth opens and a weak little gurgle chokes out of him, and just as the sordid, sticky film reel in his head flickers to life and starts to turn, Nel kicks at his ankle and takes pity on him.
"Sorry." She almost sounds sincere. "That's not for Friday. Let's make it a date night, yeah? You know what time he gets home?"
"Uh-huh."
"I'll keep him in place for you. You trust me, don't you, sugar?"
Finally, something easy. "Yeah."
"Atta boy." She beams, brightens everything all around her. The sun shines on her skin and when she scoops her hair over one shoulder it flutters in a perfect minty wave. She must've just had it done, because the color is solid all the way through.
She pats his bicep once more and then shoots up onto her feet. She stretches her arms above her head, tall on her toes. The bench has left a red line across the backs of her thighs, right below her ass and the frayed hem of her little denim shorts. Ichigo glares compulsively at the path behind them but there's nobody there.
Like she's only just noticed, Nel whines, "Ahhh, it's hot," and bends forward to adjust her bra, sunglasses slipping lower down her nose. "Let's get a drink. Something cold. Do you think they have iced coffee here?"
Ichigo yawns. It surprises him and he slumps into it, into the tiredness that's been hanging around him almost all month. "I think they have everything here," he mumbles, looking dazedly out at the swan boats again. Very far away, now. Just little white dots.
Nel cuts in front of him and flops her hands around. Ichigo lets her grab his wrists. He groans when she hauls him upward, staggers to his feet and stretches like she did, holds his sweaty hair off the back of his neck.
Says, about everything: “Thanks, Nel.”
“You’re welcome.” She takes his hand. Squeezes it; holds it. Starts leading them back onto the path. There’s a bounce in her step. The grin she turns on him is all sweetness, nothing but good. And then she says, “Do you know—just a couple years ago, I think—they found some guy all chopped up in the trash bins here?”
“What?”
“But only, like, most of him? Some parts were missing.”
“What?”
———
Ichigo stands just outside of Nel and Grimmjow's place and tries to think of an opening line that might get him shoved up against the door instead of straight back through it. But he's got nothin'. No dice. He's been stuck on it since he woke up this morning. Got a little desperate once he caught Nel's text, telling him now. It's all shit. Everything that sounds good in his head comes out of his mouth like a bad joke.
He squeezes his cell in his fist and feels the plastic creaking. It digs into his palm, smooth and hot from his own grip like it'll start melting soon. He grits his teeth and stares unseeing at the door in front of him. Swallows around the lump in his throat. Flips his phone open for the time, but it's only been a minute since he last checked. Sixty whole seconds. Maybe a little more. Eighty. Ninety... One-twenty.
Right on time.
He raises his arm to knock but then there are sounds: Nel's voice swarming from inside, cheerful, moving closer without a break for reply. Muffled rise and fall. Ichigo can't make the words out. He sways towards the door, ears up to try and catch something deeper—a growl, a rumble, a bark, he doesn't care, anything. Fuck, he'd lick the floor clean if it meant Grimmjow's voice might buzz up onto his tongue.
There's nothing. The door jerks open in Ichigo's face and Nel is there, already smiling with her eyes too big, lined dark. Her eyelashes are huge and fake, spiky ones on the bottom. She's done up. She’s squeezed into this little summer sweater-dress thing. Teetering on matte black bordellos.
Knockout, Ichigo thinks, not for the first time. Smokeshow. Just like her goddamn brother.
"Oh, yay!" she cries, blocking the gap of the door. She twists over her shoulder to yell back into the apartment: "My date is here!"
No reply that Ichigo can hear. Nel doesn't wait. She cracks her grin at him and bullies him back, slips out the door. She pulls it not-quite-shut behind her and he gets a whiff of her perfume—woodsy, evergreen, masculine—and it settles him, lays down some ruffled parts of him. He sucks down another greedy breath and doesn't care that she's standing close enough to let him. He'll take a little pity. His pride's already in the dirt. He thinks Grimmjow's gonna grind it into nothing under the toe of his boot and his chest pangs with real, hungry hurt.
"He's in his room," Nel says, breaking him out of it. "He got home maybe ten minutes ago. Look at you, you're perfect!"
"What–" He's just himself. "What does that–"
"Nothing, nothing! Don't worry about it, baby." Ichigo's still holding his phone and Nel grabs his wrist to look at the time. The little screen lights her face up. She clacks it shut in his hand and throws her arms around his shoulders, squeezes him in fast and tight, and then she shoves him back and scrunches her hair and shakes it out. She pokes her tongue between her teeth, smiling lewd. "I have to go! I really do have a date. Remember what we talked about at the park and you’ll do great. And don't let him wait up, okay? Just wear him out if he gives you trouble. Okay? Okay! Good luck, love you, bye!"
She whirls around and scampers down the hall and disappears.
"Yeah," Ichigo mumbles after her, still not used to the whiplash. "Bye."
He slips his phone into his pocket and faces the door again. In Nel's wake the quiet swamps him. He doesn't think once about bowing out. He just gets brave. Or maybe he just gets greedy.
He hasn't seen Grimmjow in almost a month.
He walks in and locks the door behind him.
Nel and Grimmjow's apartment is a good one, not too small. It looks like Nel, inside. It's colorful, and warm with fading daylight, and cluttered in a lived-in way. It would be worse if Grimmjow didn't live here, too. That's the mark he leaves on the place, the almost-neatness—and the gym bag left in the entryway, and the stereo below the TV, and the half-decent sound system built up around it, and the two dents in the wall covered by one of Nel's brief flings with photography. The boots by the door, the sneakers with the laces tucked inside.
Ichigo toes his shoes off and leaves them with Grimmjow's. He steps up into the apartment.
From a room to the right Grimmjow calls, "What'd you forget?"
Ichigo's head snaps around. He doesn't call back. He wonders what Grimmjow smells like today.
"Nel," Grimmjow says, but it's a question, and then Ichigo hears him moving, and then Ichigo sees him coming—and he's got his palms over his eyes and he's scrubbing hard like he's tired, and he can't see Ichigo back, and then they're eight feet apart with just a rug between them and when Grimmjow looks up from his hands he blinks and says, "Aw, shit."
"Hey," Ichigo says back—because I missed you doesn't cut it and he can't come up with anything else.
Grimmjow doesn't put him back through the door. He doesn't put him up against it, either. He glances back at it over Ichigo's shoulder. His face twists through too many expressions too fast for Ichigo to track. He lands on an uncomfortable, teetering in-between.
"What," Grimmjow levels at him, flicking to the door again, "the fuck."
"It's not Nel's fault."
"Why would it be– No, nothing is ever Nel's fault."
His voice is a little hoarse, scratching from his throat and falling dead, but it's his and it burrows beneath Ichigo's skin and sticks there. Sound has never felt so good. It makes his chest feel small, or his lungs feel big, and Ichigo still doesn't know what to say so he only stands there and looks at him, hands at his sides and empty.
Bare feet and big sweats that don't do anything for him besides cinch at his skinny ankles. The shirt he's in is old. There are holes shot through the collar. The front is illegible, faded to flecks of color that used to be words or a band or a brand. Ichigo can't remember. He remembers that it used to have sleeves, but somebody cut them off and split the sides to the waist. It's a lot of skin—some of Ichigo's favorite—and Grimmjow's got good arms, but he doesn't look real good. He looks ratty. He's dark around the eyes. He looks worn from more than care. His hair's lank. No fuck-me-jeans, no fuck-me-anything, just the clean, threadbare clothes he changes into after work at Harribel's gym. Just something to get home in.
Home to me, Ichigo thinks. Home to me? Looking like shit. Like hell warmed over. Stupid fucking gorgeous.
Ichigo's body steps towards him without his permission. He stops himself, cautious, when Grimmjow's lip starts to curl like a threatened dog.
"We," Ichigo says, and wets his mouth, and shows his palms, "We need to talk."
"I got nothing to say to you, man."
"Then listen. Because I've got shit to say to you, alright?"
Grimmjow shakes his head and his eyes wander around the room, anywhere Ichigo isn't. He looks right and there's blood in the outer corner of his sclera, his right eye splotched red, and Ichigo realizes the darkness is a little darker, there.
"Who got your eye?"
"Doesn't matter."
Maybe it doesn't. Ichigo asks, "You okay?"
And Grimmjow's jaw locks up tight and he hits Ichigo with the full heat of his bruised, busted glare.
Ichigo can take it. He wants to take it. He holds it steady, feels it crackle. Terawatts between them like a lightning strike, and strike, and strike. "Come on, Grimmjow."
"Fuck you," Grimmjow says, but it's a reflex, and a tired one. He sighs and paws his big hand over his face. "I need to shower."
"You don't." Ichigo knows—because he knows him, shit, just like Nel said. Like the back of his hand: like the palm of it, too, and his fingers wrapped around, and his thumb in his slit. "You rinsed at work."
"Oh." Grimmjow laughs, sudden and loud and bitter. "Sure, yeah. Yeah? I don't know, Kurosaki... Maybe I was with somebody."
Ichigo shakes his head. Swallows the black acid that rises to the back of his throat. "You weren't. You were at work."
"You think that means anything?" Grimmjow snaps, mean and sharp-toothed, flashing. "You think I can't get my dick wet at work?"
"Did you?"
Grimmjow blazes but his mouth slams shut, and Ichigo's got his teeth in this too, now, sinking in. He wants to shake his head, tear a chunk, snap the spine. Find what gives first.
"Say it," Ichigo spits. "Lie to my face and tell me you did."
Grimmjow doesn't. Can't. He clenches his fists. Then unclenches them. He stares at Ichigo unblinking like he does when he's stuck and too stubborn to take help from even himself. He looks miserable and mad, and Ichigo wants to shove him hard. Ichigo also wants to wear his ugly, cut-up t-shirt and share his fucking toothbrush.
