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Chapter Text

No one ever told Ichigo that it was happening until it was too late to do much of anything about it.

Looking back at it later, he decided that as far as Grimmjow was concerned, he should have expected it. Despite whatever attachment Grimmjow felt towards him, he was still never one to ask for help. He had probably thought that the situation would make Ichigo see him as weak or pity him or some other shit that Ichigo never would have done, but Grimmjow was Grimmjow.

He would have thought Harribel would have said something, though. She was their queen and she had always wanted them to be able to exist freely. Ichigo would have thought that she would have asked for help - regardless of how much she may not have wanted to - if it was something so important. But she hadn't said anything either, and not even Nel had breathed a word to him. That one hurt a little, too. Not as much as Grimmjow's reticence, but it hurt nonetheless.

However different Nel and Harribel were from Grimmjow in several ways, there were apparently still some fundamental similarities between arrancar and one of them was the insistence upon solving their own problems. Or maybe that had only become a fundamental similarity after the whole fiasco with Aizen. Ichigo didn't know, and he didn't really care.

What all of the arrancar had hidden from anyone outside of Hueco Mundo for months was that something had gone wrong in their world. They couldn't even tell what it was; they couldn't see it, or hear it, or smell it, but they felt it in their bones, that it was pulling them towards regression. It was something that none of them had ever heard of having happened this way before, even to the hollows who had been around long before they had like the former king whom Aizen had dethroned. The way that it had always worked was that hollows had to eat and eat and keep eating in order to evolve and would regress if they didn't, outside of meeting some special circumstances. Becoming arrancar, they had believed, was one of those special circumstances that eliminated the risk of regression for good.

But when it all came to light, Grimmjow told Ichigo that they had all felt it from the moment it began happening. It was a feeling he couldn't describe when he tried to explain it, but he knew immediately what it meant. They all knew. And they hadn't said a word.

Maybe Ichigo really was too oblivious. Otherwise he might have sensed sooner that something was wrong. Grimmjow had never behaved any differently but he had begun showing up much more often. Ichigo had always seen him decently often since they had come to terms with the fact that there was something more between them than a semi-alliance doused in a healthy coat of intense rivalry. But that 'decently often' suddenly turned into just about every day. Ichigo noticed it of course, but just filed it away as one of temporary, inexplicable Grimmjow things that he did every so often. He didn't even bother to ask about it because he certainly didn't mind. Just shrugged and saw Grimmjow when he had time, and told him he was busy when he didn't. And in the latter case, Grimmjow just tended to linger nearby and occupy himself until Ichigo was free again. But it should have been a sign, and it was one Ichigo had undoubtedly overlooked.

When he did finally find out about the situation, he - and very understandably, in his opinion - took the news rather poorly.

"What the hell is wrong with you? That's not funny, Grimmjow."

The frown of the arrancar in question deepened. "Do I look like I'm being funny?" he asked tersely.

As a matter of fact he did not, which drove a shot of cold through Ichigo's gut. "You had better be joking. Because if you weren't joking, that would mean you'd known for months that something like that was happening and just never told me. Which would be fucked up even for you."

Looking back on it later, he didn't think he had genuinely expected Grimmjow to fess up that alright, okay, Ichigo caught him - he had only been fucking with him and it was a terrible joke. But he also hadn't been willing to acknowledge that the alternative was a possibility and that Grimmjow was being serious because that would mean... well, what he said.

So Grimmjow heaved something that sounded annoyed and shifted his eyes away for a moment before bringing them back to Ichigo. "I had my reasons for not telling you. But it's true."

Both of them stayed quiet for what must have been at least a few minutes during which Ichigo thought he probably went through a full loop on the emotional rollercoaster. First he was disbelieving, then he was absurdly confused, then he was so devastated he thought his knees might give out from under him, and then he was seething in anger. The conversation escalated at the speed of light into a massive argument.

"Why the fuck should I have even bothered being with you," Ichigo demanded, "If you were always going to just keep doing everything for yourself and never giving a shit about how things would affect me?!"

"That wasn't what it was."

"Then what was it, Grimmjow? What possible fucking reason could you have for not telling me for months that you were going to regress and not be yourself anymore?! I wouldn't have kept something like that from you, you know I wouldn't."

"I ain't gonna regress, I'm gonna kill myself before it happens!" was the snarled reply, and it caused Ichigo to stop short. Of course he would. Grimmjow had mentioned regression in very vague terms once before so Ichigo knew what it meant, functionally. And Grimmjow would never let that happen to him, so of course he would-

"You wanna know why I didn't tell you? 'Cause I knew this was what'd happen, but worse. You're freakin' out right now! You're freakin' out and then when you finally get it out of your system and calm down, you're gonna crash and not know where to go from there. You wanted me to tell you right away so you'd be doing that for months, driving yourself crazy and fuckin' beating yourself up every day when you couldn't miraculously fix this like you wanna fix everything? How would that've been any better, huh? Wouldn't've done a damn bit of good for either of us."

"It would've been better because I wouldn't be told last minute that you're going to kill yourself! I can't believe your solution was to just fucking give up! You and Nel, and Harribel! You all just gave up and didn't say anything! We could have talked to Urahara, we could have had him investigate! We could have had him pull in people from the Twelfth Division to figure out some kind of way to stop this!"

"And there's the other reason. 'Cause I knew you'd pull all those other fuckers in. It never clicks for you no matter how many times I say it, that we don't trust the shinigami the way you do, Kurosaki." Grimmjow sure had some fucking nerve to sound as if he were the one entitled to be angry here. "Especially with something like this where we wouldn't have any control if someone tried to pull shit or hit Hueco Mundo while we were less able to defend ourselves. We all agreed way back that we weren't gonna be dependent on shinigami or anything they offered us again, not after Aizen."

He was right about one thing: Ichigo would have pulled anyone and everyone in to help. He would have called in every single favor he had ever earned in his life and then some. But the arrancar were apparently too stubborn to allow that and their resulting reality was this, where there was nothing he could do but sit on his hands and watch? "So instead you just decided to sit around and wait for your death? Is that what you're telling me?!"

Grimmjow regarded him with a hard, level glare. "No," he spat sharply. "What I decided to do and what I did, was come to your world more to be with you."

Ichigo felt as if the ground had vanished from beneath his feet and he was sinking into a place he had never seen. Grimmjow suddenly showing up all of the time, stopping by even when Ichigo was still at work and simply waiting around for him to finish. He had been fitting the most he could into the time he knew he had left. It didn't make Ichigo feel any better. If anything, it made him feel a lot worse.

Oh. Here was that crash Grimmjow had predicted.

Ichigo had been seeing him every day for a while. Soon it sounded as if it would be the polar opposite and he would never see him again. He wasn't certain how he was managing to stay upright at the moment. The idea of Grimmjow being gone forever, it seemed impossible. He just seemed like too much to ever vanish into thin air.

Although he did not look up from where his gaze had fallen to a spot on the ground between them, he heard Grimmjow approach another two steps and his boots appeared in Ichigo's field of view. "We were trying to figure it out ourselves for a month or so. I started coming here more often when it didn't seem like anyone was getting anywhere."

Okay, Ichigo needed to pull it together. He could be mad and sad and every other emotion under the sun later, once he had made sure they tried every possible avenue to fix this. He side-stepped around Grimmjow and continued walking decisively forward. "I need to go talk to Urahara."

A hand gripping his upper arm stopped him. "I just fuckin' said no to that. You really want me to end up some experiment in a lab?" He must have grasped from Ichigo's pause that he didn't understand what he was saying, because he expanded on it. "I remember things I heard about that fuckin' Twelfth Division you mentioned. Making puppets out of arrancar during the Quincy War. You think I wanna risk ending up like that? I'd rather be dust."

Grimmjow's eyes were already on him, watching, when Ichigo's head spun so fast to look back at him that he nearly threw his neck out. "So you must not trust me either, right? Because you should know I would never let that happen to you. Not to any of you, I would tear that place apart first."

"I trust you more than anybody else," Grimmjow firmly corrected with a hint of irritation. "It's got nothing to do with you. I know you don't get it, the shinigami - the ones besides you - how it is with them and us, and how we don't want their fuckin' hands in anything we do. And you know that ain't just me being difficult or else you would've heard something about all this from your best buddy Nelliel, right?"

Yeah, she hadn't told Ichigo either. And she had interacted with Urahara in Hueco Mundo as much as Grimmjow had, back during the war. Apparently their mistrust ran too deep for that to make a difference. Fucking Aizen. "I'm going with or without you. I don't give a shit if you're not okay with it. I don't even care if it makes you hate me. You can hate me as much as you want, I'll take that any day over you regressing and never being able to be yourself again."

That was what caused Grimmjow's expression to darken into something cautionary for the first time in this particular conversation. "I don't give a fuck what we have between us, that doesn't mean you get to make my decisions for me."

"I'm not making a decision for you, I'm making a decision for me, based on what I can live with!" If he did nothing as Grimmjow was asking, well. Ichigo didn't know how he would hold up for the rest of his life, shouldering that burden. Sure as shit not well. "What would you do if the roles were reversed?" he challenged.

He actually didn't know the answer to that himself. Grimmjow would be upset, of course, even if he would never admit it. But if Ichigo had been the one whose life was on the line, he wasn't sure whether Grimmjow would eventually accept it more easily. They had very different philosophies in general, and Grimmjow's was significantly more Darwinian and sort of fatalistic. If something took you out, then you were gone. Too bad, so sad: should've been tougher if you wanted to avoid it. That outlook may have applied across the board, even to part-shinigami perpetual thorns in Grimmjow's side; Ichigo wasn't sure. "If I told you, 'I'm going to die and I give up, so you're not allowed to do anything to stop it,' would you just stand around waiting for it to happen and not try to save me? Because that's what you're asking me to do, and if you think I can do that, then you're fucking crazy and you don't know me at all."

There was a beat of silence between them during which Grimmjow just regarded him with a flat expression and Ichigo waited for him to either begrudgingly let go or say that he would break Ichigo's damn legs to stop him if needed.

What he got was the former. "I wouldn't just let you fuckin' die. Even if it meant I had to work with someone I didn't trust." He released Ichigo's arm. "You made your point. Go talk to whoever you want."

At least that was one step forward. "Then come with me. I won't let anyone do anything to you, I swear on my sisters' lives, okay? But you'll at least have to let him take some sample or run an analysis he needs or whatever, that will give us a better chance of finding a way to stop this than asking him to go in blind." Because Grimmjow seemed to be about to object to that piece, Ichigo thought he was justified in twisting his arm a little. "If we don't try, I'll never forgive myself. It'll be just like with my mom: I'll always feel like it was my fault. And it's fucking awful to live with that sort of guilt, so if you care about me at all then don't do that to me, Grimmjow." He didn't like pulling that card, but Grimmjow's life was on the line so frankly all bets were off. If he had to be a little heavy-handed, then so be it.

Grimmjow glowered, a lot, which Ichigo had expected. But then he looked up at the fake sky of the ceiling before letting out a quiet, "fuck" under his breath. "This ain't what I wanted. ...But I'm not gonna deal with you doing the martyr thing. Can't stand it when you do that shit, sure ain't going out knowing you're doing it 'cause of me." He blew out another frustrated breath. "No one is going digging around in me and if I think something is off, I'm gone."

"Alright, deal, I don't care. Just come on."

"You're a real asshole. I don't know how I let it get to where you can fuckin' play me like this to get what you want," Grimmjow grumbled before they took off up the ladder.

Ichigo ignored him.

Urahara said exactly what Ichigo had feared he would say: no, he wasn't sure what was going on; of course, he would look into it as much as he could and take a sample from Grimmjow (who grimaced at the words) and in Hueco Mundo and do whatever he could; but he warned that it would take time, when it came to something like this. And it didn't seem they had much of that.

Grimmjow sort of brushed it off as if he hadn't expected any differently. When they were outside and had some privacy, Ichigo demanded to know how he was treating it all so flippantly.

"What d'you want me to do? You want me to be all upset and fucked up? What good'll that do me, Kurosaki?"

"Whether it will do you any good or not, I don't know how you can fucking not be. You said that you'll have to kill yourself, Grimmjow! You won't exist anymore, do you get that?!"

"I get it. I've just had more time to accept it than you. And before you start bitchin': yeah, I know, my fault you didn't have that same amount of time, alright?" At what was most likely the remaining fury lighting up Ichigo's face, he huffed and looked a little annoyed when he added, "I haven't exactly had someone like you who'd worry about me before. I thought I was doing better by you by not saying anything."

Well that had been the wrong decision so now Ichigo was pissed at him, too. Pissed and sad and feeling fucking helpless. And maybe he did want Grimmjow to be upset. Maybe Ichigo selfishly did want him to be upset and desperate so that he himself wouldn't be the only one losing his mind over this. But Grimmjow wasn't, and it sounded like it was potentially too late.

Ichigo didn't bother pretending that he might try to force himself to work the following day, instead calling in to tell them he was sick and almost certainly infectious. He stayed in bed, awake and unsettled, until 11 a.m. and then dressed before walking out of his house. Grimmjow hadn't come home with him yesterday after their conversation with Urahara and had gone back to Hueco Mundo for the first night in a while. That had not done Ichigo's state of mind any favors, either.

The weather was inappropriately pleasant and he continued walking until he came to a shrine that was rarely visited anymore, as evidenced by its state of disrepair and overgrowth of vegetation. There was a stone wall surrounding the shrine which Ichigo sat himself down upon and then proceeded to engage in the very exciting pastime of staring at his sneakers.

A shadow fell over him a little later and blocked out the rays of sun that had been falling through gaps in the trees. He didn't bother looking up; he knew who it was. A brief, "Hey," was delivered by a well-loved voice.

"Hey." The response was listless but that was all Ichigo was going to be able to muster anytime soon.

Grimmjow sat down beside Ichigo on the stone wall. "Look like you haven't slept since I saw you yesterday."

"Good observation," Ichigo answered in a clipped tone. If Grimmjow tried to start something right now, Ichigo really would explode at him. "Because I didn't."

"You see what I meant now?" It wasn't as goading as it otherwise may have been, coming from the man in question. "This's what I was trying to avoid by not telling you about everything for a while. So you'd have to do less of this."

Of course he didn't get it. Ichigo loved him the way he was but it wasn't uncommon for them to have these incidents where something that seemed so inherently obvious to Ichigo just didn't seem to register to Grimmjow. His logic didn't always mirror human logic and his priorities were often different.

Ichigo tried not to sound too exasperated when he sighed. "Grimmjow, I would have been a mess no matter what you did. There isn't a way to avoid that; it's just how grief works. I'll still be like this long after you're gone if we can't find a solution. These things take a long time."

"I didn't want you this way over me when there ain't shit I can do to change it."

"Well I don't want you to possibly fucking die. So I guess no one is getting what they want," Ichigo remarked bitterly. Being upset didn't fix anything though, and what was the point of wasting their time together being bitter when it could be all they had left? The seconds on the clock could be ticking away to whatever moment was the unclear deadline. "How are Nel and everyone else?"

Grimmjow shrugged. "More or less the same as me. I think you still forget this sometimes but we ain't human, and we don't look at everything the human way you do. Not so out of place for how it is in Hueco Mundo. You eat someone or get eaten yourself; you win or you lose. You're strong enough or you're too weak, and whatever happens as a result is just the way it is." He made an amused sound. "Maybe all those souls we ate to survive and evolve the way we did are finally getting back at us somehow."

"You're really not helping." Ichigo lifted his feet from the ground to plant them higher up against the wall so that he could set his chin on his knee. "I don't want you to leave me," he admitted miserably.

"I know that." Grimmjow sounded tired. Ichigo wondered whether the thing infecting him drained him physically, or whether the exhaustion he was hearing was simply mental. "I don't want this either."

The silence around them was tense and morosely anticipatory.

"C'mere," Grimmjow demanded quietly and - in authentic Grimmjow form, without bothering to wait for any agreement - slung an arm around Ichigo to yank at him and bring him closer. Ichigo lifted himself to scoot over a little and allowed Grimmjow to direct him until he was aligned against his side. He turned his face and pressed it into the line of Grimmjow's neck between his head and shoulder as he closed his eyes.

It had been a gradual process to come to this point between them. In the beginning of the relationship, neither of them had been comfortable enough to touch each other with familiarity outside of either hitting each other during a spar or fooling around. Then some time had passed, and Ichigo had thought to himself that it was stupid if he couldn't touch his own... whatever they were calling it at that time, and so he had slowly, coaxingly touched Grimmjow a little more - an attempt not so much unlike winning the acceptance of an untrusting beast. And eventually, slowly, Grimmjow had begun initiating similar, arguably affectionate touches himself on occasion, the way he was now. They were always a little clumsy coming from Grimmjow but the message was clear.

Ichigo had worked hard for that. He had worked hard to make their bond what it was, and now it was, what? All that work down the drain?

His thoughts were too depressed and swirling to focus on much. He knew they should be spending their time more wisely, maybe talking if they could do that without devolving into another argument about how the circumstances should have been handled. But he couldn't muster the energy to do anything besides feel Grimmjow's body in the places it was touching his own.

Something like a minute later, he was jostled a little by the arm around him. "Hey, you listening?"

Ichigo made an acknowledging noise.

"I thought about it all a lot. Wanna see whether you'll do something for me. Will you?" Grimmjow asked that as if there were anything Ichigo wouldn't do for him, regardless of how angry he was.

"Don't be stupid. You already know the answer to that." Ichigo didn't lift his head but he opened his eyes and stared at the patch of hierro-encased skin beneath his face. It was Grimmjow's left side, so the nasty scar along his clavicle was a jagged line in Ichigo's line of sight. "What do you need?"

"Never thought I'd be in a position to ask for this shit." Ichigo waited to hear what 'this' was but in what seemed to be a non-sequitur, Grimmjow continued in a firm tone to say, "I'd rather do anything than regress. So my first instinct was what I told you: that I'd off myself when I felt that I was getting too close to the edge. No regression, no rebirth; I'd just be at the end."

Ichigo had already heard about that plan and didn't particularly want to be involved in this discussion if this was the direction it would be taking. "Doesn't sound like you need me for that."

"I'm getting there. When I was sitting out in the desert thinking about this, I thought about that and how it was probably my best bet. It's what I would've done at any point before, if this happened in the past. But I thought about you, too. I never expected this thing with us before it happened, but maybe it changes the situation. Your zanpakutou's different than mine," he tilted his head in reference at his hip where Pantera hung between them from his belt, "Yours does that cleansing thing on hollows."

There was an abrupt sinking sensation in Ichigo's stomach at what he was most likely about to hear.

"The way I see it," Grimmjow explained, "I got two options. Option one is I just do it myself and disappear: gone. Maybe like I'm supposed to. But option two is I have you do it, and I go through that whole cycle you shinigami can set off." He craned his head back so that Ichigo would no longer be pressed against his neck and Grimmjow would be able to meet his eyes directly. "Only one of those options leaves the possibility that me and you can meet each other again. So maybe that's the better option."

Ichigo shook his head only slightly. "You would pass as a soul into Soul Society and you wouldn't remember anything about having been an arrancar or a hollow before that; none of it."

"I know how it fuckin' works," Grimmjow assured with only a hint of the ill-temperedness Ichigo would expect. He studied Ichigo with a considering gaze. "I'd be starting from nothing and I wouldn't know you. I wouldn't be strong; I'd be a nobody. Would you come looking for me? Even if I wouldn't remember?"

As if any of that were even a question. "You'd never be a nobody. And of course I would. If I would be able to tell it was you, I would look for you until I found you."

Grimmjow jerked his head to the side and lifted an eyebrow in suggestion. "Then is that what we're gonna do?"

Later that night as Ichigo considered everything again when he was lying in his bed beside Grimmjow and failing in his attempts to fall asleep, he reconfirmed to himself that it was an easy decision.

Any strategy that had the potential to keep some part of Grimmjow with him would have been welcome. He was desperate enough to agree to nearly anything.

A little over a week later, Urahara had made no substantial progress. Ichigo's expression at hearing that must have been devastated because he had never seen Urahara look quite so remorseful.

Upon hearing that the outlook wasn't promising, he decided to start preparing their back-up plan. If there was nothing that could be done, then he needed to ensure he would be able to find Grimmjow's soul in Soul Society.

"You're telling me that you're gonna mobilize the entire Gotei to figure out where I end up?" Grimmjow asked as they sat in Ichigo's bedroom one afternoon.

"The way you're saying it makes it sound dumb, but basically: yeah."

Ichigo couldn't remember ever having seen Grimmjow laugh harder than he did then. He laughed so hard that he went from sitting upright with his back against the side of the bed to lying on the floor.

"I thought we had more time before you lost your mind," Ichigo teased half-heartedly. "This is kind of premature." In reality, he wouldn't be upset if Grimmjow laughed about this for the rest of the night. It was a much more pleasant atmosphere than what they had ever since the regression threat had been revealed. "It wasn't even my idea, I just explained the situation and Rukia ran with it." He wasn't sure whether Grimmjow was still listening but it didn't matter.

"Holy shit," the arrancar exclaimed when he had stopped. "Hey, they still got Aizen in a container underground somewhere? Kurosaki, I'm counting on you to make sure someone tells him. What I wouldn't give to see his fuckin' face when he hears the whole Gotei is gonna be sweeping Soul Society looking for me. That's the funniest shit I've ever heard."

Given the circumstances, Ichigo was more than willing to throw fuel on the fire if it could keep this good mood alive. "You'll think it's funnier when I tell you that all of the shinigami in the Gotei have your picture now."

Grimmjow lifted his head from where it was resting on the floor so that they could lock eyes. "Get the fuck out of here."

"How else would they recognize you? Only a few of them have ever seen you. Rangiku-san is mad at me, she took one of your pictures and told me I've been holding out on her by never bringing you around."

When Grimmjow started cackling again at that, Ichigo finally caved and laughed along with him.

Most of the time, however, Ichigo wasn't laughing. He thought he probably didn't smile most days, either. He was very cognizant of the fact that it was stupid: by sulking, he was just pissing away time he would probably never have with Grimmjow again. They should have been enjoying as much as they could, being happy. But Ichigo felt as though he were simply going through the motions, because he felt like an empty husk all the time.

As it currently stood, signs were pointing to the need to go with the Soul Society plan. That was definitely not the preferred plan, since it still involved essentially losing Grimmjow. The part of him that would remain in existence wasn't the part of him that would remember Ichigo or all the memories they shared or what they had ultimately become to one another. His Grimmjow, in a lot of ways, would be gone even if his soul lived on. And that had to be enough if it was either that or oblivion, but that didn't mean Ichigo couldn't feel heartbroken about it.

He tried to remain optimistic. He would just... he would just get Grimmjow up to speed. And then they would be together again.

Grimmjow didn't seem very concerned about much. Ichigo attempted to talk to him about it once. He asked him how he felt, whether he was frustrated about the parts of him that would disappear. "That's gonna happen either way," he told Ichigo. "Only difference between you killing me and killing myself is whether or not part of me stays with you."

"Aren't you angry that it has to end that way, though? I'd be angry. I'm angry for you. You had to make a decision between two shitty options because of something out of your control."

Grimmjow responded with an aggravated noise that said he would have preferred to change the subject. "Yeah, I am. Maybe not as much as I might've been once."

Ichigo's laugh rang insincere. "You're usually angry about everything. Now of all times, you learned to rein in the temper? When you have more reason to be angry than ever?"

Grimmjow looked at him for a moment, then jerked his head with a careless shrug. "Some things're different now."

Ichigo had asked (albeit with zero enthusiasm) the others in Hueco Mundo what they wanted to do, whether they were interested in the same offer as Grimmjow was taking. While he absolutely did not want to play this role, he wasn't sure who else could and it seemed cold-hearted not to extend the option if he was going to do it for Grimmjow. What was he going to say, 'the rest of you are on your own, sorry?'

The responses had been mixed.

Obviously he had asked Nel first, and she had taken a lot of time to think about it. But eventually she came back to him and - with the usual rib-cracking hug - reported that she, Pesche, and Dondochakka would take him up on it. She did express some regret that she expected it would be tough for him and assured him that if he couldn't, it would be okay. That caused him to feel even more obligated to follow through. He had told her that he would find her, too, but she had just smiled and told him not to worry, that he should just focus on finding Grimmjow first.

Harribel and the Bestias had turned down his offer. And that made him feel bad, but it wasn't his decision in the end and he didn't have the same ability to convince them as he had Grimmjow. Harribel had delivered the answer in the dignified manner that she did everything. He would say, however, that there was a hint of warmth he didn't usually see from her when she said that it had been kind for him to ask about the four of them.

There were two dozen or so other arrancar left that Ichigo basically didn't know at all, and so he had not been surprised when none of them were interested in accepting anything from him. They knew who he was but that didn't mean they liked him, and he soon discovered that he already had a bad rap with a few of them solely due to his close association with Grimmjow. Apparently he had ripped one girl's leg off or something, which seemed a little extreme to Ichigo but Grimmjow had dismissed his objections by saying, "she's a bitch, trust me," and pointing out that Inoue had grown the damn thing back anyway.

Ichigo spent every single day with Grimmjow. He took as much time as he could off work in order to do so. They hopped around between Hueco Mundo and different spots in Karakura as they had always done, which was almost uncomfortable in that it seemed as if they were pretending everything was normal. But it was never normal because the countdown timer felt like a physical presence in the vicinity with them regardless of where they were, and Ichigo had to force himself not to think about it. He didn't want to think about what would happen when the clock struck midnight or what he would need to do when it did.

Grimmjow told him in no uncertain terms that they were going to fight. In his mind, the only option was for his rebirth to follow the climactic battle he had always wanted and he refused to go through with it any other way. And Ichigo had to win in order to get the result for which they were aiming.

"What if I lose?" Ichigo asked.

"I'll tell you if it comes to that," Grimmjow answered.

They were in Las Noches one day, about four weeks after Grimmjow had originally revealed what was going on, when Ichigo learned the timer had been ticking away faster than he had thought.

"It's getting closer. So we'd better do it soon," Grimmjow reported casually, as if just discussing ordinary plans for any other day. Ichigo didn't know how he could say it that way. He wanted to go crawl under his duvet and pretend it wasn't real anytime this conversation was broached.

"How do you know?"

"I can just tell, same way I've been feeling it all along." He glanced over from where he was keeping pace at Ichigo's side. "Thinking our best shot is to do it in the Living World so that my soul will go up just like all the pluses. That way's more predictable than if we tried to do it from here."

Ichigo did not really have anything that he wanted to say to that. At least nothing that would be productive: it would likely just be more unhelpful things shouted in anger, panic, sadness, or a combination of the three. That had happened from time to time over the past several weeks, and while Grimmjow had seemed exasperated and a little confused about why Ichigo remained so touchy after the initial big blow out, he let it happen. He never zipped off and left Ichigo to deal with being upset by himself, even if that meant he only stayed so that they could have a shouting match. And in some ways, that was a little cathartic. Much more so than it would have been if he had just been frustrated that Ichigo was upset and left him to work himself out of it on his own.

The only thing Ichigo said at the moment was, "Okay."

Grimmjow had stopped walking, and Ichigo was forced to hit the brakes as well when he was suddenly caught from behind. One arm circled around his waist and the other angled so that Grimmjow's palm was flat against his chest. Ichigo hesitated before leaning back into the body behind his, and they stayed in that position for a few long seconds.

"Back when I first evolved, I remember walking through the desert," Grimmjow began against Ichigo's neck in a rumble. This was already a warning sign because he really didn't talk much about that period in general. "I hadn't been able to think for very long but I could still tell even then how this life was gonna be. I was gonna have to fight until I was so strong that I could do whatever I wanted and crush anything in my way. It was always gonna be that way, and that was fine with me. It was just the way it was."

Ichigo was staring down the length of the corridor without even blinking as he listened.

"But then you showed up and changed the way everything went. Turned out to be the good part of it. Never can do anything half-assed, can you?"

He felt Grimmjow's lips curve and teeth pressed against his skin signaled that he had grinned. "Wanna get some more fucking in? Get all the last hurrahs in we can before I gotta hit the road."

"Can you stop acting like everything is okay?"

Grimmjow planted both of his hands on Ichigo's sides and spun him around so that they were just as close but now chest to chest. He let one arm fall back to his side and kept the other slung around Ichigo's waist. "C'mon, quit being so miserable and give me shit like you usually do."

He had that usual mischievous gleam in his eye and a crooked smirk: not worried at all, barely bothered. Ichigo couldn't understand it. It was only a matter of (what was now revealed to be very minimal) time before it was all gone. And afterwards, things wouldn't be the same even despite their best efforts to get close. Ichigo's reserves were too empty for him to put on a show. "I'm not as enthusiastic to give you shit lately when I know you're about to leave me any day."

Grimmjow's demeanor dimmed immediately and he scoffed in exasperation. "Well it ain't today, so you might as well cheer up." There was a pause before he asked, "If I hadn't told you about it at all and just let it happen, would you've been so pissed at me that you wouldn't've been upset?"

"What?" The intention didn't register in Ichigo's exhausted mind. "I don't get what you're asking."

"If you hadn't found out until it was too late. You'd've been fuckin' fuming. Maybe I should've done that, if being that mad at me would've kept you from being so goddamn sad. Think I might've rather had you hate me than be like this, if I was gonna be dead anyway."

Another one of those things Grimmjow didn't get, Ichigo thought dully. "I would've still been just as sad no matter how pissed I was at you. One doesn't cancel out the other that way." 

It was like living every day waiting for a bomb to drop on his head. Every morning when Ichigo woke up, he wondered whether Grimmjow would tell him it was the day. None of it was fair. Not to him, not to Grimmjow, not to Nel or any of the others. He thought he had fought to make things better. What had been the point if the world was still so unjust? Ichigo felt that he had never asked for too much in life and he gave a hell of a lot back, so why did he have to lose some of the few things he had?

He rested his forehead on Grimmjow's right shoulder. "I love you."

"You really are fucked up over this," Grimmjow ribbed. "You never say that." He hadn't let up on his one-armed hold around Ichigo's middle.

No, Ichigo definitely didn't say it often. Probably only on a handful of occasions. He still said it more often than Grimmjow, whom Ichigo recalled having said he "probably" loved him only once, and it had sounded like an accident because Grimmjow had hauled ass back to Las Noches shortly thereafter and not reappeared for four days. Ichigo had known better than to resurface the topic when he returned. "You knew anyway, didn't you?"

He felt the tip of Grimmjow's nose press into the hair on the side of his head. "Maybe I did."

Grimmjow had been sleeping beside him nearly every night for weeks, so Ichigo was not surprised to find him in the bed that morning. But he was surprised to find him sitting on the edge of it, slouched and with his elbows resting atop his thighs. "Grimmjow? What's wrong?"

Twisting his head Ichigo's way, Grimmjow met his eyes. "We gotta have that fight this morning, Kurosaki."

Ichigo's stomach sunk so far that he would probably need to start digging if he wanted it back. A small, optimistic part of him had held onto the hope that Urahara would come through for them in time. Evidently that part of him was stupid.

"...Let me get my badge."

They went far outside of Karakura for their battle, to a wooded area with no buildings nearby. It had seemed the best option in light of needing to do this in the Living World.

On an ordinary day, Ichigo would estimate that he could beat Grimmjow eight times out of ten. Today, he wasn't sure how he was going to win once. All of his movements were stiff instead of fluid and they hadn't even begun yet.

"Ready? This is the one I've been waiting for for years, so you'd better deliver." Grimmjow watched him from a few meters away, mouth tilted in his usual eager anticipation for a clash.

Ichigo didn't think he was in a position to make any promises on how well he would perform. "Ready," he said although he wasn't.

Grimmjow lunged at him.

It escalated into the battle he assumed Grimmjow had been dreaming of. Bankai, resurrección, and every hit intended to maim. Even on Ichigo's end: for all that he had been concerned he wouldn't be able to put up a fight, his survival instincts kicked in quickly. He had no choice if he wanted to stay in one piece, because Grimmjow wasn't pulling any punches.

It probably lasted an hour and a half before Ichigo had managed to pin Grimmjow to the ground. The resurrección dissolved away until he was looking down at Grimmjow as he normally saw him, all black and white clothes, partial mask, and feral confidence. Ichigo let his bankai fade at the same time.

Grimmjow was looking up at him in return, face relaxed and not at all what one would expect under the circumstances. "Looks like you win. Go ahead and end it." Like it was so fucking simple. Was he crazy?

Ichigo had been straddling his waist to keep him down but now he just sort of lost his balance and sat directly on top of him. "You-" He didn't even know what he was planning to say. Because he was sitting here on Grimmjow's waist with Zangetsu in hand and being asked to kill him.

He dropped the blade he kept in his left hand and tightened his grip on the right. He hadn't been able to deal a killing blow to Grimmjow all those years ago in Las Noches and he really didn't think he could do it now, either. When doubt had crept in over the past several weeks since they had planned this, he had told himself that - despite how sick he felt at the notion - when he was in the moment, he would be able to get it done. But his hands and legs felt frozen solid and now he was thinking that he may have overestimated himself. "What was your plan if I lost?" Because it was looking as though they would need to go that route instead.

"I didn't have one," Grimmjow revealed calmly as he held Ichigo's gaze. "No point, 'cause I knew you wouldn't lose. You're the strongest bastard I know."

Normally those words from Grimmjow would have had Ichigo glowing and preening for a week. Today they crushed him.

