Work Text:
It’s his dad’s fault. That’s what Ichigo tells himself as he sits crossed-legged around a table in Urahara’s shop, sake glass in hand. Go in my stead, Ichigo! Daddy can’t drink with that man for the tenth night in a row. He’ll die of liver failure!
And Ichigo had said, I’ll kill you myself if you don’t get your shit phrasing together. But he’d rolled his eyes and dragged a hand over his face in exasperation. Unfortunately for him, it wasn’t enough to stop him from agreeing once Yuzu overheard them and asked Ichigo to bring back more candy in exchange for his company. He should at least pay you for putting up with him, she’d said, which prompted an outcry of, No son of mine will whore himself out for candy! And anything past that Ichigo let fizzle from his mind as he’d turned and left. Urahara isn’t lonely despite his father crying out the opposite. On any given day he has plenty of people to harass. No, Ichigo saw the clusterfuck of yelling and excuses of liver failure for what it was–a shoddy attempt at some scheme–with a deadpan expression on his face and an acquiescence that is only borne out of having nothing better to do.The choice between two evils was never ideal, but if it came down to his father and sister discussing the merits of prostitution, or a few cold ones with Urahara, the obvious choice was the one with alcohol.
Speaking of which, he’s on his second cup, and he’s pacing himself. At least, it looks like he’s pacing himself if you compare him to Urahara who’s already giggling like a schoolgirl and leaning the side of his face against Tessai’s chest. Gross.
“Kurosaki-san…” Urahara begins with a drunken drawl. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Hard pass,” Ichigo says, and takes another sip from his glass. It’s halfway empty, his head is just beginning to feel floaty. He should stop before Urahara notices and tries to use a slight buzz to his perverse advantage. If it came to that, the pros of choosing this over home would suddenly become outweighed.
Yoruichi reaches across the table, tits nearly in Ichigo’s face as she leans in to grab the sake bottle from his right. Face heating, he dutifully looks away.
“Keep it up,” Ichigo says with a tension in his jaw, “and I’m gonna think my surprise is the four-way nobody asked for.”
Yoruichi settles back with the bottle and a lazy grin as she drinks directly from it. “Don’t ever hedge your bets on Kisuke not asking for something.”
A quick glance to the clogs in question, and Ichigo swallows his responses with more sake. They’re all talk. He knows that. But damn if he doesn’t want to getsuga any idiot who would lead him into the intrusive thoughts of Urahara naked. No alcohol in the world would be enough to wash that out.
“What’s the surprise?” he asks instead of touching that comment with a ten foot pole. He’s not looking at any of them right now, instead partially focusing on what sounds like Jinta yelling, followed by a series of thuds. Ururu kicking his ass again? Only time would tell.
“It looks like you’ll find out in just a minute!”
A few more thuds and a distinctive crash later, Urahara’s sliding door is yanked open with a growl and a voice that follows with, “Your fuckin’ brats are on my list, Kisuke.”
Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez stands before him with a half-baked snarl on his lips and Ururu hanging off one of his arms. Ichigo takes him in as if he hasn’t seen the arrancar in ages, which isn’t true. They spar regularly. In fact, he’s pretty sure he just saw him last week. But it’s unexpected here so, of course, Ichigo chokes on his sake and spits it out on the table as he sputters,
“Grimmjow!? What the hell are you doing here?”
And Kisuke, ignoring him to instead respond to Grimmjow, says, “You’ll have to spare Jinta, but I think Ururu would give you a run for your money.”
“Hello?” Ichigo says, exasperated.
“Let the boys talk, Ichigo,” Yoruichi says with another swig from the bottle. And Ichigo is about to respond, pissy, with a pointer finger at the ready and everything when–
Grimmjow flings his arm behind him, too fast for Ururu, who had begun to loosen her grip, to keep up with. She flies back through the open door, crashing into whatever wall stood behind her as an audible woosh of breath leaves her lungs. She groans just as Ichigo is starting to react, when Grimmjow calls out over his shoulder, “Try that shit again and it’s my hand through your stomach, kid.”
A weak and miserable, “Kay…” is heard from the hallway, and then the door is shut behind the blue-haired bastard.
“Good of you to make it, Grimmjow-san! Have a seat, have a seat!” Urahara pats the space to his left as Tessai is already occupying his right. But Grimmjow just frowns, then finally turns his attention to Ichigo. It’s the sake, Ichigo tells himself, that’s responsible for the way his guts clench at that gaze being trained on him. And there’s definitely no petulance over the fact that two of his comments had gone ignored. Who cares if Grimmjow is typically one track minded when it comes to him? He doesn’t need to monopolize the guys’ thoughts. Absolutely not. It’s like Yoruichi said, let the boys–.
