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“All you have to do is keep trying! Identifying reishi nearby is Quincy 101. Only a complete idiot would fail to get this right.”
“I knew I should’ve gone to your father for training,” Ichigo replies sourly, keeping his eyes closed in meditative concentration, or whatever. “At what point does the whipping start?”
“When I go back home and retrieve my lash. Now shut up; half your problem is you’d rather argue with me than actually learn.”
“What can I say, I’ve missed our little talks.”
There’s an odd silence, and Ichigo opens his eyes a crack to see Ishida’s flustered look just before it disappears. His eyes open the rest of the way.
“Really? Dude. You’re the one who’s always busy these days. You turn down all my invites!”
“Because I am busy! You try deciding to follow in your old man’s footsteps, knowing he’s an elite in the field you...” He has the decency to look sheepish. “Well, Kurosaki-sensei’s rank as a shinigami is different. I have to actually know things.”
If they weren’t sitting cross-legged on the ground in Urahara’s training bunker, Ichigo probably would have lunged at him and started a fight. Not because of the position really, but because he’s trying really hard to affect an aura of genius-like contemplation while Urahara and his “guest” deal in black market goods a small distance away. Hopefully out of earshot.
“Quick being a dick and show me how to move these reishi piles already.” Ichigo jerks his head slightly at the pair angrily haggling over some kind of machine and a keg, or what looked like a keg. “If I’d known we’d be doing this while they’re here, I would have brought my badge.”
“If I’d known, I would have cancelled.” Even two years after the quincy war and everything it revealed, the twist of Ishida’s mouth when he looks at hollows hasn’t flattened out. Or maybe it’s just because it’s Grimmjow.
If there’s a single person, creature, evil demon bent on killing him that can completely disrupt Ichigo’s attention, Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez is it. Followed by Kenpachi at a really close second, but at least he has to follow orders and stay in Soul Society. Grimmjow, on the other hand, can go anywhere he wants these days in thanks for services rendered during the war, or whatever. Which means at any given time there’s a not-zero chance Ichigo is about to run right into him.
The thing is, Grimmjow hasn’t been trying to kill him. He’s Urahara’s bestest best arrancar buddy, apparently, and they have drinks together and kick tyres and bitch about the price of fuel in Hueco Mundo and what happened to wanting to fight him over and over, anyway? What happened to all of that?
“Focus, Kurosaki,” Ishida cautions. A cold hand slaps his kneecap, grounding him. “A clear mind and a clear purpose. Feel the energy around you. Feel it, and pull it inwards.”
Right. Focus. He can do that. Pulling in a long, cleansing breath, feeling his skin and his heartbeat and the artificial breeze ghosting through his hair, Ichigo clears his thoughts and casts his senses out towards the reishi deposits Urahara had loaned them for training.
In his head, they’re a cool, muted source of light compared to the dead landscape. Duller than the spiritual signature of Urahara, who is a bright spark of gold buried within a gigai. Much duller than Grimmjow, who is a wild flicker of snapping icy blue, in constant motion like an eager flame. Compared to the two of them, the reishi is nothing. So why can’t he move it?
“…eave them be, Grimmjow-san. It can’t be easy, embracing a power with so much upsetting baggage.”
“You remember who you’re talking to, asshole?”
“But you wear it so well.”
“You’re damn right.” A crunch of footsteps on gravel, heading away. “We’re done for this week. I’m going.”
“You know, I have a delicious new gin from Hiroshima upstairs, and Ururu has been obsessed with designing snack platters lately…” Both voices fade out of earshot, slowly leaving the area.
Were they flirting? Was—was that flirting? Or just hospitality? Was that why Grimmjow wasn’t bothered with Ichigo anymore?
No, stop, Ichigo tells himself. Focus. Find the reishi. Move the reishi. The blue flame in his mind is moving further and further away. He casts his awareness out as far as he can. Reishi, reishi, reishi. The air sparkles with it, but it’s not what he needs. Four piles of it sit like beacons, but the hand he creates in his mind to grab it does nothing. The footsteps are almost completely gone by now.