...He didn't think he could do this, they were going to have to come up with an alternative. He began to stand up.

Before he could, Grimmjow lifted his head and snatched one shihakushou sleeve in hand. "Don't even think about it. You ain't gonna fuckin' bail on me, Kurosaki. We're either doing this right or we ain't doing it at all. You and me both decided this and you have to keep your word, 'cause I don't got a lot of time left before I have to just do it myself and you won't like that either."

His flippant tone did not help and Ichigo glared at him, some resentment seeping into his hand where it was clenched around one of his swords. Grimmjow was one to talk, his part was effortless! He just had to lie there while Ichigo executed hi- the plan. Executed the plan. "Shut the fuck up and stop acting like this should be easy! You don't know what this is like!" He was struggling to get all of his words out evenly. "I'm supposed to protect the people I love, not kill them myself!"

Grimmjow made a frustrated noise as he released the fabric and laid the back of his head against the ground again. "I fuckin' hate that word. But, ain't you? 'Protecting' me?" The emphasis he put on the word was a little exaggerated. His eyes remained steadfastly on Ichigo's face. "You know how else this can end: with me being a mindless weakling with no future, scraping by hour by hour until something eats me. Never anything more than that no matter how many times I win. And I won't even know it. You doing this would 'protect' me from that. So if you wanna protect me so bad, you need to do this. You're the only one who can 'cause I ain't letting anyone else get close enough."

Admittedly - as much as Ichigo hated it - hearing it rephrased that way did cause him to hesitate in outright abandoning their idea. What was the other outcome? Exactly what Grimmjow had just described. And if he didn't do this, then Grimmjow would do it himself and Ichigo would never see him ever again. And he thought he dreaded that idea even more than what he would have to do to prevent it.

He wished that he could be anywhere besides here, expected to kill someone he loved. But Grimmjow believed that Ichigo was the strongest warrior he knew. He was honoring him by telling him that he was the only one who could do this.

Ichigo would have given almost anything to not be that person right now.

He continued repeating to himself internally that Grimmjow needed him for this, that he was depending on him, and he swallowed, shifted, turned his eyes to his zanpakutou.

"Hey, you gotta wait for me before you jump into any new wars. Just 'cause I'm starting fresh doesn't mean you get to leave me out of it," Grimmjow warned with a smirk.

He was obviously being playful but Ichigo wasn't as he looked back to him. "I swear I won't stop looking for you until I find you. No matter how long it takes."

The smirk on Grimmjow's face slipped into something that was smaller but somehow also more genuine. "If there's one thing I'm sure of, it's that. You're a stubborn son of a bitch." He lifted an arm and settled his hand around the curve of Ichigo's neck in a fonder gesture than he usually allowed. "Maybe I'll be better at it all this next time around, with not being a hollow anymore."

"Better at what?"

Grimmjow maintained an indifferent expression but his gaze shifted to some point beside Ichigo's ear in a way that suggested he would've preferred not to say any more. "You know what. Being with you, and love and all of that shit."

The words hit Ichigo right in the chest and Zangetsu met the ground at Grimmjow's side with a dull thunk again as his arm went involuntarily slack.

"You know why I'm doing this. It's so I can come back, for you." Grimmjow was rapidly growing uncomfortable at this subject, judging by the tension slowly creeping into the planes of his face. He had never liked talking about emotions when it came to anything, let alone when it came to Ichigo. "I know I ain't ever been very good at any of that by your standards. But as much as I can, anyway, I did. At least the bar's set real low for the new me," he pointed out. "Won't have to do much at all to impress you and you'll think it's a big improvement."

Ichigo had to collect himself before quietly correcting him. "You don't need any improvement. You do just fine at being with me."

He lifted his larger sword again and took in a deep breath. He had to do it. He was protecting him, even Grimmjow had said it. He had to do it. Grimmjow was doing this for him so Ichigo had to do his part.

His heart was about to pound right out of his chest and leave a gaping hole in its wake.

The blade was long so he had to straighten his back as much as he could and he reluctantly, painstakingly set Zangetsu's tip right where he knew Grimmjow's heart was. Ichigo had felt it beating so many times when he had placed his palm or cheek against his chest. His hearing wasn't as good as Grimmjow's but he swore he could almost hear the healthy thump-thump-thump from here.

Ichigo closed his eyes and pushed.

As soon as it was done, he withdrew Zangetsu and threw it to the side as if the hilt had burned his hand, then collapsed against Grimmjow's body. Ichigo pressed his face into the arrancar's chest without opening his eyes once. He couldn't raise his head and look at him. He tried to force himself multiple times but couldn't, and he knew in that moment that deep down, he was a fucking coward. Grimmjow probably thought so too, would probably be disappointed in him up until the instant he-

A hand splayed against his upper back and fingers curled slightly against his skin. "Quit being so damn sad, dummy. You'll see me again soon, more or less."

Ichigo felt the fingers of the hand against his back start to go first. Those points of pressure vanished a little at a time in an unsettling way, as if Grimmjow were disintegrating.

...Because he was. Ichigo was going to crack into several pieces, he thought as he sucked in a desperate, wet breath.

"You've always done shit for my sake. Even back when I didn't want you to," Grimmjow mused with a trace of appreciation in his voice, rare as a flawless diamond. He didn't sound like he was in pain, but he would never make something like that apparent even if it were the case. Then he paused and Ichigo was terrified that he wouldn't speak again. "Learn my lesson too late once in a while, huh? 'Cause it's only now that I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't've asked you for this."

Ichigo could smell the sharp tang of blood in the air. He held his face against Grimmjow's body and attempted to hold himself together, although the growing dampness in the fabric beneath his eyes suggested he was not doing the world's best job. At least he was maintaining some of his dignity in front of Grimmjow by being quiet about it.

"I bet I'll do better by you this next time around. You beat my ass if I don't." Ichigo wanted to see his face but he still couldn't manage to force his head up, unwilling to witness how much of Grimmjow was already gone. "You're gonna be alright, Kurosaki; you're tough. Don't be so damn sad."

Those were the last words Ichigo heard from him, and not long after he found his face falling forward into the dirt as the body that had been supporting it disappeared.

He didn't move from that spot for a while and barely noticed when the skies opened up and rain began to fall. He stayed there with his knees and face in the dirt even as that dirt turned soggy and muddy around him. Ichigo eventually raised his upper body unsteadily with his elbows so that he could tilt his head back to stare at the indifferent, callous rainclouds. A humorless chuckle escaped his throat at how appropriate it was before he dragged himself over to the nearest tree to slump against it. His eyes fell back to both of his swords on the ground and he couldn't decide whether he wanted Zangetsu to be closer or further away. After a moment, he stuck out his foot to guide one blade at a time towards where he was, then leaned his head back against the trunk once more. Leaves on this particular tree were sparse so Ichigo was hit with more rain than he avoided, and he couldn't have cared less.

It was probably hours later that he heard footsteps approaching, barely audible over the weather, and he decidedly ignored them. A black umbrella materialized over his head, blocking out his view of the sky, patchy leaves, and showering rain.

His eyes shifted slightly downward to find his dad's face. "Can you believe it's raining?" he asked hoarsely. "Figures."

Isshin said nothing but Ichigo saw him sigh a weighted breath. He extended his free hand, the one not holding the umbrella, in offer. It was a long moment before Ichigo took it, and Isshin helped pull him to his feet.

Chapter Text

What followed were months upon months of what Ichigo would have assumed hell was like, had he not seen the place himself to know better. And based on his experience, he could safely say that he thought he would have preferred to be there over this. He was in a loop of grief and regret and waiting, and Ichigo just walked around that loop in circles day after day after day.

Grimmjow was gone.

Nel, Ichigo's good friend and ally, was gone too. He had promised that he would... help? (he didn't even know what to call it) her and her little group as he had done for Grimmjow because he knew how much they trusted him. In the end, he couldn't. He felt like shit about it but his hands froze up when he so much as touched Zangetsu for the next several weeks. Everyone had been very sympathetic - poor Ichigo, that must have been so hard, no one blames you - and no one had held him accountable for skipping out on a commitment he had made to someone he respected. He was told not to worry about Nel and her brothers, and from what he was later told, Rukia had been brave enough to fill in for him. He was grateful that someone had been willing and able to back him up. He had no idea whether she had actually done it herself the way he had to Grimmjow or whether she had figured out some other idea, but he didn't give it much more thought because he risked feeling queasy when he tried.

Hueco Mundo, he didn't know what would happen there at this point without Harribel to keep it all in line and all the arrancar completely gone. It was all such a senseless loss and no one even knew why.

Ichigo had landed a decent job at an office nearby right out of university, but he didn't even try to stay. He had used up all of the leave he possibly could in the time between finding out about the issue in Hueco Mundo and when Grimmjow had d- had left. After he was gone, Ichigo simply resigned rather than wait around to get fired. He knew perfectly well that he probably wouldn't be able to drag himself in there for a while and his performance would have tanked even if he had. He certainly would not have been able to focus on any work. He planned to just find a new job when he felt he was in a better spot to do so - namely, after he found Grimmjow again. Presently, however, the employment situation was extremely low on his list of priorities.

His dad didn't give him as much of a hard time about putting his whole life on hold in the first few months as Ichigo would have assumed, and simply allowed him time. But then again, Ichigo considered at one point, his dad had plenty of experience grieving the loss of the person he loved so maybe Ichigo should have expected the understanding he was being granted.

There had been exactly one occasion on which Isshin had asked Ichigo whether he wanted to talk about it. "I know you might not want to talk it over with me, but you could meet with someone who talks to a lot of people in your situation," he had said through the closed bedroom door.

Ichigo had actually laughed before he turned the offer down; it was just that ridiculous. Because he was sure it would be very easy to go to some sort of very human counselor and say, 'hey, I had to kill the love of my life to keep him from suffering an even worse fate and now I'm waiting on pins and needles to see whether I'll be able to find his cleansed soul on another plane of existence. It's been about as terrible as you would expect and I'm not entirely sure how I should be feeling. Do you have any tips for me?' Yeah, right.

He didn't leave his room for a while outside of essential reasons like taking a trip to the bathroom or stopping in the kitchen to get water. He alternated between lying awake for sequential nights and sleeping for twelve or fourteen hours at a time. On some days he felt up to showering, on others he didn't. His sisters really tried to drag him out of his seclusion in the beginning but he suspected Dad must have said something to them about giving him space, because they toned it down significantly and simply texted him little notes from time to time about being around if he needed anything.

And his sisters cried themselves. Ichigo heard them a few times. Grimmjow had been a regular guest at the Kurosaki household for nearly three years; he had been part of the family after a while. The girls had loved him.

Obviously there had been the hope that Ichigo would be able to find Grimmjow in Soul Society as they had said, but after days of staring at his bedroom walls and ceiling, he began to come up with 'what ifs.' What if something went wrong that made that impossible? Or what if he looked different and no one would recognize him when they were doing their check-ins in the districts of Rukongai?

Ichigo didn't actually know whether an arrancar would look the same before and after, and he hadn't been able to find anyone who did know despite asking everyone he could possibly think of. It simply wasn't something that had ever been investigated because there was no real reason to do so. Leave it to the Twelfth Division to have every piece of information about the cycle that existed except for the one Ichigo fucking needed.

When the notion that Grimmjow could look different had come up during their initial planning, Ichigo had dismissed it. At the time, he had been entirely confident that he would be able to recognize Grimmjow regardless. There would have to be some similarity in him or his reiatsu that Ichigo would be able to sense simply as a result of how well he knew him, and that would signal which soul he was. It would take much longer to find him that way than if he could simply be spotted at a glance by anyone in the Gotei keeping an eye out, but Ichigo would sift through every district of Rukongai with a fine-toothed comb if he had to. And so everything would be fine whether or not he looked the same, he had told both himself and Grimmjow at the time.

But sitting in his room in the dark - blinds drawn at all times - made every hope Ichigo had seem less likely to pan out. It became more and more difficult to remain optimistic.

Eventually Isshin asked whether he wanted to help part-time around the clinic on days he was feeling capable. It made sense to Ichigo that if he was going to sit around the house all day being depressed anyway, then he may as well do so downstairs in the clinic where he could possibly help out. It actually benefitted him to be able to focus on something, so he ended up helping his dad in the clinic every day. A few months into this routine, he decided that getting out of the house a little more would be good for him and he really needed to do something to help contribute again, so he picked up a part-time evening job, too. It was low stress and he would be able to leave with little notice if necessary.

Even if he couldn't go back to full-time work under the circumstances (because he wouldn't have the flexibility he needed to go see Grimmjow as soon as he turned up), he also couldn't just sit around indefinitely and continue to do nothing until Grimmjow was back. He felt bad enough for not currently working a serious job at his age, and Grimmjow would have been pissed at him for it, anyway. Ichigo could just imagine the sort of things he would have said about Ichigo dropping everything and bringing his life to a standstill.

After he found Grimmjow and got him settled, he would get back on track right away. Then everything would be as it should. Or at least as close as it could get.

Ichigo kept his soul phone out and available on his desk constantly in case there was any word from Soul Society. Sometimes he just sat next to his desk and stared at the thing, willing it to communicate to him what he needed to hear. When he wasn't doing that, he checked it multiple times a day even if he hadn't left the room and thus would have easily heard any dings signaling receipt of a new message. And there were messages - mainly from Rukia and Renji, but occasionally a few others - checking on him periodically. He always jumped up to read them, just in case, but none of the messages he received were the one he wanted.

Another month passed, then two. The passage of time without word became a growing itch under Ichigo's skin.

It had been how long now? How had no one seen Grimmjow after all this time? Sure, Soul Society was a huge place and there were a lot of people, but lower seats in the Gotei were supposed to be patrolling their assigned districts every day; that was part of their damn job, and Grimmjow would sure as hell stand out in a crowd. That many people going through the bulk of Soul Society every single day and no one had seen Grimmjow after nearly eight months? A few months, Ichigo understood. Hell, even six months was reasonable because it was trying to find one person in a huge number. But maybe it was Grimmjow's own words about the dynamic between shinigami and arrancar that started influencing Ichigo, because he began getting antsy and suspicious.

He trusted his friends in the Gotei entirely: if they saw Grimmjow, he would know. But that didn't mean everyone was actually trying. What if one of the captains with whom he wasn't as close told his or her squad not to report anything if they happened to spot Grimmjow? Or just members of the squads making that decision on their own, maybe having a lingering resentment towards hollows or something ridiculous like that and refusing to help? And districts were assigned to specific squads, they didn't really rotate coverage or anything. If someone went rogue, Ichigo would never know because no one else would check places they assumed were already being actively checked.

Ichigo had to go start looking himself, that was all there was to be done at this point. He could coordinate with the shinigami he trusted to check separate locations so that they were covering a wider area. He would pick out the squads he trusted least and start by sweeping their designated regions.

No sooner had he come to that conclusion and decided that he would go up to Soul Society the following day when the news came through.

He heard the little notification sound from the phone on his desk and stood up from his bed to check it immediately as had become reflexive.

He very nearly dropped the phone when he opened the message. It was a message from Rukia, consisting of only three words, and he had never jumped out of his human body faster in his life as he did upon reading it.

they found him!!

It had been someone from Iba's division who had seen him and sent word over to Rukia and Renji (and Ichigo would happily get Iba all the sunglasses he wanted, enough to last a shinigami lifetime; hell, he would get matching sunglasses for the entire division) who were both waiting to meet him when he stepped foot into Soul Society. Grimmjow was evidently in West Rukongai 59, which was pretty far out but Rukia had borrowed a map for Ichigo to reference. The cagey way in which she said "borrowed" indicated she had really just stolen the thing without asking anyone, but Ichigo certainly didn't give a single goddamn. She offered to come along and while he appreciated all of his friends' support all this time, he declined. The fact of the matter was that he was going to shunpo over there as fast as he possibly could to begin searching and he didn't want to be slowed down by anyone trying to keep pace with him.

He knew which area Grimmjow was in now thanks to that squad member in the Seventh, but unless he had been sitting in one spot all day long, Ichigo was still going to need to look around for him. And he would search through the night if necessary, because he was not leaving Soul Society without seeing Grimmjow.

It did take a little while even with shunpo to get out to the correct area and there wasn't exactly a lot of signage, so Ichigo was lucky that Rukia had the foresight to nab the map for him. He had to be around 59 now, he figured as he checked the paper again. There was a mountain a little off to the east that matched one on the map.

With that established, he began searching. Initially he tried to do so on foot but as he was walking up and down the streets, he realized that he was a moron because he would have a wider range of visibility from a higher vantage point. So he went back up and continued searching from the air. Shinigami must not have been out here all that often aside from the patrols because being up off the ground did get him a few noticeable stares from passersby.

It must have been a few hours later that he thought he was probably at least a third of the way through surveying the district as a whole, but this place was big even if he was moving quickly. Upon having that thought and reaching to pull out the map again to double-check his likely location, a very specific pop of color caught Ichigo's eye and after a moment of shocked processing, he dropped for a very rough, unstable landing onto the road.

...He was the same. Ichigo had known he looked similar since someone had been able to identify him, but god, it was like he had just stepped out of reality all those months ago and then stepped back into it today. The hollow parts were gone, but the hair was the same shade of blue it had always been. Ichigo couldn't see his eyes clearly from this distance but he would bet money they were the same ocean blue as before, too. Grimmjow's hair laid a little flatter and less deliberately styled now, rather than in that windswept look that had seemingly come naturally if he simply ran his hands through it a few times. His clothes were of course different too, but he was Grimmjow. He was undeniably Grimmjow.

"Grimmjow!" Finally, after all those nights lying in bed starting listlessly at the ceiling, he was right here. Ichigo could only see part of his side profile from this angle but it didn't matter: he looked as incredible as he always had. Ichigo could suddenly breathe easier than in all of the previous long months as the relief hit him. "Hey, wait!" he called out when Grimmjow continued walking in the direction he had been headed.

Be it the volume or something else, that exclamation managed to get Grimmjow to turn his head and look down the road at which point he clearly saw Ichigo running toward him. And the closer Ichigo came, the more pronounced Grimmjow's frown became. Ichigo had never been happier to see that grumpy frown in his life.

Grimmjow took a few steps towards where Ichigo was coming, almost as if to meet him part of the way. When Ichigo was finally near him and about to greet him again, Grimmjow took one more large step forward with his left foot...

And reeled his right arm back to clock Ichigo straight in the mouth.

Having been completely unprepared and thus nowhere near braced to take a punch, Ichigo went down in a heap. "Ow, shit!" He pushed himself up into more of a sitting position and reached up to find a stripe of blood where the blow had landed and split his lip. He spat something loose out of his mouth and withdrew his hand to find a tooth in his palm. Damn it. Maybe that would fix itself up when he next swapped bodies, otherwise he would have a gap in his smile. Inoue would happily reverse it for him, if nothing else worked. He wouldn't have cared, though; he would lose every last tooth he had if that was the price of seeing Grimmjow again. "You still hit pretty hard." While on the ground like this and eye level with his thighs, Ichigo could not help but notice that Grimmjow wasn't even wearing any sandals. Apparently he was just walking around out here in his bare feet.

That comment snagged Grimmjow's attention where he was standing above Ichigo watching, and the threatening set to his eyes shifted into something curious. "You're acting like you've met me, but I've never seen you before." He sneered. "Otherwise I'm sure I would've remembered the hair. Who are you? And what the hell were you shouting at me?"

"I was calling you Grimmjow because that's your name: Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez." And of course he hadn't known his name, so using it had been kind of pointless on Ichigo's part in retrospect. He pushed himself back upright to his feet and used his sleeve to wipe the blood from his lip. "And I'm Kurosaki Ichigo."

"Not interested in who you are after all, then," Grimmjow informed him coolly. "Because you've got the wrong guy."

"No," Ichigo adamantly disagreed, "I'm one hundred percent sure that I have the right guy." If he had needed even more evidence of who this was, the pain in his mouth was another helpful clue.

He could not quite pinpoint what expression Grimmjow was wearing then, which deeply bothered him because he thought he knew and could define them all by this point. "Do you have someone looking for you?"

"Looking for me?" Ichigo repeated. That was the complete opposite of what was going on here. "What are you talking about? I've been the one looking for you."

The way Grimmjow's lip curled was so nostalgic that a sharp ache hit Ichigo right in his core. "I'm saying that it seems like something might be assembled a little incorrectly in that bright head of yours, so you probably have someone who watches you to make sure you don't get yourself into trouble. You know, the kind of trouble you'd get in by doing things like running up on complete strangers while screaming like a lunatic."

And, well, Ichigo didn't actually have a great counterargument prepared. From Grimmjow's perspective, it was exactly as he had described: a stranger in the uniform of the Gotei had come running up on him out of nowhere, yelling a name he didn't even know. "I can explain everything to you. Is there somewhere we can sit and talk?"

Grimmjow was visibly dubious about this suggestion. After a few lengthy seconds, he looked away and sighed. "I'm not convinced that someone from a loony bin isn't going to come looking for you, but..." He glared at a few people who had stopped to see what was going on since they were making a rather public scene. "I guess you can't do too much harm in that case. And I have to admit I'm curious why you beelined right for me. Come back to my place and you can tell me whatever you're screaming about."

At least that was a step in the right direction. Ichigo smiled a little and nodded. "Lead the way."

And Grimmjow sighed yet again as if Ichigo was a real pain in the ass but reluctantly did.

There were a lot of people outside in this neighborhood, including a lot of kids. It wasn't like the suburbs back in Karakura where people in public were spaced out or in small groups socializing, at best. "There are a lot of people out around here."

Grimmjow regarded him irritably. "What else would you expect? A lot of people live here."

Ichigo had a feeling he already knew the answer, but he asked anyway: "Do you talk to any of them?"

"Usually not because I'm not interested. You'd say I'm kind of a lone wolf."

Ichigo let out a light laugh. "Wrong animal."

"What?"

"Never mind." Ichigo had noticed that he didn't seem to have kept any of his former habits in terms of speech and how he would phrase things. Grimmjow definitely didn't curse quite as often now. Ichigo supposed that made sense, but he hadn't heard a single 'fuck' yet and he was genuinely disappointed.

Grimmjow's 'place,' when they came to a stop, was arguably more of a potentially-structurally-unsound shack than anything. It was worse off than some of the other homes in the area but they were all noticeably run down compared to what Ichigo was used to seeing. He realized (and somewhat shamefully) that he had never spent a whole lot of time anywhere in Soul Society outside of the Seireitei, and it had slipped his mind that there was the same sort of class disparity and poverty in Soul Society as there was in his own world. Rukia and Renji had told him some stories about how the districts got worse the further out you went, but he had never come here himself. It had never been so much as a passing thought in his mind what things might be like out here. Not even today when he was seeing it with his own eyes, since his focus had been solely on finding Grimmjow.

They stepped inside to a sparsely furnished room with one futon. One slat in the roof was missing entirely, judging by the long beam of light running the width of the floor.

Seemingly misinterpreting the despondent air Ichigo had picked up, Grimmjow paused in the middle of the room before crossing his arms defensively and glaring. "If this doesn't meet your standards, then you can go back out on the street."

"No, that's not it at all. I was thinking about something else." Grimmjow's face said he wasn't buying that excuse, Ichigo noticed as he politely pulled off his sandals before entering. He also left Zangetsu leaned upright against the wall and just the act of doing so made him glance reflexively to Grimmjow's hip. It was so wrong to see him without Pantera. Say what he may have about not being good at loving Ichigo, he certainly hadn't had any problem loving that damn sword: even when they went to bed, he had always seemed disappointed to need to take it off his belt. "Honestly, I was thinking about how I've never been anywhere in Soul Society outside of the Seireitei. I'm kind of embarrassed."

The truth was evidently acceptable, because Grimmjow huffed a dismissive breath and uncrossed his arms as he swung himself down to a sitting position on the bare floor. "So what, you're in the Gotei's ranks or something?" He eyed Ichigo in speculation. "I might be out here in the slums but even I can recognize a uniform like that."

"Definitely not. I just help out sometimes. I don't even live in the Seireitei."

He had always been a little out of place no matter where he went, as a result of who he was, and the Seireitei had been no different. People accepted him and most of them were friendly to him, but he was still an outsider in a lot of subtle ways even amongst friends. He was just different.

But Ichigo had never felt like an outsider when he was with Grimmjow. That was one of the things that had drawn Ichigo to him in the first place. Once Grimmjow knew him as more than an adversary or just a shinigami, he didn't treat Ichigo like he was anything other than the person he was. He would give him shit all day long, but it was all shit because of things he said and did rather than whatever parts made him up.

Ichigo's explanation had piqued Grimmjow's interest and he appraised him carefully as he leaned back on his hands, the heels of which he planted against the wood of the floor. "Then where are you from? Oh, wait..." Grimmjow paused and grinned. "Loony bin, right?" He laughed when Ichigo scowled and kicked at his leg as he joined him on the floor so that they were facing each other.

God, it was like the past few lonely, depressing months had flitted away like leaves in the breeze, sitting here with him again. He was just like he had been before. Ichigo wanted to grab him and hang on so that he couldn't be magically yanked away again, but even pre-Soul Society Grimmjow had always given him a little grief when he pulled a clingy move of that nature. This Grimmjow to whom he was currently a stranger would probably sock him in the jaw a second time if he dove at him. "I'm actually from the Living World." That elicited the anticipated confused reaction, as Grimmjow's brow furrowed. "It's kind of a long story."

"Sounds like you have a lot of those. Let's skip to the one I give a shit about: how do you think you know me?"

Ichigo knew how all of this was probably going to sound to someone who had none of the context that he did, but Grimmjow would eventually realize he was telling the truth once Ichigo explained everything in enough detail and answered all of his questions. "I knew you before. We planned this. You and I said we would meet again here."

Something clicked in a way that made Grimmjow's mouth flatten into an uninterpretable line. After a moment of silence during which Ichigo tried to decide what to say next, he suggested, "Maybe you should start from the beginning."

Ichigo rested his hands in his lap. "Yeah, I can do that." His lips were dry. Maybe the Rukongai air was drier than he was used to, he considered as he licked them. "There was a war, about eight years ago now. I had just started high school. I don't know whether you've heard of Aizen Sōsuke." Ichigo honestly had no idea whether Aizen's name was common knowledge out here. Everyone in Soul Society would have been aware that the wars occurred unless they had been living under a rock for a while, but it was possible they did not have many of the details.

"Don't know that name."

"He was part of the Gotei until he defected. You know about hollows, right?" At Grimmjow's sound of confirmation, he continued, "Aizen went to Hueco Mundo, the hollows' world, and set up a base of operations. He used this stone to transform a lot of hollows into arrancar. Those are sort of evolved hollows with shinigami abilities, I guess you'd say. A few of them came to the Living World-"

"Hey," Grimmjow interrupted unhappily, "Are you telling me how you know me, or are you giving me a history lesson?"

He certainly hadn't become any more patient since Ichigo had last seen him, he considered with just a touch of annoyance. "I am telling you. That was when I first met you."

Grimmjow's visibly unsettled expression suggested that he was reading between the lines just fine, but he either didn't like or didn't believe the conclusion he was drawing. "What does any of that have to do with me?"

"You were one of those arrancar that came to the Living World, where I live."

"That doesn't make any sense," was Grimmjow's immediate, curt denial.

"Just give me a minute and it will. I was able to get Aizen sealed away and the war ended. Some time passed and there was another war, with the quincies. They tore up where you lived, Hueco Mundo-" it would ache to mention that place for a while, with how different Ichigo knew it now was, devoid of all the arrancar he had known and some he didn't, "So you joined our side. You said you needed to keep Hueco Mundo in one piece so that you could kill me there." Funny memory, thinking back on it. It had been funny at the time, too.

"After that war, you were still dead set on beating me so you kept coming around. I had promised at one point that I would fight you whenever you wanted, so I let you. I hadn't hated you for a long time but I was sure you still hated me. Then one day, I'm not even sure what it was that was different. Something about the way you were looking at me while you were talking made me wonder whether I was wrong about that. We went in circles around each other for a while but eventually worked it out and decided we wanted to try being together." He added, a little quieter, "We really cared about each other, in the end."

Grimmjow's expression hadn't shifted at all throughout the entire summary but Ichigo thought that was probably understandable. Admittedly, it was a lot to ask someone to digest at once.

"Then something got messed up in Hueco Mundo, we still aren't sure what. It was going to make all of the arrancar, including you, regress back into an earlier stage of evolution. If that happens, you basically lose everything and you can never evolve again so everyone would have rather died than regress like that. And you hid it from me for a while, which was really shitty," he couldn't legitimately blame Grimmjow for that at this very moment because he didn't recall doing it, but Ichigo was still sore about it. "I had the smartest guy I know trying to figure out how to stop it, except it was pretty clear that we weren't going to have a solution in time. But then we decided to do this: if your soul went through cleansing by a shinigami zanpakutou, it would pass through to Soul Society. You wouldn't have your memories but at least your soul would continue to exist rather than just disappear, and that was better than the alternatives. So that's what we did, and I swore to you that I'd come find you. Now here I am and here you are. Like we said."

"Quit doing that," Grimmjow snapped.

"Quit doing what?" Ichigo asked in confusion.

"Saying 'you,' 'we,' any of it. It wasn't."

"It was-" Ichigo fumbled a little. He and Grimmjow had both known that he wouldn't have his memory but from the way they had discussed it, they had... they had basically operated under the assumption that he would believe and accept Ichigo's recount of the events after enough of an explanation. "It was you, though. That was the whole point of all of this, that your soul would come here. I just explained it."

"Not mine. I sat here and listened to your whole story instead of stopping you part way through so that you wouldn't be able to say afterwards that I missed something that would've made a difference. I heard it; now I can tell you for sure that none of it has anything to do with me."

"What, you think I'm making all of this up?" Ichigo was beginning to lose his temper.

Grimmjow had been steadily watching him the entire time; he hadn't taken his eyes off Ichigo for an instant. He was observing him like he was a stranger and Grimmjow was currently trying to assess whether or not said stranger was also a threat. "I don't know whether you're crazy or just mistaken and it doesn't make any difference. You're wrong either way."

"I'm not wrong! You're Grimmjow, that's you! Everyone was looking for you for months, they-" A lightbulb went off and Ichigo immediately perked up. "I can prove I'm right, that I'm telling the truth and that you're him. The Gotei were looking for you so that they could tell me when they found you, so they have copies of your picture. You thought it was hilarious when I told you, you must have laughed for ten minutes straight. There would be no other way for them to get a picture of you if I wasn't telling the truth, right? I'll get one of them to show you, that will verify my story and prove that you're Grimmjow."

He had put all of his hopes into waiting for this. The expectation of this reunion was among the few things that had dragged Ichigo through the miserable months of waiting, to know that there was an opportunity to see each other again. It was never going to be exactly the same but it would be better than nothing. Now even that was not going smoothly because Grimmjow was - as always - being so fucking difficult. This was worse than in the past, though, because he didn't even know he was doing it. He was convinced that Ichigo was the one who was genuinely wrong.

"I don't need to see shit. You're pushing in all the wrong places, you don't even know me."

"I know you better than anyone!" Ichigo shouted as he leapt to his feet, swiftly reaching the boiling point with each additional denial, and Grimmjow quickly stood to meet him. They had put too much into this for Grimmjow's stubbornness to throw everything off the rails. Ichigo had put in too much: he had to do the deed, he had to endure the nightmares of those moments, he had to feel like the world was falling apart for months, he had to wonder whether he would ever be able to stop being so fucking sad. And Grimmjow wanted to give him a hard time and pretend that was all for nothing? "I know you better than you know yourself right now!"

"The fuck if you do!" Grimmjow yelled back, leaning aggressively closer. "You think you're going to walk in here and tell me who I am? And guess what?" His timbre dropped to something more warning as his chin dipped to fix Ichigo with an ever sterner glower. "Even if you are right, I don't care. Whoever this soul might have been in before, he's not here." Grimmjow's voice was cold in its certainty. "I'm here and this soul is mine now, because I'm me. I'm not some hollow you used to be with, and I don't know you."

Not believing Ichigo was probably one thing. Saying he didn't care even if he did believe him, that was an extra hard kick in the nuts. Ichigo had been so fucking excited to see him, and all of this, it wasn't what he had wanted at all.

"Go home to the Living World," Grimmjow said. "Whatever you were looking for, you aren't going to find it. It's not here. Now I'm done with this whole charade and I'm giving you one chance to get out of my house before I pick you up and throw you out myself."

Ichigo would have taken another punch in the face or fifty, over this. He would have taken just about anything over this. And he was so off-balance from the whole situation that his brain seemed to stall. He couldn't think of what else he should say, or do, or try. He just stood there staring back at Grimmjow's angry uncompromising expression, probably with a disbelieving, devastated look on his face, and shook his head. He felt defeated in a way he had not been in a very long time. "Why are you being this way? This isn't how this was supposed to go."

Grimmjow edged one foot slightly forward and shifted his weight into what would have made a stronger stance if this transitioned into a physical altercation. "Do I have to tell you to get out a second time?"

Ichigo didn't want to fight him, not like this. Not at all like this. He had just finally seen him again. With Grimmjow as he currently was, Ichigo would win any battle they fought. But he was losing in the only battle that actually mattered, and so he turned around and left with his metaphorical tail between his legs.