“Hey, fuck you,” Ichigo spits at her, words finally catching up.
“The hell is that?” Grimmjow says, ignoring most all of them. He’s looking at Ichigo when he says it, eyes narrowed and face upturned to sniff at the air. A crinkle folds itself into Grimmjow’s nose, and Ichigo fights the urge to sniff at his shirt. Okay, sure, it had been from his floor, but it wasn’t like he stunk.
“The hell is what, asshole? Me?”
Grimmjow steps closer, looming over Ichigo who is growing increasingly more pissed off over the fact that he’s sitting on the floor. Their height difference isn’t that dramatic. Not when they’re both standing. Now, it feels strange in his bones. To have that calculating gaze on him under these circumstances. But, like hell he’s going to let any of that show. He takes a deliberate sip of the sake and maintains eye contact with a frown.
He says, “Spit it out, asshole!” when Grimmjow says nothing except step closer, leaning over and looking like he’s trying to glare through him.
“Kurosaki?”
Ichigo’s mouth drops open, an indignant and offended squawk leaving him that he definitely chalks up to the alcohol. “Are you fucking kidding me?” As if they don’t see each other on a weekly basis since Ywach’s defeat. As if Grimmjow wouldn’t know who he was with the slightest, most insignificant drop of reiatsu . And why did the concept of not being recognized by Grimmjow piss him off so bad?
Grimmjow reaches down, grabd a fistful of Ichigo’s orange hair as if he were pulling a damn weed, and yanks him up closer to eye level. Ichigo goes to his knees to avoid his scalp being ripped off, and immediately scrabbles to grab Grimmjow’s hands. “Hey, asshole! Fucking stop it! I’m human right now! Human!”
The grip doesn’t loosen because of course it doesn’t, but Grimmjow’s face is closer now, taking him in. Those searching eyes and furrowed brow. He growls a bit, then shoves his hold away. “Thought you were one of Kisuke’s fucked up dolls again for a second.”
“What the hell?” Ichigo says, rubbing at his tender head. Again? He can still feel Grimmjow’s fingers there, gripping him unapologetically.
Grimmjow shrugs, straightens back up and shoves his hands in his pockets. “You smell weird. Can’t trust shit from that damn Shinigami. How do I know you ain’t some kinda trick?”
Urahara, to his own defense, turns away from Tessai’s chest long enough to whip out his fan and feign innocence. “That was one time we used Kurosaki-san’s likeness for a new gigai prototype and, to be fair, I didn’t know you were coming that day.”
Ichigo lets that sink in for a moment. It doesn’t process in time. “What about me could be a trick for you?”
Grimmjow rolls his eyes, doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move to sit down either.
Ichigo sighs, finishes his third cup. “Well, it’s really me. So what are you doing here, anyway?”
Grimmjow stares at Ichigo, briefly flicks his eyes to Urahara, then back. His nostrils flare as if he’s assessing. He’s always like that. Silent at first with certain things. It took Ichigo a while to notice. At first, he’d written Grimmjow off as a loudmouth who’d spout whatever shit he wanted whenever he wanted. But, no, that wasn’t right. He mouths off, yeah. But it’s times like these Ichigo is reminded of the fact that Grimmjow’s insight is unparalleled to anyone he’d ever met. He’s sharp. Always.
“If it’s you, then come out, Kurosaki. Ain’t gonna worry about killin’ you in that stupid meat sack.”
It’s the alcohol. Oh man, it’s the alcohol. And Ichigo knows this but it doesn’t stop him from leaning an elbow on the low table, cradling his face with it as he smirks up at Grimmjow and says, “You’d worry about me?”
Yoruichi coughs on a laugh She slaps her leg and says, “Three glasses! That’s how much sake it takes for Kurosaki Ichigo to start flirting.”
“I’m not flirting!” Ichigo yells with a sudden heat to his cheeks and that’s definitely the alcohol. But Grimmjow still hasn’t moved. He’s still standing there like at any minute there will be a break in character and someone will admit that they only invited him here to drink as a sick joke and not out of any genuine camaraderie. But, maybe that’s projecting. Someone like Grimmjow didn’t care about being invited out for drinks and hanging and whatever other bonding activities Urahara would think up with cards and dice while holding them all hostage. He didn’t, right? Oh, but then again…Ichigo wonders whether he used to do anything similar with his fraccion. Did they drink in Hueco Mundo? Did arrancar hang out with each other?