Ichigo feels his temper rising, his calm giving way to erratic impatience.
“I can feel it, but it won’t move. How do I touch it?”
“With your intent,” Ishida says, like it’s obvious. Ichigo’s brows plunge into a scowl.
“Yeah, but how?”
“With your intent!”
“HOW, ASSHOLE?” Ichigo yells, his eyes opening in a rush of hot, frustrated anger. If he could just pull it all in like a fucking magnet he would—
“Look out!” Ishida yells, casting his hand out to divert four torrents of reishi spearing towards them like comets pulled into a singularity. It doesn’t work exactly, but Ichigo spooks enough at the sight that his mind blanks. They all fall in a heap before they can slam into him, rolling clouds of spiritual life across the dirt towards them. Ishida pushes it away in a move that makes Ichigo think of Byakuya and his zanpakutou, but a lot of it stays clinging to Ichigo’s body and hands, like iron filings stuck to a….oh.
“Intent,” Ichigo repeats, suddenly getting it. “I was trying to use Mage Hand when I should have been Jean Grey.”
“And you call me a nerd?” Ishida says crossly, but he’s not really mad. There’s a small smile trying really hard not to make an appearance, but Ichigo can hear it in his voice. “Good work, Kurosaki. With my ability to enrage you, we’ll have your quincy abilities primed in—”
“What the fuck?!” Grimmjow snarls at a distance. “Kurosaki!”
It’s like music to Ichigo’s ears. An angelic chorus of murderous anger, all for him. Excited, Ichigo jumps to his feet and turns with eager expectation, eyes seeking out the direction of the voice, but all he sees is Urahara’s enormous smile. Where’s—
Grimmjow jolts into view with a thump of sonido, eight feet away and black fur crawling dangerously up his wrists. His eyes are blue slits of rage, his teeth bared, his—is that his dick?!
“Why are you naked?!” Ichigo howls in horror, staring at every scarred, muscular, hole-punched inch of Grimmjow’s body. It’s like he’s been chiselled by the hand of a horny god. There’s not a spare ounce of fat on him. His pubes are the exact same colour as his hair. His dick is longer than Ichigo’s oh my god how is this happening—
“You fucking ate my clothes you quincy piece of shit!” Clawed hands grab the front of Ichigo’s t-shirt and haul him in, popping through the nice red cotton of his v-neck. At this range Grimmjow’s eyes look crystal blue under the fake sunlight. “Put ‘em back!”
Sorry, is Ichigo’s instinctive response, the one his mother would have approved of. What comes out is, “Maybe you shouldn’t have been in range of my god-like powers, asshole!”
Trying to grab Grimmjow’s collar back is a mistake, since there’s nothing there but scars and hot, smooth skin barely sheathing taut muscle. He’s pulled in all the way for Grimmjow to get right in his face, which means…which means…he’s pressed up against six feet of naked arrancar.
“God-like powers? I saw you over here straining like a constipated adjuchas downwind of a vasto lorde,” Grimmjow sneers. “Guess if you can’t give me my clothes back, I’ll just take yours.”
Ishida, who already has his bow out and trained on Grimmjow, sighs.
“I doubt you have the fine motor skills necessary to disrobe him without clawing something vital open. Let him go.”
Ichigo sees the calculations run through Grimmjow’s eyes like computer code. A mortified pit opens in the bottom of his stomach. He’s surrounded by enemies. Enemies, everywhere.
Between them, Grimmjow lets his claws shrink away back into blunt nails. Ishida neatly puts his bow away. Outrage whites out Ichigo’s vision.
“It was an accident, okay?!”
Grimmjow leans in, all the way in, until his hot breath of laughter blows into Ichigo’s bright red ear.
“That’s why you get a head start.”
