Chapter Text
Their entanglement begins the very first day they meet, although neither one of them really knows it yet at all.
He moves into a shitty apartment complex in the midst of winter— on what he could swear might be one of the coldest days of the year, in fact. It’s honestly incredibly lucky that he hadn’t found himself moving during a bout of snowfall; now that would have put him in a truly foul mood (even worse than the one currently caused by the smell of shitty lead filled paint and dust that envelops the hallways all around him).
It’s not like he has much to move, anyway; an old, stained couch, a singular coffee table, a television stand alongside an ancient TV that barely even worked anymore; a mattress that’s more springs than any sort of comfort, accompanied by a few stray boxes of whatever other random shit he had managed to accumulate during his lifetime.
He certainly hadn’t chosen the place for the views, he thinks to himself in a sour fashion as he trudges up to the second floor for what he hopes will be the last time, a beat up old duffel bag slung over his shoulder. His boots make significant thudding sounds with each step as he makes his way upwards, and he certainly isn’t shy about flinging the staircase door open to the point that it slams into the wall on the other side of it.
No, he’s chosen this shithole because it’s close to the only real home he knows; a equally run down shithole excuse for a gym (re: fight club) known to most as “The Pit”— well, by ‘most’ he supposes that he only means those who frequent it, as most sane people would call it a good place to go if one were yearning to die.
Grimmjow doesn’t put much thought into that.
He doesn’t really put much thought into anything, really.
So it takes him completely by surprise when, while he fumbles with his keys for what he again hopes will be the last time today, cursing under his breath, another human voice (and not a siren, or a stray dog barking, or some other sound befitting this absolute shithole he’s ended up in) breaks the silence in the hallway.
“You’re loud.”
Grimmjow promptly drops his keys, which leads to him grinding out an aggravated “fuck” before he spins on his heel to address whoever’s decided moving day is the best day to address someone like him. Despite the fact that the voice had been melodic and soft, dare he even say borderline amused, he certainly isn’t finding himself in any sort of mood to talk.
In the doorway across the hall stands a young woman wearing a pair of black rimmed glasses. In one arm, she balances a small of stack of textbooks, and the other arm is perched upon her hip. Her green hair stands out in the dinginess of the hallway surrounding them, but it’s her hazel eyes, wide and curious and uncharacteristic of the type of person who might live in this building that make him halt, standing there staring at her like an idiot for a good fifteen seconds before turning away and bending downwards to retrieve his dropped keys.
“Didn’t realize the walls were so thin,” he merely grunts in response as he swipes his keys from the ground. Fan-fucking-tastic, he thinks to himself— of course he would end up with a neighbor who actually wants to talk.
“Basically made of tissue paper,” the green haired woman continues on, without any idea at all that she’s dancing on his last nerve. “Welcome to the building. My name is Nelliel.”
At this, he simply blinks. Most of the time, in shithole apartment buildings like these, people don’t go out of the way to introduce themselves. In fact, they usually avoid all possible eye contact, only nod at each other or speak when absolutely necessary, and basically pray that their neighbors don’t deal drugs… or do things that are even worse.
(Like fight at The Pit.)
A quiet whistle pulls him back to reality, and Nelliel quirks a brow in his direction. “Got a name, stranger? Or shall I just call you ‘Blue Hair’?”
You’re one to talk about weird hair colors, his internal monologue snips back, but he suppresses it against all odds.
“My name is Grimmjow,” he finally says in a reluctant tone. “I’m, uh, new.”
“Well I could’ve guessed that much, I’ve been listening to you trudge up and down the stairs for an hour or so over and over.” She’s smirking ever so slightly now, and as she shifts the pile of books in her arms, he catches the gist of a few of the titles— human anatomy, something about diseases, and another topic regarding medicine. “That, plus you’re totally irritated, and I know that’s exactly how moving makes me feel.”
Grimmjow merely snorts in response. “I’m never not irritated.”
Unexpectedly, the woman— Nelliel, he supposes, merely laughs at his outward attempt to be intentionally off-putting. And it isn’t nervous, or forced; the sound of it is jovial and light, as if his bluntness is somehow appreciated.