Had they been friends?
His experience is relatively limited to the dichotomy between psychotic murderers like Nnoitra and others like Nel who seemed nearly human. Where does Grimmjow measure up? Ichigo isn’t sure, and he’s too busy realizing he’s genuinely curious about it to notice that Grimmjow huffs himself down into a sitting position at the front end of the table, Ichigo to his right. He has one knee pulled up with an arm casually slung over it, his other leg stretched out.
“Gonna tell me why I’m here or is the goal to feed Kurosaki alcohol until he embarrasses himself worse than that line?”
“Now you’re getting it, Grimmjow-san! This is why we’re friends. You understand me.”
“I’ll fuckin’ gut you.”
“Noted!” Urahara wags his fan around a bit more, taps Tessai on the shoulder in a way that apparently signals the table needs more sake. He leaves into the kitchen, and after only a moment, Ururu is the one who appears with two more bottles, and a glass for Grimmjow. To Ichigo’s shock, he watches as Grimmjow takes the cup gentle enough to not break it, and reaches up to ruffle Ururu’s hair before she scampers off red in the cheeks. And maybe Ichigo is looking at Grimmjow just as strangely as Grimmjow had looked at him. Because it occurs to him now in this moment…he’s never seen Grimmjow in any sort of domestic setting. Every meeting of theirs had ended in bloodshed, even when he’d ripped Askin’s heart out of his chest while they fought for the same side. It’s..,weird, right? Is that what it is? Were they hanging out?
Urahara snaps him out of his second internal monologue of the night to say, “We’re playing Never Have I Ever! ”
Ichigo groans.
“The hell is that?” Grimmjow asks, pouring himself a cup of sake. He downs it easily, no scrunchy facial expression of disgust like Ichigo, then pours another before settling back.
“Show off…” Ichigo mutters to himself, but of course Grimmjow hears, and grins.
Yoruichi, being the only helpful one at this table, explains the rules. “We go around in a circle, I say something, like… Never have I ever lit a guy on fire, and if you have, you put a finger down and drink. If you haven’t, you keep your finger. Last man with any fingers left wins.”
Grimmjow frowns. “This is a human game?”
Yoruichi shrugs. “Played it growing up and at the academy any time we managed to score something stronger than beer. Not just a human thing.”
“I’m not cutting my fuckin’ fingers off ‘cause I’ve done more shit than you assholes.”
And Ichigo can’t help himself, he really can’t. He busts out laughing, louder than is likely necessary. For a moment, he turns his face into his arm to get a hold of himself, and when he looks back to Grimmjow, that sharp gaze is on him again. Ichigo says, “We don’t cut our fingers off you homicidal maniac, you just put them down!”
“Keep laughin’, Kurosaki, meat-sack or not I’ll end you too.”
“Like this,” Ichigo says, ignoring the common threat. He reaches over, grabs Grimmjow’s hand with much less resistance than he would have anticipated, and looks back up into those blue eyes. “You have all five fingers up, right? So, if you’ve done something, you just…” With a little pop of his lips, Ichigo bends one of Grimmjow’s fingers down, and smiles. “Like that. See?”
Grimmjow leans in, just a bit. His face betrays nothing of what he could possibly be thinking, but his nostrils flare again and Ichigo wonders how he never noticed that Grimmjow scents the air like a predator when he’s taking in any information. “How many you had so far?”
“Three.” Indignant.
Grimmjow grins. Says, “Lightweight,” in such a way that it sounds like a taunting purr caressing Ichigo’s cheek, and…Oh, that’s the alcohol too. Ichigo gulps like a damn cliche, pulls his hand back, and tries to take a steadying breath.
“Fuck off. I got here first. You’re behind. Catch up.”
“Get my fingers down, then. Unless you bitch out first.”
“Never have I ever been a hollow!” Ichigo says and immediately feels like a literal child. Grimmjow deadpans at him, and Ichigo realizes his error. “Y’know, like…not…only.”
And he doesn’t think that will work, because it’s a reach at best, but Grimmjow glares at him hard and shoots his second sake before putting one of his ten fingers down. Going clockwise, it’s his turn next. And Ichigo should expect what he’s going to say but he still has the gall to find it an affront when he says,
“Never have I ever been a shinigami.”