He chances another step—closing in, cornering Grimmjow back, and Grimmjow settles his weight and braces. He tips his chin down. It’s not what he looks like in a fight, but it’s close. Like he's waiting for that good, hard shove. Like he can see it in Ichigo’s face and he's getting ready for it, and maybe getting ready to do something about it, and then Ichigo stops again because the other stuff– The other stuff, fuck–
"Okay–" He doesn't mean to gasp for air, but he does, deep, and his blood starts humming all around. "Listen, I... I–"
"We can't do this again."
"What?"
"We can't do this again, Kurosaki, just spit it out!"
"I'm sorry! Okay? Fuck you, I'm sorry."
Grimmjow sneers at him like he's gonna spit. "I don't want your sorry."
Ichigo digs in. "I don't care. I'm giving it to you and you're gonna take it, because it's true. I fucked up. I didn't know it then, but I do now, and it..." He hates that his hands are empty. He doesn't know what to do with them when he's got nowhere to put them. "I thought... What the fuck, Grimmjow, you turned me inside out, okay, you got my guts showing all over the place, and I– I didn't know."
Faded blue fringe against the bridge of Grimmjow's nose. The room is gone. The door is gone. There's just Grimmjow across from him wearing old comfort and new bruises, saying, "And you think you do now? Huh? You think you know somethin'? You think you know fuckin' anything?"
Look at you looking at me. You're gonna take what you can get. "Yeah," Ichigo sighs, locked on the two little black dots in Grimmjow's eyes. Getting bigger. Or maybe Ichigo's getting closer. "I think I do. You tried to tell me. And I got it, now. I got it. ‘Cause, do you remember–" He shakes his head. He brought an offering to go with his sorry. Here it is. "Last year... It was February or– or March. And I had those study groups that ran late, on Tuesdays. And there was this girl in one of them, and she liked me a little, and she was–" Breathe. "She was the last person I had sex with. Last person that wasn't you."
Grimmjow stares at him. He's narrow-eyed with suspicion or thought. His nose twitches like he's trying to sniff out a lie—like he's not so sure, like he's still deciding. Like he's sick of the corner and wants a way out. But he doesn't look to the door again. He can't, because the door is gone. There is just Ichigo.
The silence stretches too long. Ichigo swallows not enough spit. "It's true."
"What was her name?"
Ichigo can't read the tone. Grimaces. "I don't, uh. I don't remember."
Grimmjow scoffs. Maybe laughs. He rubs his face again, and Ichigo wonders if he's hiding. He knuckles into his eye. The busted one. Grunts when it hurts–
"Hey, don't–"
Grimmjow drops his hand—and his shoulders. "You jealous fucking shit. I'm not telling you mine."
Not because he doesn't remember. Ichigo's sure he remembers, and it makes his face turn hot because it pisses him off that Grimmjow won't tell, and he's pissed off that that's what pisses him off. The last thing he wants is to know—what kind of sick fuck wants to know?—but his fingers itch for it like a cigarette. What, when, where, why–
"Who?"
Grimmjow glowers. "No."
Ichigo nods reluctantly and hates it. He says, "Okay," because it has to be. He's still got his palms showing. He shuffles forward on socked feet, the thick rug under him, Nel-colored. He aches everywhere but it's a punched-out throb in the center of his chest. The last person Grimmjow had sex with—that wasn't himself—fuuuck, he hopes he doesn't know them. "It doesn’t matter... Because it was a while ago, huh? That's what I think I know. That is what I know: that it’s been– It's just been you and me for– What the hell, a long time. Long enough." Grimmjow is looking at his mouth. Ichigo ducks to try and catch him. "Yeah?"
Grimmjow says nothing. He shakes his head, barely perceptible, but his eyes are there again and that means yeah. Yeah, you and me. Yeah, just us. Yeah, even when we weren't. A month apart and Ichigo missed him so bad he still feels it fresh, feels it like a wound still wet. He misses him. Right now, he's missing him. In words, it still isn't enough.
"And I know what you want, now. Because you," Ichigo laughs, awed, sucked in, "You fucking told me."
Another step and he's close. Grimmjow is watching him closer, dark as a storm cloud—seeped red in the corner like sheets dragged off the bed, soaking up murder. Broken hearts, maybe. Ichigo's guts strung out across the living room floor. Ichigo's hands twitch up and he almost paws his belly—to scoop out more, to give up more—but he reaches for Grimmjow instead, careful as he never is, and when he touches him Grimmjow doesn't flinch, doesn't reel, and when Ichigo feels him his skin is warm and dry. And Ichigo sighs shaky through his nose. And Grimmjow just shakes.
His bare arm, the silvery blond hairs under Ichigo's fingers. Then his thumb and his palm, sliding up and trying not to grab. Grimmjow is wired. He feels it through his skin, the energy coiling. Leaping up into him.
The last time Ichigo touched him they were kissing upside down. But that memory is lost in the way Ichigo got lost, so it doesn't count. The last time Ichigo touched him before that they were in bed, and Grimmjow had spunk spotting his abs and he'd just stopped panting. Ichigo got up to throw the condom away. He was hunting clean clothes, or passable ones. He tossed a sock at Grimmjow's chest and Grimmjow wiped down, sloppy with his eyes closed, and balled it up and chucked it back at him, hard. Ichigo smacked him on the thigh and Grimmjow grunted. Tried to kick him. He was somehow loudly naked. His dick was still a little dark. Ichigo yanked on his leg hair. Then he went to shower.
That was forever ago. Too long. Long e-goddamn-nough.
Ichigo fits his hand to the side of Grimmjow's neck.
"You want what I want?"
Grimmjow grabs him. Fists his belt. Hard knuckles pushing in, tremors in his bones.
Ichigo squeezes his nape. He feels heat rising and thick, tangled hair, some of it stuck down the back of Grimmjow's shirt. He wants to lick the dark dead blood out of Grimmjow's eye. Mostly just wants to kiss him.
Doesn't.
Leans in. "Yeah, you do. You want what I want."
Grimmjow gusts hot, shivery air over Ichigo's face. He opens his mouth like he wants to put something in it and Ichigo hears the wet part of his tongue from the roof of his mouth. His pupils are big, jittering, looking back and forth between Ichigo's eyes looking back at him. He says, smothered and starved and barely there: "What do you want, Kurosaki?"
The sticky black scab-wound in Ichigo's soul splits wide open. He climbs into it. Lightless, it gulps him down.
He pets his thumb behind Grimmjow's ear, over the hinge of his jaw, clenched. Takes the other side of his throat, too—his pulse in there, his blood and life in there—and holds him steady between his palms. He rests his forehead against Grimmjow's. Brow wrinkled. Upset. But solid. And warm. Too close to see. He tastes Grimmjow's breath.
The answer has not changed. It's only grown more awfully, savagely certain.
"You," Ichigo tells him. "I want you. I fuckin' missed you, man. I want you."
Grimmjow closes his eyes and Ichigo feels it. Feels him sag and lean, sway forward. He tips in for Ichigo's mouth and Ichigo holds him off, thumbs in his cheeks. Grimmjow grinds his skull into him instead. It hurts. He hauls Ichigo in by the belt. Their noses knock and Ichigo grunts because that hurts too.
"I can't fucking stand you, right now," Grimmjow growls.
"I know," Ichigo breathes.
"Jackass."
"Worse than that."
"Stupid."
"I know. I'm sorr–"
"Shut up."
"You tried to t–"
Grimmjow strains into him, stag-like. "Shut up."
Ichigo can't. He sweeps deeper into Grimmjow's hair, digs into the back of his head. "You want me to want you and I do. It hurts, how much I do. And it felt, felt so fucking bad, y'know, and I didn't– I thought I was gonna..."
"Gonna what?" Grimmjow's mouth grazes his. "Hm?"
Go crazy, bleed out, wither into some gnarled, jizzed-out husk. Swirl down the drain with slimy hair and dirty soap. Hell. That's dramatic. But he felt so curled up and nauseous he thought he was gonna eat his own tail. Thinks he still might. Closeness shouldn't feel so good. Not with anybody. Shouldn't feel so yawning-empty, not-enough, teetering and raw.
Something is wrong with him. Caring doesn't help.
He's not deadly like Grimmjow is but he's strong. He makes Grimmjow feel it, until Grimmjow's hand splays across his stomach. He hisses through his teeth. "Thought I was gonna come fucking get you."
Grimmjow's fingers spasm and he groans. Quiet. He nods—tries to nod. Ends up bunting and rubbing and it makes Ichigo prickle with sweat, heart kicking hard. His mouth waters, stomach flops.
"Yeah," Grimmjow says on a big exhale. Then he opens his eyes and starts to get away. "Stay here."
Ichigo goes numb, everywhere, floods with static and headlight beams. Grabs and grabs and gasps, "What are you– No."
Grimmjow pulls. Not hard. He's easing out, petting circles above Ichigo's belt buckle with his knuckles. Warm through his shirt. Back far enough to make out his limbal rings and the constriction of his pupils in the light, and then too far. Swoop of purple mottling his dark eye socket. Because somebody blacked his fucking eye and he's telling Ichigo to–
"Stay." A step of space. He puts his hand around Ichigo's forearm, too tight. "Kurosaki. Stay here."
"No," not again, please, fuck, don't, "You–"
"I'm coming right back," Grimmjow says, voice crawling out of him like it's on its belly and hunkered low. His eyes are wide, a little wild. Ichigo feels wider and wilder. He's got Grimmjow's hair all messed up, like he just got out of bed, fucked hard, slept harder. Grimmjow doesn't go any further. Those fingers on Ichigo's stomach dip under his shirt and touch his skin.
Ichigo swallows and lets him go.
Grimmjow blinks, quick, almost like a startle, like he can’t believe it. He breathes deep and his chest gets big, ribs through the slits of his shirt, three moles on the left side. Then he slides his hand down Ichigo's arm, wrist, palm, fingers, trailing off...
And ducks back down the hallway.
Ichigo's hand tingles. Hung in the air, stretched out after him. A door closes. Sounds almost careful.
He said he’s gonna come right back.