“Well, you may be loud, but at least you’re honest,” she responds in a tone of voice to match her laugh.
Feeling a tad less irritated than he had just moments before for reasons unknown to him, Grimmjow gestures towards her books with the hand that’s still grasping his keys. “You some kinda doctor or something?”
Nelliel nods her head no. “I’m just a medical student. Not a doctor yet.”
“Huh.” Admittedly, Grimmjow doesn’t have the slightest clue what to do with that little tidbit of information, so he does the next best thing: speaks his mind directly. “Mind if I ask why the hell you live here?”
“It’s cheap and I’m broke after paying my tuition,” she says with a small shrug of her shoulders. “Not to mention the fact that it’s close to the hospital.”
He merely stares right at her, as if not buying her simplistic excuse and expecting her to attempt to pivot to trying to sell him some sort of illicit substance instead.
The green haired woman, however, just stares right back, completely unbothered by his ostensible rudeness and sudden silence. A few more moments pass them by in awkward stillness before she deigns to speak again, shattering the stillness with zero remorse.
“Well,” Nelliel says, adjusting her small stack of books one last time, “I’m right across the hall if you ever need anything— just do me a favor and knock.”
“I don’t— and won’t— need anything.” He responds right away, perhaps a little too quickly for it to be 100% believable.
“Sure,” his new hallmate says, both corners of her mouth curving slightly upwards. “But as neighbors, we ought to help each other out, so… just keep it in mind.”
And with that, she turns on her own heel to advance back inside her own shithole apartment, the door and its accompanying lock both clicking shut behind her. Grimmjow, meanwhile, finds himself simply staring at the spot where she’d been moments earlier, standing frozen in front of his door like an idiot.
A medical student, living right next door. A friendly medical student, even. To the best of his ability, he shrugs off the strange feeling burning inside of his chest, telling himself internally that it wasn’t like he’d ever need her— who wasn’t even a doctor, by her own admission— for anything.
Oh, how very wrong he would turn out to be.
The first time that he knocks on her door, it’s weeks later and far into the night— around 1:45 AM.
She hadn’t been sleeping, of course; sleep is a luxury afforded to those who don’t need to be top of their class in every subject to maintain strict scholarships, so when the unexpected sound reaches her ears, she merely purses her lips into a shape of slight of annoyance, wondering if she should bother answering at all.
The knocks come soft at first, then turn heavier and more urgent.
Nelliel sets her current obnoxiously thick textbook aside, stands up from her chair at her kitchen table, and gently pads over to the door barefoot. When she peeps through the privacy hole, a sharp gasp escapes her nearly instantaneously and she yanks the door wide open just as Grimmjow himself is finally leaning (or collapsing) forward, forcing him to catch himself upon the frame in order to avoid faceplanting into her apartment.
“Don’t say anything,” he hisses to her in a low tone of voice, fresh blood dripping from his brow with each passing word. “Just… do the doctor thing.”
“The doctor thing.” Nelliel stares him up and down in a state of total disbelief, a single brow raised.
“You told me to call on you if I ever needed help, neighbor. Well, you’re a doctor. Fix me.”
“I’m not a doctor,” she finally manages to say, heaving a long sigh as she reaches out and yanks one of his arms over her shoulder for support. “But I can safely say that you are an idiot.”
“Never heard that one before,” comes his half-hearted reply.
They walk a few wobbly steps from the entrance into what would be considered a foyer were this not such a shithole, the blood from his brow drip drip dripping onto her crappy linoleum floors, until they finally reach what he assumes must be her living area. Nelliel gingerly lowers him onto her couch; Grimmjow protests by grumbling, but it’s obvious that his whole attitude isn’t behind it from the lack of volume and harsh words.
She flits around him busily like a little bird while he sits in silence, watching her assemble various small kits and certain items that he’s only seen before in hospitals— his absolute least favorite place to go, he thinks— between the smell of antiseptic, the stench of death, and the way the people always treated him, no; bleeding here on his neighbor’s floor and furniture is beyond preferable to that, he thinks.