Ichigo sips his drinks with a curse under his breath,
Yoruichi, directly across from Ichigo, rolls her eyes. “No lame shit. Ichigo, you know that’s not how you play. Those don’t count. Put your fingers back up.”
“He started it.”
“I’ll finish it too, Kurosaki. Soon as you get outta there and fight me.”
“ Never have I ever,” Yoruichi interrupts with a slam of the bottle on the table. “Fucked a guy the first night I met him.”
“Bullshit,” Grimmjow says, surprising Ichigo. Just how comfortable is Grimmjow here? But Yoruichi’s grinning, puts her hands on her hips.
“I getcha with that one? It’s true. Men won’t trip over their balls for you if you give them everything day one.”
“Can confirm,” Urahara says, dabbing at the corner of his eye with a handkerchief even as he puts a finger down. Tessai is gone, never having come back from fetching the sake. Yoruichi proudly shows off her ten fingers. Ichigo, having very limited experience in this area and okay sue him maybe that’s why he didn’t want to play, does not put a finger down.
Grimmjow does.
Ichigo absolutely balks at him. When he catches the other’s eye, that grin’s back in full force. Ichigo doesn’t have any time to comment or reel as Urahara goes next.
“Never have I ever…Hm. Oh! Never have I ever successfully completed No Nut November.”
“Why are you like this?” Ichigo asks as he plants his forehead on the table, ten fingers still intact.
“The hell is that?” Grimmjow asks, frowning.
This is hell, Ichigo thinks as he’s faced with the brunt of Grimmjow’s face on him. He’s dead, the sake was poisoned, and now he’s in hell.
“Yeah, Ichigo,” Yoruichi snickers. “What is No Nut November?”
Ichigo takes a deep breath, pinches the bridge of his nose. “Sometimes I wish a number of you would have stayed dead.”
“Kurosaki-san, you wound me.”
“You’re first on the list!” Ichigo all but yells as he jabs a finger across the table in Urahara’s direction. The asshole does nothing but giggle behind his fan. Ichigo wants to kick him in the face. But, he doesn’t, not yet. Instead, he forces himself to look back at Grimmjow and lets loose a breath. “It’s a stupid internet challenge where you don’t come for an entire month. All of November, hence the name.”
Grimmjow responds without missing a beat, pupils dilating and contracting like an interested cat at the drop of the word challenge. “Internet bullshit where you don’t come where?”
Yeah. He’s definitely in hell.
“You’re kidding me,” Ichigo says, getting red in the face, ears, and neck. “Y’know–like… y’know.” Urahara and Yoruichi start laughing in earnest like a couple of fucking demons now and Ichigo blindly thrashes his legs out under the table in an attempt to kick one of them or both wherever he can possibly reach. It works enough for Urahara to scream out mercy and grab his knee. But Grimmjow is still watching him. Still waiting. Man, when did this guy die anyway? How the hell did he not know what that meant?
Ichigo groans, follows it up with, “Just fucking kill me… I mean ! An orgasm , alright!?” Another pointed finger at Urahara. “Shut up! Shut the fuck up! You did that on purpose!” But, then, Grimmjow’s laughing too. Ichigo swings his eyes back, finger still poised towards an Urahara who now has his arms raised in playful surrender. “What the hell are you laughing at!?”
“You’re red as a fuckin’ cherry, Kurosaki.” Grimmjow’s entire chest shakes with his laughter as he leans back, a palm on the floor behind them, downing another sake cup. Ichigo hates the way the sound travels south, warm and rumbling. Stupid fucking alcohol.
“It’s your damn fault, you bastard! Know more slang!”
The laughter increases, and Ichigo thinks finally this is where he loses it. In a shitty candy store with even shittier people he was lucky to call his friends. Well. Yoruichi was his friend. Mostly. “I know what it means you dumb fuck shinigami. Think I’m that stupid?”
Ichigo deadpans with his mouth hanging open, a man who’s just had the proverbial rug pulled out from under him. “You…then what the hell?”
Grimmjow rolls his eyes but the remnants of his laughter is still evident in the curl of his mouth. “Thought it’d be funny to watch you embarrass yourself. I was right.” And as if the world weren’t spinning in reverse, Grimmjow doesn’t put a finger down either.
“You were fucking with me?” Ichigo says, incredulous, as if he can’t fathom a moment in time where Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez is joking with him.