Alone, Ichigo heaves. He rakes his touch-warm, going-cold fingers through his hair. He looks around for something to do with himself. Can't find anything.
Doesn't matter. Grimmjow's gonna come right back. Ichigo walks a loop around Nel's cushy rug. Then another, and another, and another. Grimmjow said stay so he's staying. But it's not like before. He's not frozen, not speared, not stricken. He's reaction. Overreaction. And building want, always.
I wanna come get you, he thinks. I wanna get you for fun. I wanna get you for keeps. I'm a jealous fucking shit and I wanna rub your handsome nose in it.
Ichigo's had his nose rubbed in it, hard. Because there's nobody else. It's just them, right, just us. Just you with me and me with you. And Ichigo doesn't want anything more than he wants to make it real, make it something he can feel, see, smell, taste. What else: bolt it down. Smear it into Grimmjow's skin. Seat it in his guts.
Ichigo shivers. Almost trips. He thinks he doesn't want anything more than he wants to cut loose, open up. Pedal down: push as fast and far as he can go, and lay rubber, and peel out.
He paces past the mouth of the hallway where Grimmjow disappeared. Seconds ago turning into minutes.
And Ichigo remembers—like something he’ll never forget, like his sisters’ birthday, like his first phone number, like the street his mom bled out on: everything Ichigo wants, Grimmjow wants it too.
He turns again, suddenly dizzy. He circles around the opposite way and paces back. He scrubs the back of his hand over his mouth.
Sticky thoughts. Empty hands. Go get him? Oh, no, Christ, don't do that. Don't you dare. You don't need to. He hasn't gone anywhere, and, anyways, he said he's gonna be right–
Grimmjow blindsides him with his hands first and his mouth second, and Ichigo bites right into his biting teeth with his eyes wide open and his hands hitting skin. It's barely a kiss. It's ugly like a burn. Mostly it's hot like one. Ichigo plummets into it—feels like he hits every hard, sharp thing on the way down—and his tongue gets pinched and it hurts more than it's good, but it is so good. A month's worth of so fucking good. He groans straight into Grimmjow's mouth and Grimmjow snaps it up until it's gone.
Then Grimmjow plants his hands on Ichigo's chest and shoves him.
They part with a kissy suck-sound like an old cartoon. Ichigo stumbles away from him.
He feels spit stuck in a string on his lip, going instantly cold. And for a second Ichigo's mad. Really mad. And confused, a little. And tingly-shocky, a lot. Like he grabbed a wire, jumped his heart. And then he remembers to breathe and he licks that spit, their spit, and he looks—and Grimmjow's across from him and he's lost his shirt somewhere, and he's flushed pink, and the muscles in his tits are twitching as he pants, and he's got a face on him like a wide open stretch with his mouth slack, and his pupils black, and his eye black, and he's looking back at Ichigo like–
Ichigo shoves him back.
He shoves him like he means it and Grimmjow snags him around the neck and tries to kiss him again. But he misses by a mile because Ichigo is shoving him—and shoving him, and shoving him, and shoving hard—and when Grimmjow staggers Ichigo crowds him. Ichigo chases him. Chases his sloppy almost-kiss and his naked chest and his solid body. Hands first; mouth first. And then Grimmjow gets his mouth open on Ichigo's bottom lip, his chin, and Ichgio mouths back at him with too many teeth and too much mean—and he can't see shit besides Grimmjow, can't feel shit besides Grimmjow, and he doesn't know what he's aiming for or where they're going, but he is taking them there—stumbling and shoving—and Grimmjow's skin tastes like sweat—and Grimmjow is making these little noises that he never makes when Ichigo fucks him, or kisses him, or holds him down, and he thinks they might be words but Ichigo's gone stupid, alright, gone totally fucking cock-dumb and spit-drunk, and he's eating them before they can form—and Ichigo growls like he didn't know he could—and Ichigo shoves him hard.
Grimmjow hits the wall; Ichigo hits Grimmjow hitting the wall. Grimmjow grunts and gasps and he's winded, and Ichigo presses him up and adheres to him. He's hot all the way down. He's right where Ichigo put him and Ichigo pushes him in further and flatter, until his head thunks back. He wheezes something against Ichigo's mouth. Ichigo crushes him quiet with his tongue halfway to his tonsils.
Thinks with blazing heat: got 'im. Thinks with a tank full of premium fucking delirium: got ya.
Grimmjow paws at him, caught, and catches his nails against him all over. Covered in clothes but Ichigo can't get out of them. Can't peel away, can't get anywhere but closer and deeper and wetter. He shoves his thigh up between Grimmjow's. His fucking dick hurts. Grimmjow kisses and grabs like he's trying to take chunks out of him, or just trying to breathe. His whole body flexes. Ichigo strains, and moans. He tears himself away from Grimmjow's mouth and smears his kiss down his jaw, his swallowing throat. Skin in his teeth. He sucks hard and Grimmjow thrums and heaves, big breaths scraping down, gasping raw, and Ichigo can feel them all. Hear them all. Hot on his ear, moving his hair. Panting. Loud.
Louder when Grimmjow tucks into him, hoarse, and he still sounds a little pissed but then he's saying, "C'mon," and he's rasping, "C'mon, c'mon," and he's nosing into Ichigo's hair while Ichigo bucks him into the wall and bleeds his neck below his skin, and he's baring his teeth and snarling, "C'mon, Kurosaki, you f– C'mon, come– Come on, c–"
Ichigo forces his hand between them and runs into both of Grimmjow's, and he can't tell who but somebody pops his fly, and somebody yanks his zipper, and somebody shoves his briefs down so his dick stands free, and then somebody grabs him and that's Grimmjow. That's Grimmjow's hand wrapped around him and pumping dry, sliding with his foreskin, gripping too tight. Ichigo's stomach spasms and he chokes against Grimmjow's throat.
"Yeah," Grimmjow says, hot, almost shaking, holding Ichigo's cock so close his knuckles are in Ichigo's gut. "Yeah, lemme– Just–"
Grimmjow drops a little and Ichigo's nose jams up under his jaw. He bites what's in front of him, jugular, and digs his fingers into Grimmjow's sides—leans hard on Grimmjow's chest, Grimmjow's fist, his cock stuck between them and Grimmjow stuck under him. Always trying to fucking go somewhere. Ichigo doesn't get it. It lights his fuse. Lights all his shit up. Why's he gotta go anywhere, when Ichigo's right here? Huh? When Ichigo's got him so good? When Ichigo wants him so bad? Why's he gotta–
Drop, squirm, grunt. Grimmjow beats his head back against the wall and fights for space, and then takes it when Ichigo doesn't give it up. He bars his arm between them and the strength is real, enough to wedge Ichigo off of him, just a breath of space, and Ichigo tries to hold him but he's going down. Down. Scrapes his teeth off Ichigo's jaw as he does, viciously, and twists his cock that way too, and Ichigo catches on quick.
And hisses, "Oh fuck," as Grimmjow forces himself down the wall. "Oh fuck, oh– Fuck."
There's no room. Grimmjow's pressed in so tight that his hair slides above him, and Ichigo gets his hand in it to push him down faster, until he hits the floor and Ichigo's standing staggered between his thighs and the only thing keeping his cock from slapping Grimmjow across the face is Grimmjow's grip on him, pinning him up against his stomach and smearing his fucking shirt, and Ichigo falls forward, leans his forehead on his arm on the wall, and suddenly he's in the shower again. Flash of white, flash of misery. Wet and alone and looking down at a Grimmjow too good to be true.
He is wet, getting shiny. He squeezes his hand and expects to feel it around his dick. But his fingers are in thick hair over warm scalp and hard skull, and the hand that's on his dick is only holding him up, bigger than his with the thumb underneath, and the breath that huffs on him is hot and real. Hot and here. Ichigo pants. Grimmjow's dark in his shadow and moving fast. He winds his arm around Ichigo's hips and grabs him by the back pocket. Ichigo's open fly is touching his chin, the button dimpling him. Skinny rings of blue looking up. Ugly blotch of blood looking up. Grimmjow licks his mouth and opens wide.
And Ichigo watches his cock feed into Grimmjow's mouth and groans with his whole body in it—groans the way an animal groans dragging something big behind it, sweating and panting and sunk in and starving—and he's out of his mind. He's blown straight out of his fucking head, mist and mush. Cut loose on mouth and tongue, and teeth, and all this hot and wet and soft and hard. All of it, sucking down fast. Too fast. Too much. Grimmjow chokes and Ichigo feels it like a bullet, and his fist spasms in Grimmjow's hair and Grimmjow doesn't pull off because he can't. Because he's on Ichigo's cock and the wall is behind him, and Ichigo's too raging fucking hard to do anything but jut into him and throb and leak slick onto the back of his tongue.
Grimmjow squints, blinks fast. Can't look up anymore: too close, too dark. Eyelashes over glaze. He heaves through his nose. He swallows shy of Ichigo's cockhead and it makes his tongue roll. Ichigo shivers. Grits his teeth. Keeps his shit together by a fraying thread. Then Grimmjow hauls him in by the ass, and that's it.
Ichigo cusses loud. Doesn't know what he says because he's all teeth and cock and fist and it doesn't matter. He gets in closer. Closes whatever gaps were left between them, every way out blocked by his legs and his pelvis and his fist. He ruts into Grimmjow's mouth. Deep and deeper. Feels his throat and then feels a little more of it. He's so silky inside. He feels impossible. Hard cartilage snap and squeeze; velvet cushion. Grimmjow's hand jumps to his hip, scrambles there and curls into his clothes, white-knuckled, and he makes a wet noise, and then he doesn't make any.
Ichigo can feel Grimmjow's chin on his balls through his fly and the band of his briefs, and his nose bunches into his shirt, presses into the quiver of his belly beneath. Streak of his own slick right there in the fabric, right next to Grimmjow's face, ready to stick, but there's no further to go. Ichigo's bones hit Grimmjow's bones, his teeth. He crushes the soft stuff in between and Grimmjow's throat strangles around his cock, and Ichigo hisses down into the dark space, his own mouth nearly kissing the wall still warm from Grimmjow's body, and he moves.