It doesn’t take long at all before she warily sits down next to him with the necessary tools to clean the gash across his forehead that’s still bleeding rather profusely. Curiousity getting the better of her, she finally asks him in a gentle tone of voice so as not to offend somehow, “What happened?”
Grimmjow merely grunts, but offers an answer after a pregnant pause passes them by. He chooses to say nothing about his involvement in The Pit, and instead get straight to the point of the matter.
“Guy fucking headbutted me.”
Nelliel raises a single brow as she dabs at the wound with antiseptic (something that forces Grimmjow to suck air in through his teeth), and she can’t help the curve of a smile that plays around the corners of her lips. “Let me get this straight: your head hit another person’s, and somehow you, Mr. ‘I’m Always Irritated’, ended up losing?”
“Oh, shut up,” he snaps at her rather abruptly, but he doesn’t pull away when she switches from cleaning the wound to stitching it up as gently as humanly possible, and he can’t help but notice how her hands are so very delicate and precise in a way that nobody else’s ever have been with him before.
When she’s done, he expects questions— where were you, why were you fighting, how in the hell did you end up in the gutter called life like this— but instead, Nelliel merely sets aside her now dirtied tools and tells him to simply get some rest.
Ultimately, he falls asleep on her now blood stained couch, and when he does, she doesn’t wake him. In the wee hours of the morning, he wakes up and slips out the front door, not a single “thank you” exchanged on his part, nor a “you’re welcome” on hers.
Ever since she was little, she had always been an avid reader; to her, books are an escape, a way to enter a whole different world different from the one she’s grown oh-so-used to. She remembers cowering on the nights that her parents would fight with raised voices and irate tempers, hiding beneath her covers with a flashlight and a book in an attempt at fleeing the situation unfolding beyond her door.
Such a toxic and abusive environment had led to her leading a charge and emancipating herself when she turned 16. It’s only been a few years since she’s seen them, but looking back, her parents’ faces have grown somewhat hazy in her memory, and she’s perfectly content with that fact given that said faces usually haunt her dreams.
Her love for reading, though; that had never changed nor faded over time— something that is currently being put to the test as she pores over a rather dry anatomy chapter that she’s already read two times. Repetition is usually key for her, but she just can’t wrap her head around the material for once, and it’s giving her a minor headache.
It’s then that the knock at her door comes, interrupting her attempt at focusing upon the anatomy book laid on the table before her. It is by no means a gentle knock, and most definitely not a neighborly one, but it’s one that she somehow feels reverberate through the shitty floors beneath her feet. Around this hour (2 am) she’s only ever had one visitor before, and she’d put good money on this being a repeat of last time.
Nelliel closes her eyes, rubbing at them in an exasperated manner, exhales somewhat shakily, and then stands up from where she’s lounging on the still blood stained sofa. She nervously makes her way to the apartment door, biting down upon her bottom lip and reminding herself that she doesn’t know this man all that well, assuming that it’s him— but she can’t turn someone in need away, especially when she’s more than likely the only one who can help.
By the time that she finally reaches her plush interior doormat and pulls open the front door without a moment’s hesitation, Grimmjow is leaning upon the frame somewhat sideways for support. She sucks air in through her teeth as she takes in his battered appearance— his shirt torn, his lip split, and a nasty blood stain seeping through whatever mangy cloth he had managed to find to press up against his ribs.
“Let me take a wild guess,” she begins in a dry voice, hoping that it masks the concern she’s feeling welling up in the pit of her stomach. “You tripped down a set of stairs.”
Grimmjow smirks at her— or rather, he tries to, and ends up wincing visibly as an immediate result.
“Stairs swung at me first.”
“Oh, yeah, sure.” She can’t help the tiny grin that surfaces on her face at his answer. “Sounds downright vicious.”
Her playful reply seems to be enough of an invitation inside; he pushes off where he’s been leaning in her doorframe and then proceeds into her apartment with what appears to be a limp, leaving a trail of crimson red droplets upon the scuffed floor. Nelliel says nothing about the blood; after all, if blood unnerved her, she wouldn’t last very long in medicine. Instead, she simply pulls the front door shut, locks it, and follows behind him.
