Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Friday nights had been quiet at the Kurosaki household for the last few months.

More than a few months, really. Karin was abroad, studying under a sports scholarship in America. Yuzu was more often than not helping Isshin in the clinic—where Ichigo should probably be, if he was completely honest. Being twenty-one and torn in a hundred different directions had him standing completely still, working part-time as a kitchen hand in a local restaurant. With the quincy war long ended, Ichigo figured he was belatedly owed some of that teen life he’d missed out on.

It also meant he was incredibly bored. So when the demanding knock of a full fist hit the front door, arrogant and obnoxious, Ichigo sat up straight and dropped the TV remote to the sofa with a soft thump. He was halfway to the door by the time he heard the pained hiss from the other side.

“The fuck,” a voice whispered hoarsely, obviously heavily injured. Ichigo grappled the door handle and yanked the thing open, locks tumbling with a clatter.

“Hey, what’s wrong? My old man’s in the—” Ichigo’s voice died in his throat. Twice, he might have blinked. It was hard to tell.

Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez stood on the doorstep in a halo of muted light and disturbed flying bugs, who apparently didn’t know whether to go for him or the light. Just standing there with absolutely no reiatsu, wearing—Ichigo squinted at what looked like black jeans, boots and a loosely tucked half-buttoned shirt—decidedly human clothes. The jaw mask was gone, but the smear of green at the tilt of his eyes was still there. Grimmjow’s fist was clenched to his chest protectively, but his eyes were narrow and unapologetic. Ichigo blinked for maybe the third time.

“We’re closed.” He shut the door and bolted for the stairs, nearly skidding into a wall. Kon, Kon, where the fuck was Kon—

Grimmjow shoved the door open with a shouted curse and came barrelling into the house after him. Ichigo had the sudden betrayed lament that ex-espada weren’t at all like vampires and could, in fact, come through doors like gangly pissed-off deer, slamming into things and yelling fuck a lot.

Ichigo was on the stairs when Grimmjow’s hand grabbed his flailing heel and hooked in the strong cotton of his sock, hauling his leg back just enough that he caught the whole ankle in unfairly long-fingered hands and yanked him back down the staircase. Ichigo winced as his stomach bounced over the edge of each step like a washboard, feeling friction burn on his fingertips the entire way down.

“No,” Ichigo said the moment Grimmjow flipped him like a pancake and caged him on all fours like an eager…whatever he was. “No, I’m not fighting you. I don’t care if you have cancer and this is your last earthly wish, Grimmjow: it’s not happening.” Limbs splayed like a starfish, fingers stinging, Ichigo didn’t even lift his head. He tried for an authoritative, resolute kind of frown. The type of frown he’d seen on people like Byakuya and Toshirou when they had to deal with unruly assholes.

“I’m not here to fight,” Grimmjow said flatly, and sat back on his haunches. Also, kinda Ichigo’s thighs. “Have you seen me, Kurosaki? I’m a fuckin’ walking marshmallow. A five year-old punched me in the dick on the way here. I nearly threw up in the alley.” He raised his fist and Ichigo tensed, but it was just to show off the graze on his knuckles.

“You hit a kid?” Ichigo stared, aghast. He barely batted away the hard swat at his head in time.

“Are you stupid? I got this knocking on your piece of shit door!” Swinging off Ichigo’s legs, Grimmjow sprawled heavily down on the floor beside him, staring at the ceiling morosely. Knuckles knocked against Ichigo’s elbow, making him wince again. “I’m wearing a gigai, you shitful shinigami. I want to record my last will and testament before I go kill myself for agreeing to this torture chamber.”

“I’m not a priest,” Ichigo said sourly. “And you’re sure as hell not going into the light.”

“Fuck off and listen to my confession.” Grimmjow cleared his throat meaningfully. He took a deep, sober and steadying breath. “When I made sixth espada, I drank enough sake to kill Yammy’s entire ancestry and pissed everywhere in Ulquiorra’s closet. All over his neatly folded stacks of dickhead clothes. We’re talking yellow the whole way through. I was a fuckin’ racehorse that night.”

Pushing himself up on his elbows, Ichigo shot Grimmjow a glare. “Like hell you’re sorry about that.”

“I got the room wrong.”

“Then who—”

“I pissed in my own room,” Grimmjow groaned, and covered his face with his hands. “My new room.”

Absorbing the short tale, listening to Grimmjow swear and lament his past deeds beside him, Ichigo stared up at the shadowed ceiling and wondered if this was the rest of his life, laid out in five minutes of life-threatening escape and then horrible confessional for an easily-bruised arrancar who liked to talk about his murder fantasies with zero warning. There seemed to be a lot of turkey carving metaphors. Who the hell was eating turkey in Hueco Mundo, anyway?