The permanent senkaimon to traverse between the Living World and Soul Society had been placed under Urahara's purview for security reasons. Ichigo had occasionally wondered why - if they always put so much faith in the guy in the first place - they never just formally invited him back to Soul Society. But that was neither here nor there and it was the last thing on his mind as he stepped through the gap between worlds onto the loose dirt of the underground bunker, limbs all hanging heavier than normal.

A while later - Ichigo had not bothered to check the time at any point - he had a visitor to the boulder he had chosen to sit against despite really, really not being in the mood for one. And he didn't need to check who it was, either; the clip clop of clogs was a dead giveaway.

"Kurosaki-san, welcome back. How was your trip to Soul Society to look for your wayward soul?"

Oh he was wayward, alright. "Let's just say it didn't go very well."

"Oh? How so, if I may ask?"

He didn't really want to talk about it - especially with Urahara, who was not exactly Ichigo's number one choice for a trustworthy confidant - but he was also too drained to put up an argument to decline. He tossed his skull back to clunk against the stone. "He punched me, asked whether I was crazy, listened to what I tried to tell him but immediately refused to accept any of it, then threatened to throw me out if I didn't leave."

"So you're saying that he's violent, argumentative, ill-tempered and suspicious, but very curious about you. Essentially the exact same way he was before," Urahara concluded cheerfully with his fan concealing his mouth. "You must be delighted!"

Ichigo's mouth hung agape for a moment as he looked at the man before he snapped his jaw shut. "How the hell did you get that from what I just said?!" He should have known better. For all his genius, Urahara had some bizarre opinions. "He insists that he isn't the same person and he wants nothing to do with me! Why would I be delighted about that?"

Urahara looked contemplative, as if giving the matter genuine thought. "I suppose I would have thought it a positive for you to find that he is - even without the memories of his previous existence - very similar to the Grimmjow-san you knew and cared for. Isn't everything that he did what the one you knew before would have done, were he in the same position?"

And Ichigo thought about it. If this situation had played out with Grimmjow years ago before he had ever met Ichigo? ...He would have reacted nearly identically, just with more cussing and attempted murder. So comparatively, by standard Grimmjow parameters, he had been downright laidback up in Soul Society today. Laidback, a little more tentative in his approach, but still so very similar. Urahara was right.

Flapping his fan a few times and glancing up to the fake sky of the ceiling, Urahara pondered, "He was never easily swayed to your favor the first time around, was he? It took time and, forgive me for saying, but you were both stubborn. You had to learn about each other and let go of your initial perspectives in order for that bond to eventually bloom. You were the one who was involved so you'll of course know better than me, but my sense as an outsider looking in was that it took quite a bit of work and time to end up as the two of you did. And now you are starting over from the very beginning, at least on his end."

He looked back down to Ichigo. "Honestly, I would probably be more concerned for you if it were easy. That would make it seem as if something had turned out wrong!"

Ichigo couldn't disagree. It wouldn't have even seemed like Grimmjow if he had been different. "You have a point. But he didn't want to hear it at all. I'm not sure how I can force him to listen."

Urahara smiled at him, this time in a way that was slightly less entertained at someone else's expense and slightly more warm. It wasn't a common expression to see on him. "If you've already succeeded in this same venture once before, then the only question here seems to be whether you're willing to expend the effort to do it a second time."

"Thanks," Ichigo said genuinely. "...And do me a favor and don't ever tell anyone that you had to give me relationship advice. I'd never live it down."

"I don't think I should make any promises," was Urahara's playful, noncommittal reply. He turned to presumably go back to his shop, but he hesitated. He was rarely a hesitant man. "Kurosaki-san, I haven't said this because I thought you may not want to hear it from me. But I'm sorry that I wasn't able to figure something out in time."

It would have been easier to have someone to blame, but it wouldn't have been fair. "Me too. I know you tried."

Ichigo took the entire next day to recuperate and actually do a few productive things like helping his sisters. He was not ignorant of the fact that they had really stepped up to cover his slack for a while now, both when he had been coming to terms with what had been soon to happen and then again after it actually had.

He wondered whether he would have recovered a little more quickly if he hadn't been impatiently waiting for Grimmjow's reappearance. He didn't know whether not having that tinge of hope would have made the grieving process longer or shorter, if he would have known he would never find Grimmjow again and thus have complete closure. Grief was unpredictable that way.

The following morning he headed back to the shop bright and early, determined to follow Urahara's advice. He was right: Ichigo and Grimmjow had come together once, and they could do it again. That was the whole point of everything they had done.

Ichigo had been forced to swallow down everything in him that reeled back in horror at the idea of putting Zangetsu's blade through Grimmjow's chest in a spot he knew would be fatal and had done it anyway. He'd be damned if he had done that to the person he loved for nothing. And he certainly wasn't giving up. Not after one try, not after a dozen, not after a hundred. Grimmjow was going to have to try a lot harder than that to get rid of him. He hadn't been able to get rid of Ichigo in their last life and he wouldn't be able to do it this time, either.

Ichigo would find a way to make him see who he was.

Chapter Text

Ichigo could admit when he had made a mistake, so okay: maybe he had not handled that first encounter as well as he could have. And in retrospect, yelling at Grimmjow and telling him that he didn't know anything may have not been the best tactic. But the good news was that he had a good idea of how to improve for the second attempt.

Because there were a few things that Grimmjow had always respected. The most obvious was of course strength, but Grimmjow also respected ambition. He was very much an advocate of doing what was necessary to get what you wanted, because that had been his entire existence. He placed value on pushing forward and overcoming (or more likely destroying) what was in the way of a goal. Therefore, being as familiar as he was with Grimmjow, Ichigo figured that if he drove the point home enough that he wasn't giving up on this until he got what he wanted - that was to say, Grimmjow hearing him out instead of shooting him down immediately - then Grimmjow would eventually be receptive to that because he would respect it. All Ichigo had to do was approach it calmly, but also with confidence.

Piece of cake; he knew what made Grimmjow tick.

He was much easier to find the second time. Ichigo might not have been the world's best at sensory type stuff, but in the past he had been able to find Grimmjow from a ways away simply from such prolonged exposure to his reiatsu in particular. And Grimmjow's reiatsu here in Soul Society now was - while not a one-to-one match, and Ichigo wouldn't have been able to pick him out without visual confirmation the first time - extremely similar to how it had been before, definitely enough so to be perceivable. It was stronger than the bulk of the souls around him, too. Not nearly as strong as it had once been, but enough to prove that he had an untapped well of potential if he put in the work. He would no doubt want to get back to that level at some point, after they got through this initial hurdle and he had a clear understanding of who he was.

Grimmjow was outside again along the main road and looked somewhat surprised to see Ichigo when he popped up in his vicinity. Guess he needed to relearn that Ichigo was unrelenting in most things. "You can't be serious."

"As far as showing up here?" Ichigo asked. "I probably wouldn't be standing here if I wasn't."

"Don't you have anything better to do than stalk me?" The condescending tone in which the question was delivered showed that Grimmjow was already egging him, possibly shooting to start an argument and run him off even faster today.

That wasn't going to happen, but he was welcome to give it his best shot. Ichigo never lost when it was important. He offered a half-smirk. "Not really. You're actually my top priority."

Grimmjow's glower was exceptionally judgmental this go around. "You should be embarrassed for having just said something like that, you know."

"The good news for me is that you don't remember any of the embarrassing stuff I've said to you before, so I'm starting with a pretty clean slate."

"Don't you start with that shit again," Grimmjow warned, narrow-eyed and mistrustful. "I don't want to hear it."

Slow and steady wins the race, Ichigo reminded himself as he put his hands up in a conciliatory 'alright, alright' gesture. He was just coming on too strongly for a stranger, he realized. He needed to be more casual first. Establish the dynamic, then have the (what had proven to be) harder conversations after. That way Grimmjow could get a better idea of who Ichigo really was before being asked to take a lot of things at face value. That made perfect sense.

And sure enough, the threat in Grimmjow's eyes did ease a little when Ichigo didn't press the issue further for the time being. "You didn't tell me you were some kind of celebrity," he suddenly stated with a hint of accusation, as if that had been an intentional omission. "People who have never given me the time of day were chasing me down after you left, interrogating me about what I was doing talking to Kurosaki Ichigo. Someone even asked if I could introduce him to you."

Ichigo hadn't given it much thought but - having never been out here in Rukongai before - he wouldn't have known whether anyone would recognize him. He did have the impression that quite a few people knew his name by word of mouth, but that didn't mean they knew his face. "I told you about the wars, so you just weren't paying close attention. What did you tell them, anyway?"

"You said you fought, not that everyone who's so much as blinked around here knew who you were." Grimmjow's lips curled into something smug. "I told them that you're really into me but I keep turning you down."

Of course he did, because it had to be something annoying. Ichigo had to scowl at least a little bit, in light of that information. "I don't know whether I would say that's accurate."

"It's not all that far off, either," Grimmjow insisted, still patently entertained. It was a decided improvement over the other day, and Ichigo was more than willing to let Grimmjow take jabs at his expense if it made everything easier. Anything at all that would make him more open was welcome at the moment, so Grimmjow could just keep it coming.

He began moving and Ichigo kept pace at his side. "At least your story won't do anything to damage your reputation as a grumpy paranoid asshole who introduces himself to people by decking them in the face," Ichigo pointed out. "We wouldn't want to ruin that."

As soon as it came out of his mouth, he thought it might have been a mistake and that he should have tempered it down. It was how he would have spoken to Grimmjow before, but right now he only saw Ichigo as a stranger. The last thing Ichigo wanted was to piss him off since that certainly wouldn't help them take any great strides forward in establishing trust or having Grimmjow receptive to him hanging around. And there was nothing in the world that Ichigo wanted more than that right now, after all these months.

But Grimmjow didn't seem focused on that aspect of his response at all. "You don't care?" he asked while watching Ichigo's face as they walked.

"About what, that story? Why would I?"

Grimmjow seemed incredulous that he had to ask and actually stopped walking. "I keep hearing that you're a big famous hero and now word's spreading like wildfire across Rukongai that you're desperately pursuing some nobody in a slum who already shot you down."

The part that bothered Ichigo seemed to be the polar opposite of what Grimmjow had been envisioning. "You're not a nobody." It was a reflexive response because he and Grimmjow could insult each other until the sun went down, but he wouldn't stand for the idea of anyone else doing it. "I don't care what they think, anyway."

Grimmjow studied him very carefully then. He had always been keenly observant and suspicious, so that was nothing new; living here hadn't triggered that in him. A part of Ichigo did vaguely wonder whether his eight months or so out here had made it more pronounced, though. He knew that the higher the number the district had, the less safe it was, as a general rule. Rukia and Renji had been from a pretty high number. Hadn't Kenpachi grown up in 80 or something? And he had turned out, uh... the way he had.

Grimmjow didn't currently have a lot of the inherent advantages he used to have, either. Before, he had the luxury of being a lot less careful due to his strength: he had been able to take care of himself easily since he was one of the most powerful arrancar that existed. Perhaps he needed to be more observant now without that luxury. His survival instincts had always been unparalleled (despite the fact that he had sometimes willfully ignored them for the sake of his hair-trigger temper or a challenge), so he would have adapted however was necessary here in Soul Society.

Ichigo hadn't noticed anything too glaring that suggested this particular area was dangerous - not that Grimmjow would have any trouble defending himself against regular people, judging by the punch Ichigo had taken the other day. But it was most definitely not well-off, and he would probably raise the idea to Grimmjow at some point that he had the option to live somewhere else, but-

"What do you really want from me, Kurosaki?" It was the first time Grimmjow had directly addressed Ichigo by his name - by his surname, the way he had for such a long time - and something inside Ichigo burned at the moment of familiarity. "Just come right out and say it."

Ichigo wanted a lot of things. What he wanted most of all was for none of this to have ever happened. That way he would have Grimmjow back with his memories and experiences all intact; Nel happy and healthy back in her home; the rest of the arrancar fine and Hueco Mundo back in order.

What he wanted from Grimmjow, specifically? He wanted everything he had from him before. Because there was only one Grimmjow, and that was who Ichigo wanted back to filling every role he had previously held in Ichigo's life. But that would take time to reestablish, as Urahara had reminded him, and so that was what he really needed at present. "All I want is your time." At Grimmjow's continued furrowed, skeptical brow, Ichigo emphasized, "That's all I'm asking."

Grimmjow exhaled a long breath through his nose before fully facing Ichigo rather than studying him at an angle. "Because you're convinced that deep down in here somewhere," he tapped his fingers against his chest twice, "I'm someone else and if you try hard enough, then maybe I'll remember. Right?"

Pfft, Ichigo wished. "I don't think there is a way for you to remember. I asked all of the smartest people I know and the only one who offered any kind of solution was Kurotsuchi; he claimed he could digitize your memory or something. You refused and said that if I tried to get him involved again, the whole plan was off." That had been a heated argument. "You didn't trust him. I don't actually trust him either but I was basically grasping at straws at that point."

Before he could continue or Grimmjow could reply (and probably chew him out again for suggesting it had been him in those situations with the 'you'), a new and decidedly young voice interrupted. "Hey, hey, are you really Kurosaki Ichigo?"

He spun in the direction of the voice and when he tilted his eyes down, there were a couple of kids looking at him curiously. Ichigo offered them a half-smile. "That's me."

One was a very young girl, around the same age Nel had appeared when he met- His heart sunk a bit upon thinking of her. She was somewhere out here too, thanks to Rukia (and no thanks to Ichigo himself). "Why aren't you out fighting bad guys?"

Ichigo pulled himself together and shoved the feeling down. "There aren't a lot of bad guys right now, so I'm taking a break."

"What are you doing out here where we live?" another asked.

"I'm here visiting someone." Ichigo gestured towards Grimmjow behind him.

The oldest of the three kids followed Ichigo's gesture, finally noticing that Grimmjow was there and paling a little when he did. "I haven't come anywhere near your stuff," he quickly assured.

Grimmjow gave a hum of approval. "Good. Then you don't have to get the shit beaten out of you and I guess everyone's happy."

Oh jeez, he wasn't really bullying the neighborhood kids, was he? Grimmjow didn't mess with people weaker than him but his temper was unpredictable, if this kid had done something to set him off. Ichigo leveled him with a chastising look and Grimmjow's mouth curled into something taunting in response. "What's wrong, Hero?" he asked in a tone of factitious concern.

The kids asked a few more questions about Ichigo and the war and he attempted to give age-appropriate answers. Their clothes were a little battered but not terribly, although they were like Grimmjow in not having any footwear. That seemed to be somewhat common out here. It made Ichigo want to yank his own sandals off and give them to someone who needed them, if they would fit. Not Grimmjow, though, even though their feet were similarly sized: he would probably be offended and stuff them down Ichigo's throat.

The kids went on their way after their curiosity about Ichigo had been sated and he stood up straight from where he had been squatted down to be at their eye level, arching his chest to stretch out the stiffness in his back from holding the awkward position.

"I didn't actually do anything to him." Grimmjow was in the same spot as he had been when Ichigo looked back, shoulders set casually and the image of unperturbed. At Ichigo's glance, he clarified: "That kid. I just scared him a little so he wouldn't keep trying to steal shit from me."

That brought up Ichigo's mood on a number of counts. For one, Grimmjow wasn't, well, beating on kids, which was a definite relief. But for another, it showed that he didn't want Ichigo to think otherwise. He cared, even if to only a fraction of a degree, about the impression Ichigo had of him. Put one check in the 'progress' column. "Seems like it worked. He turned white as a ghost when he saw you." Upon noticing Grimmjow's unimpressed face, he conceded with some humor, "That phrase works a lot better in the Living World."

Grimmjow hummed in a manner clearly intended to be derisive. "Your little meet-and-greet attracted some attention." He dipped his head to the left. When Ichigo followed the movement he saw that the kids had stopped and were animatedly talking to a few adults who proceeded to look up at him.

"More fans to meet," Grimmjow drawled. "You must like the attention: seemed like you had fun with those brats."

"I wouldn't say I like it but I'm not going to be an asshole to kids." He shrugged his shoulders. "They don't do it as much anymore over in the Seireitei. I think I'm old news up there outside of the Gotei." Grimmjow snickered at the comment. "Do you want to go inside and get away from everyone? I think that one up there is yours, right?"

That made Grimmjow scoff something that sounded disbelieving. "Why are you still doing this?"

"I'm not doing anything. I'm not here to see them, I'm here to see you."

There was clear aggravation on Grimmjow's face but he turned and took a step in the direction of his home a little ways down the road. "Forget it. Come on if you're coming."

Ichigo followed.

In front of the house beside Grimmjow's, a woman was standing outside today with a futon hung over a support rack. She gave it another hit but lifted her eyes when she saw them approach. "Good morning!" she greeted Grimmjow cheerfully.

Grimmjow actually responded by nodding in acknowledgement before making his way into his house, which was a surprise. He didn't immediately slide the door back in place to hit Ichigo in the face when he tried to follow, so that was a promising sign.

"I swear she cleans the same things every single day, and she's so loud about it," Grimmjow informed him offhandedly once they were inside. "Why the fuck would you ever need to clean a futon that often?"

Ichigo pulled his sandals off politely. "Couldn't tell you. At least she's friendly, she said hi to you and everything." He took a few steps towards Grimmjow who was still standing near the middle of the room.

"Lucky me, I seem to attract a lot of people who want to talk my ear off," Grimmjow snarked.

In his defense, Ichigo really had done most of the talking the other day. "What's it like living here?"

Grimmjow shot Ichigo a look as if he had asked something crazy. "Living here? Why the hell would you care?"

The obvious answer was that Ichigo cared about everything going on with him - because he cared about him - but he would get prickly about that one. "I didn't have a chance to ask you much the last time I saw you. And like I said, I've never been out here before so I don't really know anything about it."

"Fine: it sucks," was Grimmjow's concise reply. "If you haven't noticed, this place isn't exactly overflowing with riches. But it is what it is and I get along just fine."

This conversation was definitely not the best avenue to pitch his earlier idea, but Ichigo's mouth moved a little more swiftly than his brain. "You don't have to stay here, you know. You could get a new place wherever you want. If you want to live somewhere-" and he didn't want to say nicer, because that would be poorly received, "different," (Ichigo privately complimented himself on a smooth recovery), "you can."

Grimmjow's heavy look was resentful. "What, at your expense? I don't need any charity from you."

If that wasn't the quintessential Grimmjow response. Ichigo could have seen it coming from a light year away but had still wanted to check, just in case the Grimmjow of present was a little less over-the-top independent than the arrancar of before and willing to accept a kind gesture or two. "It isn't charity, Grimmjow," he argued, "You should just have what you want. Or what would make you comfortable." He pointed his thumb over his shoulder backwards in the direction from which they had come inside. "So if that's here, then okay, fine. But you have other options if you ever pull your head out of your ass and want a change of scenery." A thought occurred to him. "Besides, I bet I could make the argument that the Gotei should just sponsor it for you without me even being involved, based on service during the last war, if that would piss you off less than if I had a hand in it."

"Is this your new strategy to sway me into agreeing I'm the dead boyfriend so that we can play out your happy couple memories? We've moved onto bribery?"

He had certainly maintained his talent for rubbing salt in wounds, and those wounds burned. "It's not a strategy, asshole," Ichigo retorted sharply with fists clenched at his sides, feeling genuinely insulted at how Grimmjow had described it. Was that really what he thought or was he just trying to rile Ichigo up? "That isn't even fair. It's what I said: I want you to be comfortable. And happy, obviously."

"You shouldn't want anything for me, stupid, because I'm no one to you." Before Ichigo could even protest that, Grimmjow asked, "Your place in the Living World must be nice, right? Can't imagine that heroes live in shit holes."

Ichigo huffed out a frustrated breath. Okay, they would revisit that former assertion later. "It's an average house that I live in with my sisters and dad. Definitely not fancy and probably not anything like you're thinking. Helping out with wars in Soul Society doesn't really translate to financial benefits in my world."

"You have a family?"

"Yeah, of course. I mean, most people in the Living World do. I know it's a little different here."

"Hm. You got friends in the Living World, too?"

"Uh." This had quickly veered away from talking about Grimmjow and begun focusing on Ichigo, which hadn't been his intention. "Yeah, I have friends. Some here, too. You-"

Grimmjow cut him off. "You've got all kinds of people around you, then. And I'm sure you're not hard up for company if you want to have some fun and get laid; I imagine heroes have their pick of willing partners. So why are you so desperate to find this guy?"

Ichigo's brain might have stalled out and restarted a few times because the question was not fully computing. "What the fuck are you talking about?" He reviewed roughly what had been said back to himself in his head, trying to see what conclusion Grimmjow was reaching. "Your argument is that I shouldn't have wanted to look for you unless I was desperate and you were all I had, is that what we're saying here?" he asked with some heat built on sheer incredulity. "That makes no sense! I would want to find you no matter how many people I have around me because we planned it out together. And because I love you, you idiot!"

It had slipped out in frustration but that had probably been a mistake just now. He could be oblivious at times but Ichigo wasn't completely emotionally ignorant. He was well aware of how making some blanket statement about his feelings would likely turn out at this point: with Grimmjow taking ten more giant steps away from him. Even years ago, the first half dozen times Ichigo had begun voicing that sort of thing, Grimmjow had been dismissive and quick to retreat for a while until he grew more used to hearing it.

It was difficult to read how the Grimmjow in front of him had taken that particular outburst because he seemed pretty unenthused about everything in general. "And you're making great progress on seeing your little plan through. Really accomplishing a lot by repeatedly running yourself face-first into a brick wall since - like I keep telling you - it isn't me. You have to give it a rest eventually. However good a fuck your boyfriend must've been, there has to be a limit."

Ichigo would have been less offended if Grimmjow had just outright spit in his face. To minimize it like that, to piss all over all of the sacrifice that had been involved was far, far over the line of his tolerance. Anyone else who had said those words would have already been on the ground bleeding. His fingers twitched at his side in rage and Grimmjow clearly caught the movement because his eyes flicked down for just an instant.

"Watch your fucking mouth," Ichigo warned darkly.

Grimmjow's eyes squinted in that pleased, focused way that they always had when he had known he was about to land a solid slice with Pantera. "Oh you didn't like that one, did you? Which nerve did it hit, Kurosaki?"

Fucking asshole. He was jettisoning Ichigo's blood pressure sky high and he was enjoying it. And if that wasn't Grimmjow, huh, especially before he had warmed up to Ichigo and come to terms with wanting to be with him. Back when they were on opposite sides, he would have done almost anything to get under Ichigo's skin, precisely as he was doing now. Because he was being told something he didn't want to hear and he wouldn't have to hear it or deal with it as long as he got rid of the root cause. And the root cause here was Ichigo.

With that in mind, Ichigo didn't scream at him or swing on him or storm out on him. Instead, he pulled at every technique he knew to rein himself in and told Grimmjow the truth: "It hits the one that knows how wrong you are to undersell it all that way. Talking like I don't have a good enough reason to come looking for you, like I should just give up. You came here for me, because I told you I didn't want to have to lose you, but I wish you hadn't had to go through any of it. If I could've flipped a switch to swap places with you and be the one whose life was wiped and sent to Soul Society instead, I would have done it so that you would've been able to stay as you were."

Grimmjow had struggled in the past to identify the appropriate recourse in arguments when Ichigo went off the beaten path and defused the fight rather than fed into it. Ichigo read in his eyes that was the same problem he was having now.

Ichigo hadn't been good at it early on, in the beginning of their relationship: they were both too similar in temperament so no one ever pulled the plug. They simply escalated and escalated until they burnt themselves out and then eventually reconciled after a cool down period. But over time, Ichigo had become a bit better at reeling them back and Grimmjow had realized in very short order that it was tough to carry on a fight if you were occasionally the only one participating.

"You're only dead set on believing this because you want it to be true so badly," Grimmjow informed flatly after a few seconds. "You don't want to admit the guy is gone, that's why you won't let it go."

"If I give up on you that easily then I don't deserve to have you anyway," Ichigo countered, unwavering.

A long exhale through his nose preceded Grimmjow shifting his jaw back and forth a few times in thought. "You're a stubborn son of a bitch. Fine." He turned and took a few steps towards the far wall before rotating towards Ichigo once more. "I'll throw you a bone and give you a chance to prove it to me."

Ichigo jerked his shoulders back in surprise, then glowered. "I already offered to give you proof and you weren't interested, remember?"

"Do you want to try to convince me or not?" At Ichigo's pause, Grimmjow continued, "Should be the easiest thing you do all day. I'll ask you some questions. If you get all the answers right, then you win: I'll buy your story about who I am."

On one hand, for how resistant Grimmjow had been to acknowledge his past up to this point, the offer came across as insincere. But on the other hand... Ichigo would have given a lot to get any closer to convincing him. What harm could it do to take a chance that was being offered? "Questions about what?"

"About me. You should really be jumping at the opportunity. This should be a great deal for you since you 'know me better than I know myself,' right? That was what you claimed the other day." Grimmjow's chin hiked up in a haughty challenge. "What happened to all that confidence?"

That was right: Ichigo did know him. Unless he asked about specific things he had done since he had been here in Rukongai or whatever, Ichigo should have the answers. Piece of cake. "I still have plenty of confidence, so start asking."

"What's my favorite color?"

If Ichigo had written out an extensive list of questions he might have been asked in this moment, that one wouldn't have even been in the top thousand. He gawked at Grimmjow, baffled. "What?"

"You heard me."

Favorite color? "Yo-" Ichigo racked his brain but he was pretty sure that Grimmjow had never had a favorite color. He certainly had never said anything about it. It was just such a mundane thing that he wouldn't have cared about. "I don't think you have one."

"Wrong." Grimmjow leaned his shoulder blades against the wall behind him and crossed his arms over his chest. "What season do I like?"

Now that one had come up in conversation between them before. Hueco Mundo may not have had seasons but the Living World did, and Grimmjow had spent more than half of his time there for several years. It had been plenty of time for him to become well acquainted with all four seasons and he thought the temperature and smells in the Living World were best in- "Autumn," Ichigo answered, smirking with confidence in his victory.

"Wrong."

Bullshit, he had told Ichigo that! Ichigo leaned forward towards him with a step as he went to begin arguing. "The fuck it is, y-"

"What's the first thing I do every morning?" Grimmjow asked loudly enough so as to be heard over Ichigo's objections.

Ichigo straightened back to his original stance as he and Grimmjow looked into each other's eyes from across the room.

"Not even a guess on that one? Let's try one more, I'll give you an easy one: what do I want most in this delightful life I have going on here in Rukongai?"

Just a few minutes ago, Ichigo would have thought he could answer something like that without even thinking about it. But now the doubt was swelling higher like smoke contaminating clean air. "...you always wanted a few things. To be the strongest so that nothing could ever hold you back. You used to say you wanted to be the king."

"The king?" Grimmjow repeated with a scoff. "The king of what? Doesn't matter, because that's wrong too. You're oh-for-four, Kurosaki. Didn't get a single one. I was right and you don't know anything about me, so I'm obviously not your lost love after all. Go try someone else."

Ichigo couldn't immediately respond. He was doing his best to not let it show that he was a little rattled.

"I forgot to mention the other part, by the way: if you lose, you have to leave," Grimmjow said. "But judging by that expression on your face, you're ready to go anyway."

"That-" Another second had to pass before Ichigo could pull his thoughts into some semblance of order. "Come on, be fucking serious, those are little things that don't even matter." Maybe not the last one about goals since that was arguably a big thing that did matter - especially when it pertained to Grimmjow - but Ichigo hadn't come up with an argument to explain that one quite yet. "You're not not you just because you like a different season." The words came out a little more softly than he had intended.

"How the hell do you think you get to backpedal now that I proved you wrong? Listen to me so that it'll finally click: what you convinced yourself of isn't reality, end of story. So quit bothering me." For someone who claimed to have just proven a point, Grimmjow didn't appear to be particularly smug about his victory and he was frowning as he watched Ichigo. Ichigo got the sudden impression that his discomfort was due to Ichigo's own expression, whatever that was. He sort of couldn't feel his own face at the moment, as there was some unexplainable numbness across most of his body. "And quit looking at me like this is my fault when it's your own doing," Grimmjow ordered before turning to walk further away across the room, as if to go about other business. "The truth is that I've been a whole lot nicer about this than I could've been so you should be grateful."

When Ichigo still didn't move, Grimmjow reminded, "The door's behind you," without looking back at him.

Ichigo headed directly to his room when he came home. No, Yuzu, he wasn't hungry and could she please just put it in the refrigerator for tomorrow? Then he sat at his desk with his head pillowed on his folded arms and watched the blades turn in his little desk fan.

He was getting so frustrated with walking away knowing he hadn't gotten even slightly closer to where they were supposed to be. He wasn't sure what the fuck he needed to do differently than he had already tried. Ichigo had once thought any obstacle was surmountable, but now he simply couldn't manage to get that first, solid step.

"You don't want to admit the guy is gone, that's why you won't let it go."

Of course he didn't want to do that. Grimmjow was the love of his life, he had been convinced of it for the majority of the time they had been together. They just fit each other in a way that was difficult to explain to other people, and Ichigo had believed that he was going to be beside that volatile, competitive asshole until one of their souls somehow burned out far, far down the road. And then with the whole 'threat of regression' shit he had thought he would lose him, and then with the cleansing he had thought that there was a chance he would get him back but wasn't sure, and now-

Now he didn't know what to think.

He looked absolutely identical and his reiatsu had that similar quality to it, as well. Ichigo would have bet everything he had that the soul up there in Rukongai was in fact the same one that had been somewhere in his Grimmjow, there was no doubt about that part.

The part about which there was doubt was a little more complex. Ichigo had admittedly never thought a lot about the philosophy of what constituted whether someone was the same pre and post-Soul Society. He had never known someone before and after prior to now. Was the soul itself enough to say 'yes, this person who remembers nothing is the same person as before?' And he didn't know the science behind it but perhaps it was more complicated than it would have otherwise been because of the nature of arrancar, that Grimmjow had arguably had many souls in him. What if some of the other souls had interacted, or mixed, or something and it had changed him in some subtle way?

But he wasn't different! Ichigo could see the parallels in his behaviors and attitude and perspective, even his sense of humor. It didn't matter if a few insignificant little things were different, as demonstrated by Grimmjow's little pop quiz. It was him through and through, that seemed so blatantly obvious. If a complete stranger who had never met Grimmjow before had observed him for five minutes, first as an arrancar and then now, even that stranger would have said it was the same guy, Ichigo was certain.

Regardless, one thing was clear: the man with whom he had spoken today did not want to be Ichigo's Grimmjow. He wasn't interested in having Ichigo thinking he was, either. Maybe that made the rest of it irrelevant. If he had already decided that he had no desire to learn anything about that other life, was that the only aspect that mattered in who he truly was?

Ichigo didn't know.

"If I give up on you that easily then I don't deserve to have you anyway."

He really didn't know.

Ichigo dreamed a dream that night that was more of a memory from a week and a half or so before the cleansing had happened.

He and Grimmjow were lying side by side in the sand in Hueco Mundo after Grimmjow had complained for three days straight that he needed some exercise and that just because things were a little crazy right now didn't mean Ichigo was off the hook to be his on-demand opponent. In what should have been very unsurprising, Ichigo had been absolutely disinterested in the idea. But Grimmjow had kept needling at him and guilting him, and eventually Ichigo had caved and agreed to "just once, and then I don't want to hear about it again. Can you please get your fucking priorities in order? We have bigger things to deal with right now."

In the sand after Ichigo won - and to his credit, Grimmjow wasn't in as much of a snit about that as usual - Ichigo asked, "How am I supposed to get you to like me again once I tell you everything? You hated me for a while here. I hope it isn't going to take years again for you to stop."

"I didn't hate you for years," was Grimmjow's dismissive response.

"The hell you didn't, you tried to cut me in half every time you saw me!"

"That doesn't mean I hated you," Grimmjow argued and turned his head to the side to show Ichigo a confident smirk. "Ain't gonna be hard the way you're acting like it will, Kurosaki. Just call me an asshole and bat those big brown eyes at me a few times, that'll probably be all you need."

Ichigo had his doubts. "I should probably just kick your ass a few times, that might work even faster." And when Grimmjow snickered, Ichigo reached out with a hand to lace their fingers together.

But Grimmjow smacked his hand away and instead swung himself on top of Ichigo before leaning in close to his face. He settled his hands against Ichigo's cheeks. "You know that's all bullshit, don't you, I-chi-go?" His fingers caressed the skin beside Ichigo's eyes with each syllable of his name. "I thought you said you love me."

"I do-!"

"Then why the fuck did you let me go? Why'd you kill me yourself?" Before Ichigo could even take a breath to get the words out to explain himself, to defend himself, Grimmjow leaned closer. "And you didn't say goodbye. You didn't even fuckin' watch me die. I'm starting to think," he drawled, "That your love ain't worth shit."

Despite how gentle it was, somehow the kiss he planted against Ichigo's lips hurt. "The truth is that you let me down, right?" Grimmjow whispered against his mouth. "And now you'll never see me again."

Ichigo's right hand was clenched in tension around his sheets when his alarm went off and he opened his eyes with a shaky inhale. After a moment during which he forcibly slowed his breathing, he loosened his grip.

That final part hadn't happened in real life but he knew why it had added itself to the dream. Grimmjow had severely underestimated how difficult this would be.