He drags back and Grimmjow tries to follow him like he forgot he's gotta breathe, eventually. Like he really wants to die on Ichigo's dick—shit—and Ichigo's still holding him like he wants to feel it happen, like he wants to feel him quit, feel him lose, y'know, without a nod, without a tap, without a go-ahead, and it's such a wicked-awful thought that it blinds him for a second. Numbs him like shock, shocks him like a slap, curls up and festers and gapes, gapes, gapes, and drools, and he thought he was– He wants– Feels–
"Wait, I'm– Grimm, Grimmj–"
He yanks Grimmjow's head back and hears it crack against the wall and Grimmjow gasps ragged, and Ichigo does too. Out in the cold suddenly. His dick leans shiny against Grimmjow's chin and the corner of his mouth and his cheek, and Grimmjow is huge-eyed, tilted up at him.
"Kurosaki," he croaks, and nothing else. Lead-heavy. Landmine.
I want to own you.
"I... don't..." know how to feel like this. This much.
"I do," Grimmjow says, and his naked shoulders rise and fall, fast, and his neck is a long stretch, swallowing. Black cherry mouth. He kneads his hands into Ichigo's shirt, the pocket he's hanging off of. Barely any sound. "C'mon."
Ichigo thinks his hand looks so good in Grimmjow's tired, lank hair. He pushes it back, rolls Grimmjow's head back a little further. Angles him up like that and Ichigo’s cock kicks along the side of his face. Grimmjow's breath hitches wet.
This much is too much; not enough. He can't leave it alone. He just can't. Ichigo shakes his head, hides his eyes against his forearm for a long second, loud with their panting. He feels like a bloody fucking mess. Feels like Grimmjow’s supposed to be covered in him, drenched and stained, and he's mad that he isn't. Feels fuckin' bad. Feels tied up and tangled in something like a taste for this, something that crept up on him a long time ago—something he tried to hide in his skin, only it never healed over.
He looks back down at Grimmjow penned in and watching him. His head pounds and his cock pulses, and the ugly truth is he feels better than he has in weeks. All his fucking life, maybe.
There's a slick-spit-smear like glitter on Grimmjow's cheekbone. Taunting him. Twisted and bent, Ichigo thinks: fucked up, baby, you did that. Mouth and slit both drooling.
C'mon.
"Can I–"
Grimmjow snaps with a snarl, nose wrinkled, flash of something savage in his eyes, deprived and depraved, and he struggles against himself. Drives the heel of one palm into Ichigo's hip but keeps him on him with the other, with his arm around his thigh and his fingers clawing. And it's like being hugged down into a liver kick, a gut punch. Fucking clinching him, clinching himself, and the next shove into Ichigo's hip hurts like a good, deep bruise, and Ichigo grunts. His knee comes up on its own. Finds Grimmjow's ribs: a quick jab to push his air out of him, and it does. Makes him wheeze and freeze. Makes him glare, too, blazing hot, but Ichigo's distracted by the bruise in his eye socket almost the same color as the head of his dick.
"Knock it off," Ichigo growls. He presses all five fingers into Grimmjow's scalp. "Tell me."
Grimmjow laughs, and then chokes, fighting for it. "Fuckin' fuck you, Kurosaki, don't– don't ask. Don't ask for shit, just– Just take it, alright? You want somethin', yeah, so take it. Just take it, just come–" He sucks down a breath that takes all of Ichigo's with it, shuddering. "Come fucking get it."
The brakes go out.
Ichigo pins Grimmjow's head to the wall. His hips jerk forward, insensate, cock sliding dirty and smooth against Grimmjow's cheek. He can feel the muscle in there twitching against him.
He thinks he says, "Open your mouth."
Grimmjow does. Instant. Hot breath on the root of Ichigo's dick. He'd just have to turn his head to give him a kiss—but he doesn't because Ichigo's got him, and because Ichigo doesn't want him to. Not yet.
Ichigo spits. Thick silver-white. Snapping off his tongue and falling all the way down, until it hits. Until it makes this little spat noise that sparks off Ichigo's bones and lodges somewhere fatal. His aim is a little off. The glob splits between the side of his own dick and the corner of Grimmjow's stretched open mouth, and Grimmjow's tongue is so pink and wet and squirming in there, and Grimmjow groans like Ichigo's never heard him groan before—and then Grimmjow's whole face melts into some fucked-up, obliterated kind of bliss.
Again. Spit again. Gotta, got to—anything for a sound like that, for a face like that. Ichigo curves down and puts his whole rotten, chewed-up heart into it—and it's mouth to mouth, this time. It's all white and bubbly on Grimmjow's tongue, this time. Ichigo watches it slide back until it disappears. He thinks he can't breathe. He waits for Grimmjow to swallow it. But Grimmjow doesn't. He just holds his mouth open, eyes up, depthless, catching Ichigo's and holding him, too.
He shivers hard. Or Ichigo does. He feels it in every place they're touching. Out of one body and into the other. Just shaking with it: they've been here before. But not quite like this.
Chase it down.
Ichigo's blood surges and they're crashing again, frantic. His fist twists in Grimmjow's hair and he backs off just to come in again, and Grimmjow yanks at him to make it happen faster, rougher, faster. He tries to find the head of Ichigo's cock but Ichigo forces him still, lets him strain for it, wet-mouthed, until Ichigo lines up just right and gives it to him. Just about all of it. It doesn't matter. It feels like the best thing that's ever happened to him—like the first time, like the only time, like the next time, forever, until he's in the fucking dirt. Unkillable feeling in fragile flesh. Grimmjow could bite him off and Ichigo would come. Grimmjow could swallow him in huge bloody chunks and Ichigo would come hard.
Grimmjow swallows him as he is, throbbing hot and swollen, and it's close. His spine is tight, pressure building, and Grimmjow's perfect. Pinned to the wall with nowhere to go, can't even suck, can't even make it good except to open up and take it and try not to puke. No tricks tonight, no showmanship. Just Ichigo following the slide of his spit down Grimmjow's throat, yeah, just fucking it down there.
Fucking Grimmjow's handsome face. Fucking his skull into the wall.
It's sloppy. Grimmjow clings to him, gags, lets Ichigo use him. Breathes when he can and then wastes it on garbled sounds, rough and deep. Ichigo's probably making sounds, too. He can't hear himself. He's long gone. He's hurtling somewhere fast—fast. He's thinking about his drool in Grimmjow's stomach and Grimmjow's drool on his cock, and his cock's drool on Grimmjow's cheek. He's thinking about what it'd look like if it dripped.
He's coming.
Wait, wait, fuck, he's, he wants– Shit, shit, he jerks back and shoves his hand down to catch himself and pumps fast, squeezes hard, swipes his finger over his slit, and Grimmjow growls hungry and breathless and noses right into him and narrows his eyes almost fucking closed–
Ichigo comes in a shiny wet mess across Grimmjow's face. Absolute filthy spurt and streak: over the bridge of his nose, down the side, down his cheek, striping over his mouth and then into it and into it and into it. Bullseye on Grimmjow's tongue. Ichigo's struck and staggering. He's overwhelmed and overcome—totally senseless, and at the same time so sharply present he thinks it might wreck him. Might just run away with him, chain him up and drag him by the ankles, leave him smeared ugly on the pavement just like his jizz smeared so fucking pretty right under Grimmjow's busted eye... Oh, fuck.
He fucks himself over Grimmjow's face until he's empty and trembling. One last gush for the road: it lands pearly on Grimmjow's bottom lip.
Grimmjow peers up through his eyelashes. He's the deadliest thing Ichigo's ever laid hands on. He scoops Ichigo's come into his cupped tongue and shows him everything he hasn't swallowed.
"Grimmjow," Ichigo wheezes like a curse, but Grimmjow blinks real slow like he likes it. Ichigo lets his dick go limp on its own. He cups Grimmjow's shiny cheek and slips his thumb over his mouth. The glide is ridiculous. "Spit that– Spit that shit out."
Grimmjow closes his lips around Ichigo's thumb instead—rolls his slippery tongue up against Ichigo's fingerprint and pushes the wet around. Swishes it. Makes bubbles and fuckin' plays with it. Then he swallows. Audible gulp, little sigh, half-hooded. He sucks hard at Ichigo's thumb. Sucks it clean.
Ichigo's chest and throat feel tight. Guts shaking as he stares. His heart oozes, picked-open sore. Then Grimmjow glints blue-black like an electric arc and bites him.
Ichigo drops like a sack of shit. He falls half into Grimmjow's lap and grabs his face with both hands and kisses him stupid. Stupidly. Grimmjow opens right up and they slide together. The taste hits him like a shot. He winces, shudders, feels all his body hair stand on end. He hates it. He loves that it's his. He licks after it and Grimmjow writhes. He's radiating heat, seeping it through all of Ichigo's clothes, and Ichigo can feel how hard he is still stuck in his sweats.
Ichigo rocks down on him once. Grimmjow's thumbs dig into his sides and he goes toothy and sloppy like he's lost track of his own spunk-drunk tongue. His face is wet. Their teeth catch. Grimmjow starts to chase him forward off the wall.
Ichigo breaks off. A string of his own come stretches between his nose and Grimmjow's cheek. They pant the same air and it snaps in a blink.
Ichigo's overcome with the sudden urge to say something insane. He doesn't know what. He tries, "You..." but it dies against Grimmjow's red mouth. You, what? He doesn't know. Doesn't know anything, except that he's not done yet. Except that he's still hot. Still all stirred up.
You make my fucking soul sweat, you psycho.
Grimmjow yanks at Ichigo's shirt so hard he hears something pop.
"Fuck–"
"Off," Grimmjow snarls. He sounds more like a dog with its lips peeled back than anything human. He sounds mostly like he's been gargling hard dick, throat-fucked. Looks like it. His hair's flopped forward and he's shiny and sweating and flushed. Pupils huge and dangerous again, like a mangy stray, but maybe they never looked any different.