It probably didn’t matter, just like it didn’t matter why Grimmjow had squeezed himself into a gigai after months of silence, done with laying low in Urahara’s underground bunker to sulk and hack things to pieces. Ichigo felt like he'd known about it peripherally, in the sense that someone had mentioned it in earshot, probably. It was hard to keep track of who said what when you were trying to bury your head in the sand and forget the whole shinigami thing. He might still have his powers and skills, but there was nothing out there anymore that people like Rukia and Renji weren’t able to handle.

He’d only ever been a substitute, after all.

Maybe he was as shitty at handling it as Grimmjow was. Two forcibly retired enemies, doing things they never thought they would.

Such as, Ichigo thought sourly, being sprawled together on the floor of his house where Isshin was inevitably going to find them both and probably try to tell Grimmjow he could move into Ichigo’s wardrobe. Given that recent story, like hell that was ever happening.

“Is that your only confession?” Ichigo caught himself asking, turning his head to eye Grimmjow’s darkened profile.

“Yeah, why? What kind of sad asshole has more than one?”

Ichigo scowled. After another beat, he sat up, grabbing a lean wrist with his other hand.

“Come on, we’re going out.”

Grimmjow sat up somewhat obediently, but sagged forward like a limp flower as he stared at his booted feet.

“Where? I ain’t fighting you, Kurosaki. I’m disabled.”

Getting up and grabbing his coat from the rack in the hall, Ichigo threw it on with a whirl of black fabric. The hood settled on his head, loose and concealing. Turning back to the doorway he grinned through it at Grimmjow, who was blinking back owlishly. The angle of his jaw was sharper without the broken mask.

“Don’t be so dramatic, dickhead. And we’re going to fit you for a beer coat.”

“What?”

“We’re getting a drink. Trust me, you’ll hurt less afterwards.”

The road to hell might be paved with a lot of Ichigo’s personal good intentions, but he figured he could stand it if anything went wrong. He’d been there before, after all.

If pressed, Ichigo couldn’t say for sure what exactly sent him out onto the streets that evening, other than getting Grimmjow, sixth espada of Aizen’s personally-picked arrancar out of his family home. After all, he’d been actively reclusive for nearly the last year as everyone started going on with their lives. The battles they’d all gone through had dried up, and while Ichigo couldn’t be even a little sorry about that, there was something scratching against the walls of his mind, urging him to move a little. Fight a little.

With that out of the question and Grimmjow looking traumatised by his ultra-sensitive gigai, a bar seemed like the next best idea. Ichigo was barely past legal drinking age but there weren’t many places in Karakura that gave a shit about asking for ID, far preferring the glint in his eye as he ordered up.

That was how they ended up in one of the seedier establishments local to the prefecture: a dark, dimly-lit thing with cracked vinyl barstools and purposely sooted windows tucked beside an alleyway that was perpetually slick with water and abandoned cars. A place people didn’t really go unless they wanted cheap alcohol and cheap company. It didn’t bother Ichigo, being what he was, and despite Grimmjow being a little delicate in his gigai his expression sharpened with interest, ears almost pricking up as he breathed stale smoke and listened to the faint drawl of the jukebox suffering in the corner.

“This place is a shithole,” Grimmjow said approvingly. The spread of his shoulders already seemed wider. “I want a cheap beer in a dirty glass. Give me money for the music over there.”

Fishing out a handful of coins from his pocket, Ichigo shoved it into the upturned and waiting palm, ignoring the sharp-toothed grin it earned him as he turned for the bar. The music was so dim he could probably pick German pop and it wouldn’t matter.

“Two?” the barman grunted as he approached. He was a large, pot-bellied guy with a comb-over and beady eyes. “House picks?”

“House can pick for me.” Ichigo thumbed in Grimmjow’s direction. “He wants a dirty beer.”

Ambling back sometime later, Grimmjow had his hands stuffed into his pockets and a smile quirking the corner of his mouth. Privately, Ichigo could admit the gigai was dressed pretty closely to a style that suited a cocky bastard like Grimmjow. All in black, he had the first three buttons at his collar undone, fanning open until the wedge of his throat and upper chest were visible. No scars, of course. Not in a gigai. Somewhere along the way he’d stopped flaunting the hole through his stomach and the wide silvery-pink scar, too. It might not even be there anymore, in his true form. Healing was always progressing, and if Urahara was looking after Grimmjow at the shop, maybe he had looked after other things too.

“Eyes up here,” Grimmjow said, a laugh sounding caught in the back of his throat. His fingers were flicking upward from his chest. “You never seen a shirt before?”