For the comment, Grimmjow shoves Ichigo in the shoulder, forgetting the difference in strength, and sends Ichigo sprawling out on his side. “Now you’re gettin’ it. Your brain get sealed away too when you’re all weak like this?”
Ichigo growls, suddenly done with being the night’s laughing stock, and shoves himself up off the floor. He lets a fist fly full strength into Grimmjow’s shoulder, knowing it won’t do shit to him, but doesn’t anticipate the arrancar’s hierro making the whole experience feel like he just punched a statue. Ichigo swears, yanks his hand back to shake it as a new fire ignites his eyes.
“That’s it!” he yells, and he can’t tell if the negative look on Grimmjow’s face is from getting punched when he can’t fairly punch back, or from seeing just how lacking Ichigo is in strength currently. Whatever. Ichigo was gonna win this stupid game fair and square, and then he was going to be the one laughing. “Never have I ever kissed a man!”
“Stop while you’re ahead, Ichigo,” Yoruichi says as she puts a finger down and tosses back her cup. Haphazardly, she wipes her mouth and begins to refill herself. “Keep it up and I’m going to feel bad for how lame you are.”
Urahara nods in agreement, discreetly putting a finger down and drinking.
Grimmjow doesn’t put one down. Just raises a brow.
“Nuh-uh,” Ichigo starts, shoving Grimmjow’s cup towards him. “You drank for fucking a guy you just met.”
“That’s fuckin’. Ain’t what you said.”
“So you’re telling me you fuck on the first date but not kiss?”
Yoruichi whistles low. “Damn cold, Espada.”
Grimmjow flashes her a bit of a smirk then turns back to Ichigo with a shrug. “Like hell I’d let any asshole near my mouth like that. So they can try to rip out my throat? Fat chance.”
Yoruichi again. “But your cock’s fair game, huh?”
The smirk on Grimmjow’s face blooms into a grin once more, feral and dirty and Ichigo reorganizes his legs for no particular reason, drinking just to distract himself from staring at it. “Never met as ass tight enough to threaten my cock, but I’ll keep an eye out.” Pause. And then, Grimmjow’s voice was closer. “Did I break you, Kurosaki?”
“Just! Take your turn, asshole.”
Grimmjow takes a moment to look him over, as if trying to search for just where to go to get the best gain. His eyes move over Ichigo’s face, roam down and up before apparently feeling satisfied enough to lean back again.
“Never been a virgin at twenty.”
Yoruichi howls and bangs her fist on the table. She doesn’t drink. Of course she doesn’t.
Urahara does, somehow surprising everyone. He shrugs and says, “I was a late bloomer.”
And then the table is looking at Ichigo and maybe Ichigo will knock himself out of his body, come to think of it. But it’s difficult to notice anyone else, because Grimmjow is smirking at him like he knows he’s won and Ichigo is deliberating on just how he wants to wipe that expression off his face as he puts a finger down and drinks.
“Gotcha,” Grimmjow says.
“Fuck you.” Drink number five.
It goes like that for at least the next hour. Maybe more. Ichigo passes drink number seven and starts laughing at everything everyone is saying. He’s drunk, but he’s good. And he still has three fingers. Grimmjow is down to one. Yoruichi and Urahara have long since knocked themselves out and are onto bigger and better things, those things namely being chasing Tessai around in an attempt to get him to catch up to everyone else and drink. Ichigo doesn’t know how many drinks Grimmjow has had. He doesn’t know if it’s affecting him in the slightest. But they’ve only been watching each other as the battle gets down to the wire, neither ready or willing to lose. Ichigo has the advantage, and Grimmjow has been staring at him for the last minute and a half as if struggling to figure out what to say.
Finally, he says, “Never lost a battle to a hollow.”
Ichigo curses under his breath, puts a finger down and drinks. Two left. “I beat Ulquiorra later.”
“Still lost to him the first time.” Grimmjow drinks anyways.
Ichigo’s turn. If he gets Grimmjow here, he’ll win. Two fingers left for himself. He could do this. Just had to get it in two guesses. He can do that, right? So, what does he know about Grimmjow? He likes to fight. He apparently likes to fuck, but not kiss. Grimmjow had been able to stare into his soul and figure out what to say. Ichigo had relied a lot on the luck that was Yoruichi’s filthy fucking mouth. Why did this game have to turn sexual right from the start?
“Never have I ever…” he starts, humming and staring. Grimmjow kicks his leg, waiting.
“Spit it out. I already got my next one, Kurosaki.”
“Never have I ever…been in love?”