“Sit down,” she instructs in what she hopes is an authoritative tone, and he sinks onto her couch without a word of protest.
She takes note of the fact that he at least chooses to sit in the same place he had been seated in the last time he had paid her a visit, staining it with fresh blood in the exact spot she had already fruitlessly scrubbed with a myriad of cleansers for what seemed like hours. She doesn’t make a fuss about the couch now, either; it’s a lost cause, she thinks, and not worth the energy.
Instead, she spends the next few minutes silently gathering up all of her supplies, taking inventory mentally as she goes— antiseptic, gauze, tape, bandages— before ultimately making her way over to where Grimmjow is sitting, still clutching the cloth to his side. She crouches down in front of him and, biting down on her lip nervously, proceeds to remove the cloth; when she takes it off, she can’t help pulling a dismayed face at the state he’s in.
“You know, I haven’t known you very long,” she says in a soft voice, “but if you aren’t more careful, I get the feeling you’re probably going to run out of intact ribs.”
“I’ve got extras,” is his mumbled response through clenched teeth as she gingerly resumes inspecting his side, taking care not to cause him any unnecessary pain.
Nelliel stops her examination for a moment and merely stares up at him with a deadpan expression. “I’m quite sure that’s not how human anatomy works.”
He merely grunts in response, inhaling sharply when she begins cleaning the wound with a rather hefty dose of antiseptic. Grimmjow lets out a few choice curse words whenever she accidentally presses too hard against him or makes contact with an uncleaned area for the first time, but Nelliel merely ignores him. No big deal; he had expected her to behave as such, like a true professional (never mind the fact that she very much is not yet a professional).
What he doesn’t expect, however, is the brief moment when her hands shake somewhat as she goes about her business; the aforementioned tremors are gone as soon as they came, but they had been there in the first place, which makes him give pause. His blue eyes flicker down at her, first landing upon her hands where they are working and then jumping to her face.
“What is it?” he asks, his tone gruff but not overly harsh.
“Nothing,” she says rapidly— perhaps a little too quickly, and she feels the need to reiterate herself as a result. “Nothing at all.”
He doesn’t respond to her reply, but his eyes do not leave her visage, searching her expression for something; anything at all. Nelliel goes out of her way not to meet his gaze as she finishes cleaning the wound and tapes him up with a meticulously practiced precision. As she does so, she does her very best to ignore the growing tightness within her chest.
Grimmjow stays silent for the rest of the treatment and, as she rises from where she’s seated on the couch and gathers up her now dirtied first aid supplies, lets his head loll backwards uncaringly against the edge of the sofa. He closes his eyes, and few minutes pass him by as he listens to her cleaning things and putting them away in the other room. Before he knows it, he’s fallen asleep on her blood-stained couch once again.
Grimmjow awakens many hours later in the same spot he had fallen asleep on, and his very first coherent thought is a simple, resounding ‘fuck’.
Everything hurts.
And when he says everything hurts, he doesn’t mean the dull ache of pulled muscles or the somewhat comforting sensation of soreness after a good fight; those types of pain he could deal with no problem, even wear proudly like a badge. But this? This is markedly worse, he thinks to himself— the pain stemming from his side is heavy, sharp, and ever-present, making even taking in the slightest breath absolute agony.
He hisses, his teeth clenching together as he attempts to take in a deep breath and ends up wincing severely as a result. It’s at this point that he finally opens his blue eyes, and the first thing that he notices is that the ceiling above him most definitely is not his own— it’s far too clean and intact. This ceiling has no cracks spiderwebbing across its expanse, no water stains leaking through peeling paint. Instead, there’s just an ordinary white surface featuring a faint shadow cast by a cheap looking ceiling fan, one that makes an irritating rattling sound as it spins around and around.
It takes him several long seconds to piece together exactly where he is as the events of the night before come flooding back to him all at once, and he takes a moment to glance at the couch beneath him, grimacing at the gratuitous blood stains he’s left behind— and that’s when he notices that there’s a pillow propped up behind his head alongside a painstakingly crocheted blanket covering most of his body.