“Not you in one,” Ichigo snorted, sliding money across the laminate of the bar. He barely paid attention to the glasses thumped in front of them. Not until he smelled the cloying sweetness of chambord, anyway. “What the hell is this?” The bartender was already ambling down the other end of the bar, wiping down the surfaces, leaving Ichigo with…well, it did smell good. Some pinkish concoction in a cocktail glass with a hulled strawberry slid over the lip. At least, that’s what Ichigo thought it was. It smelled like raspberry and pineapple.

Grimmjow suddenly eyed his beer like it was somehow lacking. Behind them both, the faint strains of Every Breath You Take by The Police began crooning over the jukebox’s aged speakers. Ichigo rolled his eyes and took a gulp of his drink, pointedly not looking as Grimmjow slid onto the barstool beside him with a self-satisfied sigh.

“Do you even know these songs?”

“Kisuke has a thing,” Grimmjow swayed his hand meaningfully, “for old karaoke music. Never heard the lyrics outside his warbling, though.” Taking a deep gulp of the beer in front of him, following Ichigo’s lead, neither of them bothered to turn around as the real evening crowd began to fill the bar in slow droves. A few complained about the backlog of music Grimmjow had queued up, some ten songs by the sounds of the rumpled occupants in the back booth.

They sat for long minutes, sipping drinks and eyeing each other when it seemed prudent.

“What,” Ichigo asked finally, tongue skimming his lip for the last sheen of his drink. The sharp sting of alcohol and red fruit sat happily in the back of his mouth. “You keep doing that face.”

Another few hundred yen to the barman, another repeat of their drinks. Grimmjow set his jaw and didn’t reply, just tossed his head back to drain half his beer. Ichigo watched the lean curve of his throat bob on a long swallow. The burp was less interesting, but even he had to give Grimmjow points for volume.

“What face, huh? The face of me bein’ locked down like this, watching you just doing it on purpose? Huh?” Leaning across, Grimmjow nearly put them nose-to-nose. “You’re getting soft, Kurosaki Ichigo. Gonna get fat, like this.”

A hand planted itself roughly against Ichigo’s stomach, hot and spidery between the folds of his coat. There was nothing to grab there and they both knew it, but maybe that wasn’t the point. Ichigo realised with a start that he hadn’t even tried to stop what could have been an attack.

“Get off me,” Ichigo said finally, shoving the hand away. “This is my choice, just like it was yours to wear a gigai that left you with the attack power of a wet kitten.” His eyes met angry blue. “Which you haven’t explained yet, by the way.”

A snort. “Like you don’t know.”

“Know what?”

“The kidou bindings, all around your fuckin’ house and where you work. All down the street you walk home on, even to the supermarket.” Grimmjow looked like he wanted to spit. “Can’t touch you—someone wants you locked up tight as a drum. Safe as houses.” Another hard draught on his beer, but this time Grimmjow looked like he wanted to stab something. Ichigo just watched him intently.

Kidou on his house? Work? His way home? It would explain why he hadn’t even smelled a hint of spiritual activity, maybe even explained why he hadn’t bothered to look further into any he’d sensed. There were, what, dampeners?

Had Grimmjow willingly entered a gigai just to get through them?

Bullshit, Ichigo thought reluctantly, grabbing his fresh drink and drawing out the strawberry from the glass rim. It was snatched from his fingers before he could eat it, leaving nothing but red syrup on his fingers. Grimmjow chewed happily, sharp teeth still ferociously inhuman. Some things even a gigai couldn’t mask.

“Guess I got your cherry, Kurosaki.”

“That’s a strawberry.”

“Even better, yeah? Ichigo?”

“Oh, I’ve never heard that one before.” Ichigo tipped the glass to his lips and swallowed, sliding his eyes to the interested gaze fixed on the liquid. “What, you want some? It’s actually pretty good.”

Grimmjow was chewing his lip—really, actually kind of chewing—when the next song kicked in. Cher’s If I Could Turn Back Time started over the muffled jukebox speakers. Behind them, a few people whooped and shuffled in tandem. Someone groaned loudly. Ichigo sagged, trying to imagine Urahara singing terribly to it in karaoke. It wasn’t a pleasant thought.

He was distracted when long fingers unpicked his grip from the stem of the glass and took it from him. Ichigo watched Grimmjow take a cautious sip of the sweet redness in the glass. It had more bite than the beer, that was sure. Blue eyebrows shot up, and Ichigo watched as the rest of it slid down his throat in a long wash of stolen alcohol.

The glass was thumped down in front of him, empty. Grimmjow blew out a breath that might as well have been dragonfire, it smelled that flammable. Across from them the bartender hovered once again, his damp cloth slung over his arm. What a stereotype. There was probably a shotgun strapped under the counter, too. Was the place modelled after a saloon? Ichigo hadn’t seen enough westerns to be really sure. Another few notes slid across the bar. Ichigo didn’t really care by that point; he’d been pointlessly saving his cash for months, knowing he had no goals for it. Study? Clothes? An apartment one day? None of it mattered really, while he still felt the twitch of violence between his shoulders. The call to draw his blade.

