Archive of Our Own ^beta

Ichigo wakes up to the feeling of soft felt feet tap-dancing on his cheek.

He pokes out a reluctant hand from beneath the warmth of the blankets and aims a precise swipe a few centimeters above his cheek, the motion more of a reflex than it is conscious. There's a soft thump from somewhere above his head and he retracts his hand, reveling in the bliss of self-satisfaction blending with the feeling of slowly falling back asleep on a cold winter morning. Blessed peace.

It doesn't last long, though. The feet land back on his forehead, and this time they stomp with vengeance. "Hah! Insolent fool, you! Did you think such a lowly, ill-timed move would be enough to catch me, the great Kon?"

Ichigo groans. The string of sleep he'd almost successfully restored to continuity snaps. "Wake up! Oi, sleepyhead! Wake! Up!" Kon punctuates every sentence with emphatic kicks, and with every dull knock on his skull, whatever remaining hope for going back to sleep Ichigo had, fades away fast.

"I said, wake up already! It's— eek!" The rest of the sentence is cut off in a yelp as Ichigo's hand shoots out in practice-made perfect aim and comes to rest in a death grip around Kon's neck.

Ichigo sits up, blankets falling to his lap in a heap, and yawns. Such a perfect morning to be slept in, he thinks miserably, absolutely wasted. He vaguely remembers he was having a pleasant dream too. Somewhere, he hears Kon gasping like a dying goose and reluctantly lets go. There's a muted thud on the floor, followed by indignant screeching with renewed vigor, and the rustling of sheets as Kon climbs back up to the bed.

"Jeez! What's with you, asshole?! Would it kill you— don't poke my eye— to show some Christmas spirit?" Kon sits down in front of him, his stubby little legs crossed as best as they can be.

"Oh, shut up." Ichigo grumbles. His eyes fall on the huge stack of pending assignments weighing down his desk and he quickly looks away. His homeroom teacher needs to have a little more respect for his efforts to ensure all humanity lived to see another Christmas. But ignorance is bliss and assignments, are thus, plentiful. 

"Penny for your thoughts." Kon says. Ichigo stretches.

Right at the peak of the stretch, he remembers. The dream.

The same dream for the third night in a row.

There's a copy of The Interpretation of Dreams lying around somewhere downstairs. Should he check it once? What does it mean if one sees their sworn-rival turned spar-partner in their dream? What does it mean if one has been having those dreams in gradually increasing frequency?

Ichigo buries his face in his palms and groans.

Okay, he tells himself firmly, I'm not going to think about this. I'm not going to think about this.

He thinks about it when he pushes his feet into his slippers. He thinks about it when he puts the toothpaste onto his brush, and ends up with too much toothpaste. He thinks about it as he washes his face. He thinks about it as he vigorously rubs his face with the towel.

He thinks that he really should think about something else when the doorbell rings.

Ichigo is just considering going back to the bedroom when he catches the bits of conversation flying like cannon-balls across the span of the ground floor— "Karin-chan, get the door please!" "I'm in the bath, Yuzu!" "Eeh? Is Onii-chan–" "Ichi-nii! Ichi-nii!"— and his feet spin inevitably towards the stairs. It's really a wonder that their roof hasn't caved in with all the screaming that goes on in the house.

There's a shiver up his spine the moment he turns the landing between the two staircases, because Kurosaki Ichigo knows a warzone when he steps foot into one.

"Ichi-nii, you finally woke up! A christmas miracle!"

"Onii-chan, the tree was delivered just this morning, you have to help us put up the decorations!"

He barely has time to process anything because the doorbell rings without a pause, and the incessant godawful krrrring sound really, really gets on his nerves. "Coming, coming!" he shouts, crossing the hall in three large steps and muttering curses under his breath. He pulls the door open, with a bit too much force, and then takes a deep breath in to snap at the visitor but his voice dies a shameful death in his throat and all the air is knocked out of his lungs at once.