It was all so unfair, it was all so fucking unfair. Why did this have to happen? And Grimmjow sure as fuck hadn't helped with the way he had handled it. He hadn't even trusted Ichigo after all they had been through, not nearly enough to clue him in. And then he still didn't fucking understand what he had done wrong, obviously, because he had speculated that he may have been better off having never told Ichigo. Ichigo wouldn't have done any of that to him, so why did he?!

They should have traded places, as far as Ichigo was concerned. Let Grimmjow pick up the pieces while Ichigo drifted peacefully off to Soul Society, how about that? Let Grimmjow be the one left behind instead, and he could see how he liked being stuck in the dark and then at a loss as to how to fix things after.

...Ichigo's family would have been devastated if it had been him, though. They couldn't have braced themselves for a second loss that way.

Then maybe it would have been better if he had never met Grimmjow, instead. He would never have gone through all this pain, he wouldn't have had to follow through with the stupid fucking plan that hadn't even worked, because Grimmjow in Soul Society wouldn't believe him! Ichigo wished he had never met Grimmjow in the first place, all the way back in the Winter War. He wished he hadn't met him and then he never would have made that promise in Las Noches that gave Grimmjow the ammunition he needed to keep coming around until they had become so tangled up in each other.

It took all of ten seconds before Ichigo realized how awful a thought that had been. How much could he say he even valued his memories if he would wish them away so easily? He didn't know what kind of person said they loved someone so much and then wished something like that. Probably a real piece of shit.

"I'm starting to think that your love ain't worth shit," the Grimmjow in his dream had accused.

Maybe it wasn't.

Ichigo missed him, so fucking much. He turned his face into his pillow and held it there until his lungs burned and he needed to pull away to breathe.

Chapter Text

As much as his last visit had somewhat effectively knocked Ichigo for a loop, he couldn't have stopped himself from eventually going back even if he had wanted. He spent a lot of time thinking about it all over the five days that followed: at home, in the clinic, at the store when he offered to pick up groceries for Yuzu simply for an excuse to distract himself. He had asked for some time off from his part-time job so that was one less thing to flounder at while his brain was constantly roiling.

Truthfully, he had not been able to come to many firm resolutions outside of that need to go back and try again, because he was still confused as hell and uncertain of what to do now. Which was all discouraging, of course, but ultimately didn't matter because Ichigo had sworn to himself that for as long as it took, he would hang in there. Grimmjow had done this for him anyway; he couldn't just quit, even if his results so far had not been anywhere near what he would have liked. He owed it to Grimmjow to reach some resolution... he just wasn't currently sure what that resolution would end up being.

But Ichigo had surprisingly frequent optimistic moments wherein he decided that eventually they would get there. It was actually a perfectly logical conclusion because he and Grimmjow had always been pulled together no matter how much they had resisted, like their souls themselves were opposite poles that drew one another closer. And that was the same soul up there in Soul Society that had always been yanked towards Ichigo's in the past so as far as he was concerned, that could only mean one thing: it could take a lot of time - maybe even years - but at some point, Grimmjow would accept everything and want to be close to him again. So that meant Ichigo would put in the necessary effort, however slow-going the progress.

That was the thought firmly fixed in his mind when he next stepped through the senkaimon into Soul Society. He needed to be patient and they would figure it out eventually. However long that took, it would be worth it.

"Somehow I saw this coming," Grimmjow noted caustically, chin planted on the heel of his upturned hand as Ichigo strode up to where he was sitting on the lone front step where he entered his house. Unlike the last visit, this time he did not look even remotely surprised that his unwelcome guest had returned. "You seem like the type."

"The strong-willed, sticks-to-his-convictions type?" Ichigo suggested as he sat down beside Grimmjow, whose blue eyes followed him without their owner bothering to turn his head. Ichigo half expected Grimmjow to think he was way too close and push him off.

Grimmjow neither pushed Ichigo off nor stood himself to move away. "The annoying, 'stuck to your skin like a leech' type," he corrected in a rumble.

"I'd argue that my description is more accurate."

"Sure it is." He straightened from where he had been hunched over with his elbow braced on his thigh and stretched his legs out in front of him. "I have things to do today. Can't just sit around entertaining you every time you show up."

Ichigo frowned. Grimmjow didn't have to say it that way. Sure, Ichigo had been sort of all over the place lately but who wouldn't have been, in his shoes? "I can entertain myself just fine. Go do whatever you want." Ichigo couldn't imagine he would curry any favor by remaining stuck on him 'like a leech,' as it had been so kindly phrased, so he would just come back when Grimmjow had finished doing whatever it was and talk to him then.

"That's the plan." Grimmjow stood up and at that point Ichigo noticed he had a bag beside him that he now swung over one shoulder to carry with him. He stepped down onto the street and eyed Ichigo expectantly. "Why are you still sitting there? I'm about to get going with or without you."

'With or without you?' The words registered after a moment. "You want me to come?"

"Even if I don't, you'll probably follow me anyway, right? I've tried to get rid of you twice and it hasn't worked." Grimmjow began walking off down the road. "My own personal stalker," he called back over his shoulder.

Sounded like Grimmjow didn't dislike leeches as much as he had wanted Ichigo to believe. And Ichigo certainly didn't know how the fuck he had just received that invitation to tag along but progress was progress and he wasn't going to complain. He shook his head in amusement and leapt down from the step to catch up to Grimmjow. "Are you going anywhere in particular?" He genuinely didn't even have a guess as to what Grimmjow may need to go do.

"I have errands to run. You must not be familiar with that sort of thing since you have all the time in the world to bother me."

Ichigo scowled. "I run plenty of errands at home. I make time to come see you despite everything else I have going on. I have chores, and obligations, and work..." Maybe not a lot of work given his current circumstances, but that was neither here nor there. Grimmjow didn't need to know that.

"I'm sure you're very busy," Grimmjow sarcastically agreed with a look shot Ichigo's way.

They were walking further and further outside of the town and Ichigo couldn't even see the small houses anymore when he glanced behind them.

"I'm overdue for laundry." Ichigo drew his attention back to Grimmjow and realized that was the answer to his question from a few minutes ago about where they were headed. "And I need to fix my roof. There's a gap, a bunch of water comes in when it rains. So I have to get what I need for that."

Ichigo remembered it now, seeing that line of sunlight across Grimmjow's floor that one day and thinking it indicated an opening. "You're going to do that yourself?"

"Who else is going to fix it?"

Fair point. "I guess it would have to be you. I just didn't know you knew how to do repairs like that."

It was not the most intelligent comment he had made today because it hit too close to that previously-tapped nerve. "Yeah, you wouldn't know that because you don't know me, remember?" Grimmjow replied irritably before glaring ahead again.

Okay, fine: Ichigo got it, sort of. He didn't have the information Ichigo had. Or rather, he did (because Ichigo had told him), but he hadn't experienced it to know that everything Ichigo had said was true and so it felt unreal to him. It would probably be frustrating to Ichigo, too, if their roles were reversed.

But Grimmjow wouldn't even consider the possibility of what Ichigo was saying. If he considered it, then he would really look at the evidence and realize that he was who he was and they could move forward. Of course Grimmjow wasn't willing to take that step, he had dropped a big brick wall in front of him on that end and had no intention of removing it, which resulted in - as he had said - Ichigo continuously running himself face-first into the fucking thing to no avail.

It did sort of raise a question, though: if Grimmjow was so turned off by Ichigo and his constant pushing on that prickly subject, why had he more or less invited his company today? He had no problem telling Ichigo to fuck off the last two times he had been here so it certainly wasn't due to lack of ability. He had claimed that he resigned himself to it because Ichigo was so stubborn but if he didn't want Ichigo accompanying him, then he wouldn't be. Despite his verbal denials, it was clear that he must have been curious. He must have been curious about Ichigo and what he had said, and maybe that was the start towards getting where they were supposed to be, Ichigo thought. He could work with that.

As they continued walking without doing much more than chit chatting and giving each other some shit when the opportunity arose, Ichigo noticed at one point that there was a lake ahead. Laundry, Grimmjow had said, was an item on his to-do list today.

Ichigo couldn't even begin to imagine the idea of his Grimmjow doing laundry last year. Had he ever had the desire to do some back then, he probably would have snuck it in with Ichigo's in hopes of having him just cave and do it for him - which Ichigo most likely would have, albeit with some protesting to keep up appearances.

Grimmjow. Laundry. Wild stuff.

"Here we are," Grimmjow announced as if Ichigo wouldn't figure it out on his own upon seeing a body of water. He dropped his sack to the ground and pulled out his clothes, then waded right out into the lake and dropped the bundle in the water.

Ichigo turned to take in the area around them. It was surprisingly desolate out here but that was consistent with what he had observed in Rukongai while searching for Grimmjow initially. Homes were usually clumped together and there was a significant amount of uninhabited space used for either agriculture or livestock. He had been aware before that several areas of Rukongai were used to cultivate, and that was how Seireitei was supplied with those sorts of commodities since there was minimal room to grow anything within the gates.

Grimmjow was still splashing around and when Ichigo turned back with his mouth open, ready to ask about the area, he stopped short at the sight.

His first thought was along the lines of being pretty impressed that Grimmjow still had virtually the same amount of muscle tone (and that the hollow hole was now unsurprisingly absent). His second thought was along the lines of realizing that Grimmjow had just stripped down right out in the open. "What the fuck are you doing?!"

Grimmjow turned around - which was not ideal at this particular moment in time - and eyed him balefully before Ichigo did a prompt one hundred and eighty degree turn. "What does it look like I'm doing? I only have two of these, how am I supposed to wash this one if I'm wearing it?"

"You don't wash it while you're wearing it, you wash it another time!"

"I'm not making a second trip when I can just wash it now." Grimmjow scoffed. "Why are you acting like a kid? I heard your life story pretty recently so I know for a fact you've seen a guy naked before."

Something that was absolutely not a sputter escaped from Ichigo's mouth. Was he accustomed to seeing Grimmjow's naked body? Yes, but under pretty different circumstances, and he was basically a stranger to this version of him! It made him feel like like he was taking advantage and being a creep, even if Grimmjow himself didn't care. "Yeah, when I was expecting it! And not out in the open like this! Aren't you worried about someone seeing you?"

"Obviously not." The sounds reaching Ichigo's ears revealed that Grimmjow had dismissed his outburst and returned to his washing. "Keep a look out and protect my virtue then, if you're so worried."

And so Ichigo, with few other options, plopped down on the bank to sit, cross-legged and facing the opposite direction.

"You're dramatic," he heard from behind his back as he kept his eyes on the tree line.

"No, I'm not! You're not even thinking about it from my perspective!"

"Sure I am, which makes you look even more dramatic. You're the one who's convinced I'm someone else who you should be happy to see naked."

"But you don't believe that right now, so it makes it- I'm not going to argue with you, just wash your clothes."

"Maybe I'd already be done if I didn't have to deal with your temper tantrum first."

"Shut the fuck up, it's not a temper tantrum!" He could hear Grimmjow's chuckle despite the distance between them and the sounds of moving water.

"What's your world like?"

"The Living World?" Ichigo tilted his head back to the sky. "It's similar to here in a lot of ways. People are similar no matter where they are. There's the same day and night cycle. We have more technology in the Living World, though. Soul Society is still kind of behind on that despite all of the new things they've caught up with over the last few years." He considered what other similarities there were between the two. "Lots of politics in both worlds."

There were some splashes from behind him that confirmed Grimmjow was still hard at work. "You made it sound like they don't know you're a big hero back home. Why wouldn't you just stay here all the time where you could have all the accolades and get whatever you want? ...Well, you are kind of here all the time lately, huh? Bothering me seems to be your favorite hobby."

"If I had a rock within reach, I'd throw it at you," Ichigo warned. "I told you: I have a family and friends in the Living World. And regardless of the rest of it, I'm human too. It's worth having the human life while I can. I'll have plenty of time to be here after I'm dead."

"You're a strange guy." Grimmjow must have sloshed out of the water and back to the bank because the sound of dripping and his voice came closer. "Your innocent eyes are safe now, by the way."

"I can hear you dripping. Don't your clothes need to dry?"

"It'll dry while it's on me. Sun's out, isn't it?"

Ichigo (cautiously) turned to confirm that Grimmjow was in fact dressed in wet clothes as opposed to still being bare-ass naked. Fortunately it wasn't the type of clothing that stuck too closely to his skin or else Ichigo would have felt like a pervert if he inadvertently caught an eyeful of anything in that case, too.

Grimmjow swung his bag back over his shoulder. "You going to stand up? We have other places to be unless you're tired of playing tag-along."

"I'll be fine as long as you're not going to keep taking your clothes off," Ichigo retorted bluntly as he pushed himself to his feet.

"See? Dramatic," Grimmjow pointed out again with a gleeful smirk at having made Ichigo wildly uncomfortable.

They continued in the opposite direction from which they had come and not too far from the lake, Ichigo's eyes caught on a wide stretch of color ahead of them. As they came closer, the size of the field of purple became even more apparent and as far as he could see were thousands upon thousands of plants sprouting upright purple flowers.

"I wouldn't have pegged you for the flower-picking type."

Grimmjow sneezed as he took a step into the beginning of the lines of growth. "Funny. Shut up, would you? We have to cross through here." And with that he began shuffling along through the field with Ichigo following behind. A few more sneezes escaped him as they crossed through the rows of purple and Ichigo couldn't help but let out an amused noise each time, much to Grimmjow's blatant chagrin and glares. Ichigo had never been particularly skilled at identifying flowers or any of that, but he knew the scent in this field was familiar. And apparently it didn't sit well with Grimmjow's nose.

"I've never seen so many flowers in one place before," Ichigo mused as he opened his hand to let them brush against it as they strode through, having caught up so that he was now at Grimmjow's side.

Grimmjow audibly sniffled to try to withhold another explosion. "This is the only field like this I've seen around here."

"Probably a good thing for you. It sounds like someone's firing an air gun out here with all your sneezing."

Turning his head to Ichigo, Grimmjow leveled him with narrowed eyes. "Too bad these flowers aren't orange. I could just knock you down and no one would ever find you since you'd blend right in."

"Very creative, nice job," Ichigo complimented with palpable sarcasm and earned himself a shove which he immediately returned in kind.

They came to Grimmjow's intended destination soon after. It looked like a timber yard with a number of other building-type materials outside a small forest, which Ichigo supposed made sense to come here if they were trying to patch the roof. There were a few men milling around out here and Ichigo didn't want Grimmjow to feel like he was glued to him, so he stayed back a bit while Grimmjow went off to get what he needed.

It was sort of funny, seeing Grimmjow doing all of these mundane, average things when he had always been so wild. The things that were different about him as a result of his current environment were becoming more apparent to Ichigo with each encounter. But at the same time, Ichigo was noticing more and more aspects of his core identity that were incredibly consistent with who he had been. Ichigo strongly suspected that he could have figured out this was Grimmjow even if he had looked completely different, as long as he had a chance to watch him for a few minutes.

Someone swung enough in Ichigo's direction while picking up a bucket full of tools from the ground to catch sight of him and did a double-take. Ichigo was still close enough to overhear anything said loudly, but the man seemed to drop his voice in some semblance of politeness when he addressed Grimmjow.

Grimmjow, on the other hand, had no such compunctions about politeness and thus Ichigo didn't have to do much guessing to identify the topic of conversation. "Yeah, that's him," Grimmjow's rough voice projected easily across the space. "...No, he's here to harass me. It's his favorite hobby."

Dick! When Grimmjow turned and caught Ichigo's eye, he grinned devilishly.

He doubled back with what he needed shortly after and Ichigo walked along at his side as they returned to the direction of the town. "I'm not an expert but don't you need something to hold it in place?"

"Of course I do. You think it's going to stay there with magic?"

"Obviously not or I wouldn't have asked," Ichigo pointed out sourly. "Where are you going to get everything else?"

Grimmjow's answer came after some hesitation as they crossed back through the same field (and sure enough, Grimmjow had already sneezed twice). "...That old woman who lives next to me, I figured I could borrow the other things I need from her. She's been here forever so she's collected a lot of stuff and she's always asking whether I need things." He shot Ichigo a look. "A little like you."

That was surprising. "Do you yell at her the same way you yell at me when I offer?"

"No, because she's much less annoying."

"Thanks, asshole." But honestly, he was happy to hear it. If she was looking out for Grimmjow that way - and especially if he was willing to accept the help here or there - Ichigo owed her.

A few eyes were on him again when they rounded their way back into the town and down the main street on which Grimmjow lived. Ichigo had thought word would have spread by now so that his repeated appearances weren't continuing to cause a commotion.

"I should have you ask to borrow what I need," Grimmjow grumbled upon noticing the attention. "Everyone would you give you anything you wanted."

An idea occurred to Ichigo and he stopped, donning the most sincere-looking expression he could. He shrugged at Grimmjow, catching the way his eyes widened slightly as Ichigo made a quarter turn. Then he raised his hands and cupped them around his mouth to amplify his voice when he began, "Hey-"

Grimmjow was on him in an instant and yanking one of his arms down. "Don't you dare," he hissed. "I was kidding, Kurosaki!" He obviously saw from the grin that Ichigo had been messing with him and backhanded him in the bicep. "You're a real shit."

Ichigo watched from directly outside his house as he walked over to the neighbor's and - with a glance at Ichigo warning him not to crack wise about it - relayed to her what he needed with clear discomfort in his posture.

This was familiar, Ichigo thought. Grimmjow had been like this, too. Ichigo had attempted to explain it to him a few times, that offering to help didn't mean Grimmjow couldn't do it on his own, it only meant that he didn't have to because he wasn't alone. Ichigo could do things with him if necessary and it did not take away from Grimmjow's independence if he did. But Grimmjow seemingly could never really accept that distinction. He had wanted Ichigo's presence and attention and loyalty, but he had virtually never wanted his help - especially if it were described as such. Even with the regression threat, Ichigo had to pitch it as doing something for his own sake (namely the sake of his own guilt) more than Grimmjow's before he gave the green light for Ichigo to go speak to Urahara.

Grimmjow soon came back over to him (and the neighbor waved amiably to Ichigo, who returned it - but really, if that woman ever needed anything at all, all she had to do was ask) with clear intention and set everything he needed in one place.

"You're going to do that right now?"

"Relax," Grimmjow ordered as he arranged the slat to lean against the roof, presumably so that he could reach it once he was up there himself. "You can keep yammering at me just as easily when I'm up there as you can when I'm on the ground." He circled around to the side of the building and maneuvered his feet up onto the inset for a window before heaving the things he needed up on top of it, followed by himself.

Ichigo popped up in one shunpo to find Grimmjow glowering at him. "Hey, I would've brought you up that way too if you'd asked."

"Well I wouldn't have asked."

"No kidding, that's why you had to do a spider monkey-style scale up the side of your house."

Grimmjow's eyes narrowed in a way that came across as pretty disingenuous. "If I accidentally hit your finger while I'm swinging this in a minute," he waved the mallet, "Know that it wasn't actually an accident."

Despite fumbling around some, Ichigo did his best to be useful as they covered the empty space in the roof with the new piece.

"You really don't know how to do stuff like this?" Grimmjow asked upon noticing Ichigo's uncertainty at certain moments if he wasn't taking the lead. At Ichigo's pause to decide how to answer without either looking incompetent or lying outright, Grimmjow's mouth quirked up before he returned his attention back to where he was securing the repair. "Aw, you're kind of useless, huh?"

Ichigo scowled. "Hey, war hero, remember?" He usually didn't pull that card but if Grimmjow was going to try to drag him this way, "Arguably pretty useful! I just haven't done this specifically."

Grimmjow threw his head back and laughed. "I would've been trying to rile you up more all this time if I'd known you get so pouty."

In another life, Ichigo would have carried on the back and forth, but here he just scoffed and leaned down, pretending to inspect the sturdiness of the new section that had been put into place while hiding his smile.

What an asshole. Ichigo had missed him while he was gone.

They both inspected the ceiling from the inside when they came back down to the ground and entered the house. It may not have been pretty, but Ichigo suspected it would do the job. The truth was that Grimmjow had seemed rather adept at this sort of thing, having given Ichigo very clear instructions and behaving as if he knew what he was doing. "Looks like you shouldn't be getting any more water in here the next time it rains."

"Finally."

Ichigo turned to him with a knowing smirk. "You're welcome for all of the help I gave you."

Grimmjow snorted and turned his head to look back. "I think you were more in the way than anything," he retorted, but Ichigo could tell that he was entertained by the bickering.

Ichigo lifted his eyes upward again. He was trying to determine how to know when he should leave if Grimmjow didn't go out of his way to send him off, which he would have expected to have happened already. He had been here for most of the day at this point. Ichigo obviously didn't mind staying if it were up to him, but Grimmjow was still getting used to him and he didn't want to push too much too soon (again).

As he was considering this, Grimmjow spoke up. "You're not a bad guy, Kurosaki," he granted apropos of nothing. "Just a desperate one."

What a glowing compliment. "Gee, thanks."

Grimmjow let out an amused little huff. "I mean it though." He had glanced at Ichigo briefly but had raised his eyes to the ceiling again. "When you left last time, you looked at me like I ripped your heart out and stomped on it. I don't know how to deal with shit like that. You're so persistent, hoping I'll finally tell you what you want to hear if you just push me enough in the right direction. But you have to accept that I'm not going to be someone I'm not just for your sake."

Ichigo chewed the inside of his cheek. He had not been planning on bringing any of this up today. He had been planning to take a break and then revisit it when Grimmjow warmed up to him and seemed a little more willing to listen. "How am I asking you to be someone you're not? You are who you are."

"Yeah, and that's the part you don't want to see. You don't want to, but I think you do."

Ichigo could tell that Grimmjow was looking at him again now, so he swallowed and met his eyes. He wasn't going to look off to the side like a kid who couldn't handle a difficult conversation. And those eyes, they were such familiar eyes. He had looked into them so many times.

"It would've been easier for me to just keep saying you were crazy and brushing you off. But there was a day I didn't have anything else going on, so I sat down and really thought about it all. I thought about the things you said and I thought about the reactions you gave to things I said - the little ones you probably didn't even notice you were giving." Grimmjow's gaze was burning a brand directly through Ichigo's skull for how intently he was watching. "You're not stupid: you know what's going on, I could tell from those reactions. The only problem you have is that you won't let yourself accept it."

Ichigo wasn't sure why it was so difficult to move his mouth. "No. I've accepted everything," he said in a tone that bordered on angry. "You're the one who hasn't, that's the problem."

Somehow Grimmjow was maintaining his composure easily this time around despite Ichigo's gradually escalating tone. "I don't think that's true and I don't think you think it is, either."

"Don't tell me what I think," Ichigo snapped sharply. "You didn't know him or else you would realize how similar you are. I knew you both, I can tell."

"That's my point, I didn't know him. And listen to what you just said yourself: didn't you just describe me and him as separate people?" He paused. "Look, I can't tell you what specific pieces of a person make him who he is. I don't know the answer to that. There's only one thing I know for sure, and that's myself. I know who I am. If I have the same soul as someone else used to, then that is what it is, but that doesn't change anything," Grimmjow informed him firmly. "The fact is that I've met you three times and before that you were a stranger. I'm not the person you loved; I'll never have lived that life. My life started here, in Soul Society, and no amount of you wishing otherwise is going to change that. All you're doing is torturing yourself."

Ichigo's hands felt numb where they hung at his sides and the anger that had begun trickling into his bloodstream seemed to dissolve away.

Grimmjow's voice was brutal in its decisiveness. "I can probably guess what's going on in your head, from some of those things you said. You said you'll be giving up if you let go, but who are you helping by hanging on this way? Certainly doesn't seem to be helping you; in all the time I've seen your face, you've looked like you were suffering more often than not. Hanging on can't help him unless there's some other afterlife out there you don't know about, which doesn't seem likely based on what you've said about how these things work. And you hanging on doesn't do me any good either, since I've been dragged into this too. I know this isn't what you want to hear but I'm telling you the truth." Grimmjow jerked one shoulder up in a shrug. "Doesn't really matter what I think about any of it besides the part that involves you telling me I'm wrong about who I am - which does make me mad as hell, by the way - but it just seems like a waste for you. Is that really what he would have wanted?"

The worst moment of all was the one in which Ichigo realized he couldn't say Grimmjow was wrong about much of anything.

He didn't pull any punches, Ichigo noted humorlessly as he processed everything that had just been said. Pretty smart guy; he had told Ichigo how he saw it and called him out because he had been watching carefully enough all along to see the situation clearly. Maybe he even saw it more clearly than Ichigo did, since he didn't have the emotional investment.

He was in so many ways so, so much like the Grimmjow that Ichigo had always known. But he wasn't. That was what he had been saying all along. As much as Ichigo wanted him so badly to be the Grimmjow that he had known and fought and kissed and yelled at and laughed with and slept with and shared those past memories with, he wasn't. Maybe his soul had those experiences, but his soul being the same didn't mean that this Grimmjow was a carbon copy. He could never be exactly the same.

"You don't want to admit the guy is gone, that's why you won't let it go."

Yeah. He had been right, even back then. Clocked Ichigo correctly after only two meetings. It was funny how a person could know certain things were true, and would agree they were true if asked, all without accepting them. Ichigo realized that he had been aware before now that his Grimmjow as he had known him would never exist again, but he had never once truly accepted it.

Ichigo thought he had already grieved for him. Now it felt as though he would have to do it all over again.

There were no benefits to Ichigo having been pushing all this time for this Grimmjow to acknowledge that he was the same as the one before. He was right about that, too. It helped no one. The only thing Ichigo had done was prolong his own pain and annoy Grimmjow by needing to be continuously corrected. Somewhere in there - however deep down - was still the soul that was the other side of Ichigo's coin, as far as he was concerned. He wasn't the same man but he did carry the same soul inside him and for that reason if no other, Ichigo didn't want to continue doing any host of Grimmjow's soul the disservice he now realized he had been doing thus far.

"You're right," he said. Grimmjow appeared to be a little taken aback at him having finally made that concession. "You are, and I need to drop it. I think I should go."

He turned towards the door, needing to be on his own right now. As he stopped near the entrance and found that he couldn't manage to look back at that face, he kept his eyes on the floor as he slipped his sandals on. "See you."

Ichigo didn't get far. He needed some time to sit and think and the longer he walked, the more pressing the need became until he found a hill outside of Grimmjow's tiny town and dropped bonelessly to the ground. The hill overlooked fields with some sort of growing crop that Ichigo couldn't identify in the reduced visibility of twilight.

Maybe he should have read some philosophy books in all that downtime he had over the past several months, to figure out before now what identity meant and what made a man who he was. That may have been better for everyone involved than him having stumbled around while attempting to make sense of it as he went, he thought as he put his knees up to circle his arms loosely around them.

The Grimmjow who had been by his side for several years was gone. His soul was here, and Ichigo knew that he wasn't imagining the massive number of similarities between the arrancar Grimmjow and this man who lived in District 59 of Rukongai. But he wasn't the same person, not really. He didn't want to be the same Grimmjow and he rebutted the idea that the same soul meant he was. And ultimately that was probably more his decision to make than Ichigo's, wasn't it? No wonder he had been angry that Ichigo refused to get the memo.

It was hard - really hard - but Ichigo thought that it would also be okay, at least in time. He was much more fortunate than most people who had lost someone they loved, his father included. Most people didn't get the peace of mind of knowing that the soul of their loved one had found new purpose rather than being somewhere unknowable, but Ichigo did. And some of the familiarity that reminded Ichigo of the past was like a nice little nostalgic bonus, even if it hurt at the same time. He just needed to stop trying to squeeze this current Grimmjow into a perfectly-shaped box as if he only existed for Ichigo's sake to replace someone who was gone.

He heard Grimmjow approaching before he saw him, heavy steps drawing nearer without any attempt to be inconspicuous. Oh, Ichigo would have to ask him what name he went by here, wouldn't he? It obviously wasn't Grimmjow. He would ask, but he didn't think he had it in him to do it right this second.

"How did you find me? If you already learned about sensing reiatsu then you're definitely outpacing me, I'm still shit at that."

"I took the easy route: asked some people who were outside whether they'd seen which direction you went. They steered me this way and I walked a while, here I am." Grimmjow lowered himself to the ground at Ichigo's side with not too wide a gap between them. "I thought I was going to set you off back there and have you start screaming at me, not take it and then walk away."

"Yeah, well." Ichigo curled further into himself. "I know you don't want to hear what I'm sitting here thinking about."

"Probably not." Grimmjow leaned his weight back onto his arms, palms against the ground, and stretched his legs out in front of him as if intended to be the polar opposite of Ichigo's drawn-in position. "But I'm already sitting down and I don't feel like getting up yet. So if you start talking, I don't have any choice but to listen unless I cover my ears."

Ichigo huffed a quiet, breathy laugh.

They sat there in silence for a few minutes, a silence that was surprisingly companionable for the little amount of time they had actually spent together, if Ichigo added it all up.

"I was the one who did it."

"Did what?"

Ichigo reached behind his shoulder to tap his fingers against the blade strapped to his back in answer. "The one who sent his soul on. Cleansed it. It didn't feel like cleansing, though.

"I was the only one he'd let do it, so I didn't have a choice if we wanted to go through with our plan. And it turns out I'm not as brave as the stories would have you believe; I was a coward when it mattered." His fingers curled around the hilt. "I closed my eyes and put this sword through someone I loved and it was one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. I wanted to look at him but I knew that if I did, I would have to watch him bleed around Zangetsu and fade away, and I couldn't make myself do it. I didn't even do him the decency of watching it happen."

His hand fell away from the sword as he dropped his arm to land on his knee. "He was trying to make me feel better at the end and I don't think I deserved it. He told me that I was going to be alright because I'm tough. I should've been the one trying to make him feel better, or at least say goodbye or that I loved him or something. But I didn't say a fucking word. I just kept my face covered and cried like a baby. Some tough hero, aren't I?"

He should have been reluctant to admit all of this out of sheer embarrassment, and his audience was probably sitting here thinking he was a cowardly fucking loser. But he let his Grimmjow lie there bleeding and fading and hadn't even said a single goddamn word, so it was pretty well warranted if he looked bad. "I can't imagine his final thoughts could have been anything other than wondering when I became so gutless. Must be karma that I have to see the whole thing play out so often in dreams."

Grimmjow listened in silence. He seemingly hadn't moved at all.

"The only thing that got me through that was knowing that it would be worth it when we could see each other again. Now I realize that I was thinking about it wrong. You helped with that." Ichigo should have been grateful to have been forced to swallow the truth, as bitter a pill as it was. He probably would be, in time. "It was worth it, but not for the reason I thought and it doesn't have anything to do with me. It's because that soul he had is in you now; you wouldn't be here without it. But you're here and you can do all of the things you do every day. So this was the better option after all." After a moment during which that all truly settled in, with having said it aloud himself, he added, "I should say I'm sorry."

At that, Grimmjow finally spoke up. "What for?"

"Not being fair to you, I think. You've been right and I've been an asshole. I can't make you shoulder my burden or expectations or however you want to describe it. The truth is that I didn't really know what to do. Who would, right? Someone who meant everything to me was taken away without much warning. Another arrancar who was my friend, too." He broke off, then shook his head. "But none of it is fair to you, and I don't think he or I ever thought about that. The position you'd be in as a result, I mean." Although the truth was that Grimmjow likely wouldn't have cared even if he had thought about it. His priority had been carrying out his plan and when he had a plan, he didn't let anything get in the way. "I've been selfish and making things more difficult for you, for the exact reasons you said. But you don't have to be anyone besides who you are and I don't want to make you feel otherwise. I'll stop."

Grimmjow sort of briefly hummed in acceptance. "Good," was his monosyllabic response. It was kind of surprising that was all he had to say now, since he had been so vocal about his displeasure on the matter all along while Ichigo just hadn't wanted to listen.

It was likely because Ichigo hadn't spoken to anyone about any of this that he couldn't close the floodgates now that they had opened and he had an - however unwilling - audience planted beside him. People had asked him whether he needed to talk about it ever since it had happened, of course. Offered to lend an ear whenever he needed it. But he hadn't wanted to be a burden or have everyone treat him as being even more fragile than they had already been, so he had never taken the offer. He wouldn't have admitted to anyone else that it had made things harder to keep it all locked up and churning in his gut all this time.

"We were so cocky. Him and me, I mean. We thought we didn't have to follow the same rules as everyone else and we could find a loophole to change things." His hands were now hanging limply from his wrists where they were draped over each knee, as if all of the tendons and bones had been snapped. "I was just desperate to keep him. I didn't want to have to lose him like I lost my mom. I loved him, I just wanted to be with him for as long as I could. But I guess the time we had was as much as we could have."

"You put a whole lot of investment into all of this. Waiting it out all this time, coming up here again and again. Could a hollow even have loved you back?" was asked from beside him. Ichigo's knee-jerk reaction was to leap to defensiveness as he had sometimes had to do early on in his relationship with Grimmjow, back when a few people in his life hadn't really understood. That must have been visible in the way his posture shifted because Grimmjow added, almost placatingly, "I don't know either way, I've never even seen one. Only asking based on things I've heard."

That shouldn't have been a surprise: Soul Society mentality on hollows was generally pretty pervasive. It was the boogeyman to be grateful one had not become, for the average soul here. Ichigo forcibly relaxed the spots where he had sensed his body tighten at the question. "You wouldn't be sitting here if he hadn't loved me back," he pointed out calmly. And he knew it was the truth, that Grimmjow had loved him as much as he was able. He had said so. And his very rare, awkward attempts at considerate gestures, his consistency in spending so much of his time in the Living World to be with Ichigo towards the end, his repeated reminders that he was going through with the cleansing for him, so that Ichigo would have him in some way again. It had all proven how he felt even if he had never verbalized it much. "That's why he went through with everything he did at the end."