The bartender kept serving, and Ichigo kept paying until the room felt blurry and soft around the edges. Beside him, Grimmjow looked almost soft, too.

“I’m not getting fat,” Ichigo said expansively, tilting his head to frown at Grimmjow. “Or if I am, aren’t you as well?”

“I still train in the bunker,” Grimmjow said, shaking his head. “You never come. I’m sittin’ about fighting imaginary shit and waiting, while you’re out in the stinking suburbs pretending nothing ever happened. That you’re ordinary. You know how much I want to kill you for that?”

“You always want to kill me,” Ichigo said, somewhat fairly. He took another gulp of his drink, this one sharper than the rest. Grimmjow snorted loudly.

“You’re sitting in this shithole, with actual vermin and all the human trash this area can spit up, tryin’ to tell me you’re enjoying life? Who the fuck are you now? You’re a deadbeat, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo knew his sudden anger was fuelled by how drunk he was, but even that couldn’t explain away the hard sting to his pride. Cheeks burning, the words came flying out before he could caution himself.

“So why don’t you go back to Hueco Mundo then? No one wants or needs you here. Especially not a deadbeat ex-shinigami. You’re the one who came to me, you lonely asshole.”

The hand that slammed into Ichigo’s throat and took him to the floor was human-strength, and weak by even that measure. It still caught Ichigo by surprise, his shoulders hitting the sticky floor hard before he could defend himself. Getting soft. Hovering over him, Grimmjow’s face was thin with rage. His eyes glittered.

“If you want to squirm your way to a slow death, you shitty excuse for an enemy, I’ll kill you right here.”

Ichigo’s response was to haul back as best he could and punch Grimmjow in the ear. He snarled in pain, lurching, but he didn’t let go. Tenacious bastard, Ichigo thought, watching the room swim around them both. Even in that form, tenacious. The hand on his throat was sweating, slipping in it as he squeezed.

“Get off me,” Ichigo rasped, planting his palm on Grimmjow’s chest in warning. His fingers were pressed into the fan of flesh left by the open collar of his shirt. “Unless you want to die.”

“I don’t want to die, you asshole,” Grimmjow snarled in his face, “I want you to give a shit and fight me. Or we might as well both fuckin’ lay down, gut ourselves, and end the whole damn thing.”

It occurred to Ichigo, between the swirling room and the furious blue of Grimmjow’s eyes, that maybe his old rival had been waiting around for him to pull his head out of his ass the entire time. He couldn’t think of any other reason he might want to hang around Karakura, wait over a year for activity and then finally accept a de-powered gigai just to shake sense into him in the flesh.

It was…actually pretty dedicated of him. Which still made a horrible kind of sense. In trying to shake him up for a fight, Grimmjow had actually woken him up to the world around him. For a few pink drinks and some shitty old music.

“All right,” Ichigo said hoarsely, drawing his hand back to slap at the hand holding his throat. “All right.”

“All right,” Grimmjow repeated, releasing his throat to hold his shoulders down to the floor. His expression was a little drunk, but mostly furious and miserable. “’Cause I’m going, if not.” He didn’t have to specify where he meant by going.

“No. Stay.” Ichigo blinked hard. Grimmjow’s breath smelled like burning candy. “But also get off me.”

Despite being de-powered like he was, Grimmjow still seemed to have more than enough strength to pull Ichigo back up to his feet—more than enough for an arrancar, really, which begged all kinds of questions about the nature of Urahara’s special gigai and what it could do. He set Ichigo straight when he swayed with the movement, even though it meant Ichigo bracing his cheek on a shoulder that smelled like generic soap and ambient cigarette smoke. For a moment that contact was the only solid point in the room. Hands burned like brands at his upper arms.

“Homos,” someone faux-coughed behind Ichigo. A few scattering laughs at the tables behind them both. Last check, there had only been five people back there.

“Trash,” Grimmjow spat back.

Reiatsu swelled under Ichigo’s alcohol-dulled grip. But didn’t the gigai have conditions—

Didn’t it? Ichigo wondered as Grimmjow shoved him hard into the side of the bar and leapt at the occupants of the far corner, where the laughter had been loudest. An actual person went flying past Ichigo’s head and slid behind the bar before he had enough mental faculty to wonder if he should do something.

Another guy went sailing through the air. At Ichigo’s right, the barman started reaching under the bar for something. Ichigo spread his hands.

“I’ve got this,” Ichigo promised, and maybe he looked like he really did, because the guy stopped reaching.

Ichigo threw himself into the fray.

If nothing else, it was a fight.