For a good few seconds he considers just shutting the door right back and trying again once, maybe that would fix the hallucination.

From the other side of the doorframe, the scowl on blue eyebrows and sharp nose gives way to slightly widened blue eyes, and then melts altogether into a wide grin, flashing a sharp canine.

"Yo, Kurosaki." Grimmjow says.

And Ichigo doesn't like that. Ichigo doesn't like that at all.

"Ichi-nii, is that Grimmjow-san at the door?" Karin's voice approaches from the hallway. Ichigo turns his head back so fast that he almost gives himself whiplash, and chokes out, "Grimmjow-san?!"

Karin appears with a towel wrapped over her head and already in her school uniform, blazer hanging over one shoulder, one hand on her hip. She blinks. "Ichi-nii, you're blocking the door. He's probably here with Yuzu's delivery."

Ichigo smells something familiar inside his head. It smells like the time their toaster blew its socket. "Yuzu's—… What? Yuzu's what?"

Karin gives him the flattest of flat stares. "Ichi-nii, are you sure you're completely awake? Yuzu's order from the shōten. Now move and let him in!" The emphasis on the last syllabus is simultaneous with the iron fist that grips his arm and drags him away from the door.

Ichigo doesn't resist. He honestly begins to wonder if he's completely awake. Grimmjow steps in.

The exchange occurs before his unblinking eyes. Grimmjow wordlessly hands over a package wrapped in brown paper and Karin disappears into the kitchen, saying that she'll back be with the receipt in a second. 

Ichigo stands there, wondering if he should hang his hands by his side, or cross them in front of his chest, or try pinching himself once.

"My, Kurosaki," Grimmjow drawls as his eyes scan Ichigo from below upwards, and in a moment of abject terror Ichigo realizes that he's still in his fucking strawberry printed pajamas. From the depth of the junkyard of his subconscious, his 'shit, not good' alarm gives a feeble cry. "Don't you look as charming as ever. Glad I didn't have breakfast or I'd have to throw it right back up."

Furious embarrassment rushes to Ichigo's face. Before he can open his mouth to retort a reply to defend his right to wear whatever the fuck he wants in his own damn house, Karin appears with a piece of paper in her hand.

"Grimmjow-san," she says, cocking her head to the side as she watches Grimmjow cram the paper into a pocket on his black pants, "If Ichi-nii is up, that means it's pretty late. You should have breakfast."

Well, well, isn't everybody out for his hide today. Ichigo's temper is just about to achieve bankai when Yuzu pokes her head out of the kitchen. "Grimmjow-san! Did Karin-chan say you haven't had any breakfast?"

At this point, Ichigo feels that the conversation is too far ahead of him to even try to catch up. His brain needs a reboot.

Then, he looks at Grimmjow and finds comfort.

Grimmjow looks worse. Grimmjow looks more surprised than the first time he saw Ichigo with his hollow mask on, and that's really saying something.

Grimmjow stares for a while, and then averts his gaze with a click of his tongue. "None of your business, kid." He grumbles, gruff and guarded.

"It is!" Yuzu descends on the battlefield armed with a ladle. "It's Christmas Eve! No one leaves my house without having breakfast." Yuzu says with immense finality, crossing her arms in front of her, an adorable goddess of veritable wrath.

Ichigo shivers. Grimmjow freezes at the doorstep, like his operating system has stopped responding. Like he's torn apart between surprise and utter disbelief. Like he can't bring himself to accept that a small and frail human without the slightest trace of spiritual power would dare point a ladle at an arrancar— Espada — towering over six feet.

Grimmjow turns his face from Yuzu to Ichigo and after a long while, Ichigo chuckles. He feels like there's finally wind in his sails.

He's probably gotten to see Grimmjow so devastatingly surprised about four or five times in all the times they've fought with each other over all these years. And Yuzu just did that twice back to back. Kurosaki one, Jaegerjaquez zero.