Ichigo's mind jumped back to Grimmjow saying that he would probably do better by Ichigo in his next life. And that one fucking hurt a lot. He struggled again to keep his throat from feeling too tight with grief. "He did the best he could. It was always enough for me."

After a long pause during which Ichigo reprimanded himself that he should really stop making this poor guy sit here and play unpaid therapist, Grimmjow asked, "How much do I look like him?"

Letting out a curt laugh, Ichigo twisted the heel of one sandal in the dirt. "Practically an exact match. The only things that aren't the same are the parts that were part of him being an arrancar: the mask fragment and the estigma. And you wear your hair a little differently than he did. Otherwise you're identical."

The next question was entirely unexpected. "Would it help if you were just able to, I don't know, say shit to me, or something? Get whatever you need to off your chest, if you've got things left unsaid. We both know I'm not him, but I look like him so I guess I can be the stand-in." Ichigo was genuinely a little floored by the offer and it must have shown because Grimmjow hurriedly explained, flustered, "Maybe it'd get it out of your system. Better than you moping around all the time looking like you're ready to crawl in a hole and waste away, it's really annoying to see."

Ichigo honestly didn't know whether it would help. What things did he have to say to Grimmjow that had gone unsaid? There was definitely one thing: "I would tell him how sorry I am for not watching his soul pass on and not saying anything. I'd ask whether he could forgive me for that." He would sleep so much better if he could hear Grimmjow tell him that he forgave him.

"I guess I would tell him all the things you'd expect: that I love him and miss him, and that I think about him all the time. I hope he was thinking in those last seconds - even with how I fucked it up and let him down - I hope he was still thinking about the times we were happy. Because there were a lot of those." His chest ached. "He'd probably make that face he always made when he was uncomfortable and say I was getting too sappy on him. I'm sure I didn't tell him how important he was to me as much as I should have, because of that. I thought he would think I was being too soft and that he would make fun of me."

Ichigo's eyes focused on a single blade of grass in the patch just in front of his feet and he had to suck in a jagged breath. "How fucking stupid is that? I shouldn't have cared; what did it matter if he made fun of me for it? I should've told him all that stuff anyway. I'd tell him all of it now if I could, everything I thought about but didn't say."

He was willing to bet that the guy sitting beside him really hated witnessing this sort of vulnerability. A flat chuckle escaped his mouth and he lifted his eyes to Grimmjow, who shifted his head in Ichigo's direction after a moment. "I bet you don't like people being emotional, right?" he asked. His gaze fell back to that same blade of grass. "Don't worry, I don't think I have any crying left in me, at least. I exhausted all of that a while ago when I basically didn't leave my room for two months."

Those first miserable months. Ichigo had wondered at the time whether it was possible to die from that sort of pain. His mind had gone to some wrathful places once in a while, wanting someone to blame for how he felt. "I'd yell at him too. There are days I'm so fucking mad at him for keeping me in the dark. No one in Hueco Mundo told me for months that they knew the regression was going to happen. Everyone hid it from me and that made everything so much harder. I'd tell him what fucking bullshit that was, because I wouldn't have done that to him. There have been a few days where I was so mad at him that I wished I'd never met him-" He was forced to cut himself off, because his voice had been about to crack and he had sensed it coming. The two times he remembered having had that thought, he had felt like the scum of the earth on the days that followed. "But I didn't really mean it. I'd never mean that."

Ichigo hadn't realized that there were this many things he would have said to Grimmjow if he could. "I know you- he had his reasons for not wanting to tell me about everything, but I wish he had. I wonder whether Urahara could have figured something out to save him and the others if he had more time. That keeps me awake a lot at night, wondering if there really was something we could have done. Or - even if Urahara couldn't have found a way to help them - I still wish that Grimmjow had told me from the very beginning so that I could've dropped everything else I was doing to spend all the time I could with him. I would've spent every second with him, as much as he wanted, doing whatever he wanted to do. I miss him all the fucking time."

They both sat there together on that hill outside of town and listened to the quiet sounds of the night.

A little while later, Ichigo had calmed down and was pretty embarrassed over the whole thing. He had rambled on and on while Grimmjow hadn't said more than a few words or moved from the position he was in, which meant that Ichigo could only imagine what he was thinking. And of course he cared about Grimmjow's opinion of him, he couldn't just switch that off.

Then Grimmjow finally, abruptly spoke up. "Lucky guy, wasn't he?"

"Because of what, me?" Ichigo asked with an amused lilt while turning to look at him again. "I don't think he would've agreed to that. He would've said he had to fight to get anything. And he probably would've said that the universe screwed him over a lot, just look at what ended up happening."

"I've seen enough to know that a lot of folks don't get anything at all no matter how much they fight for it," Grimmjow told him. "And I know for sure that a lot of them don't have anyone love them the way you clearly loved your guy."

Ichigo digested all of that. He didn't usually think about it that way, but he supposed that from the perspective of someone living alone out here in a pretty distant section of Rukongai, it was much more readily apparent.

"He probably knew all the things you didn't tell him," Grimmjow concluded from beside him in a surprisingly reserved tone. He had not turned in Ichigo's direction in a while, and his eyes stayed firmly set over the open fields before them even now. "They're written all over your face."

Chapter Text

When everything was said and done, one overarching question was left: what now? He needed some time to consider what was right and what was fair for both of them.

If he ignored his gut impulse and pretended to look at the situation objectively, he would have to admit that it potentially wasn't the best idea to keep coming back. He didn't think it was crazy to wonder whether he might stagnate his own chances of moving on in a realistic way if he stayed so close to someone who - for all that he wasn't the person Ichigo had loved and lost - reminded him of that person a lot. That was the logical argument that suggestion caution.

But inside Ichigo was something pretty deeply woven, intangible, and unable to be excised that would seemingly always and forever pull him in the direction of things like Grimmjow, and he couldn't say with certainty that the logical argument could outweigh that pull.

Because this person was still very much 'a thing like Grimmjow' to which Ichigo felt pulled. And Ichigo did like him. He had similarities to Grimmjow but he also had differences and things that were exclusively him, and Ichigo could see those much more clearly now that he wasn't looking at him through a pre-determined lens.

Ichigo recognized that he should give it some thought to really ascertain the best approach... but he also assumed odds were pretty good that he wouldn't be able to stay away. And the other relevant party here had a say in things too. Ichigo really didn't know what his opinion on it all was now that they had come to an understanding. If he even wanted to see Ichigo again, then the option was still on the table. But if he didn't, then the decision was already made and what Ichigo wanted would be irrelevant.

And the only way to know was to ask. "Is it okay if I come back sometime?"

"Why?" was the response. "What interest would you have in hanging around here now? You realized I'm not who you wanted."

"I think I need some time. You know, to come to terms with everything. But I liked hanging around here with you," he confessed. "I don't really know how you feel. I know you said I've been annoying you a lot so it's your decision if you wouldn't want me to come here again anyway. I know I was really insistent with everything and pissed you off. If you really want me to fuck off, I'll respect it this time. I promise."

The considering pause that followed was ambivalent but did not go on as long as Ichigo might have expected. "As long as you don't start mixing me up with him again, I guess it's alright. You're a pain in my ass, but you've kept things more interesting lately."

Ichigo spent a week and a half in the Living World this time.

When it had really sunk in that night that it wasn't Ichigo's Grimmjow, he had been pretty devastated. For all that he had tried (only somewhat successfully) to put on a brave face at the time, there had still been the thick, acid sense of loss in his gut again and it lingered a while. The first two days after that conversation had mostly consisted of him moping.

On the third day, the mortification also suddenly set in about how he had handled himself with his big sad outburst. He had gone on and on about his feelings and missing Grimmjow in front of a virtual stranger whom he had been following around like a lost puppy, and it had all been way too much. At least he hadn't cried right then and there, but it had still been pretty bad. So now he had two things to contend with: coming to terms with reality and also embarrassment. It was a great combination and he ultimately managed to give himself headaches for a few nights in a row over it all.

He did have to eventually make a decision on what he was going to do. It came down to what was best for both of them. And (well, Ichigo didn't really have anything to call him at the moment) not-Grimmjow had said that he didn't mind Ichigo visiting again, so he was probably fine with either way it turned out.

Which meant that the decision came down to Ichigo. Should he let it all go and chalk it up to fully accepting his loss, or should he hold on as he had been trying to do up until now? As he had thought before, one route may have been healthier than the other, but that wasn't the only aspect that mattered to him by a long shot.

For whatever else Ichigo may have been forced to acknowledge that night, one idea had never changed or wavered in his mind: his Grimmjow's soul was there because of him. He knew that soul was up there with every certainty, although it didn't mean that Grimmjow himself was. And Ichigo owed that soul something, even if he wasn't accepted and given a place in that life as they had originally intended. Following some deliberation, he decided that he at least needed to do everything in his power to make sure that soul's new host lived as good an afterlife as was possible because as far as he could tell, that was the right thing to do and the best way to honor Grimmjow's memory.

And this guy deserved it for his own sake, anyway. He had put up with a lot of trouble from Ichigo and been surprisingly patient with the whole situation, all things considered. The fact that he had sat down and let Ichigo pour his heart out and blubber in front of him was above and beyond the call of duty, honestly.

So Ichigo did have some level of obligation to him. He wanted to do it, too. And he would have found a way to try to ensure that not-Grimmjow had a happy life in Soul Society from either up close or from a distance if he had told Ichigo to hit the bricks. Ichigo currently had the green light to execute his mission from up close. From here on out, that guy was going to have the best fucking afterlife anyone could ask for, if Ichigo had anything to say about it.

...Yeah, he figured he had known in the back of his mind that he would go back all along. Those opposite poles, opposite souls drawn to each other whether they liked it or not. Maybe he had never stood a chance.

Despite having been told he was welcome (well, maybe that was overstating it) to come back, he couldn't shake that feeling of having embarrassed himself some. What if he had only been told he could come back out of pity? Great, now he sounded just like his arrancar.

His arrancar who was gone. Forever.

Goddamnit, he thought he had gotten all of it out of his system already today. He shook his arms deliberately as if that would help eliminate all of the tension pent up in them and forced himself forward until he spotted a very familiar road full of battered but resilient homes.

And his target, who was never seemingly too far off whenever Ichigo stopped by, was outside again and must have caught a glimpse of him coming, because he was watching as Ichigo dropped down near him. "You're here."

"I'm here."

"I wasn't sure whether you would come back."

"I told you I would," Ichigo pointed out.

"Yeah, I know. I was just used to you popping up all the time for a little while there so it threw me off that it didn't happen the next damn day, like usual."

A lot had thrown Ichigo off lately too, that was for sure. "You knocked some sense into me and it took some time to figure it all out, so that's what I was doing."

The man in front of him hummed. "You'll grow out of your stalking phase one of these days, Kurosaki. Give it time." And he grinned when Ichigo shoved him a step back by his shoulder. "Come on, you're going to get all the neighborhood yapping again if we're just standing around out here. If I have to answer one more question about you for these nosy sons of bitches, I'm going to have to kill somebody."

"Won't be me, I'm too tough for you," Ichigo retorted as he carried along by his side. He had no idea where they were going today, but that didn't matter much. "By the way, one important thing: you've never told me what name you go by." Ichigo tipped his head back to check out the sky. "Part of that is my fault, right, since I rushed in and started calling you 'Grimmjow.' But what does everyone else call you?"

That was one of the things he had told himself over the past week: as part of his effort to not be as much of a dick about everything anymore, he shouldn't just call this guy by Grimmjow's name without even getting his opinion on the matter.

Not-Grimmjow gave a sort of noncommittal noise followed by, "They call me whatever. Couple of nicknames." At Ichigo's dubious expression, he said irritably, "I'm not usually out here carrying on a lot of conversations. Lone wolf, remember?"

Ichigo didn't make the animal joke this time. "Nicknames like what? I need to call you something."

There was another pause during which not-Grimmjow audibly scoffed. "They're all fucking annoying, anyway." From his clear dislike and reluctance to share any of these nicknames, Ichigo had a sneaking suspicion that at least a few of them involved the color blue. It seemed likely that people trying to get the guy's attention would have latched onto his most obvious distinguishing feature in lieu of any other way to address him.

"Then what am I supposed to call you? Am I making up my own nickname here?"

Narrowed eyes indicated a negative reception to that particular idea. "Not a chance, I don't trust you." Ichigo admitted to nothing but smirked. "What did you roll up here calling me? I have the 'Grimmjow' part because you said it a thousand times, but there was more."

The smirk slipped off Ichigo's face and he inhaled a quiet breath. "What, his surname? Jaegerjaquez."

"Huh. Have to admit it's a pretty good name. Kind of attention-grabbing, you know?"

Ichigo nodded, a flash of nostalgia and sadness flaring up in him. "Yeah, it's a pretty good one."

There was a beat of silence. "You said it to me so much that I got used to hearing it. It's going to feel weird if you call me something else now."

"I mean, what's the alternative?" Ichigo wondered aloud. "Will I just call you 'you' all the time?"

His companion sort of rolled his neck as if to alleviate some tension. "I'm suspecting this could be a bad idea, because it might get your head all jumbled up again and then we'll be right back where we started. Are you going to get all confused if you keep calling me that?"

Ichigo nearly stumbled at how unexpected that had been. He didn't have a particularly good objection because if anyone should use Grimmjow's name, it should probably be the new person housing his soul. "No, it's- that would be fine, I think. But I would've thought that would bother you." For how adamantly against being misidentified as he had been - and understandably so, Ichigo now granted after having reevaluated and realized that he needed to be a little less selfish - Ichigo would have thought the name wouldn't fly.

He earned a chiding look. "Kurosaki, I just told you that my choices are that or nicknames I hate, unless I suddenly get creative. I'm not exactly swimming in great options."

Ichigo chuckled. "Sure, you can use that name if you want." He almost added, 'no one else is using it, after all,' but that killed the laugh in his voice and the words seemed as though they may have punctured holes in his throat on the way out. Way too soon for any quips. "Like you said, it's a good name and you got used to it."

If he- Grimmjow picked up on how Ichigo's voice audibly fell into something a little more dejected, he didn't seem to want to draw attention to it. "You picked a bad day to finally drop by again, by the way," he informed Ichigo. "I have to work for a while today."

That was new information. "I didn't know you worked," he said, which earned him a glare. "How the hell would I know that if you've never mentioned it before? Where?"

"You remember that place we went to get that piece to patch my roof? I'm there sometimes. I don't mind moving heavy shit around so they're happy to have me."

"Guess you have to do something with the muscle."

"You'd know, you got an eyeful of all of it recently," Grimmjow reminded. Ichigo felt the scalding heat cascade across his face and he knew how red it must have been from the way Grimmjow grinned in delight. "You must have some muscle yourself under all that black." He nodded towards Ichigo's right shoulder where the hilt of his larger blade was visible. "Big sword like that has to be heavy."

"It used to be a bigger sword before it was split into two, if you can believe that."

Grimmjow made a dismissive noise. "Okay, now you're just showing off. All that aside, I have to go there for a few hours." He paused both his words and his steps, surveying Ichigo in that way he did as if trying to pin him down. "You could come back and meet me when I'm done. How about at that lake? That's in between here and where I'll be anyway. You remember where it is?"

Ichigo did, but he was also attuned to Grimmjow's unique pattern of reiatsu well enough now that he would have been able to find him even if he had been off by a fair distance. "If we go there you're not going to get naked again, right?"

"Do you want me to?" Grimmjow asked with sudden mock seriousness, and he laughed when Ichigo began sputtering denials. When he settled down, he took a step backwards. "So there in about five hours, right?"

"Yeah, I'll see you there." It probably wasn't worth going back through the senkaimon for that length of time so maybe Ichigo would go see what some of his friends were doing. He hadn't seen Hirako in ages and even though Ichigo sometimes wanted to smack him upside the head, it would be nice to catch up.

"Catch you later then, Kurosaki." Grimmjow departed with a flick of one hand over his shoulder in farewell as he walked away.

In a way, Ichigo thought as he watched him go, there was more of an ease between them now that no one was holding any expectations. So even though it had hurt a lot, perhaps it was for the best. Grimmjow might let him in more this way and that was the best outcome here, if Ichigo could be there for him. Not that he would ever ask for anything, but...

Ichigo would be there if he ever did.

And right now he was going to go bother Hirako.

Despite having spent what felt like an awful lot of time goofing off in the Seireitei, Ichigo still beat Grimmjow back to the lake.

After accepting that Grimmjow was an entirely new person for all intents and purposes, the thought had crossed Ichigo's mind at one point over the last week about what his Grimmjow would have wanted in the current situation. For all that Grimmjow had often - and he would have agreed to this - been self-focused, Ichigo knew that deep down, he had really only been concerned about Ichigo at the end. Grimmjow had known that he had no option to stay himself: he would lose everything regardless. And yet he had been the one to propose the notion of sending his soul on to Soul Society, and he had been the one to outright say that he was doing it to come back for Ichigo in the only manner he could.

Back when it had all gone down, Ichigo had asked how it was possible that Grimmjow hadn't even acted like he was all that angry about the situation. It had seemed so unbelievable; a dozen things pissed Grimmjow off on a good day, let alone a day in which he had to contend with being fucked over by the universe. Yet Grimmjow had been in his usual mood (not that it was a particularly happy one, but average for Grimmjow) nearly all of the time, outside of one or two incidents when he and Ichigo had really gotten into it.

Ichigo hadn't thought of it at the time, but since then he had begun to wonder whether Grimmjow had felt that he needed to keep it together for both of them. Ichigo had been palpably struggling with everything back then. He wondered whether Grimmjow had suspected that if he started lashing out at everything, Ichigo would have had an even harder time and so he simply hadn't done it. He had known he was drawing closer and closer to losing everything that made him who he was, and yet he had directed so much of his time and attention to doing what he could for Ichigo's benefit.

Funny, Ichigo thought, that Grimmjow had claimed to have not been very good at loving him while doing so many things that had proven the opposite.

At any rate, when Ichigo tried to hypothesize what his Grimmjow would have said about how this whole situation had progressed, there were a few major bullet points that came to mind. One was that Grimmjow would have been pissed about his own soul being in someone who had done so much to fuck up what he would have described as his very shrewd plan. Another was that he would have probably yelled at Ichigo for not even trying to beat some sense into Soul Society Grimmjow rather than just letting him tell Ichigo how it was going to be.

But beneath all of that, Ichigo thought that his arrancar Grimmjow probably would have approved of Ichigo finding some way to keep this Grimmjow around him like they had wanted. That had been his goal, after all: for his soul to stay with Ichigo. Maybe it wouldn't pan out exactly as they had predicted in terms of the nature of the relationship, but that was okay. Ichigo was grateful for it anyway. And he hoped this would have been good enough for Grimmjow, if he couldn't be around himself.

He was thinking about all of that when Grimmjow showed up about half an hour later. "What did you do all this time?"

"I was out in the Seireitei visiting some people I know," Ichigo told him as Grimmjow dropped to sit next to him, almost a mirror of how they had been on that hill together a week and a half ago. "I wanted to say something, by the way: you didn't have any obligation to listen to me the other day. It was cool of you to do it anyway."

"Don't delude yourself into thinking it was out of the goodness of my heart or anything," Grimmjow offered casually.

Ichigo let out a brief amused hum. "Well whatever your reasons, the truth is that it did me a lot of good."

He was prepared to accept that as the end of the topic but it seemed Grimmjow wasn't. "A lot of it was probably my own curiosity," he said as he gazed out over the lake. "You marched in here telling me this outrageous story. You know how they talk about hollows around here, right?"

"Yeah," Ichigo acknowledged bitterly. That had been a sticking point for him for a while now and he didn't like it. "And they shouldn't, because a few of those hollows they talk about that way helped during the war when Soul Society was getting decimated. And Kyouraku and Central 46 know that; they should issue some statement that encourages everyone to be a little more fucking grateful."

"All that aside," Grimmjow diverted back on track, "It was such an insane story. When you came back the second time, I started asking myself what kind of guy would jump through all those hoops and keep trying and trying so damn hard." He leaned to the side and stretched to pick up a stone. When he righted himself again, he curled his elbow back to skip it across the surface of the water four or five times before it sunk. "What kind of guy is able to be that devoted to someone. I wanted to satisfy my curiosity and figure that out."

Ichigo hunted around for the flattest stone within reach and attempted to mimic the move - and not terribly, at that, because he got about four skips as well. "So did you figure me out?"

"Parts of you." Grimmjow bent one knee so that it was upright while the other leg was still stretched out. "The kind of guy who would do all that, turns out it's a crazy one, and a stupidly noble one... but not a bad one," he finished, echoing his comment from the last time they had seen each other.

Ichigo smiled a little as he looked out over the water. He could accept that grade, coming from the source in question.

It was only then that he realized he hadn't eaten before he leaving home earlier today and he was starting to feel it. And speaking of eating... "I just realized that I've never seen you eat. But you have to get hungry, with reiatsu like yours."

Grimmjow looked a little taken aback at that comment and turned his head to Ichigo. "What does that mean?"

"...What does 'hungry' mean?"

Grimmjow made a noise suggesting Ichigo had said or done something extra dumb. "No! What did you mean about the reiatsu, what does that have to do with it? Seems like only one or two other people I've met get hungry. No one else does, I wondered what was wrong with me."

"Oh. Nothing's wrong with you at all. You're just stronger than most of the people around you. Souls with a lot of spiritual power get hungry, it's one of the telltale signs. A lot of the shinigami get recruited when members of the Gotei notice strong reiatsu signatures and see whether people like you are interested." And actually, now that he was sitting here thinking about it, it surprised him that Grimmjow hadn't been found solely based on that. "I can't believe Iba's people didn't notice you sooner, you should have been obvious if they had been scouting reiatsu. No one ever came up to you to talk about your reiatsu?"

Apparently the Seventh hadn't been paying very close attention because Grimmjow answered, "Nope. Can't say I would've paid attention to them if they had, anyway."

Ichigo shrugged. "It's up to you but if you ever did want to be a shinigami, you would be on the fast track. You're basically starting a giant step up from everyone else with how your reiatsu is. Some of the captains would probably fight over you, honestly."

"I wouldn't have to take orders from you, would I?" Grimmjow asked the question with such a degree of serious concern that Ichigo chuckled.

"I'm not really involved anymore since they don't need me much now. And it's not like I was ever in charge."

"You told me before that you work. Must be in the Living World if you're not busy out here anymore."

"I don't work all that much now, to tell you the truth. I help my dad out with his clinic and I have an evening job some nights helping out at a store. Definitely not what most people are doing at my age," he noted with a hint of bitterness. "I did have a decent salaried job for a while after I finished university and it was going well. But then everything happened and I had to quit. If I hadn't quit, I would have just been fired anyway. Hard to go to work when you don't leave your room for a few months."

"So when are you going to get back to what you think you should be doing? You can't use that as an excuse to hold your life up forever." Despite the abrasiveness of the words, Grimmjow sounded sincere rather than mocking. "Or I guess you could, but you shouldn't. I know you didn't get the answer you wanted but at least you got some answer about how things turned out, right? That obligation you felt you had is over."

That was the wrong button to press. Ichigo really didn't need any more pressure about how he was fairing since he applied plenty on himself. The only thing worse than feeling so bad that he couldn't go out and do much was feeling bad about feeling bad. "I don't think we need to go into that since it's none of your business; it's mine."

Grimmjow glowered and shook his head. "Fine. Do what you want."

And in an effort to think of some change of subject, Ichigo's eyes happened to catch on Grimmjow's feet out in front of him. "Do you want a pair of sandals or something?" When Grimmjow met his eyes, he added, "I know a lot of people who live near you don't have them but isn't it kind of uncomfortable?"

"'It's none of your business, it's mine,'" Grimmjow parroted back. "If I wanted something, I would find a way to get it. I don't need or want you trying to take care of me." He spat the words out as if they tasted bad in his mouth. At least this time he didn't include the line about Ichigo trying to bribe him with offers, so that was arguably an improvement. "You don't have any reason to help me anyway, we've been through this a hundred times."

"You're so damn stubborn. And of course I do! I do have a reason to help you, because I- you know." He fumbled briefly. "I like hanging around you. I don't want to come around and see you not have the stuff you need, it would make me feel like an asshole if I could do something to change it and didn't even try. What, do you think friends don't give a shit about each other?" There, that was pretty safe. Didn't push too far.

"Friends?" Grimmjow asked.

Ichigo was willing to beg any deity that would listen to not let this turn into a huge thing where Grimmjow obstinately insisted they weren't friends and blah, blah, blah. Ichigo had gone through enough of that to last a lifetime. He heaved a sigh in preparation. "You can call it whatever you want, but that's what I'm calling it."

Grimmjow was observing him in that narrow-eyed way, hunched over and focused, before he suddenly straightened. "I see what's going on here."

"...What?"

A taunting smirk was fired his way. "You just have a big savior complex."

Grimmjow cackled when Ichigo's only response to that was an, "Ugh." He was absolutely not going to tell Grimmjow that it wasn't the first time he had heard someone suggest that, because he didn't need to fan the flames of that self-satisfied fire.

"What happened between when you first came to Soul Society and when I met you?"

They were sitting together in front of Grimmjow's place three visits later when Ichigo asked. He had realized the night before that he hadn't asked about the experience in Soul Society before he had crashed himself into Grimmjow's life like a meteor.

"Huh?" Grimmjow craned his neck in Ichigo's direction. "Nothing very exciting. I opened my eyes all of a sudden and I was alone, a little outside of this town. Weird feeling to wake up and not know anything about yourself that way. Especially since you somehow still know about a bunch of everyday things that have nothing to do with you." He shrugged in nonchalance. "Then I walked around, found this place. Did what it seemed like I needed to do."

Ichigo imagined it would have been more than a weird feeling: it would have been frightening to wake up like that, alone. And of course he had been alone. Who else would have been there? He had probably woken up alone here just as the arrancar Grimmjow had woken up alone in Hueco Mundo when he had gained consciousness as an adjuchas.

He had only mentioned his time in the desert as an adjuchas twice to Ichigo: once about two years ago, and then again in that brief comment in Las Noches shortly before he was gone. The first time, he had immediately seemed to regret having said anything because he changed the subject and refused to speak another word on the matter. Ichigo had wondered back then whether his reaction had been bad or something, to have caused the sudden shutdown and backpedal. Maybe Grimmjow had thought his expression veered too close to pity. Ichigo thought it was better described as empathy than pity, and he wondered whether - if he had said that and pointed out the difference between the two - Grimmjow would have confided in him more during their time together.

He felt that empathy now too. "I'm sorry you were alone."

Grimmjow's entire head turned to him. "You look genuinely guilty and everything, don't you? Well quit it: I made it where I needed to be just fine on my own. What could you have even done?"

"Maybe nothing. I just don't like that you were alone." That soul in there (and Ichigo didn't even waver this time, because he had worked hard for a full week on consistently stopping and correcting himself whenever he slipped back into referring to this Grimmjow and his Grimmjow as one and the same in his head; it had finally seemed to stick) had twice been inside someone who had come into consciousness and been all alone. And that in and of itself was so fucking sad. "I mean, if I could've been there, I would have been the first thing you saw and you probably would've imprinted on me like a baby bird. You'd like me a lot better if that had happened."

The abrupt shift in tone from somber to joking triggered a snort from Grimmjow. "No chance. I would've pegged you for the idiot you are even if you were the very first thing I laid eyes on."

"You'd definitely be a lot nicer to me if you'd imprinted on me, too," Ichigo told him sagely. He lost the straight face he had been holding and snickered when Grimmjow reached over and shoved him.

"I'm nicer than you deserve when you're being a teasing shit like this," Grimmjow argued right before Ichigo pushed him in return.

When their shoving match had ended, Ichigo leaned all the way back to lay along the planks of wood that made up the very edge of the floor of Grimmjow's house, legs extended outside. "Did you have any plans for today?"

Grimmjow's upper body suddenly appeared to his right when he mirrored Ichigo and laid back the same way. "Nothing today. I figured you'd be here so I wouldn't be able to be productive even if I wanted. I have to spend too much time dealing with you."

"Sure. Too bad for you, you already told me I keep things interesting so I know you don't actually mind," Ichigo pointed out.

Grimmjow tutted. "You do a great job of making me want to take back every half-decent thing I say to you."

Ichigo shoved at him again from where he was lying and Grimmjow caught his arm by the wrist before he got too close. And then instead of letting go, he just held on for a moment. In the seconds it took Ichigo to turn his head to see whether Grimmjow was doing that in order to line up a good hit on him in return, Grimmjow had already released the wrist and had his gaze fixed directly at the ceiling above him. He was seemingly disinterested in glancing in Ichigo's direction despite no doubt feeling the eyes on him.

Ichigo looked back at the wood above their heads as well and thought. What things did he know about in Soul Society that Grimmjow might have the desire to see? He wasn't really an expert so he was operating with limited information. He usually just popped out in the Sei- Oh, yeah. "Do you want to go see the Seireitei today?"

Grimmjow laughed but then he seemed to realize that Ichigo wasn't joking. "And do what? Crash a party?"

"Probably not worth it; their more formal parties are really dull," Ichigo informed him, and that made Grimmjow let out another brief laugh. "I didn't know whether you might want to walk around and just see what it's like."

"That's pretty far from here, though. Wouldn't it take us a few hours to get there?"

Fortunately there was a solution to that. "It would take just as long as it takes me to get here. That thing I do that you've seen, the shunpo? It's fast movement, that's how I make it here from the Seireitei quickly. You would just have to hold onto me."

Grimmjow seemed to give it a moment of thought before deciding, "Then sure, why not? Let's go see this place."

Twelve minutes later, the instant Ichigo released his hold under Grimmjow's thighs and set him down, he was promptly kicked hard in the calf. "Hey! Come on, you can't still be mad."

"Trust me, I can. 'You just have to hold onto me,' you said. Not, 'I'll have to carry you like a fucking kid!'" Grimmjow accused with his brow contorted in resentment.

"Well it already happened and we're here, so get over it." Ichigo shifted his attention to the city around them. For all that he had been here, he wasn't actually well-acquainted with the place. His first visit hadn't been much of a leisurely sight-seeing excursion since they had been rushing to get to Rukia in time, and every visit since basically involved Ichigo going to some pre-determined spot or jumping straight into a fight. With little point of reference, he had concluded it was best to bring them down right inside one of the massive gates on the edge of Seireitei's center. He supposed they could explore and find their way from there.

When he began walking and Grimmjow did not, Ichigo called back over his shoulder, "If you stand there throwing your tantrum instead of coming with me, then I carried you all that way for nothing and you'll be mad about that, too."

An impressively creative string of insults was slung his way before he heard Grimmjow taking quick steps to catch up with him. Now that Ichigo was being observant for a change, he noticed that there had certainly been a lot of repairs made since the last war. But he was surprised at the number of buildings, at least in this area, that still showed evidence of the fighting. "There's still a lot of damage left over from the quincies that hasn't been fixed yet after all this time. I didn't realize that."

"The what?"

"The quincies. That was the second war I mentioned to you, when they invaded here. It was a mess." Ichigo paused and examined a damaged building more carefully. "Actually, now that I'm looking at it, I think this might've been where I fought at one point. The edge of that kind of looks like the damage my attacks would have done. And I think I knocked a quincy girl with lightning through that building."

Grimmjow scoffed. "Your efforts to impress people might work better if you were a little more subtle."

"Are you impressed anyway?"

"...Little bit. Smug asshole." And Grimmjow grinned when Ichigo laughed.

There were more people milling around the further they walked, and Grimmjow's pace slowed a little. Ichigo slowed his own to match, wondering whether he had seen something that interested him.

"Is this a good idea?" Grimmjow asked suddenly.

Ichigo raised an eyebrow. "Why wouldn't it be?"

"I don't think I blend in very well. Seems I'm slightly off on the dress code."

It was only once it was pointed out that Ichigo noticed Grimmjow had begun receiving a few stray odd looks. This was the Seireitei: they lived much more comfortably than those out in Rukongai - especially in the parts of Rukongai beyond the first ten districts or so - and it showed in the streets, the homes, even the clothing. And Grimmjow, with his obviously lower quality kosode and lack of footwear, really did stand out. Ichigo hadn't even though about this before now. And he probably never would have, if only because... his Grimmjow wouldn't have given a shit about standing out. But this was not his Grimmjow, and he couldn't just assume things like that. He thought he had been doing a lot better on that front for several weeks now (and through very dedicated efforts!) but there were times that he just didn't realize he was subconsciously filling in answers to questions he hadn't actually asked.

"I could probably grab something else for you to borrow if it bothers you."

"Me? I don't give a damn, I was thinking more along the lines of how it makes you look." Grimmjow threw one hand in a short, jerky gesture at their surroundings. "You're the one with a reputation here. You'll look stupid tagging alongside me, being dressed the way I am." He wasn't showing even a hint of embarrassment but Ichigo wondered whether it was in there somewhere, hiding beneath the unaffected and confident surface.