Then the smell hits him.
It’s been ages since he’s eaten anything besides shitty takeout and the most basic of food, so the scent of bacon and eggs wafting from what he assumes is the kitchen makes his mouth begin to water instantaneously. He shifts his position and emits a low grunt as pain shoots up his body from his bandaged side, which he takes a moment to examine before finally pushing off the couch with both of his hands and standing up.
He’s a bit wobbly on his feet, and he takes a moment to steady himself before glancing down at his dominant hand. Grimmjow flexes it in an experimental fashion, and grunts softly when it aches with that old familiar feeling following a fight. Good, he thinks— that means it still works, which means he can return to The Pit.
“She didn’t do a half-ass job,” he mutters out loud to no one in particular, not expecting the response that immediately follows.
“Of course I didn’t.” Nelliel’s voice comes from the nearby doorway, calm and steady.
His head and gaze snap upwards instantly— something he instantly regrets, as the movement sends a severe surge of pain down his neck and throughout his body. Nelliel stands in the doorframe of the kitchen with a plate of food in one hand and a mug in the other, looking like she hadn’t just spent a portion of last night putting him back together. In fact, she looks rested, with her green hair loosely tied back and a pair of glasses perched on top of her head. For someone who had seen him in such rough shape, she appears to be fine; utterly composed, even.
“You’re not allowed to be up and moving just yet,” she continues on when he doesn’t respond to her initial statement, stepping into the living area towards him.
He snorts at that. “‘Allowed’? That’s cute. What, you gonna stop me from moving?”
“If I have to.”
Nelliel crosses the room, places both the mug and the plate down upon the small table that she’s got set up besides her now blood-stained couch, and then she’s suddenly reaching out to him before he can even react. Her fingers are warm to the touch from carrying the dishes, and as she gingerly presses them against his bandaged side, he shoots her a venomous glare of obvious warning. However, she is unafraid and unyielding, and simply moves her hand up to rest upon his shoulder before gently using it to guide him back down onto the sofa.
Grimmjow bristles immediately.
“Look, don’t—”
“Just sit down.”
Her voice isn’t loud, nor is it forceful— but there’s an element present in her soft tone that somehow stops his usual instinct to snap back in its tracks. He hesitates for a long few seconds and then, making a “tch” noise, he finally allows himself to drop back down onto the couch.
“Bossy,” he mutters, making sure it’s just loud enough for her to hear.
“Got that right,” she says with a small smile before gesturing towards the food and drink set upon the table next to him. “Hungry?”
Grimmjow pauses, and then mumbles, “Yeah, actually.”
Her smile widens slightly and she reaches up to fiddle with the glasses on her head, as if she’s checking that they’re still there. After a few moments pass them by, she makes her way to his side before plopping down next to him on the couch. Her hazel eyes flicker back and forth between the plate of fresh food and his stoic face, and she makes a motion for him to help himself.
He doesn’t need any further encouragement; after all, he hadn’t been lying, and his stomach is indeed empty. Reaching for the plate and its accompanying silverware, he eyes the three strips of bacon and hefty pile of scrambled eggs that she’s prepared for him hungrily. Picking up the fork and taking a bite of the eggs, he chews slowly and deliberately, occasionally reaching for the mug of black coffee she’s given him to go with the meal.
He’s about halfway finished with the plate and has a mouth full of bacon when she speaks up at last, and his blue eyes land upon her as she talks. She doesn’t meet his gaze, instead absentmindedly twirling a lock of green hair around her finger while staring down at her feet like they’re the most interesting thing in the room.
“If this is going to be a more regular thing than I had initially anticipated, I… I think I should get to know you a little better.”
He merely blinks, chewing and swallowing his mouthful of food, and takes a few moments to mull over what she’s just said before he responds.
“…Huh.”
Nelliel finally raises her gaze to meet his, clearly unimpressed by his single syllable reaction. “‘Huh’? That’s it?”
“What, you want me to spill my whole life story to a stranger?” He drawls sarcastically, taking another bite of bacon right after to avoid having to speak any more.