Ichigo doesn't really understand what is going on, but as if that has ever stopped him from acting. As if he's giving up on an absolutely-out-of-his-depth Grimmjow. "Come on in, Grimmjow." He says, thus, gathering his wits enough to manage a grin, "You heard her."

Yuzu leads a visibly stunned Grimmjow to the kitchen, by the scruff on all levels but physical. Karin stays back to offer a hurried explanation to Ichigo. "Yuzu ordered hollow repellants and anti-spirit serum and electromagnetic—" She takes a quick look at Ichigo's face and stops talking. She offers a pat on his shoulder instead. "Well, you get the drift. She doesn't want you going out today at all, see," she says, "She wants you to stay home and be comfortable."

Ichigo feels the buffering wheel turn in his brain. When the scene finally finishes loading, he can't help but tilt his head forward and chuckle. "Idiots. Both of you. I wouldn't have gone out anyways."

Karin grins, and promptly turns around on her heel. "Wait! You little–!" Ichigo spins her back by the arm. "Don't think I've forgotten about—"

"What now?" Karin says, exasperated, "How we know Grimmjow-san, is that it? Do you have to nitpick at all the details, Ichi-nii?" She whispers fiercely.

Ichigo whispers back, fiercer. "Listen here, young lady—"

"I get it, I get it already! Yuzu always gets her caramel candies from there, and sometimes she and Ururu hang out while Jinta tries to crash their party. And me and my soccer buddies go there after our matches, for juice and cookies."

Ichigo is a bit dumbfounded. He almost excuses the rushed "oh, and also Urahara teaches me basic kidō" part Karin mutters under her breath. 

He tries to glare at her but it comes out too weak. "But what does that have to do with Grimmjow?"

"Well, he lives there, doesn't he?" Karin hisses through her teeth, impatient. "Of course we know him! Besides, Urahara said even though he's a Hollow, he's a friend of yours. He's a really nice guy, okay?"

Oh. Oh. That explains a lot. Before Ichigo has any time to dwell on it, Karin jabs him sharply in the ribs. "Now, go change and make yourself presentable, Ichi-nii, do you even know what time it is?!"

Ichigo runs up three steps at a time.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

Kon tries to catapult himself at Ichigo's face the moment he steps in, demanding his fill on all the ruckus from before, and Ichigo side steps at the very last second. Kon hits the wardrobe door with a thump— probably the forty-second time this morning— a resounding wail following right after.

He doesn't give up. "Tell me," he threatens, "Tell me or I'll make origami out of your assignments."

"Jeez, Kon, let go!" Ichigo shakes his arm vigorously so that Kon stops hanging from his cuff. He doesn't think he can summarise the ruckus if he tries. He just wants to go downstairs as quickly as possible, because Grimmjow freaking Jaegerjaquez is sitting in his living room. And his sisters… Well, his sisters are apparently very fond of him.

He's a nice guy, okay?

Ichigo resists the force that tugs the corners of his lips upwards, and instead strains his ears to hear for any emergency signals as he steps into his pants.

"Ichigo," Kon says, "you've got it the wrong way on."

"Fucking—!" Ichigo jumps around, trying to kick the pants off of himself now and Kon swings on his sleeve. "Why the hell didn't you say that before I fucking put them on?!"

Kon would've raised an eyebrow if he had one. "Jesus! What on earth happened downstairs?"

Ichigo exhales a breath of resignation. "My sisters ordered anti-hollow stuff from Urahara's, Grimmjow showed up with the delivery and now he's eating breakfast downstairs."

Kon lets go and falls straight to the floor. Understandable, Ichigo thinks, I would've reacted like that too. Kon jumps back right up, rubbing his butt.

"Hey, I can hold the window open for you if you wanna jump out of it." He says with genuine, heartfelt sympathy, masterfully evading Ichigo's kick. Ichigo shoots him a death glare. He doesn't have time to engage now.

"A Christmas miracle indeed! The man of your drea— Hey! Don't aim for the tummy!— dreams, showing up at your doorst— Bleaugh!!"