Ichigo blew out a disbelieving breath. "Like I'd care about that." Then he frowned. "...Did you really think I would?" He didn't think he gave the impression of being so shallow. Regardless, one thing was for sure: Ichigo didn't give a flying fuck what anybody thought about Grimmjow or himself based on something ridiculous like clothes. "No one is going to say anything or else I'll give them hell." Then he realized what reaction his comment would probably elicit and attempted to preemptively stave off any backlash by qualifying, "Not that you need me to, so don't bite my head off. I'd do it because I want to."

To his surprise, Grimmjow didn't snap at him or get offended. Instead he held Ichigo's eyes with his own. "You'll always go to bat for someone you give a shit about, won't you?" The way he asked sounded off, though, almost as if with a hint of melancholy. It didn't make a whole lot of sense.

In an effort to alleviate the notable drop in the mood, Ichigo took a step closer to elbow him jokingly in the side. "Just try to stop me."

That evidently worked, because Grimmjow sounded more amused when he said, "I wish. I can't stop you from doing anything, remember how hard I tried before? Pulled every card I could think of to get rid of you and you kept showing back up." He faced the direction that would take them further into Seireitei, concerns dismissed as quickly as they had arisen. "Come on, I thought you were showing me the good stuff. So far it's a lot of rubble. I'm starting to think you're giving me the cheap tour."

"I'm not a tour guide, I don't have a whole route lined up to give you the five star version," Ichigo protested.

"Yeah, well this was your suggestion so you'd better start improvising. They really live it up here, huh?"

"If you think this is a lot, I should take you over to the Kuchiki Estate. I think Byakuya's laundry has its own house."

Grimmjow snorted and gave Ichigo a wry smirk. "Is this where you were thinking you'd get a nice little place for me, so that I could set up shop next to the Gotei?"

"No way, I would've never thought you'd actually want to live here. You're kidding, right?"

"Who knows? Maybe I'm not."

...He was definitely fucking with Ichigo. "I don't buy it. If you were serious, though, we could probably work something out."

"You really take the wind out of my sails when you answer all earnest like that," Grimmjow grumbled with something that Ichigo might have declared was a pout. He did not do that, however, because he didn't want to add another lost tooth to Grimmjow's record with his face.

Grimmjow's attention was drawn elsewhere as they walked past more of a commercial area and Ichigo didn't need to guess why. The smells of food were permeating the air. The shinigami all needed to eat, unlike ordinary souls in Soul Society that didn't get hungry. There was much more food - and a wider variety at that - out here as opposed to what Grimmjow traditionally saw.

"You hungry?"

Grimmjow lifted a shoulder. "Sort of."

"Might as well take advantage of it and get something you don't normally have. What's something you haven't tried before?"

Although he looked half-inclined to protest, Grimmjow accompanied Ichigo in examining what was available and eventually settled on takoyaki on a stick, which he regarded with the sort of interest that came with being introduced to some novelty.

He eyed Ichigo a little suspiciously when it was being handed to him but when Ichigo didn't make any moves, he dug around in his clothes to retrieve money. "I'm surprised you aren't fighting me on this. You're normally offering to buy shit left and right."

Ichigo scratched under his sleeve at his left forearm awkwardly. "Yeah, well..."

Shooting him a curious look, Grimmjow paid and took his food before taking a few steps back to the spot beside Ichigo. "What?"

"I don't actually have any of the kind of money that they use here. I kind of thought they would just recognize me around here and, you know," Ichigo admitted quietly so that the owner didn't hear him.

Grimmjow stared at him for all of two seconds before he cracked up. He was laughing so hard that he closed his eyes and slumped his weight against Ichigo's right side. It was a surprise that he didn't drop his lunch but he managed to keep a safe grip on the skewer with his right hand.

When he recovered, he straightened back upright and grinned. "You're really something, Ichigo."

At that, Ichigo was the one to let out a quick laugh of delighted surprise. "I think that's the first time you've called me Ichigo."

For some reason that caused Grimmjow to tense a little, defensive. "What, I'm not allowed?" he asked challengingly.

Wrong direction, complete opposite direction of where Ichigo had wanted to go. "No, it's fine. You can call me what you want." He immediately thought better of that notion. "I take that back; if I give you blanket immunity that way, you're liable to start thinking up some really creative things to call me in front of all your neighbors. But you can call me Ichigo whenever."

"That's a shame, I had some ideas ready to go." Grimmjow popped one of the balls of takoyaki into his mouth and Ichigo waited expectantly for a verdict as he chewed and swallowed. He gave a hum of approval. "Pretty good."

"I could tell. You chewed that like a horse."

He snickered when Grimmjow prodded him in the arm with the empty end of his stick. But he wasn't fooling either of them into thinking he was too sore about it, because he offered Ichigo the skewer for him to eat the next one.

Grimmjow finished shortly thereafter and as they explored a little further, Ichigo felt pretty confident that he was having a good time.

A high voice suddenly called, "Ichigo!" from somewhere behind him.

"Rukia!" he greeted as he spun in that direction.

"I thought I sensed you come back over here," she noted as she and Renji stepped close enough to hold a conversation.

"Yeah, we were looking around. You two haven't met Grimmjow yet." He gestured to the two shinigami when looking back to Grimmjow. "These are my friends. Kuchiki Rukia, Captain of Squad Thirteen, and Abarai Renji, Lieutenant in the Sixth."

"Hello, Grimmjow." Rukia had fortunately been pretty magnanimous about forgiving arrancar Grimmjow for their rough introduction back when Ichigo had gotten together with him. 'Bygones are bygones as long as he keeps his arms to himself going forward,' or something along those lines, she had declared. She obviously wasn't holding it against Grimmjow here that he looked functionally identical to someone who had once impaled her, either.

Renji followed suit and Grimmjow jerked his head in a nodded greeting towards the both of them in response.

"I was just showing him around the Seireitei," Ichigo explained.

Before anyone could dive into any small talk at all, Renji seemed to make an attempt to break the ice in the absolute worst way. "So did Ichigo catch you up on the past already?"

Grimmjow's body language changed as quickly as the crack of a whip and it was readily apparent to all present how the question was received. Fucking Renji, could he seriously not read a room at all? Ichigo went to stomp on Renji's right foot but Rukia beat him to it and drove her heel into the left (which elicited a stifled "umph!").

"You need to be more specific. 'The past' as in the multiple Soul Society wars where Ichigo did all the heavy lifting story, or as in the tragic lost love story?" Grimmjow asked dryly. "I assume you meant that second one but don't worry, I got filled in on both. Good on you for checking."

This would be an excellent time to change the subject, Ichigo quickly decided. Before he could do so, Grimmjow spoke up again, this time pointedly to him: "I actually owe your dead boyfriend a thank you." Ichigo's spine straightened as if yanked by a wire. "When would I have gotten the chance to be waltzing around the Seireitei if I didn't look like him?" The snide tone caused the words to land uncomfortably with everyone, as evidenced by the tense pause that followed. Grimmjow was smiling but not even a robot who had just learned what emotions were would have described his expression as happy. He disregarded the awkward atmosphere and turned to begin walking away, leaving the rest of them behind.

Renji was the first to clear his throat once Grimmjow had gained some distance. "...That was really uncomfortable."

"And it was your fault, dumbass!" Ichigo reminded angrily, cuffing him in admonishment in the chest. "That's a sore subject right now."

He did look sort of contrite and then Ichigo just felt bad. "Sorry, Ichigo. I didn't really think about it."

In reality, Ichigo knew he owned more of the blame in this. This was his responsibility and he had handled everything poorly in his first few meetings with Grimmjow as a result of his own grief. He didn't need a high-level degree in psychology to see that he had made Grimmjow sort of unsure of himself and uncomfortable, even though he would never admit it. Ever since they had realigned on everything, Ichigo had been especially cautious about avoiding any suggestion that Grimmjow was the same one he had known before, and even avoided mentions of arrancar in general. He had decided it was better to stay as far from the topics as possible than to figure out by trial and error where the line was between acceptable and a pissed off Grimmjow.

But he hadn't shared any of those details with anyone, including Rukia and Renji. They had no way of knowing what was in the off-limits category and it should have been on Ichigo's shoulders to tell them.

"Fuck." Ichigo blew out a breath. "It's not actually your fault. I should have mentioned it to you two before or something and asked you to avoid bringing it up. I'll see you later, alright?" With a parting wave to both of them, he jogged after Grimmjow.

Grimmjow had not gotten enough of a lead that he needed a shunpo but as soon as he was in side step with him, he shot Ichigo a biting, "I don't need a chaperone. Go back and spend time with your Gotei friends."

And, yeah, Ichigo acknowledged that he may have had some ownership in creating this issue in the first place but he didn't know why the fuck Grimmjow was mad at him right now - he hadn't been the one to say it. "Guess I'm confused, I thought I was supposed to be here with you today."

"I didn't make a very good first impression with that scene in front of your friends."

"Not really." It would have been a lie to deny it. "But it doesn't matter. They understand that the situation is complicated."

"Are you just willing to forgive me for anything?" Grimmjow's voice was bitter when he stopped walking and turned his head to regard Ichigo.

"That's not-" Okay, maybe Ichigo generally gave him a little more leeway than he would most people, but that wasn't what was happening here. "Look, I'm trying to understand where you're coming from. Part of it is my fault anyway, because I was an asshole early on."

"...What else did you want to go see here?" The fact that Grimmjow was diverting attention elsewhere was obvious. He wanted to move on.

But Ichigo was unsure how to answer, because he didn't care about seeing anything. He had just wanted Grimmjow to enjoy himself; that was the only thing that had mattered in coming here. He shook his head. "We were going to see the things you wanted. There's nowhere I need to go." He wanted to say the right thing to alleviate the tension but maybe it was best to just let it pass. It wasn't as though Ichigo knew what to say to remedy the situation anyway. "If you don't want to be here anymore, I can take you back whenever. I can go home."

Grimmjow met his eyes for a moment, still frowning, before turning away to survey the area around them instead. "We came all the way here. May as well stay a little longer. Let's just walk and see what we see."

There was more of a cloud hanging over their heads for the next hour they stayed and neither of them laughed much. Grimmjow didn't even complain when Ichigo had to take him back home via some quick shunpo.

When they arrived back in 59 and Grimmjow released him, he didn't take a step away from Ichigo immediately. Instead, he stayed behind Ichigo's back and kept one hand planted solidly on his shoulder. "Hey." He paused and since he was behind him, Ichigo couldn't see what he was doing or thinking. "Look, I shouldn't have done that."

The hand in place as it was on Ichigo's shoulder sort of inhibited him from easily turning unless he wanted to force it off. That didn't seem like the right move at the moment, so Ichigo stayed where he was with Grimmjow behind his back.

Grimmjow made a quietly frustrated noise. "I shouldn't have been an asshole," was how he finished the thought. "You're always trying to do things for me. I don't do anything for you and then I'm an asshole when you do." The weight on Ichigo's shoulder vanished as the hand slipped away. "I'll get it together, alright? I'll be better about it, if you keep coming around."

The comment hit Ichigo like a slap in the face because it aligned so closely with one he had heard before.

"Maybe I'll be better at it all this next time around."

The memory of his Grimmjow's words from last year in the wooded area outside of Karakura was about a dozen bee-stings administered straight to the gut. Despite how much time had passed, Ichigo dreamed about - and replayed that scene in his head while awake - so often that he could have recited their entire final conversation word for word with perfect accuracy. He forcibly held his expression steady. "I thought we already established this." He turned and offered a little smirk. "You're going to have to be a lot worse before you can chase me off. You're not even trying as hard as you were in the beginning; I'm kind of disappointed."

The corner of Grimmjow's mouth lifted in return, even if his shoulders seemed to retain a little stiffness. "Stubborn son of a bitch," he noted again. It sounded different now than the first time he had said it to Ichigo several weeks ago.

When Ichigo climbed into his bed at eleven-thirty, his mind was still playing back a reel of memories over and over, and his eyes burned from the way he stared at his ceiling for long stretches of time while ignoring the urge to blink.

He hadn't expected the earlier comment to land quite so hard, but the words had reminded him of how much he still really missed his Grimmjow. He would probably miss him forever in a number of ways, and it would probably always hurt somewhere inside him, the same way the loss of his mom did.

Fortunately, it did help that Grimmjow up in Soul Society was much more transparent nowadays about wanting Ichigo around. They were friendly; it was comfortable. It was at least akin to what his Grimmjow had wanted.

"I'll be better about it, if you keep coming around."

It helped.

Chapter Text

The events of the last month and a half had been a veritable rollercoaster and it had been difficult to understand most of the time, as far as Ichigo's emotions were concerned. He felt as if he were rolling a die every day and however it landed was his primary feeling.

His feelings about Grimmjow were another puzzle that he had slowly worked through. When Ichigo had first seen him again, of course he had been just as in love with him as before: that was his Grimmjow, after all. His cranky, taunting, untrusting and undomesticated Grimmjow, who drove him up the wall but also melted his brain into an ineffective puddle with those playful smirks and the way his eyes studied Ichigo so carefully, as if he were unfailingly the most interesting thing in any room. Ichigo's feelings hadn't wavered one bit, even for all of the fuss and resistance Grimmjow had been putting up about the entire thing.

Then he had been told that he was wrong. And he had finally accepted that this was sort of a stranger to him even if the same soul was inside, because that was how Grimmjow felt (and was the most important factor to consider, at least according to him). Ichigo attempted to focus on the good parts, and he enjoyed being with Grimmjow and reminded himself that - despite having essentially lost the person he loved - he was luckier than almost anyone in his position to be able to see firsthand that at least Grimmjow's soul was safe.

He really just wanted Grimmjow to be happy and live the peaceful existence that his soul had never experienced before in the afterlife. That was what Ichigo wanted more than anything else for him, and it would have been enough. He wouldn't have been resentful of not getting anything more.

But then they became closer; Ichigo got to know him better. And once he was seeing Grimmjow as his own brand new person, there were a lot of mixed up thoughts in Ichigo's head regarding him. It was confusing and sometimes he wasn't sure whether he was blurring the line between how he had felt about the Grimmjow he had known before and the one he knew now. Sometimes Ichigo thought he had still loved this person immediately, even knowing that he was functionally a stranger. But that seemed rash, so he had forced himself to take a step back and really solidify the idea that he was just learning who he was.

However, for all his best efforts to slow down, the truth was that it hadn't taken longer than a few weeks to admit that he was already in love anyway. He would be lying if he tried to claim that the whole 'knowing that was the same soul' piece had not had any influence at all on the speed with which his feelings had grown; he knew it had impacted things. Despite the differences and qualities that made this guy unique, there were just so many similarities between the two of them - bits that Ichigo had loved individually about his Grimmjow - that it had felt very much beyond his control to stop from being drawn in at breakneck speed and watch everything develop in a flash. And more than that, after those few weeks, Ichigo could feel the difference in himself that told him he loved Grimmjow here on his own merits rather than as something like a memory. He was confident of that.

But that didn't mean things became less complicated. Ichigo had gone through one day where he felt unbearably guilty for it. It wasn't rational, because Grimmjow (the arrancar one) had intended for this to happen, but Ichigo couldn't shake it for a while. He knew it didn't make sense to feel guilty, he told himself it didn't make sense to feel guilty, and yet the feeling persisted. He had thought he and Grimmjow would be together for, well, ever. And this wasn't him, so the thought that Ichigo was wrong for having these new strong feelings was like a tiny little pin sticking in the back of his skull subtly, occasionally - but still painfully.

Once a while back, when Ichigo had vocally complained that his arrancar was being a real pain in the ass, Grimmjow had sniped back that Ichigo had better shut up and find a way to get used to it because he was never going to be with anyone else. Ichigo had made a whole big deal of telling him that he was talking like a fucking obsessed lunatic, but the truth was - for as overbearing as other people might have found a decree like that - he hadn't minded. He had liked it, had felt all content inside that Grimmjow intended for them to be permanently committed to no one but each other. Ichigo had wanted him forever anyway.

In fact, Ichigo thought that he probably never would have been interested in trying to pursue something with some random person, outside of present circumstances. Firstly, it was hard to imagine being able to love anyone else that way again; his relationship with his arrancar Grimmjow would have been too fresh in his mind. And secondly, it would have felt like a betrayal or like he was forgetting Grimmjow, or something. Even if Ichigo himself had somehow been able to accept starting a relationship with someone new, he would have worried that Grimmjow would have seen it as a betrayal and thus Ichigo would have been insulting his memory. So Ichigo wouldn't have even tried: he would have just stayed on his own and said that sort of happy, sometimes overwhelming love had already happened in his life, and he would make do with the memories of it and enjoy everything else he had going for him, like his friends and family.

But this was not just some random person, and Grimmjow had endorsed the damn idea in the first place. After Ichigo had really beaten it into his own head that the guilt made no sense, the feeling had fortunately bled away. Ichigo insisted to himself that Grimmjow wouldn't have felt betrayed by Ichigo loving his own soul's new host, of anyone, and he probably would have called Ichigo a dumbfuck for worrying about it in the first place.

He got his own head in order, came to terms with being in love again, and folded all of that up to tuck away into a little box somewhere inside his chest. And that was where it would stay for the time being, because he wasn't sure where this was ultimately going to go or when, but the one thing he did know was that it would likely have to be on Grimmjow's terms.

Not that he could say he knew what those terms were. Early on he had considered that this Grimmjow may simply be unlike the arrancar Grimmjow and not attracted to Ichigo intimately, either because he didn't want men in general or just plain didn't want him specifically. And if that were the case - while it would have been a pretty painful shot to Ichigo's ego and heart - he would have dealt with it and continued to fill in whichever role Grimmjow wanted him to be.

But as time had passed, there were some moments wherein Ichigo thought he caught a glance from Grimmjow that could have suggested something. He wasn't a hundred percent positive because the glance would be gone in the blink of an eye and then he would second guess himself on whether he was simply projecting. And Grimmjow wasn't easily read, but Ichigo had received that type of look enough to clock it sometimes (which was a huge improvement over his younger self, who had been blind as a bat when it came to recognizing other people's interest in him).

Be that as it may, Ichigo was not about to make any moves on his own. If he tried to move too quickly and force his own timeline, what he was more likely to do was force Grimmjow away from him and he wasn't going to chance that. Grimmjow enjoyed having Ichigo around and they were friends right now. Maybe they would move forward at some point and maybe they wouldn't, but he was okay regardless.

The trip to the Seireitei during Ichigo's last visit hadn't ended on the best note, but it was okay. He figured Grimmjow would definitely have moved past it a few days later when he came to Soul Society again; he never let anything hold him down for long.

Nowadays - in a sharp contrast from how unhappy he had looked to see Ichigo the first few times - Grimmjow usually appeared more casually amused whenever he would turn up. But today he was blatantly eager about something or other because he nodded his head in greeting when he saw Ichigo from down the road and was half-grinning as he walked to meet him. "I'm the one with plans for us today," Grimmjow informed as soon as Ichigo was within earshot. When they were in front of each other, he continued, "I was being a dick in front of your friends when we went to the Seireitei, so I owe you one. I'm going to take you somewhere that I don't think many people know about."

With how many people were milling around this district, it sounded unlikely that there was a single square meter everyone didn't know. But Grimmjow did look excited about it so Ichigo wasn't going to burst his bubble. "You're really talking it up. Now I'll be disappointed if it isn't something really good. And I told you not to worry about my friends, it doesn't matter to them at all. They were really understanding when I texted them later."

"Well it matters to me," Grimmjow countered sternly, and that was that. "So follow me. We have to go a little way out of town for this." He started off and expectantly ushered Ichigo along with him. Wherever they were going, Grimmjow really wanted to get there.

It was a different direction than they had taken in the past from what Ichigo could tell, and this area was more forested. The further into the wooded space they got, the more shade they had, which meant Grimmjow wasn't slightly squinting in that way he sometimes did. Ichigo had noticed it a while ago, that he did that when it was very bright out. It typically happened when the sun was highest around mid-day, and Ichigo couldn't help but smile when he saw it because it was pretty cute, in the way a lot of mundane things are cute when in love with someone.

"I'm trusting you with my secret stash here, Ichigo, so if I start seeing more of these missing, you'd better believe I'll know who to blame." Grimmjow looked so damn proud to have something to share with him.

"I don't know what we're looking for yet so I'm not promising anything in advance," Ichigo responded. Grimmjow shoved him for the remark but they were both grinning.

Eventually Grimmjow stopped, indicating they had reached their destination. The trees were dotted much less densely in front of them than had been the case en route here. They weren't massive trees, sort of short with fairly thin trunks. But that didn't seem to be an issue because branches upon branches of each were weighed down by brownish spherical fruits with spots. Ichigo recognized them immediately. "These are all nashi trees."

"Yeah, and they're good. And they're mine." Grimmjow took two steps forward before glancing back over his shoulder and from his side profile, Ichigo could see half of his grin. "But I'll share with you like the nice guy I am." He continued to approach the nearest one and reached up to pull a pear from the branch. It was an easy reach since the branches were so low, and he gathered a few into the crevice of his folded arm before spinning to toss one to Ichigo.

Ichigo rotated it around in his hand to ensure insects hadn't gotten into it and then took a bite. He probably hadn't had one of these in years. "These are really sweet." He looked up to Grimmjow and joined him at the base of the tree. "How did you find all these different places around here, anyway?"

"I didn't have much else to do early on and I wandered around a lot. And you know I get hungry because of the spirit energy or whatever it was you told me about, so before I had any way to pay for it, I was looking everywhere I could for something to eat."

When Ichigo settled himself down on the ground against the trunk, Grimmjow did the same. Since the trunk was so thin, their shoulders were in contact but neither seemed upset by it.

It was relaxing, very different from the bustle of where they had visited the last time Ichigo had been here. "I didn't ask what you thought about the Seireitei."

"A lot of it was how I thought it would be. A fair chunk of glitz and glam and they hope you don't see the rubble in the background, I guess." There was a crunch from beside Ichigo and a pause while Grimmjow chewed. "I wanted to get out of here eventually, you know. Maybe not go there, but at least go somewhere better than this. Maybe one of those places just a little outside the Seireitei. I've just been trying to figure out a way to do it."

"I told you that you could do that," Ichigo reminded while taking his own bite, "But you're stubborn."

Grimmjow appeared to remember the context of that offer because he objected, "How the hell do you think I'm supposed to feel good about it, like I made it, if I let someone do it for me? And you, on top of that."

Ouch, jeez. Ichigo looked over to him with a scowl. "Hey, what's wrong with me?"

"Nothing's wrong with you," Grimmjow amended. "I just don't feel good about you doing things for me. At least things like that would be."

Typical Grimmjow, never accepting help even if it would get him something he really wanted. Unless it was from the little old lady next door, then it was okay. From Ichigo, on the other hand, it was not okay. What the fuck? "Like I said: stubborn."

"You're one to talk."

Ichigo thought as he chewed. It would be easy for him to set up, but there was really no way to coerce Grimmjow into the idea without him knowing Ichigo was behind it. How could Grimmjow do it on his own, though? Ichigo wasn't well-acquainted enough to have a great sense, but he had never heard anyone say there was a lot of upward mobility in Rukongai unless you were- ...There was the answer. "Actually, you can do it on your own anyway. If you decide to move forward with being a shinigami, that's an automatic ticket in. Obviously it comes with conditions but if you're really looking for an in, that one is practically guaranteed. Like I told you, there's no question that they would want you."

"They paying you? You do an awful lot of free recruiting for those guys," Grimmjow quipped. He was studying the core of the fruit, the only piece remaining, in his hand when Ichigo glanced over. "That would change a lot of things for me and I think some of it will probably be in ways I don't want. Why did you choose to do it? Especially since you don't even live here."

Ichigo huffed. "I'm not exactly a full member, remember? And as far as helping out is concerned: 'choose' is a strong word. Looking back on it, I didn't have much choice in the beginning." He leaned his head back against the bark. "But after that, I did. People were suddenly counting on me and expecting things. They needed my help so it wasn't like I could walk away."

"Most people aren't like you. A lot of people aren't meant to be heroes." Grimmjow shifted himself further out from the base of the tree until he could lie down somewhat comfortably with just the crown of his head propped against the trunk. Before Ichigo could interject, he asked, "And you're friends with all the shinigami, right?"

That felt like an overstatement. Ichigo wouldn't really call people like Kyouraku or Kensei his friends - they were more of acquaintances. "I don't know whether I would say that. I'm friendly with most of them, I guess. I have respect for most of them. For all the grievances I might have with the way things are run and some of the decisions they make, I think most of the Gotei do what they think will best protect Soul Society. ...Maybe not Kurotsuchi. He has his own freaky agenda."

"What would you do, if you were me?"

"If I were in your position?" Ichigo considered the hypothetical. "I would go through a hell of a lot to get what I want, if it's important to me." Case in point: the fact that he was sitting beside this guy right now and had gotten closer to him despite initially being run off several times. "What it really comes down to is how much you want it. That will determine what you're willing to do to get it."

Grimmjow was pensive for a moment. "Sounds like you," he agreed. "It could be an option on the table. I'll think about it."

On that note, Ichigo remembered that he had intended to tell him something. "I almost forgot to tell you, you'll be happy to hear that your criticism finally paid off. I listened to you and I've been applying to places. I was just offered a new salaried job yesterday. Similar to my last one, actually; it even pays nearly the same."

"That right?" When Ichigo confirmed with a 'yeah,' Grimmjow pulled himself upright and nudged Ichigo's side with an elbow. "Good. It'll be good for you to feel back on track." It was kind of nice that he had been concerned about that in his own way on Ichigo's behalf, even if he had been sort of annoying in his approach.

"At least you'll stop nagging me about it now. Guess this means your idea is out, that I should just live up here in Soul Society and lounge around while people offer me free shit."

"Probably for the best considering you couldn't even get us a free lunch over in the Seireitei. I thought you were more popular," Grimmjow teased. "You probably won't be able to hang around here as much now with a new gig."

"I'll still fit this place into my schedule. You would get too bored without me."

Grimmjow tilted his head back to look through the leaves and branches laden with fruit above them, and Ichigo was not expecting it when he conceded, "Maybe I would."

Now that he was working full-time again, Ichigo usually came by later in the day and they didn't have quite as many hours to burn together at a time. They still made it work and Ichigo still treated Grimmjow as a priority, even if it meant he was often rushing from one place to the next.

"So what do you do all day at this new gig you've got?"

"Something that you'll think is boring," Ichigo assured. "I basically go into an office and respond to questions all day from people applying for work visas and things like that."

Before Grimmjow even said anything, his facial expression pretty clearly outlined that Ichigo had been correct in his suspicion. "Yeah, I'm not sure what those are but that sounds boring as hell."

"I know. It's pretty normal to have a boring entry-level job right out of school. And I took that long break from working so I'm sort of behind, I guess. I had to find a way to explain that gap in my interviews, that was fun." He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Speaking of work, he had to figure out which day he was supposed to take the afternoon off to go to the dentist. He was fairly certain that he had saved the details in here somewhere.

"Let me see that thing. I've never looked at it and we don't have those here."

"I'm in the middle of using it in case you didn't notice." Ichigo looked up from the phone in his hand and lifted it in gesture. "And yes, you do have them here: I don't know what Urahara asked for in exchange but a lot of the shinigami have them now. I can get you one if you want." He was expecting Grimmjow's glare before it manifested but still scowled when he saw it. "Before you do your whole 'I don't want anything from you' routine, Urahara legitimately just has them lying around. This isn't even the one that works here, this is the one from home. I was just checking my calendar."

"Well which one of the two you have is better?"

"Depends on your criteria for better," he finally offered over the one currently in his hand. "But that one is probably more interesting. As good at inventing things as he might be, Urahara isn't exactly a professional phone manufacturer so the one that works on the correct frequency for this world is pretty basic."

Grimmjow was squinting at the device he now held. "There are only like two buttons, are those what I press?"

Ichigo let out a chuckle. "Some of them are touch-operated nowadays like this one. So you just press what you want on the screen." He demonstrated by popping open the calculator and closing it again.

"Hm." And with that Grimmjow was poking around in exploration up until there was a camera shutter sound and he straightened in shock from where he had been slouched over. "Why did it do that?"

It was pretty funny to see him try to interact with it. Arrancar Grimmjow had handled the thing somewhat similarly, but he had always tried to play it off as though he wasn't actually very interested in the technology. "Sounded like you accidentally took a picture." Ichigo lifted himself to scoot a little closer. "Yeah, see? You took a picture of your feet and the ground. Didn't realize we had an amateur photographer in the making."

"Shut it."

Confident that Grimmjow had the means to amuse himself for a while until his curiosity was sated, Ichigo leaned back to lie in the grass and folded his hands behind his head. There was nothing much Grimmjow could get into that he was worried about. "Don't break anything."

"Yeah, yeah. I won't," Grimmjow dismissed.

A few minutes later, Ichigo opened his eyes again upon hearing a slightly tinny, low quality replica of his own voice. He had never been one to record himself much so he genuinely had no idea what Grimmjow could have stumbled upon. "What did you manage to find on there?"

But then he heard it. "Kurosaki, it ain't even your turn." Those words came through the phone's little speaker in Grimmjow's voice, in Grimmjow's drawl, and Ichigo faltered. His own voice said something else on the recording but he couldn't focus enough to identify the words. He simply stared at the phone held in Grimmjow's hands as if it had suddenly grown wings.

Pushing himself into a sitting position, Ichigo held out his hand. "Can I have that back for a minute?" his tone sounded a little off even to himself.

Grimmjow tapped the video to a pause - evidently a quick learner in more things than just handyman repairs - and returned the phone. Ichigo brought it closer, rotating it to a position where he could see the screen. He pressed the play button with his thumb to resume the video.

"...probably 'cause you're a dumbass," the Grimmjow in the video teased as he glanced up to look into the camera with a grin. It was the one he always wore when he was entertained by something. This was the Grimmjow whom Ichigo had known for years: sharp animal teeth between jaws of bone against his right cheek, flares of color beneath his eyes emphasizing their bright blue hue, and a fierce grin that promised trouble. It was a knife to the heart to see him. "The hell're you doing over there now?"

The camera swung down to the table where playing cards were arranged mid-game and Ichigo's voice spoke up again. "I'm recording this so that I can make you watch it again later. I want you to remember how badly I kicked your ass at this for months. Years, even."

...He remembered this day. It had poured all day long. Ichigo's mood usually slumped in the rain, but Grimmjow had stayed from morning until he went to sleep that night. He had been the perfect distraction, even agreeing to do things like playing card games. Ichigo hadn't felt that familiar tug of sorrow even once that day after he had shown up. And Grimmjow had never said it aloud but Ichigo was fairly certain he had been aware of Ichigo's habits on dark days with incessant rain, because he had often just 'happened to be around' for many of them.

In the video, Grimmjow grabbed the wrist of the hand Ichigo was using to hold the phone and yanked it up so that the cards (which showed that he was losing miserably) were out of the frame. The camera focused on a spot over his shoulder since he didn't have the lens angled towards his face. "Oh fuck off, you didn't even tell me the rules. Thought you had a code of honor and here it turns out you're a cheat when it comes to card games, Kurosaki. Letting a guy figure it out as he goes, how's that shit fair?"

"That was your own fault!" the recorded Ichigo protested, but there was laughter underlying his words. "I tried to teach you the rules and you weren't paying attention! You said, 'just start and I'll fuckin' figure it out,' those were your exact words."

"Then you should've explained it better so I'd pay attention!" The camera's viewpoint suddenly bounced around as the phone was apparently wrestled between the two, their voices bantering back and forth in what was clearly lightheartedness. Grimmjow had come out the winner because when the camera steadied again, it was focused on his expression of perplexed concentration before suddenly shifting around as he turned the phone in his hands, inspecting it. "How the fuck do I shut this off?" he grumbled, segments of his words drowned out by Ichigo protesting in the background and demanding his phone back, all the while threatening violence if Grimmjow accidentally broke it. He suddenly appeared on the very edge of the frame himself as he grabbed at where the arrancar's hands were manhandling his phone.

That was where the video ended and the play button reappeared in the center of the screen. Behind it, both of their faces were at least partially in the still shot, low resolution and blurry but with Ichigo mid-laugh off to one side. Grimmjow's mouth betrayed his otherwise grouchy expression, quirked up opposite his mask fragment and showing just a hint of his upper teeth including one sharp canine.

There had been so many instances like this, where they had been so glaringly happy together.

It was only when Ichigo's lungs raised the alarm that he realized he hadn't taken a breath, and he inhaled. He stared at that image for a long time before he recalled what he had been doing and lifted his eyes to Grimmjow who was watching him silently. Ichigo met his gaze for a moment before looking back to the phone. "Sorry. I just didn't remember that I had this," he revealed in a quiet voice. He released the phone, allowing it to fall haphazardly into his lap as his mind reeled.

He knew from experience that loss never truly stopped hurting and that he would have a lot more of this to endure. He would go through this again and again when things would happen that would bring up memories of the arrancar Grimmjow. Memories that only he held, now; no one else alive had any of them. What a waste of so many one of a kind, important moments, to only be remembered by a single person.

Ichigo realized that Grimmjow hadn't said anything, so he was probably waiting for some sort of further reaction. He obviously recognized what was going on since that was extremely clear; it wasn't as if he needed an explanation. But Ichigo wasn't sure how to react outside of withdrawing into his own head to ignore everything else around him, and that would be a dick move to pull when Grimmjow was sitting right here.