His converse hit the dirt and Ichigo doesn’t even hesitate. He reaches max sprinting speed in record time and doesn’t look back. It’s not going to matter, Grimmjow has sonido and Ichigo is in his stupid human-quincy-whatever body and Ishida is a traitorous piece of anaemic pseudo-german shit, but he runs anyway. Runs from the insane hunting cat on two legs that loves to chase things.
He is so fucking dead.
There’s no actual chase. The second Ichigo gets behind a huge rocky outcrop he slams straight into Grimmjow’s chest so hard he almost knocks himself out with the impact. Scrambling backwards doesn’t work either, there’s arms pinning him in place, squeezing him right up against…against…stop thinking about it!
Ichigo scrunches his eyes closed in horrible anticipation, hoping he’ll at least be able to keep a sock to cover his junk later.
A few seconds pass.
Nothing happens.
There’s no triumphant cackling, no jeering or threats. Tipping his head back so he’s not staring over Grimmjow’s bare shoulder, Ichigo sees a hard frown and narrowed eyes pinning him in place, as arresting as the arms holding him. He swallows hard, trying not to pant from exertion.
“Sorry I ruined your date with Urahara.”
“Since when do you hang out with that quincy?” Grimmjow asks, ignoring him completely.
“Since always?” The arms around him squeeze so hard Ichigo can almost picture his lungs coming up his throat.
“No, you fucking don’t. Any time I’ve been here before, you’ve never been anywhere near a fucking quincy. And now you’re learning to be one? After the entire fucking war?” Grimmjow shakes him for an instant, then changes his mind and shoves him back against the smooth rock shielding them from the others. “You piece of shit. You ran from your hollow like you were terrified, disgusted, but these powers are cleaner, right? No blood on your hands when you can shoot from a distance. Fuck you.”
Throwing him back against the rock again, Grimmjow lets him go completely and steps away, his upper lip twitched back in an angry sneer.
Ichigo just tries to breathe at first. His shoulders are aching, but he ignores it as he watches Grimmjow standing there watching him with mute disgust—no, not just disgust. Disappointment. Because he’s proud of what he is. Even standing there in just his bare skin, he doesn’t even try to cover up. He’s exactly as he’s supposed to be.
And then there’s Ichigo, learning the skills of a race that killed so many of his kind that it threw off the balance of the worlds. But that’s not the point, Ichigo knows. The point is something way more recent.
“I have two zanpakutou spirits with powers that fundamentally oppose each other: a hollow, and a quincy. Both are me.” Pushing off the rock slightly, Ichigo rubs the back of his head. “It’s not—I’m not picking one. And if Hueco Mundo ever needs my help again, I’ll be there. Every time.” His mouth ticks upward a little. “I just can’t promise I won’t accidentally strip you all naked when I arrive.”
His joke falls flat. Grimmjow’s expression is cold, closed and unforgiving. Alarm jumps in Ichigo’s chest, makes him scramble for a way to fix it. But it’s been too long since he’s seen him, they don’t fight anymore, he doesn’t—
They don’t fight anymore. Of course he doesn’t see anything except Ichigo in his human body, picking up anti-hollow weapons for Karin and learning how to use quincy powers.
Exhaling hard, a little annoyed that he even has to prove it, upset that Grimmjow would even think it, Ichigo closes his eyes and reaches into himself, as deep as he can go. Because no matter what body he’s in, his soul is still his soul. All the freaky parts of it belong to him. Grimmjow just hasn’t seen them in a while.
When his eyes open again, Grimmjow inhales sharply, takes an instinctive half-step closer to him. Ichigo knows exactly what he’s seeing, and doesn’t flinch when two calloused hands grab his face and tilt it up slightly, bringing his jet black eyes with their yellow irises into clear view.
“I’m still me,” Ichigo insists, close enough to Grimmjow’s searching blue gaze that his breath crosses his mouth. “I can’t bring the mask out anymore, though.” He smiles crookedly. “It’s turned into a horn now.”