A snort. Grimmjow doesn’t drink, or put down a finger.
“Oh, c’mon, hard ass. Your human life counts too!”
“Barely remember that shit, but I counted it.”
Ichigo frowns. “That’s bullshit.”
“Sorry I’m not a sappy sack of shit like you.”
“I was the one who said never have I ever!”
“Yeah, so?”
“So it means I haven’t either! I’m not fucking sappy!”
Grimmjow flicks him in the forehead, grinning. “Sure. My turn. Never slept with a stuffed animal.”
“That’s cheap. You said that because of Kon.”
Grimmjow shrugs. “Yeah. Wasn’t sure you slept with it though. It counts.”
“It so doesn’t!”
“Don’t be a sore loser, Kurosaki, it fuckin’ counts.”
Ichigo growls in frustration, downs the rest of his drink and puts a finger down. Only one left. The middle one. Which he shows to Grimmjow. “I’m not a loser, I have one left asshole. My turn.” Ichigo pours himself another cup, gives Grimmjow his full attention again, and narrows his eyes. He gets closer, more than he should have, and nearly loses his balance. Catching himself, Ichigo realizes belatedly he’s done so by placing a hand on Grimmjow’s thigh. Neither of them move. Like another challenge, unwilling to back down from.
“Never have I ever wanted to fuck a shinigami.”
And like he said, it’s the alcohol. Of course it’s the alcohol. Because he never would have said anything close to that in a million years. Why did those words leave his mouth? Did he even want that? No, that wasn’t the point. Grimmjow was the one talking about fucking and kissing and this whole game had been Urahara’s fucking idea. And he’s drunk, yeah that’s right. He’s drunk. Easy out. No need to think about the repercussions for crossing this type of line with a man like Grimmjow. An Arrancar. An Espada–ex Espada, but whatever. The hollow who kept him going by being the only bit of excitement in his life anymore. Fuck, what had he said?
But Grimmjow, a man who would never back down, never cower, leans in closer, and Ichigo is suddenly so so so thankful that Yoruichi and Urahara are nowhere to be seen because that’s the last thing he needs. Grimmjow licks his lips, glances down to Ichigo’s. Ichigo can feel his heartbeat in his fucking asshole.
Grimmjow drinks.
Ichigo feels his cheeks go hot. He blames it on the alcohol in the privacy of his own mind. He blames this entire night on it, actually.
“There’s that red again,” Grimmjow says low instead of explicitly admitting his defeat. “All humans this colorful, or just you?”
“You were human once.” It just comes out. Sometimes, Ichigo can’t think about that too much. It feels too overwhelming. He forces himself away from the thought now too.
Grimmjow shrugs. “Can’t remember everything anymore.” Pause. Smirk. “Somehow I thought that’d piss you off.”
“You losing? Nah.” His heart is pounding.
“Sayin’ I’d fuck one of your friends.”
One of…his…
“Huh?”
“That pretty Shinigami with the feathers on his eye. Think I’d be able to get him on his back pretty easy.”
The world flips. Or, maybe that’s his stomach. Alcohol. Right.
Ichigo blinks, brow creases. “Yumichika?”
“That his name?”
And he’s drunk. He’s drunk and human. But fuck that. He punches Grimmjow again, shoves at his chest. “Yumichika!?”
Grimmjow’s smirking again. “What? Thought I was gonna say you?”
The next punch goes to Grimmjow’s face. It hurts like a bitch and he feels one of his knuckles splinter when it definitely shouldn’t have. “Oh, fuck you! You lost anyway! Didn’t even come here for a fight and I kicked your sorry ass.”
Ichigo finds himself on his back so fast the air is knocked entirely from his lungs. Stars burst behind his eyes, telling him he hit his head. He didn’t even register moving. But now, Grimmjow is looming over him, all muscle and hollow and strength. Ichigo’s arms are pinned above his head, and Grimmjow’s eyes are dark.
“Quit teasin’ me. Throwin’ those soft shitty human punches. Come out and fight me.”
“I’m too drunk,” Ichigo complains, weakly yanking on his hands and cursing when Grimmjow’s grip holds like an effortless vice. The arrancar is sitting on his hips, holding them down against the floor. And he struggles against that too but all it does is shift just right on his groin and–oh. Fuck. Better hold still.