While Ichigo knew that Grimmjow definitely didn't want to hear him go on again about arrancar Grimmjow (because he had stated multiple times that it drove him nuts if he thought he was being mixed up with someone he had never known) nothing else was coming to mind to say. "It was raining that day." He gestured half-heartedly at the phone lying against the black of his outfit. "I sort of hate the rain. It always seems to rain during the worst times of my life." Ichigo reached into his lap to pick the phone back up and run his thumbs over the screen. "I think he wanted to distract me when it rained so that I wouldn't be so down."

That had been another of those things he did that he hadn't realized were telling Ichigo how much he cared in indirect ways, hadn't it? Grimmjow had noticed on his own back then that Ichigo was morose when it rained, so he came around and was his usual loud, attention-grabbing self and made Ichigo focus on something else. He had communicated a lot of his feelings without ever saying them, and Ichigo had caught some of those communications at the time but had been steadily realizing since Grimmjow went away that he hadn't caught them all. For as much as Grimmjow had claimed to not understand love well, being an arrancar, it was obvious that despite that, he had loved Ichigo as much as he had been able. He had been capable of a lot more than he had realized.

Meanwhile, the Grimmjow beside Ichigo was still studying him the next time he glanced up, and Ichigo's temper simmered. It wasn't easy to keep it together sometimes and he didn't want to feel as though someone was inspecting so closely as to see any visible chinks in his armor. He hadn't liked it when his family had done it and he didn't like it now. "Didn't anyone ever tell you it's rude to stare?"

"So come over here and force me to stop," Grimmjow responded calmly without shifting his gaze. That was a really shitty response and Ichigo was about to tell him off for it when he added, "Maybe that'll distract you from being down now."

He wasn't trying to taunt Ichigo; he wanted to console him somehow. And just as it had been with the arrancar Grimmjow, it seemed that he wasn't sure how to do that sometimes so he simply did the best he could come up with in the moment. It was an effort to be kind.

"I'd kick your ass," Ichigo said with fondness.

Grimmjow shrugged one shoulder. "Maybe," he granted. Like that part didn't even matter.

And when seeing someone put in that effort for him, at least for now, Ichigo couldn't feel quite as sad.

Ichigo prided himself on being able to pull it together pretty quickly and so half an hour later, he was fairly confident that he was back to his normal countenance, at least externally. The sun had been actively sinking and he realized how late it was. "It's starting to get late. Are you ready to go back?"

"Uh-huh." They both stood up and Grimmjow took a few steps forward.

"I guess I'll head home then," Ichigo said with a glance to his right at the last remnants of light against the leaves on the trees. He had a few chores to help get done tonight before he went to bed.

"Kurosaki." Grimmjow was waiting expectantly when Ichigo turned his head back in that direction. "Walk back with me."

"To your place?" When Grimmjow made a sound suggesting confirmation, Ichigo pivoted to follow him. He hadn't called him Kurosaki in a while, he vaguely thought. Grimmjow had done that originally but then exclusively switched to using Ichigo ever since they visited the Seireitei. "Sure. What's going on?"

"Just want to have a conversation with you in private," Grimmjow replied as they began down the correct route.

That was a strange answer. Had they currently been back nearer to where Grimmjow lived, yes, there were typically people out on the street and it would make sense to hold off on any topics better discussed in private. But they had privacy right now since they were alone out here, a little away from the main road. He supposed Grimmjow must have just had something bothering him that he needed to get off his chest.

He didn't say much along the way, however. And he wasn't very responsive when Ichigo made attempts to engage.

"Remember that guy a few houses down from you that we always thought hated the one who always sits outside with the cane? I forgot to tell you, I'm pretty sure I saw him stretch his leg out and literally trip that guy on my way to your place today."

All he received back was a dull, disinterested, "Hm."

Now Grimmjow was the one in some kind of mood, Ichigo thought with a flicker of irritation. Oh well; that was probably only fair since Ichigo had his own temperamental spell today. He didn't think that could have been the cause of Grimmjow's mood, though. Grimmjow had tried in his own way to be supportive with that, he wouldn't have done so if it had pissed him off.

When they finally arrived back at Grimmjow's home and entered, Ichigo slid the door closed behind him. At this point, there was only a minimal amount of twilight streaming through the windows which didn't do much for visibility. He waited after he pulled off his sandals before walking further in, assuming that Grimmjow was going to give them some light or something.

But Grimmjow did not go to the side of the room to do that at all. Instead, he turned fast as a bullet and planted his hands on Ichigo's shoulders before forcibly walking him backwards until both his back and head made hard impact with the wall beside the door. Ichigo took a moment to recover from the unexpectedness of the approach and after he did, he gripped Grimmjow's wrists with the intention of pushing him off. "What are you-" He was cut off by a mouth roughly meeting his.

Grimmjow's thin lips were sliding against his own, insistent and questing to achieve the best angle. His teeth were periodically tugging at Ichigo's lip and his tongue dove inside the instant an opportunity arose.

Wow.

Unsure as he had been about what path Grimmjow thought they were on, Ichigo hadn't thought they would get to the point of physical intimacy for... a while, if it was going to happen at all. Ichigo wanted him all the time, of course, because he wanted to be close to him and it went without saying that he thought Grimmjow was hot as hell to boot. He wanted to touch him and kiss him and see what noise he would utter when Ichigo stroked him from base to tip, what face he would make when he came with a groan. He was sure that Grimmjow would have some of his own little quirks while he fucked, just as arrancar Grimmjow had - Ichigo very vividly remembered the way he had hungrily lapped the sweat from Ichigo's collarbone and let out something low and pleased that was almost a growl in between thrusts. Ichigo didn't have the sort of galvanized steel self-discipline that he would have needed to have never wondered at all what those quirks might be with this man. He was only human (mostly).

Seemed like he might have worried for nothing a while back about whether Grimmjow wasn't attracted to him, judging by how thoroughly he was charting out the inside of Ichigo's mouth while alternating between tightening and loosening his grip on his shoulders. Ichigo released his hold on the wrists and set his hands on either side of his waist instead. He certainly wasn't inclined to push him off anymore.

Grimmjow released his shoulders before settling his own hands firmly on either side of Ichigo's face, clasping it as he caught his breath when they separated. He couldn't seem to decide where to keep the hands because a second later they were moving again, diving to work their way into Ichigo's clothes. "I don't care who you're seeing," Grimmjow exhaled the comment so quickly and quietly from so close that Ichigo could have counted each of his eyelashes.

Ichigo was dying to focus his full attention on those hands but hold on: what the hell did that mean? 'Who he was seeing' as in, 'seeing' someone as in dating? Ichigo was so lost on where that had come from. Why would Grimmjow even think that? Ichigo had never implied anything about anyone else, because there was no one else; Grimmjow was the only one he wanted. Ichigo may not have blurted it out (as a result of the 'trying not to be pushy and scare him off' bit) but he really didn't think it had been a mystery to Grimmjow that Ichigo was solely fixed on him. He was sharp and Ichigo wasn't subtle. He would have expected that Grimmjow saw right through him and figured out ages ago that Ichigo only had eyes for him, despite Ichigo not making outright moves.

"Huh?" he asked intelligently. Grimmjow had said it quickly and a little hoarsely so maybe he hadn't heard correc-

That train of thought was soon lost, with Ichigo distracted as he was when he found himself pulled back into meeting Grimmjow's wet, hot mouth as greedy hands were familiarizing themselves with every section of skin that had been exposed as a result of ministrations with the shihakushou.

They stumbled their way over to the futon without separating shortly after that.

Some exploring hands and mouths later, Ichigo realized they probably needed to establish some direction here. "What did you want to do?" he asked with his heart pounding like a drum in his chest.

"I'm fine with whatever. How-" Grimmjow stopped himself then and seemed to switch gears, leaning in to latch onto Ichigo's neck with his mouth while his hand gripped the side of his waist tightly enough to bruise. Ichigo's brain stalled out for a second. When Grimmjow had finished sucking a large mark, he pulled back to let out a hot breath against the damp skin. "It's up to you."

Ichigo was valiantly attempting to stay on track but his attention was being severely pulled in some other directions here. "I don't think I should make a unilateral decision on that."

Grimmjow popped his forehead against Ichigo's shoulder and gave an aggravated groan. "I said you could do whatever you want, this really shouldn't be difficult. Are you normally giving dick or taking it? It's a simple question."

"I'm used to both, I don't know!" Although he was a grown man who - prior to the whole ordeal last year - had an active sex life with an eager partner, he still felt his face heat at the topic of conversation. That habit had never fully dissipated.

"Then just get to fucking me before you ruin the whole mood, stupid," Grimmjow ordered in a testy tone and, well, Ichigo certainly wasn't going to refuse a direct request.

He ran a hand down Grimmjow's bare torso and stomach over the ridges of muscle and his hand didn't dip in the midsection the way he had been used to for a while. No hollow hole, after all. He put that out of mind; Grimmjow was who he was. "Fuck, you look incredible. But you always do."

In response, Grimmjow simply wrapped his legs around Ichigo's waist and pulled him closer.

He was relatively quiet throughout, from then on. For the most part he just made a lot of these little breathy noises - and Ichigo wasn't complaining, because those were great. At one point this sort of almost whine escaped from deep in his throat and Ichigo swore he heard the blood rushing faster through his own veins in response.

And he did have his own cute little quirks during sex, as Ichigo had predicted. Occasionally he would curl his feet where they were behind Ichigo's back - he couldn't see that one but he could feel it. When Ichigo would kiss him long and deep, dragging his teeth along his neck and jawline in the moments in between, there was one specific spot near the hinge of Grimmjow's jaw that seemed to invariably make his nose scrunch when Ichigo bit down. Ichigo couldn't think of anything he had ever seen that was more endearing.

Despite his seeming inclination to be quiet, Grimmjow did speak up once and asked (or rather, demanded) that Ichigo give it to him harder, and no one lasted much longer after that.

Ichigo collapsed onto his back, only half on the futon because it really wasn't designed for two bodies. That was just fine. He wouldn't have complained about much of anything right now. He had a lot of shit luck in his life, but right now he felt about as damn lucky as he could be after the fucking terrible events of the last year. "Hey." When he had successfully drawn the attention of those blue eyes back to him, he said, "I'm glad I'm here with you."

He meant that with everything he had in him. They had needed to overcome a few hurdles and some uncertainty, but they had seemingly finally made it to where they belonged, which was with each other.

And Ichigo thought that he should make sure Grimmjow knew that, too. He had learned his lesson in the past about withholding the things he should have said to someone he loved - and how it felt when it was too late to do so - and he wasn't about to make the same mistake again no matter how awkward it would be to voice certain thoughts. Ichigo had gained some wisdom about a lot of things over the past month or so, in fact. He knew very clearly now, for example, who exactly was lying beside him. And Grimmjow trusted Ichigo, he was trusting him right in this very moment. So Ichigo should trust him in turn by being forthcoming. He gripped all of the fingers of one of Grimmjow's hands in his own and squeezed affectionately before sucking up the discomfort and saying, "I love you, you know."

Some emotion flickered across the muscles of Grimmjow's face like a wave, too quickly for Ichigo to even begin to decipher what it may have been. But he seemed okay with the admission because he slid his free hand in between Ichigo's cheek and the futon to cup his face in an unfamiliar gesture. He didn't say anything, seemingly focused on simply watching his thumb slide back and forth along Ichigo's cheekbone.

And Ichigo didn't mind one bit. This was great. Grimmjow was still getting to know him, really, so it wasn't as if he had expected him to respond in kind with a returned 'I love you.' What he was doing was more than enough.

The heavy weight that had been suspended in Ichigo ever since the moment he had cut through Grimmjow's flesh with his zanpakutou was finally released from its chain and he felt lighter. He shifted forward to press his face into Grimmjow's neck, inadvertently dislodging the hand from his face along the way.

Ichigo thought he could be forgiven for the slightest amount of clinging under the circumstances. He shut his eyes tight and inhaled a lungful of the other's scent and the world felt peaceful for the first time in a very long time.

Since they didn't really need the sleep - he had to be pretty tired to pass out in his spirit body and he simply wasn't at that point yet - Ichigo grew a little self-conscious about Grimmjow thinking he was overstaying his welcome, so he stood up after what may have been an hour or so of simply relaxing together later and they both dressed quickly. If Grimmjow was sore, he was determined not to show it when he stood up. Hopefully he wasn't; Ichigo remembered that sensation and would have felt badly.

"...Kurosaki."

He still wasn't sure why Grimmjow had suddenly switched back to using his family name but it didn't bother him or anything; he was used to it. He was just finishing with securing both parts of Zangetsu and turned. "Yeah? What's up?"

Grimmjow's expression had remained pretty lukewarm since they had risen from the futon. "Nothing important. I was just going to say that I'll see you next time you're around."

"Yeah, I can definitely come back on Sunday," Ichigo assured.

Grimmjow's acknowledging hum said that was fine by him.

Ichigo was going to be riding high on this for days. He was actually a little concerned that he wouldn't be able to stop thinking about today for long enough to do anything else, with how great he currently felt. He just hadn't been certain as to whether he and Grimmjow would ever have the same kind of relationship he had come into this expecting to have, but everything suggested they were continually getting closer to it.

But with his head cleared and his pulse slowed, he suddenly recalled that there was one small thing from earlier that did not make him feel quite as great.

"I don't care who you're seeing."

He needed to clear that piece up. If Grimmjow thought that Ichigo wasn't taking this seriously or that he wasn't committed or something... well, he didn't really understand what had given him that impression in the first place but he definitely didn't want him to keep believing it. "Hey, about what you said earlier: I want you to know there's no one besides you. That I spend time with like this, or love this way, or anything. It's really just you."

Grimmjow simply responded to that with a short, unemotional, "Okay." He didn't look especially relieved, or pleased, or anything upon hearing that assurance, which gave Ichigo pause. If he had been concerned enough to bring it up, Ichigo would have expected more of a reaction.

"I thought you said something like that earlier, about thinking I was seeing someone."

Grimmjow's gaze drilled into him for a moment before he tilted his head with a seemingly unbothered tut. "Fuck if I remember. I was focused on much more interesting things than talking." He raised an eyebrow pointedly. "But you just told me you're not, so there you go."

"Why did you think that in the first place?"

The expression on Grimmjow's face creased in annoyance. "I don't know what you do down in the Living World," he reasoned. "Why are you reading so much into shit? Look, you told me you're not; I believe you. Problem solved."

Ichigo couldn't shake the sense that something significant was unsettled here on Grimmjow's end, which wasn't where he wanted to leave this. But it was made more difficult by the fact that he wasn't exactly sure what 'something' was. He especially didn't want to leave anything unsettled in light of what he considered to be a big step they had just taken. Not that he knew where the step had even landed them - he would have called this a relationship now but he probably shouldn't assume without Grimmjow weighing in.

On the other hand, he didn't want to be weird and demanding by insisting that Grimmjow explain himself further or immediately define what they were doing, which would probably instigate a fight where there didn't need to be one. There was a lot happening between them quickly, so Grimmjow may have still been processing and sort of withdrawn for that reason.

Things were getting so much better. Ichigo didn't want to screw it all up.

His mind reeled for a moment on how to leave them on a better note (without chasing Grimmjow off) until he spontaneously came up with a somewhat bashful, "Can I kiss you goodbye or something?"

And that made Grimmjow huff a little half-laugh and curl his mouth into the slightest smile, so it was a definite improvement. "Sure. Whatever."

Chapter Text

"Good timing, right?" Ichigo called across the field, hands creating a makeshift megaphone around his mouth.

Although it was a Saturday and he hadn't worked, Karin had protested that yes, she knew he needed to go see Grimmjow but could he push it back a few more hours since he hadn't been to one of her games in ages? The girls were incredibly talented at guilt-tripping so of course he ended up going. Although he had thought it was going to make him run later than he had anticipated, he had apparently showered, eaten, and then rushed here fast enough afterwards that he even beat Grimmjow returning home from work. Ichigo hadn't felt his reiatsu in town and - having correctly assumed he knew which way Grimmjow would be headed - had come here. He was just coming into the field with all the flowers when Ichigo reached him.

Even at this distance, Ichigo could tell from Grimmjow's face that he was happy to see him. He cupped his hands around his own mouth and called back, "Better than it has been sometimes."

Ichigo bit down a smile and met him halfway and when he did, Grimmjow indiscreetly half-turned and kept his mouth shut so that his sneeze would not be so loud. "Here we go again," Ichigo ribbed. Grimmjow lifted both hands and shoved with palms against Ichigo's chest in retaliation, so Ichigo shoved him back and they both ended up on the ground.

After a few seconds of continuing to mess with each other, Grimmjow turned onto his side to face him. "I thought you were going to clash with all this purple, with your hair." He threaded his fingers into it along Ichigo's skull. "It's not bad, though. Actually looks kind of good around you."

"That's surprisingly complimentary coming from you," Ichigo noted. Following a little deliberation, he added, "I was tormented for my hair growing up. I got into so many fights that my parents enrolled me in martial arts classes." He had thought about it just the other day, how little Grimmjow knew about him so far. There had been so much that Ichigo was trying to learn about him that he simply hadn't told him much about himself in return outside of the basics. And he really wanted Grimmjow to know him better.

Grimmjow hummed. "You wouldn't be you without it."

Ichigo was about to argue that point because he would still be the same guy even if he had darker hair, but without much warning, Grimmjow hooked his hands around his waist. With only a mild grunt of effort, he rolled onto his back while heaving Ichigo's body up on top of his own. The muscle wasn't just for show; he was a physically strong guy.

Ichigo raised his head a little so that he could look at him. "Just don't spray your snot right in my face. I know these are your favorite flowers."

"Shut it, I'll sneeze on you as much as I want." Despite the words, Grimmjow's eyes were warm as they inarguably rested on Ichigo and only Ichigo with such intensity that he felt like the only person who existed in the world.

The mood shifted a little when, after half a minute where they just sort of stared at each other (and Ichigo was confident that over ninety percent of his friends would have made fun of him for the expressions he suspected they were both wearing), Grimmjow rolled his hips up in blatant suggestion.

"You can't be thinking of doing that out here where you'll be sneezing your head off every few minutes. If you are, I have to say it's not the most inspired idea you've ever had, Grimmjow."

"Inspired or not, too bad for you." He tightened the circle of his arms around Ichigo's back. "Because I have a good grip on you. You're stuck here."

"You're underestimating how strong I am. I could break away from you in no time."

"Then why aren't you, tough guy?"

Ichigo pretended not to see the curtailed sneeze following Grimmjow's question. "Because I don't want to get away from you."

Grimmjow seemed to like that response and squeezed him tighter.

Initially, when they had just begun touching more intimately, Ichigo had attempted to telegraph it anytime he was moving in for a kiss on his end. He had been concerned about skittishness on Grimmjow's part because there were several occasions wherein he became oddly reserved, and they sometimes happened when they laid around on the futon together after sex. With him typically being so boisterous, it had taken Ichigo by surprise and had also caused him a little concern. So he had pulled himself back a bit to let Grimmjow initiate on his own terms in case that was the issue, that Ichigo was zooming in too quickly with the close physical contact and not offering him a chance to gather his bearings and be comfortable. But Grimmjow didn't seem to have any hesitation when he initiated any touches or kissing, which left Ichigo with more confusion.

In those times he clammed up after, if Ichigo asked him anything, he usually just hummed some answer that sounded enough like either confirmation or denial to be interpretable depending on the question. He would lie there and rub the pad of his thumb along the curve of Ichigo's hip bone or trail his fingers up and down Ichigo's spine in a repetitive motion, and he wouldn't say a word. Ichigo wondered what he was thinking. But when he was in one of those moods, he was seemingly never willing to answer if asked.

After a week or two during which Ichigo tried to be more observant and identify exactly what might be causing the occasional reticence, he still hadn't been able to figure it out at all. Grimmjow never backed away when Ichigo moved in on him and so he had surmised that wasn't the issue and he didn't need to worry so much.

So Ichigo didn't hesitate now when he leaned in, and Grimmjow met him halfway to hold their lips together for a while without deepening anything. It was unexpectedly tender and Ichigo followed his lead, not making any additional moves either, until they parted organically.

A while back he had been nervous that this might never happen and look at where they were now, always drawing closer. Things weren't simple, per se, because it was still a little confusing at times and a little sad at others, but Ichigo could take it all in stride.

A thought abruptly occurred to him that caused him to pale. "Don't other people take this route back?"

"Yeah."

Ichigo scowled at him playing dumb. "Right, so we really can't do this here, dumbass."

"You can sense people coming, can't you? Your reiatsu thing."

"Not well. And odds are that I'll be a little distracted."

"Then if you hear someone, you'll just have to be quiet and wait it out with my dick in you so that no one finds us."

That was possibly one of the worst plans Ichigo had ever heard, and he had heard some really bad plans in his life. He blew a breath loaded with incredulity into Grimmjow's face. "Oh, is that how it's going to be?"

"Mm-hm."

Regrettably for Ichigo, Grimmjow turned out to be pretty persuasive once his hands started moving with a little more enthusiasm. It wasn't as comfortable as being on a futon or a full-blown bed, but Grimmjow laid on a blanket of their clothes with Ichigo in his lap and they made it work. Grimmjow held onto him too tightly after, arms a solid cord around Ichigo like he was afraid Ichigo really would try to break away from him too soon.

Ichigo was about to ask whether he was alright but then Grimmjow sneezed right into his hair and he had to sharply redirect to complaining about how gross that was and that Grimmjow had zero manners.

Ichigo hadn't realized just how much time he had been spending in Soul Society with Grimmjow until he was working a regular schedule again and began struggling more to fit everything in. His visits had to be a little less frequent by necessity, although he still tried to stop by at least twice a week if not thrice.

However often he came by, Grimmjow never complained or made any serious demands. Whether Ichigo said he would be back in two days or five, he always responded that it was fine by him. He just didn't seem to hold many expectations, which made things easier between them in that way, at least.

Ichigo was happy. He thought things were getting better between them all the time, even if it was more of a gradual improvement than suddenly perfect all at once. And there were a lot of points where he was confident that Grimmjow was happy, too.

But he was still difficult for Ichigo to read at times. Ichigo thought that Grimmjow usually showed a lot of evidence of being pretty content when he was around: he smirked a lot, he chuckled sometimes, he teased to get a rise out of Ichigo, and it was clear that he was having fun. Then there were other times where he fixed Ichigo with that same cautious, observant look he had often donned early on when he didn't know him. Studying him, searching for something about him that Grimmjow seemingly didn't already know. Ichigo was willing to tell him whatever he wanted if he simply came out and asked but whenever he voiced that, Grimmjow always brushed him off. Worse, sometimes he would go into one of those random withdrawn spells that he would have.

Ichigo firmly believed that things were on the right track and would simply take more time. Just as he had let Grimmjow initiate their physical relationship on his own timeline, he could take as much time as he needed with everything else too, and Ichigo wouldn't rush him. He was a little more confident in what they had going on now, but also still cognizant of the fact that he had to be careful not to push and make Grimmjow second guess their situation. He wasn't going to risk anything like that after he had put in so much work to come this far.

He only realized one night that he had broken his usual routine of going home immediately after his visit when he woke up and was still in Grimmjow's house.

"Finally," a voice said from nearby as his brain drearily stumbled back to wakefulness. "I started thinking you might've fallen into a coma."

Grimmjow was sitting upright beside him, already dressed. He was off the futon, possibly because Ichigo was sprawled across the whole thing and had not left any room for another body.

"I fell asleep?"

"Sure did. You must've worn yourself out. I think it was probably only ten minutes between when you came and when you rolled over and passed out."

Ichigo sort of remembered that now, being in a pleasant post-climax haze and thinking that it was the perfect temperature: not too hot, not too cold, and not too humid. He hadn't intended to fully pass out, though. "How long was I out?"

"No clue."

Ichigo rolled over onto his side and snarked, "Thanks, that's very helpful." He stretched to reach his clothes without needing to leave the futon and pulled them closer to dig around for his phone. He found it, flipped it open, and was bemused to see that it was switched off. He held the power button down to no effect. "What the hell is wrong with this thing?" he muttered before trying again. "Is my battery seriously dead? I had the brightness set low and everything."

The phone failed to show any signs of life. "Great, now I don't even know what time it is because the time on the other one doesn't move the same." He set the phone down with a frustrated sigh and pushed himself to his feet to dress. "I probably need to get back just in case. With my luck it'll be a lot later than I think and I won't have time to eat or shower before work."

Grimmjow was still sitting in the same spot he had been, which meant that Ichigo had to squat beside him to give him a final kiss on the way out. His balance wasn't easy to maintain in a squat while leaning his weight forward to kiss someone, so Grimmjow thoughtfully held his waist in place to prevent him from toppling. And Grimmjow was more intense than usual in returning the kiss, Ichigo noticed. It was almost frantic in terms of both pressure and movement, enough so that Ichigo asked, "Is everything okay?" when he pulled away.

"Of course it is. Can't a guy change the pace up once in a while?"

Ichigo felt his own expression furrow in confusion but he didn't really have time to interrogate Grimmjow on it when he knew he would just get stonewalled anyway. "Alright, then. See you on Thursday?"

"Fine by me. Stay out of fucking trouble down in the Living World," Grimmjow joked, but his flat tone was all wrong for the delivery.

He was so tough to understand in moments like these. Ichigo wished again that he felt as if he could ask without Grimmjow thinking it was somehow denigrating him and subsequently pushing Ichigo away. He knew they would get there at some point... it just wasn't right now. For now, he just had to prove that he would be at Grimmjow's side anyway until they made it there.

When Thursday rolled around and Ichigo arrived home from work, the plan was to quickly go shower, eat dinner, and then go to Soul Society. The truth was that he wasn't feeling a hundred percent: a nightmare (about the day Grimmjow's soul had been cleansed, as usual) had woken him up at 3 a.m. and he had not been able to fall back asleep afterwards. But it wasn't the first night he had only gotten a few hours of sleep and it wouldn't be the last, so that alone wasn't going to sway him to change his plans. Besides, he had told Grimmjow to expect him today. "Hey, I'm home."

"Welcome home," floated Yuzu's voice out into entryway. "We're in here!" Both of his sisters were in the kitchen when he walked past, with Karin sitting at the table and Yuzu at the stove over a pot, stirring.

He realized that the scene was painfully reminiscent of another.

"I'm home," he had called as he walked inside after commuting home from work.

"Finally!" a voice had responded from the kitchen, of all places. "You must've fuckin' crawled for how long it took you. Since when are you so slow?"

As Ichigo had walked into view of their kitchen, he saw that Grimmjow had his left elbow propped up on the counter beside the stove, supporting his chin on his palm. The other hand had been stirring something with a wooden spoon in a pot placed on the lower burner. "What are you doing?"

Grimmjow had looked away from the pot to glare at him without lifting his chin from his hand. "You got eyes, you can see what I'm doing." Ichigo had promptly burst into hysterics, much to Grimmjow's visible displeasure. "Come over here so I can shove this spoon straight up your ass."

"I would hate to see what my sister does to you if you ruin one of her good cooking utensils that way," Ichigo had warned when he stopped to catch his breath, bent over with his hands on his knees from laughing so hard. "That's too funny."

"First you're late and now you're giving me shit. You should've just stayed at fuckin' work."

"Sorry, I would've hurried home faster if I'd realized my arrancar housewife was patiently waiting up for me with dinner."

Grimmjow had momentarily abandoned the stove to give Ichigo a hard jab in the gut for that quip - way too hard for being in his human body, because he had a bruise for over two weeks - but it was completely worth it for the way his face had abruptly frozen into a tableau of one-quarter embarrassment and three-quarters fury.

"I can't believe you let her rope you into that," Ichigo had brought up again later that night.

Grimmjow had pressed directly into the spot he had bruised earlier, eliciting a muffled yelp from Ichigo. "What else am I gonna do, tell her to fuck off and get you chewing my head off for a month? They're with you so I'm stuck doing shit. This's your fault," he'd insisted before diving to dig his teeth into Ichigo's shoulder with just the right amount of pressure before it became too painful to feel good. He had pulled back half a minute later. "If I didn't have to keep you happy, I wouldn't have to be standing around stirring fuckin' curry."

For all the complaining he had done along the way, the fact that he said he did it to keep Ichigo happy? That had made Ichigo happy all on its own.

Even after all these months, even with having Grimmjow in Soul Society and knowing that the arrancar Grimmjow's soul was safe and flourishing, part of Ichigo still ached at the memory. He had loved and lost so much of him. When it came to everything they had done together, Ichigo was the only one left who knew any of it. For some reason, that felt like one of the worst parts of it all, like nothing that had happened even mattered.

"-chi-nii? Are you okay?" When he pulled himself out of his contemplative misery and back into the present, both girls were watching him with an edge of worry in their expressions.

"Yeah, I'm fine. Don't wait for me for dinner, okay? I'm not hungry."

"Are you going up to Soul Society tonight?" his dad asked an hour later when he came across him sitting on the couch and staring blankly into the distance, clearly not looking as if he was doing much of anything.

It took a moment for Ichigo to realize he had been addressed. "Not tonight. I don't feel up to it."

He was legitimately frustrated that he couldn't just shrug this sort of thing off and go about his day. It made him feel ungrateful: the plan had (sort of) worked and he had Grimmjow (even if it was not the Grimmjow he had known before, but that was okay!), he was pulling his life back together. And despite all of that, a nightmare and a memory set him completely off the rails.

Damn it. 

Hopefully he would be back to normal tomorrow.

"I thought you were coming yesterday." Grimmjow's arms were folded over his chest when he greeted Ichigo the following day but he didn't actually look angry.

Though Ichigo hadn't slept great last night either, he was still been better off than yesterday and thus managed to make it up to Soul Society. "Yeah, I was going to but I just wasn't feeling well after work. Sorry," Ichigo offered, scratching the back of his neck and glancing to the side. He couldn't help but feel remorseful about having blown Grimmjow off, even if it was only for one day. "If you took one of those phones I offered you, I could have texted you to let you know."

Disregarding the phone comment, Grimmjow analyzed him with the intensity of a scientist over a microscope. "You feel fine now?"

"Yeah. I'm feeling better."

"You certainly didn't sleep it off," Grimmjow observed dryly before stepping closer to him. Ichigo was surprised at how carefully Grimmjow took his face into his hands before running his thumbs under Ichigo's eyes on both sides. "It's dark here, under your eyes."

It was such a soft gesture that Ichigo faltered. "I don't sleep well sometimes," he admitted.

Grimmjow's jaw shifted and Ichigo heard a sigh escape through his nose. Without much warning aside from his slow approach, he guided Ichigo's face closer by his hold on it and brought his mouth to his own, and that was soft, too. It didn't appear to be a precursor to anything or a suggestion. It felt like the only intention was one of comfort.

Ichigo unintentionally stiffened a little - not because he was opposed to it, but rather because he had never been one to make gestures like this in public. It had been similar to the hesitancy he had with voicing his affection and emotions, where he felt a little disoriented if he tried. He had been forcing himself to get past that more recently, after that experience where it had really slapped him in the face that he had left so many things and feelings unsaid to his arrancar until it was too late. Now he caught himself once in a while and remembered to tell Grimmjow that he loved him and was grateful to have him. There was always a little discomfort, especially since Grimmjow never had any sort of blatantly positive reaction towards those admissions, but Ichigo offered them all anyway and assumed that Grimmjow just planned to allow their familiarity to build more before he would be willing to show too much of his own hand.

But fuck his discomfort: if Grimmjow was making an effort like this of his own volition, Ichigo could get over his reluctance towards public affection too, even if a ton of people saw them. The last thing he wanted was to make Grimmjow feel as if he disliked it or was rejecting a move like this.

When Grimmjow pulled away, the bubbly, syrupy feeling beneath Ichigo's ribs persisted. "Be careful," he warned, face warm from where it was still being held in slightly calloused hands. He reached up to set the pads of his fingers on the sides of Grimmjow's wrists. "I'm going to start thinking you missed me."

"You think a lot of crazy things," Grimmjow countered as he withdrew his hands to return to his sides.

Ichigo's mouth curled up a little at the edges. "I don't know, Grimmjow. This one doesn't feel too crazy."

As they began walking towards Grimmjow's place, Ichigo couldn't help but notice that they caught a few more glances than usual and the cause was rather obvious. "I'm surprised you did that out here in the open. How are you going to get these people to leave you alone when you give them exciting gossip to talk about?" He attempted to be a little quiet and his tone was teasing, but he was genuinely a little perplexed about the entire interaction in retrospect. It had been uncharacteristic in several ways.

Grimmjow dismissed the concern easily and (as usual) didn't bother to lower his voice as he stepped up to his small home. "Who cares? They talk all the time anyway. I've probably been asked a hundred fucking times across a dozen days what you're doing out here, usually by the same fucking people."

Ichigo smirked as he slid the door closed behind him after following Grimmjow inside. As he started to tug off his sandals, he recalled the line Grimmjow used to give people when Ichigo had first begun showing up. "Do you still tell them I'm desperately pining after you and you're playing hard to get?"

"No." Grimmjow was across the room and crouched down to retrieve something.

"What do you say, then?"

"What does it matter what I tell them?" Grimmjow countered as he walked back to Ichigo and lifted a hand with his favorite kind of local pear as an offering. "Here. Just went and grabbed these yesterday when you didn't come by."

Ichigo took it reluctantly. "It doesn't really matter. I only care about what you think."

Grimmjow didn't seem to have anything to say in response to that because he abruptly changed the subject by asking, "You still aren't sleeping well?"

