Chapter Text
The worst part of the whole… ordeal, Ichigo decides, is that his family has taken it all in stride.
“Ichigo-nii-san, I picked up some cat food!” Yuzu can barely be seen over the enormous stack of boxes and grocery bags piled up in her arms.
“Thanks, Yuzu,” Ichigo says, taking the bags, instead of trying to explain (again) that neither Yoruichi nor Grimmjow actually eats cat food. He’s been leaving bowlfuls outside Urahara Shouten as paltry vengeance. Every time Geta-boushi comments on the odd number of strays hanging around, it’s a temporary balm on Ichigo’s frazzled and weary soul.
Only a temporary balm, of course, because—
“Ichigo!” It says a lot about how much Ichigo has… adjusted, that he doesn’t try to dodge. Yoruichi hits his chest—claws-first, because she’s habitually terrible—and pulls herself up to perch on his shoulder.
“It’s so cute that you taught her how to meow your name!” Yuzu giggles and scratches Yoruichi between the ears. Yoruichi allows it with an air of supreme satisfaction, because she finds Ichigo’s personal misfortune to be hilarious.
“Yup,” Ichigo agrees, because he loves Yuzu, and if she told him the sky was green, he'd be obligated as a loving older brother to agree with her.
“What a good cat you are, Kuro-tan,” Yuzu coos. Somehow, not only is Ichigo’s family convinced that he owns a cat, they're all also under the mistaken and frankly absurd belief that Yoruichi and Grimmjow are the same cat.
Grimmjow and Yoruichi, hellions that they are, do everything in their power to uphold that illusion.
Case in point: Yoruichi chirps and leaps down from Ichigo’s shoulder, twines around his leg (covering his uniform pants in yet another layer of cat hair) and then slinks up the stairs. Ichigo swears he can hear the faintest hint of laughter.
Scowling, Ichigo herds Yuzu into the kitchen. She tells him what goes where, and he packs everything away dutifully. There’s a ten pound bag of dry cat food, and a dozen or so cans of wet food. Ichigo is already thinking about how many cans he could place around Urahara Shouten until the place was overrun with strays.
Yuzu, having started dinner, absently asks Ichigo to grab the rice cooker from its place in the lower cabinet.
Ichigo turns from the cat food and then, very valiantly, does not swear.
The large, black cat sitting on the counter—where it definitely hadn't been a few seconds ago—radiates enough smugness to power a small country.
Ichigo pulls out the rice cooker and sets it on the counter, holding defiant eye contact with the cat. Grimmjow, the larger of the two assholes currently making his life into some kind of ridiculous paradoxical hell, radiates smugness even harder.
“Oh!” Yuzu says suddenly, garnering the attention of everyone in the kitchen, asshole cats included. “I almost forgot. Ichigo-nii-san, I got Kuro-tan some flea shampoo. The clerk said that it’s almost flea season and Kuro-tan could probably use a bath before then.”
Grimmjow, in the process of licking their own back leg, freezes.
Ichigo, for the first time in nearly five and a half months, can feel the love of some god shining down on him.
“Here you go!” Yuzu—sweet, oblivious Yuzu—chirps, shoving one of the grocery bags at Ichigo. “If you give Kuro-tan a bath now, you should be done in time for dinner.”
She turns back to the stovetop, humming. Completely unaware of the chaos she just set in motion.
Ichigo looks slowly from the bag full of not only flea shampoo but also topical treatments and a box of flea collars up to Grimmjow, who hasn’t moved. The smile that pulls at his mouth is, at best, manic.
“Kurosaki,” Grimmjow murmurs, soft enough that Yuzu doesn’t hear it, but hard-edged with warning.
“Come on, Kuro-tan,” Ichigo doesn’t even try to keep the sadistic glee out of his voice. He scoops the cat into his arms with minimal fuss, because at the very least Yoruichi and Grimmjow are reluctant to kick his ass within hearing range of his sisters.
“It’s bath time.” If his voice is a little too gleeful, well, who’s to say?
“Kurosaki—”
Ichigo has scratches climbing up his arms for the next week, but it was worth it.