“Don’t give a shit,” Grimmjow says, and leans down. He’s doing that thing again, the thing he normally reserves for the quiet moments after a fight where they’re both nearly too exhausted to move–he trails the tip of his nose along Ichigo’s throat near his pulse point, breathes it in. Ichigo can feel the ghost of Grimmjow’s lips on the skin there and his breath hitches before he can stop himself. After a battle, he’s better with this kinda stuff. He can thread his fingers into Grimmjow’s hair as the man licks his neck and calls it claiming his prey. But here, now, fully healed and intoxicated, it feels like a very different game. “You smell weird like this…”
“You said that,” Ichigo tries to say normally.
“S’pissin’ me off.”
“Can’t you control yourself?” Ichigo struggles again, and Grimmjow growls, opens his jaws and holds the side of Ichigo’s very human neck in between his teeth. Adrenaline goes off like fireworks, lighting his nerves up and causing his breath to quicken. If anyone were to walk back into this room right now, he’d never live it down. Not in a million fucking years. They’d never discussed this. Any of this. The touching that happens when they are both beaten and bloody. But that wasn’t the case here, and maybe that’s why Ichigo’s body is reacting to it like he can’t control anything worth a damn. As if he has a right to toss the same notion to Grimmjow.
“Probably can,” he started, moving off Ichigo’s throat. “Don’t feel like it.” And that’s the only warning he gets before the bite comes. It’s not fast, not a snap of lethal jaws or a ripping of his trachea, but it’s there. A deep pressure, getting tighter. The grip on his hands tightens too. Ichigo feels he’s seen this before. In observing hollows. Whether it be in Hueco Mundo or the world of the living preying on plusses–feeding. Grimmjow seemed like he was about to eat him. He wonders if the difference in smell is a good or a bad thing. He doesn’t really want to be eaten. Also doesn’t really think Grimmjow will kill him. What a thought that is.
“Human neck, remember,” Ichigo says and it’s breathy. The jaws on him tighten again, and he feels a number of Grimmjow’s teeth breaking skin slowly, canines sinking to their hilt. And okay, Ichigo really isn’t going to live this down. No way in any level of hell. Because the alcohol is making everything feel better and buzzing and–he can’t help himself.
He moans.
There’s a beat of heavy, distinct silence in which Ichigo wishes he were in a hole in the ground rather than here. Okay, well, no he doesn’t. Grimmjow pulls back, stares at Ichigo with pitch black eyes ringed in that sapphire blue and blood smeared across his lips. He licks them without breaking eye contact.
“You’re a stupid bastard, Kurosaki.”
“You’re bad at pillow talk. No wonder no one’s kissed you.”
“I could rip your throat out.”
“Yeah.”
“Think I won’t?”
They stare at each other. Ichigo with his heaving chest and panting breaths half a mix of pure human fear and a horniness he’d prefer weren’t there. He isn’t afraid of Grimmjow, but his body is. He’s trembling deep in his bones just being in the presence of Grimmjow’s reiatsu . But this isn’t an easy question to answer. Because they aren’t dancing around what any sort of truth could mean for them, they’re teetering on the precipice of insulting Grimmjow’s pride. And if there is one thing Ichigo knows better than to do, it’s that. Still, he says,
“No.”
For his honesty, he receives a low snarl as Grimmjow bares his teeth and tightens the grip on his wrist easily past the point of breaking one. The crunching of his bones echos in his head. Ichigo isn’t even sure if Grimmjow noticed, if he felt it break, but he cries out nonetheless with more of a surprised gasp and grunt than anything else. Still, his eyes don’t leave Grimmjow’s. They never do.
“You wouldn’t kill me. Not right now. Not when I can’t fight back.”
“I’ve killed weak bastards before.”
Ichigo can’t help it, his eyes fall to Grimmjow’s mouth, stained in his own blood. He thinks with an insane sudden intrusion that he wants to taste it. Wants to feel what Grimmjow’s lips are like when they crush against something. But the mood is changing. With an ache in his chest, Ichigo forces himself to remember that he’s drunk and Grimmjow isn’t. Probably. The guy still looks to be one hundred percent in control of his senses. Maybe Ichigo is reading everything wrong and he’s just a psycho who’s starting to blur the line between fighting and intimacy.
“Guess that’s true,” Ichigo says, forcing his eyes back up.
“That all you got then?” Grimmjow moves his free hand along Ichigo’s chest, under his shirt, to poise the tips of his fingers right at the hollow beneath his sternum. Right where Ichigo watched him plunge his entire hand through Rukia. A threat. One he should take seriously. Ichigo wishes on every soul in Soul Society that the memo of this being a serious situation would make it to his dick.