Ichigo rolled the fruit around in his hand. "Only sometimes, I said."

Grimmjow studied him for a few seconds. "You were dead weight that one time you slept here, I don't think you even twitched for hours on end." He shot Ichigo an amused little smirk. "Is it because you were next to me?"

"I'm surprised I didn't sleep worse in that case. You probably rolled over and just so happened to kick me at least three times while you had the chance to pretend it was an accident."

A scoff came out of the other's mouth. "Doubt it, since I didn't sleep."

"What did you do all that time then?"

There was a very awkward pause during which the smirk fell off Grimmjow's face and he didn't seem to have an answer. "Think I just got up and went for a walk. You happened to still be sleeping when I got back."

Ichigo couldn't help but think the bizarre hesitation in advance of that statement made it sound like that might have been a bit of a fucking lie. "You 'think?'"

Grimmjow sneered. "How the hell should I remember exactly what happened one night over a week ago? What, you think you're so special that when you're around, everyone has perfect recall?"

In spite of how openly affectionate he had been outside when Ichigo first showed up, there had been an undercurrent to the conversation the entire time that Ichigo had been struggling to pinpoint. Now it seemed as if that undercurrent was rising to the surface. "What the hell are you even upset about? I can tell that something is wrong, you've been weird since I got here and I don't think I deserve it."

"I'm beginning to get upset that you're asking me all these damn questions, so how about you knock it off?" In addition to those quiet spells, Grimmjow would have these moments too, where he got pissy and there was never any real explanation given. He acted like Ichigo was just supposed to roll with it and never expect to know the cause, and it was honestly kind of bullshit.

If he was going to be like this, maybe Ichigo should just leave. "Yeah, no problem. If I'm pissing you off so much then maybe I shouldn't have come today either," he told Grimmjow darkly before turning towards the door and moving to leave.

A few very quick steps were audible behind him before Grimmjow snatched his wrist. "Come on, don't be like that. I'm not actually that mad, I just wanted you to stop. You came all the way up here so stay for a little while." His thumb stroked up and down over the skin on the inside of Ichigo's wrist in what may have been a silent apology. When Ichigo did not reply for another few seconds, he deigned to tack on a verbal one, too: "I'm sorry, okay?"

Ichigo turned to look over his shoulder. "And you're going to stop being a dick for no reason?"

"Yeah," Grimmjow agreed. "...But I'm sure you'll give me some reasons eventually and then it'll be justified."

Ichigo snorted in unintentional amusement and spun to deliver a light punch to Grimmjow's shoulder.

To his relief, Grimmjow did drop the abrasive attitude for the rest of the night and so Ichigo didn't have to keep worrying about it. He didn't think he could be blamed for not needing any additional worries right now.

A week or two later, Grimmjow was again in one of those subdued, quiet moods that seemed to appear without warning. Which was not going to serve especially well for Ichigo's learning efforts.

Every time he saw Grimmjow, he tried to remember to ask a question and learn something new about him. He was honestly still a little sore about that fucking pop quiz from a while back and if he ever got another one, he was going to blow that shit out of the water with a perfect score.

Grimmjow usually gave him a chiding look but played along, and after the first few instances he had begun shooting back at Ichigo with a question about him each time in return. It was nice, and a little exciting in its own way to see newly uncovered details about someone, especially someone Ichigo loved.

But he knew as soon as he saw Grimmjow that today was not going to be one of those days to learn about him. Ichigo ended up doing most of the talking - since he was decidedly not - in order to avoid an uncomfortable silence while Grimmjow just listened.

Ichigo could never get it out of him, what was wrong in these moments, and he did wonder why. It could have been that he refused to tell Ichigo out of defensiveness. Or it could have been a lack of trust: perhaps he simply didn't trust Ichigo to the extent of confiding certain things in him yet, because he hadn't known him long enough or Ichigo hadn't earned it, or something.

Whatever the case may have been, it meant there was not much in terms of enthusiastic conversation tonight. Grimmjow was still in a decent enough mood to be interested in fucking so there was that, at least. Ichigo supposed he should be grateful for small favors.

When they separated from where their sweat-slicked skin was pressed together, Ichigo moved away but rolled onto his side so that he was facing Grimmjow while the other laid flat on his back. After a period of the kind of quiet that came from a satiated come down, Ichigo asked, "Are there any days that aren't good for me to come this week?" Grimmjow always said any day was fine, but he still tried to be considerate enough to ask.

"Doesn't matter; I should be done everyday by when you usually come around."

"Okay, Karin has a game this week that I'm supposed to make but I think all the other evenings should be open." That triggered a reminder and he chuckled. "Oh yeah: speaking of Karin, my sisters have been on my case about you a lot lately. I told them that you won't be able to meet them for a while, though. If you ultimately decide on the shinigami route you could, since members of the Gotei come down to the Living World regularly enough. Otherwise I'm not sure what the options are, whether you would ever be able to come to the Living World."

"Your sisters?" Grimmjow's tone, as he held his eyes on the ceiling, was one Ichigo was unable to place.

"Yeah," Ichigo replied tentatively. "Is that a problem?" When Grimmjow did not answer him one way or the other, he bristled. "I can't read your mind."

"Why would you want me to come to the Living World or meet your sisters?"

"Isn't it obvious?"

Grimmjow's silence said that it actually wasn't and that he might not be interested in that idea at all, which spawned a not particularly pleasant feeling in Ichigo. Maybe he was doing what he had initially told himself he would avoid: moving way too quickly while Grimmjow was on a whole different timeline, one that wasn't yet at the point of talking about future plans. Fine. Ichigo could realign if this was making him uncomfortable, if it was too much. "I'm only mentioning it because they brought it up. They asked and I told them it wouldn't be for a while, I just said that. This is far down the road, it's not something to actually think about now."

Neither of them said anything for a beat after that until Grimmjow suddenly let out a humorless laugh and confessed, "I thought I was going to be able to do this, but maybe I can't."

The words made a razor-thin line of cold run straight up Ichigo's spine. Nothing about that sentence had sounded good. He didn't know why the hell living here had managed to make Grimmjow such a cryptic guy but this was not the first time he had difficulty following his train of thought. "Do what? Can you just say what you mean for a change?"

Grimmjow's face locked back into something more guarded and unreadable, but it seemed unsteady, as if he might lose it at any given moment. "Forget it. It's my problem to deal with."

"Bullshit, you're not going to bring it up like that and then leave me wondering what the hell is going on. Explain it to me. Stop being so fucking secretive and tell me what's going on once in a while!" Ichigo bit the inside of his cheek. "Do you not trust me, or what?"

The hold Grimmjow had on his expression cracked and he was twisting up off the futon and away before Ichigo could even blink. By the time Ichigo had pushed himself to his feet, Grimmjow was mostly dressed. "It's about the time you usually leave." The dismissal was so blatant that he may as well have just picked Ichigo up and thrown him out the damn door.

What the fuck had just happened here? Ichigo yanked his clothes on but he didn't plan on going anywhere. "I'm not leaving until you tell me what the problem is. You're mad about something, so just say it. Probably something I said or did, right? Tell me what it is."

"No. I fucking did it to myself," Grimmjow replied without facing him, voice raising just slightly in volume with some vacillating emotion that he was trying to keep under very precise control.

That left Ichigo even more confused. "Well whoever the hell did it, can you at least tell me?"

Grimmjow's entire face tightened when he seemingly gritted his teeth for a few seconds and then looked at Ichigo. "I'm in love with you," were the next words out of his mouth, sounding more like an accusation of a wrong done to him than a confession. Ichigo's breath stuttered in his lungs in surprise but Grimmjow wasn't finished, and his mouth curled into a sardonic grin. "And you're in love with someone with my face who doesn't exist anymore. I knew that the entire time and it still ended up this way. Guess that makes me pretty fucking stupid."

Ichigo's mouth was stuck for a moment before it would move and Grimmjow didn't give him an opportunity to recover. "You showed up here, pestering me and insisting I was your beloved hollow. It pissed me off that you were trying to fit me into some shell you had pre-made, and I told you you were wrong. But then you kept coming back and following me around and still acted like I was the most important person in the world. And I knew better: I knew why you were doing it and that it wasn't really about me. So I didn't go after you even when I started wanting to, because it would always be you looking at me through the lens of being him. I told myself there was no way for me to win so I couldn't do it. Reminded myself that if I did, I'd be signing up to feel like shit all the time, knowing I was just a replacement. But then I went and did it anyway.

"You look so damn happy when you see me, you know. At first it feels good but then I hate it because you aren't really seeing me, right? Something always comes up that reminds me you aren't actually coming around here for me, that I'm just a reminder to you of someone else, and I can't fucking stand it. And I'm pissed at you sometimes too, even though I know I shouldn't be. Like it's your fault I got myself into this even though I saw it coming." He let out an unhappy huff. "And then you always look past it all, don't you? You look past anything I say or do because I'm as close as you can get to the guy you actually loved so much."

Everything was happening too fast for Ichigo to keep up with the argument. There were so many pieces to which he needed to respond, to deny, that he wasn't sure where to start. "You're wrong. That isn't the way it is."

"Isn't it? You came looking for me because you thought I was him. You kept trying to convince me I was because you wanted me to be. And when I told you I wasn't, didn't you keep coming back anyway because I reminded you of him? You wouldn't have bothered otherwise." Grimmjow regarded him sullenly. "The worst part of it all is that I've been trying. I took your phone that one time you fell asleep here. I sat outside and must have watched that recording of you and him fifty times, over and over again, trying to figure out the ways I'm so different than he was that I'm damn near invisible to you. How pathetic is that?" His voice was full of disgust. "I kept telling myself that if I filled his spot for you long enough, you might end up feeling that way about me, too. I told myself that all I had to do was play along for a while and be patient. But it hasn't worked, because I know you're looking at me and seeing the life you had with someone else - someone who'll never be me because I didn't live that life - and I don't know how to keep doing this. I listen to you say you love me and I still know I'm not the person you mean."

Grimmjow sounded drained of all the fire and energy he normally had. Even his audible frustration had seemingly dripped away until all that was left was weariness. "I want you to mean me, the way I'd mean you if I said it. Tell me what I have to do to get you to look at me and see me, and not just the shadow of the person who had this soul before I did. What do I have to fucking do to actually have you, Ichigo?"

A bomb could have gone off beside Ichigo and he wouldn't have noticed. He had greatly, greatly underestimated the severity of what was lingering between them. And he felt like complete shit.

"I don't care who you're seeing," Grimmjow had said after that first time he kissed him. And Ichigo, dumbass he was, had interpreted the words in only one way at face value, as Grimmjow thinking he may have been dating someone else. Ichigo had assured him that he wasn't and considered the matter resolved since Grimmjow said at the time that he believed him and never brought it up again. But that hadn't been it at all. Grimmjow hadn't been saying, "I'm doing this even if you're not exclusively with me." What he had actually been saying was, "I'm doing this even if you're imagining someone else when I'm right in front of you."

It was like something was being wedged in Ichigo's ribcage and twisted around. There had been signs all along. Big, flashing signs that Ichigo had either downplayed or ignored, and it was because he had been afraid. Frightened that if he pushed too hard or too quickly, he would only push Grimmjow away from him and suffer another loss. And Ichigo hadn't had it in him to weather another loss right now.

So he had hoped that all those signs would work themselves out and stop flashing on their own with time, or that Grimmjow would just come right out and tell him what the problem was if things went on long enough. All so that Ichigo wouldn't be forced to risk strangling something - something newly-growing but deeply loved - with his own two hands the same way he had been forced to put his sword through Grimmjow's chest in another life. It would have been funny if it weren't so sad, that now he could see he had been strangling it to death anyway by doing nothing.

He should have said something when he noticed that things were off, all those times the question had popped up in his mind and he had thrown a blanket of his own fear over it to hide it from view. He should have confronted this head on, and then he should have fixed it. How must it have been all this time, with Grimmjow believing he was just a substitute for someone Ichigo couldn't have anymore and trying to fill in for the version he thought was actually wanted? Convinced that was as close as he could get to being accepted until some indeterminate future point when it might change and he could finally be wanted simply for being himself.

Ichigo should have addressed it before, but he needed to fix it now.

The pause while he tried to think of a way to explain or prove Grimmjow was wrong or something must have gone on a little too long, because he watched Grimmjow begin withdrawing into himself in real time. "Something's been off with me all day and has my head fucked up, I don't even know where any of that came from now that I'm taking a second to think," Grimmjow quickly claimed in a clipped tone. He was a wounded creature, on his guard and ready to either snarl or split to protect himself if approached incorrectly. "Don't take any of that seriously. Just forget we had this conversation, things'll be normal."

That retreat might have made a little crack form in Ichigo's heart. "No, no no!" He took a hurried step closer in alarm. "Let me talk, you have to give me a chance to talk!"

Grimmjow didn't appear particularly eager to hear him out. The shift between his body language a few minutes ago and now was night and day. A few minutes ago he had looked nearly vulnerable in his rare openness, and now he looked as if he were stuck in a snake pit waiting for the inevitable moment he would be bitten. "Fine. Talk, then. Say what you need to say."

How could Ichigo explain it all? Yes, in the beginning, he had not understood as well as he should have. He had been so caught up in his own grief that he had been blinded by it; that was a fair criticism. But after everything had been cleared up, he had tried so hard to prove that he recognized Grimmjow as he was. He had been so careful about the things he said, avoiding those that had clearly bothered Grimmjow and made him feel like he was still being denied his independence and identity. Ichigo had done all of that because this was the last thing he had wanted, to keep doing what he had initially done in making Grimmjow feel like he was invisible.

He wasn't invisible at all.

"You knocked my tooth out the first time I met you."

Grimmjow stared at him blankly, obviously not following. Then his slim eyebrows creased in anger. "What the hell does that have to do wi-"

Ichigo cut him off. "You learned how to fix everything in this place on your own to keep it standing and you're proud that everything you've done has held up. You're allergic to lavender. That's the name of those purple flowers in the field where you never stop sneezing - I looked it up after the first day we walked through there. You hate Amata-san less than the rest of your neighbors but you still think she makes too much noise when she's cleaning the futon and that she doesn't need to clean it so often. You think the sun makes everything too bright right around mid-day so you squint a little if you're outside at that time. You sort of scrunch your nose if I bite right at the edge of your jaw, and you'll probably hit me for saying this but it's really fucking cute."

Something in his words was convincing enough to cause the ire on Grimmjow's face to dissipate as his brow smoothed, and he was listening to Ichigo in rapt attention with his lips slightly parted.

"Do you see what I'm saying?" Ichigo asked, hoping all the way down to his core that it would click. "None of those things were true about the arrancar Grimmjow who lived before you, but they're true about you. You aren't the same as him; you see things your own way, you react to them your own way. I've seen you all this time for exactly who you are. Maybe in the very beginning when I first saw you, I didn't completely understand. I was really messed up back then and I'm sorry. But I swear it didn't take me as long as you might think to get it, and I learned who you are, and I understand now. You don't need to try to stand in for anyone else for me to love you. I love you right now."

"How can you know that?" Grimmjow demanded. He wanted to believe Ichigo - Ichigo could see it in his eyes - but he was reluctant: he wasn't willing to risk opening himself up any more than he had while he was halfway certain that he would get burned.

"Probably the same way you know you're in love with me. You just feel it and you know, right?"

Grimmjow shook his head sharply in frustration and gestured with a hand at something intangible. "It isn't the same! You're the only Ichigo I've ever known, I don't have anything else confusing me about whether or not I really love you."

"Neither do I," Ichigo promised. "I'm not confused at all."

Grimmjow looked unsure of what to believe after all that had been said.

"I don't want you to think you're a replacement or a second choice or anything, because you're not. I never wanted you to think that." Ichigo clenched and unclenched his fists as he tried to come up with an idea of what would fix this, because right now he felt like a scumbag for letting it get this bad. "If you want, if it'll help, I'll call you a new name, whatever you pick. Whatever will show you that I don't need you to be anything more than you are or anyone different. I'd sift through all of Rukongai a dozen times to find you if I needed to, not because you look like anyone else or act like anyone else: just because you're you. I mean that."

Grimmjow's shifting jaw indicated that he was unsure of how to respond for a moment. "You're not just telling me what I want to hear? I was sure you were looking right through me all along."

Nothing could have been further from the truth. "I've just been looking at you, I haven't been looking at anything else."

Grimmjow's expression remained a little stiff and so Ichigo wasn't able to tell whether or not that had been enough. He was willing to stay here and explain everything for as long as it took Grimmjow to understand. Everything else could wait; resolving this was his highest priority.

But Grimmjow stepped closer to him and - mirroring the first time he had pulled the same move - dove in to catch Ichigo's mouth with his own. He inhaled against his lips before soothing his tongue thoroughly along Ichigo's and trailing it against the line of his teeth in eager exploration. He was holding Ichigo's face in his hands as gently as the last time he had done so when he pulled back with a wet noise. "I've never been able to look away from you once," he confessed roughly, eyes locked on Ichigo's before pressing their lips together only briefly this time. When their mouths parted again, he added, "It's been really annoying."

Ichigo had to smile at the sudden change in tone as his heart felt ten times lighter. "Too bad for you, because you're stuck with me. We already established that you never manage to chase me off."

"Guess I'll have to find a way to deal with it. But I think I might be able to." Grimmjow stroked his fingers along the skin between Ichigo's eyes and his temples. "Now I'll know you're really coming around for me."

"That's been true all this time," Ichigo reminded fondly, circling each of Grimmjow's wrists in a hand. "You're just kind of stupid."

Grimmjow laughed in the most genuine, happy way Ichigo had ever heard out of him, and he would have sworn it was the best sound in all of Soul Society.

Over the course of his next several visits, Ichigo felt confident in saying that things were on an upswing. Grimmjow seemed more consistently at ease and, frankly, happier in general. And that of course made Ichigo happier too.

While he had never noticed it until after it disappeared - and the blame probably laid at the feet of his occasional obliviousness when it came to other people's feelings if they didn't say them outright - he realized that there had always been some invisible, imperceptible distance between the two of them prior to now. Once that distance was gone, it suddenly became much easier to connect and understand each other. They had been connecting before, sure, but it hadn't been like this. This was a lot better.

Things weren't perfect, but they were pretty damn good. A single conversation was never going to be able to fix everything overnight, and Ichigo had moments wherein he could tell that he hadn't completely erased Grimmjow's doubts. Nevertheless, it was absolutely better than it had been and Grimmjow was under strict orders to punch Ichigo if he ever did something again to make him feel the way he previously had. Ichigo would rather have had some bones broken than continue to hurt him that way.

It was unusual for Grimmjow's door to be open when Ichigo dropped by, but that was how he found it upon a visit to Soul Society a little over two weeks after their conversation. And Ichigo found Grimmjow himself on the floor, sharply focused and jostling the door a little. "Are you trying to attract more guests by starting an open door policy?"

Grimmjow gave a sarcastic, "Ha ha, aren't you funny?" without looking up as Ichigo pulled off his shoes. "I noticed that the track where this thing slides has been warping over time and now it won't close all the way. I'm going to have to take this down and replace it with that new track now, I can't really wander off to do stuff with you and leave the door half-open. I might as well put up a sign that says, 'walk in here and mess up whatever you want' if I do."

"Wouldn't want them to steal your futon. I think that's the only valuable thing in here."

"You're a real asshole, Ichigo. I don't know why I let you hang out here."

He did that again, now: had gone back to calling him Ichigo. It had been a relief, evidence that he really had believed what Ichigo told him and wasn't still feeling that he needed to be someone he wasn't.

"You like having me hang out here," Ichigo reminded as he squatted beside where Grimmjow was sitting. "Do you want my help?"

Grimmjow blew out a mocking noise at the offer. "Your 'help' is mostly getting in my way, the way I'm remembering it."

"You're so full of shit, I helped a lot last time!"

"You sat around staring at me like a doofus until I told you what to do because you couldn't figure it out."

He couldn't take that one lying down. "I was following your lead because it's your house, but I could have figured out how to do it on my own if I had to."

Grimmjow's eyes narrowed into something challenging but clearly entertained. "Alright. If you're so confident, then figure it out now," he ordered with amusement. Ichigo stared at him. "I'll sit here and watch you."

Great. Ichigo had walked himself right into that one. And so, having been pretty formally challenged, he rolled up his sleeves and proceeded to do his best. It wasn't as if he had to do something like this before, but it seemed straightforward enough: take the door down, pull the old track up, put the new one down, door back up. Easy.

Grimmjow sat on the floor behind him and was observing him with a constant smirk every time Ichigo turned to check, like he was watching the world's greatest reality show. He didn't offer a single word of guidance.

And it was going great, Ichigo had taken the door out of the track and then... he suddenly got stuck. The stupid old wood that he needed to detach and yank out didn't want to be yanked out at all, despite seemingly having nothing else keeping it in place. "Fuck," Ichigo cursed quietly after he must have spent ten minutes just trying to get the thing up. He reluctantly glanced up to find Grimmjow's smug gaze still on him. "You don't have to look so happy about it."

Grimmjow cackled at his reaction and nudged him to the side. "Get out of the way now so I can do it." Ichigo had no idea what the hell he did so differently that made the track come up on his first try, but it seemed like bullshit. "And don't pout like that," Grimmjow scolded after shooting a brief look over his shoulder before returning to what he was doing. "Even if you're really shitty at some things, you're still the only one for me."

Since he had turned around again, Ichigo was now facing his back and couldn't see his expression. As for his own expression, the truth was that his face hurt from how firmly he held down the huge grin that nearly crept up on it. "I can't be good at everything, I have to leave a few things for you or else it wouldn't be fair," he explained. "And even if you're a real asshole, I love you, too."

"'Too?'" Grimmjow repeated. "That wasn't what I said."

"I think it was probably what you meant."

Grimmjow turned his head to look back at Ichigo over his shoulder again, mouth a flat line for just a second before it betrayed him and curled upward on one side. "Alright, maybe it was."

It was already April, meaning that May would be upon them in no time. And May 28th would be a year from the day of Grimmjow's cleansing.

Ichigo wasn't sure what he would do that day. He never brought anything up to Grimmjow for obvious reasons - that situation had been really fucking bad - but occasionally he was still hit by a pretty deep pang of sorrow whenever he saw something that stuck out as a memory he and the arrancar Grimmjow had shared before everything had happened. Not because he was unhappy, because he had Grimmjow and he loved the hell out of him and learned more about him every time he saw him. But a loss was a loss was a loss, when it came to a loved one, and he figured this might just be a piece of the situation that would always linger, as it had with his mom. Whatever the case, he would be able to deal with it.

But he was sleeping more steadily again. His life was back to some semblance of normalcy and he was finally thinking about the future rather than simply sluggishly dragging his feet through the days as he had before, when he had been waiting to get back to a life that made him feel more whole than empty.

And speaking of getting his life back to normal: he had started going out with his friends again, which was a huge improvement after barely seeing them at all for nearly a year. They had all known about Grimmjow of course, and for the spiritually unaware among them, there was a cover story about Ichigo's very human boyfriend suddenly getting sick and passing away unexpectedly. So everyone had been understanding about his total absence for a while.

They were actually supposed to go out that night to a new place that had just opened, and he figured he should hop in the shower now so that he wouldn't be scrambling out the door with still-wet hair in an hour.

A buzz and 'ping!' noise from his pocket drove him to pull his phone out and check it.

Rather than being from any of his friends, the text was actually from Grimmjow, who had finally come into possession of a phone. And by 'come into possession of,' Ichigo meant that he had hidden one in Grimmjow's place while he wasn't looking and then called it repeatedly until Grimmjow found it, figured out how to answer, and chewed him out.

you have the thing tonight right [17:48]

yeah, with my friends. I can come see you tomorrow though.

why, are you going to miss me a lot? [17:49]

Grimmjow was still gaining familiarity with typing so sometimes it took a few minutes for him to respond. And it turned out that in addition to lavender, he was also allergic to punctuation.

miss you more if you werent such a smartass dick all the time [17:54]

nice try. you like me the way I am. [17:54]

dont know why but yeah i do [17:58]

Ichigo smiled down at the message.

don't get full of yourself over it, but I like you the way you are too. [17:59]

A loud yowling from outside drew his attention away from his phone and to the window. Sounded like cats fighting or something, Ichigo thought as he opened it and gripped the frame for leverage as he leaned outside.

And yep, there was a cat running like a bat out of hell from the scene of the crime. Probably waltzed into another one's turf and stole some old tuna or something. He laughed briefly, beginning to pull himself back inside when his hand slid over a break in the wood. He leaned forward to examine it more closely. The frame was split in one place and the edges were crooked as if someone had squeezed it too hard.

He knew exactly what had caused that, he realized as he ran his fingers over it while careful to avoid a splinter. One of the first times Grimmjow had left his room through the window, Ichigo had been giving him shit about something or other. Grimmjow had gone to swing a kick at him and to stabilize himself, he had braced one hand against the roof and tightened his grip around the outer frame of Ichigo's window with the other. They had both heard the crack and Ichigo had nudged him out of the way to look before complaining that Grimmjow had broken his fucking window (to which Grimmjow had retorted that it was Ichigo's own fault and he didn't break the fucking window, anyway, the glass was just fine so Ichigo could shut it).

It was thanks to him that things were the way they were now. Grimmjow had always invariably left his mark on everything he touched, including Ichigo and his life. Ichigo smiled as he squeezed the damaged wood. I think you'd be satisfied with how it all turned out, he thought. Everything you did for me, I'll never forget any of it, or you, no matter what happens. I promise.

His phone vibrated from where he had tossed it on the bed and after a few more seconds, he leaned back inside and shut the window before retrieving it.

Grimmjow had replied to his last message from all the way up in Soul Society with a simple,

see you tomorrow ichigo [18:06]

Ichigo slid the door ajar and jutted his head out just slightly. "It's really pouring."

"Yeah?" a voice asked from behind before Grimmjow's arms snuck around him, low on his waist so that a hand could rest over each of his hipbones. Ichigo allowed himself to be leaned back against another body. "Better stay longer. Fast as you are, you're still going to get drenched if you go all the way back to Seireitei right now."

Ichigo had to admit that the rain here didn't make him feel quite as badly as back home. "You're not as sneaky as you think you are about asking me to stay."

Grimmjow bit the junction between his shoulder and neck playfully to reprimand him for the remark. "It would be easier if you didn't have to go as far, wouldn't it?"

"What do you mean? It doesn't really matter. Like you said, I can go pretty fast so it doesn't take me nearly as long as it takes me to get anywhere in the Living World."

Grimmjow sighed an annoyed sigh in his ear. "You're missing the point, Ichigo."

"Well then make the point a little more obvious, dumbass."

"I'm trying to bring up the subject of getting a new place like you suggested, dumbass," Grimmjow mocked.

Ichigo turned his head to eye him in a rather scolding manner. "The one that you bit my head off about on the few occasions I brought it up, because it was charity and you didn't want to accept something from me and so on and so forth? Is that the one we're talking about?"

"Well that was then," Grimmjow brushed off easily. "But lately it feels crowded when you're here. And you're here a lot." He gestured with one hand to his (admittedly small) home while keeping the other on Ichigo. "Besides, it's really a place for you. You bounce around here like a transient and expect everyone else to house you, namely me."

"A transient?" Ichigo grumbled.

"If you can get the Powers That Be to give you a whole place for free, it's the least they can do and then you'll have it for when you need it. And," Grimmjow noted knowingly, pinning him with a raised eyebrow, "You'll need someone to keep an eye on it and fix anything that needs done when you're in the Living World as often as you are. And I won't just be freeloading around; I plan to find jobs to do to earn my own way and everything."

"Sounds like you've thought about this a lot."

"Not 'a lot.' Once or twice. You're not really giving me any idea what you think of this."

Ichigo let out an amused scoff and smiled before leaning even more of his weight back against Grimmjow, who kept him upright with ease. There was no chance he couldn't accurately predict what Ichigo would say about this. "Well, when you lay it all out that way... maybe I do need a bigger place to crash while I'm here. And I might know someone who would fit the bill to take decent care of it for me."

Grimmjow's smirk quirked up an extra notch. "I think you might."

"I won't even make fun of you too much for finally caving on the idea," Ichigo teased. He should have expected the pinch he received in return.

The rain continued to patter against the roof and the street as they looked out through the gap of the partially open door. "Where did you say you wanted to be? Not inside the Seireitei but right outside, or something? I need an idea of what I'm supposed to be asking for."

"I don't care all that much where the place is," Grimmjow replied.

That wasn't how Ichigo remembered it. "You sounded like you had a pretty specific location in mind of where you wanted to end up. You told me about it out in that orchard."

"Yeah, well that was then. I decided there are more important things than where it is." His nose was pressed into the hair on the back of Ichigo's head and the words escaped as a warm breath right above the nape of his neck when Grimmjow added, perhaps a little embarrassed, "You being there is more important."

And so a month and a talk with Kyouraku later, there was a house in the Seireitei mostly furnished and ready for Ichigo and Grimmjow to move into it. For the amount of red tape Ichigo thought things of this nature usually involved, the process had been surprisingly smooth. Maybe Central 46 or whoever else had just wanted him to finally ask for something so that they could say everything was square.

Grimmjow didn't exactly have many possessions to transport but he gathered up what he did have and they collected all of it together to take with them. Ichigo pretended that he was preoccupied with something else and didn't see Grimmjow telling Amata-san next door that he was leaving, because he would definitely get all embarrassed about it if he knew Ichigo had caught him.

"Looks expensive," was Grimmjow's immediate observation of the building as they stood side by side out front and surveyed it. It was funny that they were both studying it as if they had to decide whether to buy the thing with their own money. Which they fortunately did not. And Ichigo didn't even feel very guilty about that as long as he considered it in his head to be more of a gift to Grimmjow than to himself.

"That's probably a given, considering where we are. Do you like it, though?" Ichigo asked.

Grimmjow made a considering sound, then nodded once. "I can work with this. Definitely bigger than the old place. We should celebrate." He swayed in closer to Ichigo so that he could speak directly into his ear as he dropped his voice a pitch. "Want to find out how sturdy the floor is while one of us is fucking the other one into it?"

There was an idea. "Just so you know, it's my new mission to see how loud I can get you to be now that we don't have other houses right next to us."

Grimmjow huffed skeptically and leaned back. "Just for that, I'm going to make you scream for me first."

It was only after they had broken the place in that they did a more thorough inspection. As Grimmjow had pointed out, everything about it gave an impression of being luxurious, at least more so than either of them were used to. And Ichigo was pleased to see that Grimmjow actually looked a little enthusiastic about this change, however much he attempted to downplay it.

He had said once before that he wouldn't feel good about making it somewhere nicer if Ichigo 'did it for him.' While they had been waiting for all of the arrangements to be made, Ichigo had asked in passing whether that would still bother him.

Grimmjow had responded that it didn't as much now, if the plan was for them to share it together anyway. He had assured Ichigo that he would find his own way once they were here and make a place for himself in this new environment. Ichigo had no doubt that he was telling the truth. This neighborhood probably wasn't ready for Grimmjow, but it had better get ready.

The accent color of the trim in this place was kind of weird, Ichigo noted. It was sort of a dark green. Grimmjow probably didn't care much about the color scheme in here, but that thought about color did lead Ichigo back to another thought. "You never did tell me what your favorite color is."

Grimmjow was in the process of moving the futons (two of them, finally, so Ichigo wouldn't find himself on the floor if he attempted to stretch) to a better spot than where they had initially tossed them. He grunted a, "Huh?"

"When you grilled me that one day a while ago, the questions about you. You said that you had a favorite color but then I never heard what it is. Spit it out: what's the color?"

"Why do you need to know?" Grimmjow stood up and eyed him with a crease in his brow and a hint of an unhappy frown. When they held eye contact for another few seconds during which he must have accepted that Ichigo was going to be as annoyingly persistent as ever, he looked away and sighed in exasperation. "...alright, it's orange." He obviously caught Ichigo's face twisting into something heavily amused because he immediately and vehemently protested, "Like a sunset orange, not your orange! And that was from before I ever met you so I don't want to hear any stupid jokes, you hear me?"

Ichigo laughed and laughed, and he was pretty sure Grimmjow only turned his back and pretended to ignore him because he was about to smile and didn't want Ichigo to notice. "Do you want me to get some paint and we'll do the outside of this place in your favorite shade?"

Grimmjow looked back at him over his shoulder with that mischievous grin. "Only if it'll make these stuck-up people in the Seireitei mad."

"Yeah, the orange would probably do the trick. You're going to find a way to get yourself banned from living here by the next time I come back."

"They'll all learn that Kurosaki Ichigo lives here part of the time so no one is going to say a word," Grimmjow argued.

"Are you going to tell everyone here that I'm pining after you and you keep shooting me down, like you did in the last place?" That was the initial line Grimmjow had spread when they first met, to mess with Ichigo. He could tell anyone any dumb story he wanted, because Ichigo didn't actually care why anyone else thought he was here, as long as Grimmjow knew the real reason: that Ichigo was here for him, just as he was.

Grimmjow turned fully to face him and all of Ichigo's worries were assuaged at the pleased light he could see in his eyes. "Nah. I'm going to brag to every last one of them that I finally let you catch me. I got dibs now on their famous hero and he's crazy in love with me, so I'm practically royalty."

Ichigo smiled just a little. "I don't know whether I'd go that far, with the royalty. Pretty obnoxious of you. But at least you'll be honest about the rest."