The place Ichigo chewed on his neck is blood-red and turning purple. It's way up high. Right over his pulse. Might as well be Ichigo's full name and phone number, his address. If found...
Ichigo rips his shirt up and off and loses it, and Grimmjow's on him. He hikes Ichigo up against him and they stick, tacky and searing, and Ichigo feels Grimmjow's cock kick. He thinks for a second that his back's about to hit the floor, a dizzying, weightless swoop in his guts, but Grimmjow ducks his head and puts his mouth on Ichigo's throat instead. Then his teeth. And then it hurts so good Ichigo's moaning straight up to the ceiling anyways.
Grimmjow sucks like he sucked Ichigo's thumb clean, like he couldn't quite suck his cock, and Ichigo's never let him before. Never. Not even those rare times Grimmjow forgot his rule and tried for it, too drunk or too earnest or both. Ichigo's always chased him off, given him someplace else. Never his throat. Never anywhere someone might see. Tryin' to stay a little respectable, right, tryin' to keep things clear. But Grimmjow's snail-trailing jizz off his nose and Ichigo's the one who put it there, and he really can't remember why he ever gave a shit in the first place, so he gives Grimmjow room with his chin tipped up and groans from the deepest, darkest pit of his chest when Grimmjow's teeth close over his voice box.
Warning: MAY BITE.
Warning: DO NOT CHASE.
Ichigo's chased him and caught him, or been caught. Ichigo's dick is still out and he grinds himself half-hard against Grimmjow's stomach—the hair he grows below his navel, the shit he keeps trimmed down. It's scruffier than usual, fanned out a little wider and unshaven. He can tell that with just his cock and feels crazy for it. Batshit. Obsessed. He pets down the nape of Grimmjow's neck and over his shoulders, comes around to his tits bunched with muscle under fat. Thumbs a nipple because it's smooth and hot and probably so pink, and Grimmjow blows hard from his nose tucked under Ichigo's chin.
Ichigo wants his hands in Grimmjow's pants. At least one. He hunches down to try it, gropes by feel and well-worn memory. But Grimmjow makes a noise like a ragged whine, like something hurts, and shakes his head. Shakes his head and licks Ichigo's sweat. He mouths the hinge of Ichigo's jaw like a half-gone kiss, right under his ear. He buzzes like a steel wire.
He says, "Fuck me."
Ichigo rattles in his lap, shivers from head to toe in a wave that pumps all his blood back to his cock and kicks his heart into overdrive. He delves a fist into Grimmjow's hair and jerks his head back, feels strands break, feels his little grunt, feels him tense and melt and quiver. Looks at him. His skin going tacky. The blood in his sclera. He's sort of beautiful. Mouth open, makes him look sharper. Kinda gorgeous, in some way that shouldn't be. Like a big cat inside a carcass, making the thing rock in the dirt, the stiff legs swaying. Fur gritty with black gore and big, wet eyes peering out from the hole it ate through the ass.
Ichigo kisses his chin. Because it's there to be kissed.
Against Ichigo's upper lip, Grimmjow says again, "Fuck me."
Ichigo can't keep the noise inside of him—this heavy, airless moan that claws its way out and sinks between them, quiet in its intensity. He holds Grimmjow by the hair and cradles his cheek, drags his thumb over the bruise below his bloody eye.
He swallows, wets his mouth and brushes Grimmjow's. "We need–"
"We don't." In a rush, all pupil. "Mm-mmn."
"Grimmjow."
"You keep sayin' you get it," Grimmjow breathes back. Rumbles. "Fuckin' get it, man, I'm... I told you. I told you."
He did. He tried. But Ichigo's voracious. Want warping into need. "Tell me again. Say it right this time." He pushes into the bruise, the ridge of bone. "Come on."
Grimmjow bares his teeth at him and shows off what he's got. He hoods his eyes. He mumbles, "It's been a while," and then growls so deep Ichigo can feel it: "There isn't anybody else, and I get tested, and you can't knock me up. We don't need shit. Fuck me."
Sweat beads in Ichigo's hairline. The back of his neck prickles. He's swelled up and breathing hard. "Stop saying that. What if I–"
"Fuck you, I don't care."
"You have to care," Ichigo snaps. "You can't–"
Grimmjow lunges forward and snaps his teeth on Ichigo's bottom lip. The pain bursts sharp and sudden and he flinches back, grunts. Grimmjow scrapes his hands up Ichigo's back and stares into him, gaping fathomless, and hisses, "I want you in my guts, you stupid fuck, and you said– You said you and me, Kurosaki, you said that, and you can have it. I don't give a shit. You're fuckin' killin' me and I don't care. I want what you got, I wanna feel your pulse in my ass–"
"Shut up." Something somewhere rips and bleeds and now Ichigo doesn't give a shit either. "I'll give it to you, fuck, okay, we– Bed. Bedroom. Right now, come on, I will, I'll give it to you, I'll–"
Grimmjow jolts in place and knocks Ichigo away from him, all wrists and quick as a shot, big veins in the soft, inner part of his biceps visible as blue-green streaks leading up, leading down. There's a long, breathless second here as they separate, touching exactly nowhere. Ichigo feels it pulling like spit, stretching out, a little glimmer and wink like crystal in evening light. Grimmjow's skin still sheens, and Ichigo's suspended in it. Floating on it. He's crossfaded, lightheaded, bodiless–
And then he hits the floor in a tangle and the haze breaks. Grimmjow unfolds above him. He reaches down as Ichigo reaches up and one of them grabs and the other hauls, and now it's a mad scramble.
Down the hall Grimmjow left him for and came back from. Grimmjow's leading, trying to lead, but Ichigo's in his face and all over him, trying to burrow into his throat below his chin and get his hands on his ass beneath his sweats, and Grimmjow stumbles over himself. Trips like he never does, clumsy, overeager. Slams his palm against the wall to catch himself and Ichigo almost sticks them again, derails them again. He smothers the curse out of Grimmjow's mouth. He pushes it back into him. Tastes blood. Doesn't know who it's coming from. Doesn't matter.
Give it to him; take it from him. There's no difference; the difference is comparable. Compatible. A curve in for a curve out, flush together, the seams disappearing. They tessellate. It's that fucking easy. They fit.
Ichigo fits up against him as they fall through a door, the first one on the right. It's darker and smaller, and it's Grimmjow's so it smells like him—smells like him clean and dirty and alive and sleeping—and Ichigo groans a little just for that. His hands grab everywhere and his belly draws tight. He's burning up. His dick is standing from his zipper and dribbling all over again.
Ichigo can't tell where the bed is. What they do, they usually do at his place. Not for any reason, he thought. Wondering now if maybe he thought wrong.
A hard, staggering stop. Grimmjow's glazed and red-mouthed. Pink-cheeked. The tips of his ears, too. He wraps both his hands around Ichigo's neck and holds him tight. Tilts him up like Ichigo's not already on his way. Then his tongue lolls and he licks a slow, wet stripe up Ichigo's chin. Into his open mouth. Slicks over his teeth, drags his lip up, the silky underside. Off the tip of his nose with a pointed flick. Same way he torments Ichigo's cock, sometimes. When things are a little slower.
Ichigo's nostrils flare. He shoves at Grimmjow's waistband, fumbling, and Grimmjow grunts and takes over. Strips down fast, Ichigo right behind him, hissing at the scrape-slide of his jeans with his face turned into Grimmjow's cheek. Ugly undressing, unpeeling, who cares. He's so hungry it hurts. Pangs and twitches, sweat-slick, sticky. God, he thinks with vicious fever, fuck : it's so fucking good to be naked.
There's heat rippling off of them like summertime street fumes.
Grimmjow hits the bed and Ichigo hits Grimmjow hitting the bed, and maybe it's just like the wall again but this time it's better, because– Because this time Ichigo's come is dripping through Grimmjow's guts and drying filthy on his skin, and now Ichigo's gonna give him some more—as much as he can, until he quits and goes limp. Who? Either of them, fuck it, both of them. As much as he can, until Grimmjow stinks like him deeper than soap and shampoo and conditioner can reach. Smear it somewhere between the cigarettes and the spearmint. Animal claim. He said it. There's nobody else.
Hands sliding and sheets everywhere because Grimmjow doesn't make his bed. He just falls into it, and Ichigo's on him. He feels Grimmjow's cock against him: hard and white-hot and tacky with slick. It twitches in the squeeze of their bodies, the crush of Ichigo pressed down over him, and then Grimmjow's hips twitch too. He’s chasing. Can't wait any longer. He hasn't been touched yet. He's gotta be dying. He makes a sound like he is—wet in the back of his throat, all gurgled. Hair in his face, tickling Ichigo's nose. He tries to arch.
Ichigo shoves up to his knees. Leaves Grimmjow down there on his back and feels dangerous for it. Mean.
His own voice growls, "Over."
Grimmjow's chest heaves and his belly scoops and flexes, and he's pretty. He's just pretty, like this. The best Ichigo can do—better than Ichigo can do. Naked and hungry and letting Ichigo take what he wants—letting Ichigo fuck him up, like they weren't both fucked six ways and sideways already. His larynx rolls in his throat. His breath huffs sharp and he flickers somewhere deep in his pupils. He sparks that dark, old-blood edge.
Letting?
Frenzy. Grimmjow twists violently and Ichigo lunges to keep him down. They hit with a sick body-on-body sound, meaty crunch, and Ichigo expects fur flying and foamy spit, but it's just skin and sweat and Grimmjow bucking with his lip turning white in his teeth. Ichigo groans at the slide. Grimmjow growls and then whines and then bucks again, harder. He tries to get his legs on the outside of Ichigo's and his arm comes around the back of his neck, and that's danger.