“Yeah?” Grimmjow says absently, his thumb tugging Ichigo’s lower eyelid down slightly with its pressure. His entire demeanour has thawed, opened up, mesmerised by the sight of the same eyes Ichigo had when they fought in Hueco Mundo. It feels like a lifetime ago now.
“Yeah. You know, I shot Yhwach with a gran rey cero.”
Grimmjow blinks sharply, snapped out of his daze. “You did?”
“It connected, too. I combined it with my getsuga.”
“Who the hell taught you gran rey cero?”
Ichigo reaches up, tugging Grimmjow’s hands away from his face, but only to rest them in a loose circle around his neck. Grimmjow digs his fingers lightly into the muscle of his shoulders, as if testing claws that aren’t there. His blue gaze is curious—and jealous.
“Some mad bastard shot me with one during the best fight of my life.” Seeing the realisation strike home, Ichigo averts his eyes awkwardly. Instead, he reaches up and jams the pad of his thumb against the thick pink scar tissue cutting through Grimmjow’s chest, right over where his heart would be. If he had one. “I lost sight of you over there. Had to bring you with me somehow.”
Looking down at the pressure against his chest, Grimmjow doesn’t try to remove it. Instead, he pulls one shoulder up in a slight shrug. Neither has moved away in the slightest, and Ichigo can feel the unnatural heat of his skin through his t-shirt and retrospectively, annoyingly tight jeans.
“Blame the cunning shopkeeper for that. Asshole got me poisoned twice over a promise—” Grimmjow cuts himself off, teeth actually snapping shut. Hard fingertips push down deep into the muscle of Ichigo’s shoulders again, making him hiss. “Doesn’t matter. Guess if you haven’t forgotten who you are, you’re just not interested in me anymore.”
“I am so interested,” Ichigo says, with total sincerity. “But you’re always with Urahara these days! You ignore me all the damn time. Even today, if I hadn’t stripped you—by accident, I swear—you wouldn’t even have said hi.”
“How the hell did you even do that, anyway?”
“I guess your clothes are made of reishi. I was trying to do Ishida’s damn training, and I was thinking about you ignoring me. I guess it all got confused.” A sudden thought springs to mind. “Why are you still naked? You could have just transformed and your armour would come out.”
“Saw where those eyes went when I showed up. And how red your face turned.” Grimmjow’s smile is sharp. “Still is. Bright pink cheeks under the deadliest eyes I’ve ever seen. You’re fucking adorable, Kurosaki.”
“Shut up, man,” Ichigo mutters, looking away. Trying to wriggle his shoulders out from under Grimmjow’s hands, all he really manages to do is some kind of embarrassing shimmy up against him.
Grimmjow, being a maniac and not prone to react to things the way a normal person should, just laughs and leans in, grinding his face up against Ichigo’s hot cheek. His pleased inhale is so deep Ichigo can almost feel his hair being sucked out by the roots.
Then he hears Grimmjow makes a sudden, interested noise. Pulling his head back, he stares at Ichigo with predatory curiosity. His blue irises have thinned out slightly, forced outward by the bloom of dark pupils. He’s scanning all over Ichigo’s face, hair, and neck like he’s searching for something.
“What? What?”
“You’re covered in it,” is all Grimmjow says, and shoves the strong line of his nose against Ichigo’s jawline, dragging it up his face on a long, slow inhale. The soft, surprised puff of laughter he releases is hot on Ichigo’s skin, prickling all the tiny hairs on his neck. “The reishi. It’s all over your skin.”
Oh, shit. Not like hollows don’t eat reishi or anything.
“Do not bite me.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s probably just the reishi from your own disintegrated underwear?”
“I don’t wear those.”
Speechless, embarrassed and more than a little turned on by what’s happening, Ichigo blames his lack of protest on all of the above when Grimmjow’s long fingers curl around the back of his neck, threading through his hair to hold him in place. He’s such a fucking idiot, he’s standing there like a freshly powdered donut in front of a hungry killer like Grimmjow, and he’s not even fighting back. How the hell is he going to live it down if he calls for help now?