“No,” he says, honest to a fault.
Grimmjow leans closer. “What else?”
Ichigo tilts his head up, feels heat pooling in a mortifying way in his groin. “You’ll get pissed at me if I tell you.”
“M’ already pissed at you.”
“Cause I smell bad?”
Frown. Pause. “Spit it out.”
Ichigo mentally puts a pin in that little hiccup for if he’s still breathing in a few minutes. He lets his eyes slide shut as Grimmjow’s fingers press at it harder, hard enough to bruise, to start to pierce. He thinks if the ex-espada forgets just how vulnerable human bodies are, he may even be killed on accident.
“You’re not gonna rip my throat out Grimmjow, because you like fighting me. And killing me as a human would piss you off worse than anything else.”
“Oh yeah? Why’s that?”
“Cause then you’d have to wonder for the rest of your afterlife whether you were strong enough to do it fair and square. And also, because I trust you.”
He’s only ever seen Grimmjow caught off guard one other time. When Ichigo had blocked Nnoitra’s weapon from cleaving him in two. He’s staring at the same expression now. Wide eyes and a slight furrow to his brow. Confused. Angry. Maybe more than both of those.
“Trust me, huh?”
Ichigo looses a breath when the homicide doesn’t come. Cracks open his eyes and manages to smile. “Yeah.”
“Stupid fucker,” Grimmjow says, but he’s leaning down again, scents at the blood on Ichigo’s neck, licks it. He wants to ask Grimmjow so many questions. About every tick of emotion on his face. He tries to get some of them in when they fight. But now, they overwhelm him, buzzing through his mind just like the sake. Grimmjow bites him again, then moves his lips to Ichigo’s ear.
“You let any other hollow this close to your neck, they’ll kill you.”
“I know.” There’s a distinct lick through the gore. Possessive. Ichigo bites his lip to help stop the sound trying to escape his lips. It doesn’t work. He fucking moans again. “You try to get this close to Yumichika’s neck, he’d kill you too.”
Grimmjow snorts, runs his lips from Ichigo’s ear to the corner of his jaw. Closer, just a bit. “What about here? He’d still kill me?” The hand at his chest moves across the planes of skin, holds his hip down and steady, alerting Ichigo to the fact that he’d begun to rock up into the hard body above him.
Ichigo swallows, thick, makes another embarrassing sound. “Oh, yeah. Easy.”
The hand holding Ichigo’s wrists above his head loosens, bringing with it the throbbing pain of the fracture. Grimmjow moves to thread fingers into orange locks, grips them tight enough to hurt and forces Ichigo’s head back, exposing more of his throat.
When Grimmjow kisses him, it’s rough and with a bite to his lower lip, short-circuiting his brain. And Ichigo doesn’t even give a shit that he’s embarrassed and drunk and his wrist is broken, he brings his hands to Grimmjow’s hair and pulls him closer with a groan. Their tongues twine, blood and saliva and gasping breaths mingling between them. Ichigo knows without a shadow of a doubt that he’s so hard he’d let Grimmjow bend him over the low table and fuck him until Urahara came back into the room. He’s also suddenly aware that he’s never had a thought like this before in his life. Hasn’t he? He doesn’t know. Grimmjow’s mouth is on his, growls reverberating against his lips, and when the arrancar breaks away, both of their chests are heaving.
“What about that?” Grimmjow says, voice low and eyes eclipsed in black.
Ichigo catches his breath, wipes at blood and spit. “Y-yeah, totally dead.”
“Huh.” Grimmjow leans back, up and off of Ichigo and the sudden loss leaves him feeling a rush of cold. “Good thing I don’t give a shit about him, then.”
“No?”
“No.”
And call Ichigo a bastard after all, but he wants to push it just a bit more. “But you drank.”
“Yeah,” Grimmjow says, and that smirk’s back on his lips as he takes his cup from the table as casually as if they’d been discussing the weather, downing it.
Ichigo pushes himself up to his elbows. “So, is it a bad smell?”
Those dark eyes are back on him in an instant, on his face, his chest, his neck. He flips Ichigo off, a single finger raised. “Final round,” he says.
Ichigo narrows his eyes, wipes the excess blood off his neck. His wrist fucking hurts. And his chest will definitely have a gnarly bruise. “Never have I ever thought a shinigami smelled good enough to eat?”
And with a slight tip of the bottle in a toast, Grimmjow drinks.