Ichigo plants himself. He ducks out of Grimmjow's arm and shoves at him. It's awkward. He doesn't know what he's doing. Just following the tug of his gut, the lean of his cock, the wild look in Grimmjow's eye. Grimmjow moves where Ichigo moves him, but he writhes while he does it, pushes and pulls and struggles like he just can't do it on his own. They're fighting to get to the same place.
Ichigo gets him turned over.
But Grimmjow’s knees are under him and he starts to come up. All of him rippling. Ichigo falls over his back and knocks his hands out, and Grimmjow hits the sheets with a grunt. Half-smothered: face down, chest down, spine curved like a cat with its tail up high—and with Ichigo tilted down over the top of him it's–
The same. The last time.
They pant. Ichigo rests his forehead behind Grimmjow's ear, which is warm. They fit so good together that they're already lined up, all the parts in the right places, sized just right. Ichigo humps forward to feel it, his dick over Grimmjow's pointy fucking tailbone and soft, hot meat everywhere else. Grimmjow sucks air through his teeth. Pushes backwards. Muffles something that might have been a curse or Ichigo's name or both.
Another grind of his cock against Grimmjow's ass and Ichigo can feel his hands starting to shake. He spreads one across the back of Grimmjow's neck, all that hair he's got like a scruff, and holds him down. He levers himself up just to look.
The twin panthers tattooed on Grimmjow's back are both looking back at him. So is Grimmjow, his bloodied right eye slanted over his shoulder. Faded blue hair stuck to him in wispy, wet curls. He's all bruise. All tired ache, and not done yet. Ichigo digs his fingers into him.
"Gonna fuck you," he pants, and swallows the taste of metal in the back of his throat. He puts his weight on Grimmjow's neck so he can get his other hand between them, tuck his knuckles between his own dick and Grimmjow's hole. Finds it smooth and tacky and hot. Real hot.
Grimmjow rolls beneath his hands. His face is turning red, eyelashes fluttering low. He gurgles a little, struggles on a consonant. Finds it: "Don't need– Don't. Don’t..."
Ichigo watches him and tingles everywhere. He lets up when the vein against the side of Grimmjow's nose starts to pop out. "Don't what?"
"Fingers, don't... Fffffuck, fuck, I–" Grimmjow squirms with his whole body and it's hard to keep ahold of him. He squeezes his eyes shut and grimaces and claws the bedding. Fists it in his real nice hands like Ichigo's up inside him already. "Did that already," he gasps finally. "C'mon."
"You d–" Like a fucking kick to the head. Ichigo shoves his knuckles against Grimmjow's hole and feels him give, and clench, and give. He's tight. Like it's been a while, a month, because it has been. Nobody else—not even himself. Ichigo sways on his knees. He breathes too fast and then real slow. He feels his body like one big throb of blood. Whatever Grimmjow did, he didn't do it very well. Ichigo opens his mouth to ask when. But he knows.
Grimmjow told him to stay. And he did.
Grimmjow told him he'd be right back. And he was.
Already decided. Filthy rush-job with a wall between them, a finger or two and his own spit. While Ichigo's mind spun him in circles.
He knuckles in a little harder and there's no easy open. None at all. It's gonna hurt. Grimmjow rumbles into the sheets and slips his knees further apart. His thighs bunch and so do his shoulders. His panthers prowl straight towards Ichigo's cock drooling in the cleft of his ass. There's a paw in each of his back dimples.
Ichigo raises his hand to his mouth and spits, and it’s loud. Violent like a screech and crash, like shredding rain-wet metal and smoking rubber, rain of shiny plastic headlight-glitter. Makes Grimmjow's flanks twitch and his ribs heave—open-mouthed and panting, waiting, writhing, straining up into Ichigo's grip on his neck. Ichigo squeezes him at the same time he squeezes his wet fist around his cock, and he almost doubles over and fucking blows it right there, cross-eyed stupid, jammed up into his own hand and about to bust white all over Grimmjow's crawling cat tats.
He hisses. Shakes it off. Smells something like wet dog in all the sweat and spit and come. He pumps slick.
"Grimmjow," he grunts.
"Kurosaki," Grimmjow grits back.
His cockhead fits perfect and huge against Grimmjow's hole. "Bite the pillow."
And then he's pushing in.
Grimmjow scrabbles for the pillow above his head and yanks it down and sinks his teeth into it, lips peeled back with pink-gummed pain, and he's devastating. He makes a tiny, agonized sound and then no sound at all. Freezes on an inhale—strangled to the throat on the very tip of Ichigo's dick as he forces himself in, forces Grimmjow to take him, even seized up with hurt, because Ichigo can't stop. Can't. Doesn't want to. He's chasing his spunk in Grimmjow's stomach and the suck-marks on his neck, his own incomplete half-claim. He's trying to make it stick. Trying to take what he wants so Grimmjow can have it, too–
The head of his cock fits through and all at once Grimmjow heaves. He sucks deep and ragged through his nose above his curled lip and the muscles in his back all flex and roll. Killer-deadly but he trembles everywhere. He tries to bear down but it doesn't last. He snarls through his pillow-gag, muffled and spit-soaked, and he sounds desperate. Sounds pissed off and ravenous. And then he bows his spine into Ichigo's hand and tries to fuck himself back.
Hard. Ichigo grunts his response and holds him down harder, scruff of the neck, probes around the wicked stretch of Grimmjow's hole sealed to his cock and his cock disappearing inside. Rough going, and miserably slow. It's a sick grind of spit and skin. Struggling with the crush and feeling Grimmjow struggle with the split—all the way into Grimmjow's guts where he opens up a little and turns silky, and then he's so searing that Ichigo burns straight through to his bones.
Plugged in. He’s buried to the pubes. No more room for his fingers to feel or his head to think. Up to his nuts in Grimmjow’s very nice ass: his nuts hanging heavy and snug to Grimmjow’s taint and his cock throbbing inside, answered by a fluttering squeeze. He groans and can't catch his breath. He doesn't have time. Grimmjow's huffing hard into the pillow. His knuckles are white, gripping it. He's looking back at Ichigo again and his bruised eye is wet and glossy.
Saying fuck me, again. Saying fuck you, too, because he's hungry and hurt. But Ichigo can't do anything about the hurt. He can only make it worse. Make it better. Push it just a little bit deeper.
He eases back and their skin peels where they were stuck with sweat, and the drag is torture. He grits his teeth until he hears them crunch. That too-much feeling gets in him again, until he's just a body in a hole; a hole in a body; a hole in his fucking head or his heart or his soul– Something, somewhere, wrapped up tight in the cling of Grimmjow's ass; guts; insides; body. Body. All of him. Anything, as long as it's his. As long as it's fucking his.
And Grimmjow's wincing and growling and the color of his eye warps beneath a tear stuck in his lash line. He blinks quick and it's gone, but there's another one right behind it, welling up pretty and clear, fucking sparkly, and that's when Ichigo folds down and fucks him.
Finally. Fucks him brutal. Gets down close to do it on all fours, to brace himself on the scruff of Grimmjow's neck and the mattress jolting when he jolts—down there in the tangle of Grimmjow's arms around the pillow and his teeth in the pillow and the rest of him curved up and bent for Ichigo's cock, and the sheets wrinkled around them both, and the sunlight dying. And he thinks Grimmjow's beautiful, really beautiful, but his noises are better, yeah, because he's making a lot of them and they're all coming out wet. Coming out sticky and thick from his chest, his throat, his mouth stuffed full. The pillow's gone dark with his drool and his chin is shiny, and Ichigo's arched over him just right—just right to watch his cock punch Grimmjow's voice out of him. Feel it and hear it, strangled. Ass too dry to squelch. Mouth too wet to speak.
What's he got to fucking say? Ichigo grunts with the effort, the scrape and burn, the awful thrill. It does hurt. He's fucking himself up and tearing Grimmjow up worse, but Grimmjow's shoving back on him to hit him harder, shove him deeper, smear Ichigo's drying spit and leaking slick as far up into himself as he can get it. He snarls on the end of Ichigo's cock and then whimpers and then mewls and maybe sobs, and between wet gasps for air he's sniffling too. Sounds snotty and wrecked, really good. He's tight everywhere, coiling up to spring loose with his panthers hunkering down, ready to go, not gonna make it too long. The hot new tear in his eye glistens, bulges, wobbles–
Ichigo knocks it out of him. Quick little drip off the bridge of his nose. It bleeds into the pillow and Grimmjow's eyes roll. He's glazed, wet-lashed, perfect. He's so messed up and shiny that Ichigo can't tell what's on him anymore—what's sweat and what's spit; what's snot; what's tears; what's come; what's–
Come– Make him come, feel him come, God, damn, God-fucking-damn–
Ichigo buckles. He falls on his elbows. He digs in with his knees, the balls of his feet, got his back hunched up like a dog humping. He's at Grimmjow's ear again and it’s still warm. Warmer: burning. He puts his mouth on it. Everything is louder here, a deafening rush. Ichigo is panting and Grimmjow is moaning. Struggling, and moaning, and struggling again. He's smothered and choked up. He sucks down snot, swallows thick. He's losing his bite on the pillow, just his mouth hanging open against it and no teeth, and he's still clenching around Ichigo's cock even though he's probably– He's gotta be–
Smearing bloody on Ichigo's naked dick, all raw, dragged down into that little black hole where Ichigo writhes and thrives, stuck in some kinda twisted, unbearable bliss—and he's still just fuckin' squeezing.
Yeah he is, oh shit, oh fuck, oh– Out loud suddenly, bursting out of him, huffing it in Grimmjow's ear—insensate, insane—gasping, "Fuck, fuck, oh fuck, yeah, Grimmjow, you’re– You–"
He shoves his hand down Grimmjow’s side and gets beneath. Tight abs, fluttering stomach, led by that damp scratch of hair and his nails scraping through it. Straight to Grimmjow's cock—finds it heavy and hard and swelled up fever-hot. He grabs it and Grimmjow bucks wild, but Ichigo rides him through it and he gives up quick. He rattles like a sick purr. Sounds like he’s drowning. He dribbles right into Ichigo’s fist.