“Relax, moron. Not gonna actually eat you. I’ll just…” A hot, wet swathe of pressure drags up Ichigo’s jaw, up his cheek and over his earlobe. The rumble of sound that builds in Grimmjow’s throat is pleased. “I’ll just get the seasoning off.”
“Ishida and Urahara are going to come looking for us in a second,” Ichigo makes himself say, forcing his voice into a tone approaching steady common sense, and not the breathless horny croak it was probably going to be otherwise. That had definitely been Grimmjow’s tongue on his skin and it should be gross but it isn’t, it’s hot, god it’s so hot, he’ll have to confess all of this to someone later just to stay sane—
Grimmjow, not really bothering to listen or care, bites the shell of Ichigo’s ear and shoves his tongue in the tender notch behind his earlobe. A shudder of surprise rips up Ichigo’s spine, his hands shooting out to grab onto Grimmjow’s waist. Searing, uninterrupted skin meets his palms.
Expecting to be shoved away, Ichigo tenses, but nothing happens except another interested little rumble against his throat. It gives him the courage to slide his hands up and down his back, his breath breaking in his throat when Grimmjow’s heavy bulk presses into him, his mouth now suckling the side of his neck in earnest.
This is getting out of hand, Ichigo thinks wildly, teeth sinking into his lower lip too late to catch the gasp he makes. His jeans are becoming painfully tight, a pooling heat spreading through his entire body. He’s way too turned on and Grimmjow—he’s just being a crazed arrancar like usual, snacking on some reishi.
Get it together, Ichigo tells himself desperately. Before you do something stupid like try to kiss him.
Dropping his hand down to the curve where Grimmjow’s lower back ends and his ass begins, Ichigo pinches it hard, as hard as his human fingers can.
“Hey, c’mon. Cut it out.”
The reaction is an immediate annoyed tsk against his throat, but Grimmjow pulls his head out of Ichigo’s abused throat and looks up with a scowl.
“What? Busy here.”
“Busy giving me a hickey,” Ichigo replies, horny and irritable, reaching back to touch his neck. It’s damp and almost too sensitive from the rough attention. “If you’ve got the munchies so bad, go eat that platter Urahara wants to hand feed you. Get a change of clothes while you’re at it.” And more importantly, give Ichigo a chance to wilt the half-mast erection fighting for real estate in his pants.
The frown that darkens Grimmjow’s face is borderline scary, given their current disproportionate strength levels, but he only snaps the teeth of his mask with a small flex of his jaw, pulling back and away. No big deal, Ichigo thinks dully, sneaking a southward glance—oh.
“Why are you turned on?” Ichigo yelps, ripping his gaze up to the sky. The hollow black in his eyes recedes with his broken concentration, leaving tiny spots of light behind. Beside him, consigned to his peripheral vision, Grimmjow sneers rudely, unashamed.
“So what? Food, fucking, fighting, it’s all the same.”
“It’s not the same.”
“It is when it’s you, dipshit.” His voice tightens. “If I can’t fight you, at least let me—”
“Kurosaki-saaaan!” Urahara’s bright voice calls pleasantly across the training grounds. “I heard raised voices, are you both all right over there? Do I need to get the hose?”
No need for a hose, Ichigo thinks as Grimmjow’s head whips around towards the voice, the moment shattered. At least let me what? But there’s no chance to ask as angry blue eyes cut in his direction and quickly away, promising danger if he speaks. Tension is written in every line of Grimmjow’s naked body as he turns away, tall and proud, the black number six standing out against the rippling muscles of his back. He tears open the garganta with a twitch of his fingers and steps inside.
“You can,” Ichigo blurts out before he can gesture again and slam the dark window shut. “You can fight me. And fuck me.” Stunned at his own reckless daring, he pushes it one step further as Grimmjow’s posture jerks arrow straight. “And if you want to lick the rest of that reishi off, my family is away for the weekend. But I have a condition.”