Her mouth purses into a thin line, but she doesn’t relent or falter. “Not a stranger, but your neighbor… one who’s been kind enough to patch you up twice now without asking any questions.”
“I’d prefer we keep it that way,” he replies, and then, deciding that sounded a bit too harsh given the circumstances, he adds on: “the questions, I mean.”
“Okay, I hear you. No questions.” She shifts her position, crossing one leg over the other. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t learn a little more about you… and find out why you keep showing up beaten and bloody on my doorstep.”
“That,” he says in a harsh tone of voice, “is also off limits.”
She doesn’t need to know about The Pit, he thinks to himself; doesn’t need to know that he’s a pathetic burnout who can only make money risking his life and limb fighting brutal battles. For the first time, he realizes that he feels almost… ashamed of his ‘occupation’, and it’s an unpleasant burning sensation that he finds himself wishing away with every fiber of his being.
“Okay,” Nelliel says with a sigh, “then what isn’t off limits?”
He pauses, and a long silence lingers between them, broken only by the sound of his soft chewing and the occasional street noise drifting in from outside the barred windows. Grimmjow clears the plate in record time, and he washes down the food with the lukewarm coffee. She says nothing, patiently awaiting his reply, as if she knows that it’s not a good idea to push him.
“You already know my name and where I live,” he says, “that’s more than most people know already.”
Her brow is knit with slight frustration and she crosses her arms over her chest, but she doesn’t press him any further. Instead, she merely sits there for a long few moments before standing up, grabbing the now empty plate and mug from the side table, and then walks towards the kitchen. She enters the room and disappears from his sight, and he hears her sink running as she begins washing the dishes that she’d prepared his breakfast on.
Grimmjow takes this opportunity to stand up once more, ignoring all the excruciating pain it causes him, and he slinks towards the kitchen. Upon entering, he finds that it’s no nicer than his— the stove is in shit shape, and the door handle is actually duct taped onto the refrigerator. The sound of his shoes on the linoleum floors alerts her to his presence, and she looks up from where she’s standing at the sink.
An exasperated sigh escapes her lips. “Look, you can’t be moving—”
“You might as well save your breath,” he says bluntly. “I’ve got places to be today, so I can’t stay put on your couch forever.”
A blatant lie, but one that she appears to buy without question. Her mouth is pressed into a thin line again, but she doesn’t do anything to stop him or force him back to the couch this time.
“Thanks for the food,” he continues, “but this won’t be happening again, so don’t worry about getting to know me better.”
If he didn’t know any better, he’d think that she looked slightly hurt at that particular statement; however, the brief display of emotion is gone before he can even contemplate it further. The green haired woman merely nods her head and lets out one last long sigh before she speaks.
“If you say so, Grimmjow.”
The soft way she says his name makes goosebumps rise upon the back of his neck, a sensation he’s quite content to ignore. She then turns back towards the sink and resumes scrubbing dishes wordlessly, which he takes as his cue to leave. As he opens the front door, he hears her call after him.
“Bye, neighbor.”
Grimmjow says nothing as he exits her apartment and pulls the door shut behind him. He had meant what he said; at first, showing up at her door for medical care had seemed like a good idea, but now that she’s asking questions and getting curious about a guy like him…
Forget it, he tells himself. Forget her. He can buy his own first aid kit, he can learn to sew himself up— anything to avoid the hospital or showing up on her front stoop again. As he makes his way across the hall back to his own apartment, he tries his hardest to ignore the tiny voice in the back of his head, the one that whispers to him that maybe just one person knowing a little more about him wouldn’t be so bad after all.
No, Grimmjow thinks definitively; there’s no room in his pitch dark world for any sort of light, and his outwardly kind and warm neighbor doesn’t deserve to get involved with someone like him— someone who belongs in a gutter, who’s made a living out of violence. Pulling his beaten up front door shut behind him, he closes it with a little too much force, causing it to slam.
The tiny voice, however, refuses to disappear; it lingers in the back of his mind, and no matter how irritated he gets, he can’t seem to get it to shut up.
And Grimmjow?
Well, he simply doesn’t know what to make of that.