"Yeah," Ichigo gasps, and glances his teeth off Grimmjow’s ear and then kisses it, and then drops his head so they’re skull to skull again. His nose in Grimmjow’s hair, breathing his sweat, fucking him deep and close as can be, yeah, ‘cause, "I got you, baby, I got you. I came and– fucking got you, huh? You gonna come on my dick now? Got my pulse up your ass, you... you feel me in there? 'Cause I really– Fuckin'– Fuck." He rubs slick around Grimmjow's cock and then pumps it, and Grimmjow's heat ripples violently around him, under him, and Ichigo fucks him hard and runs his mouth and just can't fucking stop. "'Cause I wanna live in you, man, I wanna... Shit, shit, Grimmjow, c'mon. I'm gonna fill you up, huh? Gonna fill you up so fuckin' good, gonna make you fuckin' feel it, yeah, but you gotta– You gotta let me feel you first. Gotta come for me first. On me, baby, just like this, right on me–" He's got a scream or a bite building in his jawbone. "God, you're so good, Grimmjow, so fucking good. Right on my pulse, c'mon, just..."
He's ruthless and Grimmjow meets him ruthlessly and it's an ugly mess, ugly feeling, ugly sound, but Grimmjow's against him and around him and he's hot and solid and so stupidly soft on the inside, and he's getting quieter as Ichigo works him over. Quieter. Face in the pillow, teeth out again—Ichigo can hear it in his voice twisting tight, twisting small. He hitches up like a skirt. Like claws flexing in the dirt, sixteen of them, and a tail curling. Pupils expanding, blowing up huge with an intent in there, cusp and cliff. Sucking in.
Until he's strangled silent.
And coming.
On Ichigo's cock, on his pulse speeding to match Grimmjow thrashing, Grimmjow quaking, Grimmjow gasping sudden and huge and then gasping more, more, more. And Ichigo feels it, yeah, like being strapped in and zapped, shaking around with his nerves on fire and his nose bleeding and his head smoking. 'Cause Grimmjow's a vice on his dick. Clamps on him so tight he feels like he can't move, gets in to the root and then can't get out. He's tied and stuck while Grimmjow's whole body throbs on his throbbing cock, Grimmjow's cock throbbing in his hand, and then Ichigo moves anyways and it's blistering.
All the way up through him. And wet, spurting from top of his fist and slinging across his knuckles. He tries to catch it at the head of Grimmjow's dick—his come, a lot of it—wishing he'd put Grimmjow on his back just so he could see it and then wishing exactly nothing, because it couldn't get much better than this.
Grimmjow's cock turns slippery in his hand and it kicks hard when Ichigo fucks up into him, hits him flush and shoves his orgasm out of him from the inside. They're so fucking close, connected everywhere. Ichigo can hear everything, every noise Grimmjow makes and aborts. Clingy-wet, stringing spit and snot and smearing it across the pillow when he tries to duck down into it. No room. Sounds like he's still crying, maybe, sniffling like that. Gurgling like that.
Tipped fast into too, too much. Grimmjow groans and whines and Ichigo's still fucking him, still milking his cock, getting lost in it, and Grimmjow's shoulders bunch up under Ichigo's chest and then he's all claws and legs. He tries to scramble, tries to buck Ichigo's hand off his cock, grasps for something and finds bedding, the edge of the mattress.
There's nowhere to go. Ichigo presses him down, crushes the panthers on his back, breathes hard.
"I know," he pants, "I know, I– Fuck, Grimmjow, I know, just let me..."
Slick new need: he's possessed by it. By sticky animal need, dark as dried blood and dripping slow. He leaves Grimmjow's cock alone. Drags his hips back until Grimmjow's clutching around just the head of him, notched in so perfect with his thighs shaking and his back burning, muscles used up, about to quit, and then his hand is there, wet with Grimmjow's come and shoving between them, smudging a mess, and he feels. Can't see but he feels. His fingers slicked, bumping his own tacky cock and sliding, and then Grimmjow's hole opened up and stretched tight around him, the smoothness of him and the heat.
He probes against the seal.
Grimmjow jolts beneath him, almost loses his knees. Grunts once.
Ichigo grinds his skull into him, half-nodding. He swipes his wet fingers around, leaves as much of Grimmjow's come on himself as he can, both of them, until his knuckles glide and his calluses too and it's too much, too close, and he can't hold off anymore.
He grabs for Grimmjow's hip and slips off of it, comes back stronger—and now when he fucks back into him they slide. Slide in, slide out, Grimmjow shaking hard and twitching harder. He hisses and Ichigo buries him in his own moan. His eyes roll—he squeezes them shut and pushes deeper into Grimmjow's hair, bares his teeth in there, bares everything in there, in Grimmjow's skin, Grimmjow's body.
And fucks Grimmjow's come into him with whatever's left of his spit, and his cock-drool too, coating him and starting to froth—and moving faster, and gripping harder, and pushing deeper—the best he can do, yeah, the best he can fucking do, and better–
Comes like that with a grunt and a growl that rides him as long as he rides Grimmjow, nose behind Grimmjow's ear smelling his clean sweat and his menthol cigarettes and his spearmint gum; smelling sweet black cherry soda and cucumber-melon shampoo and goat's milk soap; smelling sex. Thick with it—spilling thick into Grimmjow's ass, never-fucking-ending as he humps and jerks and pulses into Grimmjow's squeeze.
First time. First time ever. Inside with nothing between them, no rubber. Just bare naked skin and slick, and slick, and slick. Too hot, too raw, too physical—always too fucking physical, all over, full-body, until Ichigo's twitching and shaking too and Grimmjow's only gotten worse. Guts a shuddery mess; shuddering around Ichigo's mess.
And then up off the gas, just coasting. His body slowing down on its own. He's gone. He's in that scent. The scent of them. Embedded in the deepest, blackest part of his soul that gapes and bleeds and might never scab again. He's in there, now, and he's warmed all the way through. The walls are soft and wet like Grimmjow's guts, the inner lining of his cheeks. And he wants to live there. In him, just like he said. He really does, he really– He really, really–
Does.
For a while.
Up to his nuts in Grimmjow's perfect, raw-fucked ass. He stalls out, come-soaked. Listens to Grimmjow breathe, the stutter in it. He's clicky when he swallows. It's an all-over sore kind of sound. Ichigo's muscles strain in response. He gets his hand in the bedding to hold himself up, but Grimmjow is melting. Grimmjow is getting his knees out from under him and going down, and Ichigo doesn't want to slip out of him yet, greed on greed, so he goes down with him.
Lays over him with a groan. Grimmjow too, rumbling, buzzing up Ichigo's tender dick. He moves slow with Ichigo's weight on him, untangles from the pillow and pushes it away. It goes all the way to the floor with a cottony thump, and Grimmjow drops into his folded arms and rests there. Goes limp. His whole body. Ichigo feels it. Feels him shiver, sometimes, with aftershocks—and clench real weak like a reminder. Or like he keeps remembering.
Ichigo's head is heavy. He’d really like to look at Grimmjow’s face, but it's good to be buried in his hair instead. It gets in his mouth, sticks to him where he's beaded sweat. He mashes a sloppy almost-kiss into the side of Grimmjow's neck.
Isn't too sure what to do, now.
Grimmjow starts to smooth out.
"Grimmjow," Ichigo mumbles into his nape.
Grimmjow lifts a hand back over his shoulder and gropes for Ichigo's head. Finds his hair and hooks in and just kind of holds it. Ichigo tilts into his grip. It puts his mouth at Grimmjow's jaw and he works on kissing that, too, lipping at it. He’s salty and musky. Blurry from this close, but Ichigo can tell his eyes are closed.
He makes it to Grimmjow's chin.
"'Kay," Grimmjow slurs. He's hoarse, almost inaudible. "Get outta me."
"Yeah. Um." Ichigo's arm is starting to fall asleep. He's still so hot inside Grimmjow's ass. Held snug, even soft. He shifts and there's a stickiness there that makes his guts flop, heart skip. He’s exhausted. Something in him is crashing hard.
He swallows and levers up so he can see Grimmjow's face. "I, uh. I gotta tell you something."
Grimmjow's one visible eye squints open and he's frowning, wrinkles in his brow as sudden as Ichigo opening his dumbass mouth. He's too aware for how big his pupil still is, and the glaze in there.
"Not like that," Ichigo whispers, quiet, trying to sound sure of it. He wants to watch Grimmjow’s face turn soft again. "Not anything like that, I just... I'm a little..."
Scared of what I'll see. What I just fuckin' did to you, catching up to me.
"Oh," Grimmjow grunts, and when he blinks it wipes his expression clean. Kills the furrows. Back to drowsy, worked over, some kind of done-in wrecked. He's really handsome. "'S not that bad."
"You can tell?"
"Mm-hmm."
"How?"
The corner of Grimmjow's mouth lifts. Ichigo sees only the shine of his teeth when he opens his mouth to speak.
"No, no– No. Nevermind, fuck. I don't wanna know."
Grimmjow clenches on him, deliberate squeeze, really mean. Ichigo hisses, jumps like a shock. He feels tender everywhere, all his skin. And then the whole mattress shakes because Grimmjow is laughing at him. Face down in his own bed with Ichigo's dick in him, keeping it warm—laughing. Starts deep and soundless, creeps up higher until he's just kinda giggling like an idiot–
"Ow, shit–" as Ichigo pushes up and slips free of him.
Ichigo goes over in a heap and Grimmjow rolls onto his back, laughs, rattles the bed. Folds his arm over his eyes and runs out of air, gasps for more and then does it over again.
It's contagious. The smile, at least: sloppy and sharp-toothed. Ichigo hasn't heard his voice climb like this in a while, kid-giggling. Usually only when he's plastered.
"Fucked you stupid?"
"Fucked you stupid."
"Oh, yeah. Shit, yeah..."