Grimmjow is already one foot back out of the garganta when that last part sinks in, and he stops so quickly Ichigo gets an eyeful of physics in action. His palms sweat as Grimmjow’s mouth flattens into a suspicious line.
“Condition? You’re not fucking me first,” he says with such iron resolve that Ichigo’s imagination runs wild for a single exciting moment, because what does he mean first? “And if I want to do it while in resurrección, you’re just going to bend over and take it, got it? You—” His head tilts slightly. “What?”
“I just wanted to kiss you first,” Ichigo says baldly, his face hot and heart pounding with ideas. “In case we’re not compatible. But after all the stuff you just said, let’s leave it for later.”
It all sounds really reasonable of him to his own ears, which is why Ichigo is totally unprepared when Grimmjow lunges the rest of the way out of the garganta and roughly grabs him by the orange crown of his head, pulling it back so far his neck has to arch or break. It exposes his entire throat and the rack of his collarbones, and even from his painful vantage point he can see the hungry glitter in Grimmjow’s gasflame blue eyes.
“Not compatible,” Grimmjow repeats, leaning down to slowly pull his tongue from the hollow of Ichigo’s throat, all the way up to the sensitive outermost edge of his bottom lip. He drags his parted lips across Ichigo’s lower one so lightly he’s not even sure they actually touch. “You and me. In what fucking world would that be possible?”
Ichigo breathes against his poised mouth for one breath. Two.
“Good point,” he says, hooking his fingers in the back of Grimmjow’s mask and slamming their lips together.
They’ve only got about another thirty seconds before Urahara comes ambling over to see what the issue is, or Ishida decides to just hail arrows down on their location because he’s taken half the day off to conduct training and Ichigo isn’t even there paying attention anymore. It’s enough—so much more than enough because even if he can’t bite, Grimmjow kisses like he’s absolutely starving for Ichigo’s mouth. Compatible doesn’t even cover it.
“You know you’re kissing a half-quincy right now,” Ichigo eventually says between quick, snake-strike kisses that bruise his lips. “Are you okay with that?”
“Just cover yourself with reishi dust whenever I want,” Grimmjow says with a hint of his sharp canines showing. “And I want to see you use that power on yourself for me. Can forgive a quincy a lot of shit if he’ll strip on command.”
“You just want to give me orders,” Ichigo says, like he wouldn’t let Grimmjow slap a collar and leash on him if it would make him smile like that all that time. “Lucky for you I think I see the vision.”
It’s a lot of manhandling and they’re almost the exact same height if not build, but Ichigo doesn’t really care when Grimmjow’s hands cup his ass and pull him up and in, letting him squeeze his thighs around the taut muscle of his waist. He’s two degrees from tearing the crotch seam of his jeans, which are more decoration than function, but after one wardrobe mishap already today, Ichigo feels like it’s just fair. This time, Grimmjow’s rumbling laugh vibrates down his own throat.
“What is taking them so damn lo—oh, no,” Ishida’s mournful voice says at a distance. “Kurosaki, you idiot! If I’d known that was all it took to capture your undivided attention, I would have conducted this training naked! Come back here and learn about hirenkyaku! Arrancar, put him down and—is that an erection?!”
Ishida’s yelling reaches angry housewife levels of shriek in no time flat, but Ichigo is too distracted by the way the hooked scar on Grimmjow’s shoulder feels beneath his fingers to pay much attention. At least with one hand up his t-shirt and another cupping his ass, Grimmjow has no hands to attack Ishida with.
“I’m gonna spit in his mouth and kill him,” Grimmjow says confidentially. Ichigo lifts his head.
“Get me home now and I’ll let you spit in mine.”
Winged teal estigma stretches with the widening of Grimmjow’s eyes, vivid and calculating possibilities like a supercomputer. That kind of sparkle hasn’t shown up since before the quincies—not since they fought in the desert and Ichigo put on a mask all for him. Just for him.
The wet-fabric tear of the garganta opening again is music to Ichigo’s ears, but Grimmjow’s manic laughter is better.
“Deal.”