Ichigo hauls himself slowly to sitting. His skin is drying. All the stuff on his skin, starting to itch a little. He scrubs his cleaner hand over his face and back up through his hair. His right is sticky. He wipes it in the sheets but it doesn't help. He doesn't want to look down at himself. Next to him, Grimmjow's laughter tapers off until he's just chuckling, and then just breathing again.
He's easier to look at. He's maybe all Ichigo ever wants to look at.
And he's loose and good. Summer-tanned body laid out, stretched long. He's lanky and flushed, hairline still wet at the neck, larynx bobbing when he swallows. He drops his arm and rests his hand on his stomach. There's some space between them. He blindly bumps his elbow into Ichigo's thigh and then there's none.
"Don't be a jackass," Grimmjow mumbles. His eyelashes brush the bruise in his eye socket and they're spiky and dark. His face is a mess. He's puffy and pink from the crying. He'd look fresh off a bad time if he weren't so calm, so evened out. "'S good."
Ichigo can't keep his hands to himself. He brushes Grimmjow's hand on his stomach and pets beneath, strokes up and down the hair that leads to his dick. He's sticky with the come Ichigo couldn't catch. He scoots his own hand up to give Ichigo room. Belly-button to pubes. Ichigo was right: he hasn't shaved.
Grimmjow's dick doesn't seem to care that Ichigo's making passes down to the root of it. Ichigo's doesn't either.
He asks, "Yeah?"
"Yeah, Kurosaki. Best freak-out you've ever had."
"Oh." He gnaws on his lip. "You too."
Grimmjow rolls his head back and forth in the wrinkled sheets, lazy as a cat turning over. "Nah. Haven't seen one of my freak-outs."
Ichigo thinks that can't be right. He lets Grimmjow have it, anyways. He pulls a sigh and sips some of Grimmjow's calm. He splays his hand across Grimmjow's belly and looks down at himself.
Not that bad. Blood on his dick. But not a lot. He's filthier in other ways. Ways he can handle. Most of it he left on Grimmjow. In him.
Grimmjow's got his eyes on him when he looks back, hazy and half-lidded.
"Told you," he says.
You did, Ichigo thinks. You told me everything.
He nods slowly, feels it settle in him somewhere deep. He turns his nails into Grimmjow's body hair again and scrapes against the grain, smooths it down with his fingerprints, repeats. It's good and hypnotizing, starts to turn his skin numb. Reminds him of Nel's nails on his arm, stroking him.
"I like this," his mouth says. Takes a second for his brain to catch up. "You usually... You usually keep this clean."
Grimmjow hums a vague, rumbly yeah.
"Will you stop shaving it? If I ask you to?"
Grimmjow blinks once. Very, very slowly. Non-answer. Waiting for Ichigo to put it right.
Ichigo tells him, instead, "Stop shaving it."
Grimmjow says, "'Kay."
"And"—Ichigo swallows—"put another mark on me, tonight."
"Okay."
"Let me spend the night."
"Wouldn't let you go home."
"Okay... Okay. Kiss me?"
"Mm-mmn. Fuck you."
"Kiss me."
"Fuck you." Grimmjow bends a knee up and winces faintly. "Kiss me."
Ichigo twists around and falls down into it, finds Grimmjow's mouth with his mouth and opens up on him. It's lazy. Grimmjow puts his hand on the side of Ichigo's face and holds him there, and he still tastes like sex. Salty from all the snot he swallowed. It's not his best. Not Ichigo's either. Like they don't know what they're doing, clicking teeth. Really good. Only gets better.
Grimmjow's hand gets heavier against him. He's slowing down. Ichigo goes ahead and leaves him behind, until his jaw gets sore.
He kisses Grimmjow's chin. It's like hello. "Don't fall asleep."
"Mm."
"Don't."
"Need a smoke."
"Need a shower. You stink."
"Two smokes."
"After. Hey." He leans up on his elbow, taps Grimmjow's cheek and then pets it with his thumb. Sticky, still. Grimmjow finds him again with his tired eyes and Ichigo tries to get a better look at the right one, the blood in his sclera. Tries to judge how fresh it is by the color, but the light is bad. "Let me check your eye."
"After," Grimmjow mumbles.
"Sure. Shower first."
"If you change my sheets."
"I'll change your sheets, Grimmjow. Shower."
"'N wear my clothes."
"And use your shit, I know. I will."
Grimmjow yawns in Ichigo's face. Then bites at his mouth, half-asleep. "Okay."
———
Ichigo clicks through his contacts. Grimmjow leans on him and mouths a lazy line of hickeys across his collar bone.
His eye is fine. Bruising maybe two days old. He wouldn't say. Wouldn't even say that he got popped, or how, or why—just that it happened at work. But Ichigo knows him at work. He still wonders who it was. Who decided they'd had enough of his shit; who decided they'd let him have it rough.
Not too rough, or he'd be all swelled up. Worse. His busted eye is the only bruise Ichigo didn't put on him himself. It's the only mark he had to layer himself over. Impermanent. The blood will absorb and fade. Ichigo won't. And he knows better than to try and take Grimmjow's scars.
He said so, in the steam-close bathroom with his thumbs in Grimmjow's cheeks. Said something close, mouth disconnected from his brain—he already can't remember. More than half delirious. He was on a different high. A really good one. His hair was still dripping.
With his ass on the counter and his feet swinging, Grimmjow swayed dangerously in Ichigo's hands. He was dressed and damp, drying. Ichigo didn't know if he could catch him if he passed out. He didn't. He mumbled something about sticking his dick in crazy. He smiled sleazy and half-asleep and called Ichigo adorable just to piss him off, and it did. He told Ichigo to put some fucking pants on.
Ichigo did. Grimmjow's, so they're too long. He had to pinroll them. No shirt.
Ichigo stretches his spine in Grimmjow's sheets, in Grimmjow's bed, in Grimmjow's room, and texts Rukia to let her know where he is. Grimmjow braces an arm over him and scrapes his teeth off his shoulder. Ichigo noses into his faded blue hair and lifts his cell higher so he can see the little screen.
Rukia asks if he's coming home tonight.
Ichigo tells her she's got the place to herself. Stay out of the kitchen. Don't forget to let Renji up for air.
A minute later she sends him an indecipherable kaomoji and never replies to his question mark.
"Who," Grimmjow muffles into his shoulder.
"Rukia," Ichigo muffles into his hair.
Grimmjow hums and it feels like a big, deep purr. Pretty sure it's got nothing to do with who Ichigo's texting.
Ichigo rubs his other hand down Grimmjow's back. He's in a shirt—soft and long-sleeved, a little big, washed thin—and Ichigo likes how it feels against him. He puts his head back into Grimmjow's pillow. Grimmjow gnaws on him and it hurts. He's gonna look mauled.
A beat of silence as the disc Grimmjow fed into his system loops around to the beginning, spinning and spinning. Ichigo doesn't recognize it. It's mellow and playing quiet from the main room through the open door. It's gotten dark but the light in the hall is on and it spills over the bed and up the wall.
Track two, track three. Grimmjow's working on the paler side of Ichigo's bicep. Ichigo's phone chimes.
Ichigo squints at the screen. Mumbles, "Nel."
Grimmjow pops his mouth off of Ichig's sore skin with a nasty suck-sound. He noses back up to the sensitive spot above Ichigo's armpit. Grunts.
"She wants..." Ichigo squints harder and wings his arm out to give Grimmjow space. "Oh."
"Hm." Grimmjow bites him in slow-mo so Ichigo doesn't flinch.
"She's asking me if– Hey. Asking me if you'll... get your belly-button pierced with her?"
"You'd like that."
"What?"
Grimmjow unhooks his teeth and sets his chin on Ichigo's chest, breathes across his marks on his neck and collar and sternum. "You'd like that."
"Maybe, but you can't. Right?"
"Mm-hmm."
"Tell her that."
"You tell her that."
Ichigo clicks it out. Can't, 'cause of fights.
Rapid shorthand, telling Ichigo he can hold Grimmjow's hand when the needle goes through.
Ichigo says maybe this winter.
Grimmjow's head is tilting to the side as he drops off and it wakes him back up. He grumbles nothing and goes for Ichigo's throat again, knocks his head into Ichigo’s chin so hard that Ichigo's teeth snap together. Ichigo smacks him on the ass for it and Grimmjow picks his spot and sucks hard.
Nel, again. Ichigo can't see with Grimmjow's head in the way. Has to hold his phone directly above him, little plastic yuzu charm hanging down. Grimmjow smells good.
Still in one piece? Ichigo only says yeah, because he can't think of another way to put it. Just... yeah. And it's good.
Nel says it's good.
Nel says she knew it would be.
Nel says she's proud of him.
Nel says she's proud of them both.
Nel says not to ask her about her date, because it's not over yet.
Nel says she's just checking in.
Nel says–
"Shut up," Grimmjow groans into Ichigo's neck.
"Be nice," Ichigo mumbles back. "Nel says I should stop making you look normal."
"I'm normal."
Ichigo digs the heel of his palm into Grimmjow's back, feels the muscle fibers roll. "Okay."
Grimmjow sticks his nose under Ichigo's jaw and his mouth is slack on his pulse.
Grimmjow says he's normal. Nel replies okay.
Goodnight. Good luck. Nel sends him an absurd string of almost-heart-shapes and what are probably supposed to be sparkly stars. Or maybe it's all tits.
Ichigo flips his cell shut and tosses it down the bed. Too hard, because it slides across the sheets and goes over the edge. He doesn't care. He sighs and closes his eyes, gets his other hand on Grimmjow's back, gets in with his thumbs. If he thinks about it, he can almost trace the shapes of his panther tattoos through his shirt. Their tails twined. Grimmjow's too heavy to stay like this, but Ichigo can feel him falling asleep. He drools in his sleep. Ichigo's already wearing enough of his spit. They need to turn the hall light off.
Ichigo thinks he hears the disc loop again. Maybe he dozed off for a second. Feels good.
He throbs everywhere Grimmjow's mouth bled him below his skin.