Ichigo lands the heel of his foot on Kon's midsection, and presses down twice for good measure.

He rubs his face once he shuts the door behind him— Man of his dreams indeed. Fucking Kon. Then he hurries downstairs.

Karin passes him by as he gets down from the stairs. "Ichi-nii, we'll be back from school earlier, it's a half-day today. Yuzu, come on!" Ichigo nods his response and walks into the kitchen. All is calm, all is bright.

Yuzu stands beside the table, placing a heaped plate of toast and bacon and scrambled eggs in front of Grimmjow.

For a while, Ichigo feels a burning shame, for even thinking that something could've happened. He knows he trusts Grimmjow. His sisters have clearly seen enough of him to decide that they trust him too. He's one glorious asshole, but Ichigo respects his morals and his ethics. Even though Grimmjow would probably gag if he ever told him that. Ethics, Kurosaki? Don't make me laugh! Ichigo can almost hear the scoff in his mind, and his lips curl up despite himself.

The shame is overwritten by a weird sort of endearment, slowly spreading warmth from the base of his heart to the great vessels to the finer capillaries at the periphery with every heartbeat— at the sight of Grimmjow, sitting at the table, in his house.

Speaking of which, well, Grimmjow looks like he's sitting on a pine cone, never mind his hierro.

His back is ramrod straight, shoulders tense and drawn. He doesn't move a finger when Yuzu pushes the plate slowly towards his direction. She smiles brightly and proceeds to bow in the general direction of the chair that's jutting out as she wishes him a good meal. "Ask Onii-chan if you need seconds, okay? Don't be shy!"

Yuzu comes running up to Ichigo right after, hugging him before she leaves for school. As is routine, Ichigo ruffles her hair a bit and she squeals, Ichigo grins and Karin sighs. Out of the corner of his eyes, Ichigo sees Grimmjow still hasn't moved a muscle.

Ichigo heads back after the door closes behind Yuzu and Karin and their excited laughter fades from hearing. Right before he enters the kitchen, he hears the vigorous sound of cutlery clinking against ceramic. Right after he enters, he sees Grimmjow positively wolfing down everything on his plate.

Grimmjow doesn't turn back to look at him. Very dedicatedly, he continues to wipe his plate with the penultimate piece of toast.

The plate is almost empty, Ichigo notices as he walks past, and he'd only been gone for about five minutes. He must've been really hungry. Ichigo feels a slight pang in his chest as Grimmjow sets down the knife and fork and chews on his last mouthful. He looks drastically less tense than before, and something else that Ichigo can best describe in his mind as content.

He quickly turns his face away and pours himself a bowl of cereal. He eats in silence, standing at the counter, as he often does when he's home alone in the mornings.

"Like brother, like sister." Grimmjow says suddenly, and Ichigo almost gets milk up his nose at the breach of silence. "Must be in the genes."

"If only you ever listened so peacefully to what I say." Ichigo counters, can't help but grin a little. 

"Hey, when was the last time I put my hand through one of your weak little friends? Besides, you have nothing on that blond kid." Grimmjow says, appreciatively.

This feels comfortable. Amidst the banter, the oven beeps.

Ichigo puts on the mitts and pulls the door of the oven open, fingers curling around the edges of the trays. The aroma that hits his nostrils a second later is nothing short of absolute heaven, and Ichigo mentally gives Yuzu a salute. Even Grimmjow casts an interested glance towards the trays when he puts them down on the table.

"Well?" Ichigo says, basking in the second-hand glory of Yuzu's wonderful baking skills. Something very similar to pride warms his chest as he looks at blue eyes widening as Grimmjow inhales the smell. "What do you think?"

"Smells damn good. What are these?" Grimmjow tears his gaze away from the tray and looks up at Ichigo. "Saw a crapload of these things at the shop today morning. Tessai said he'd teleport anyone who touched them back to the Jurassic Era."

Ichigo chuckles. "These are cookies. You can have one if you wanna." Grimmjow whips his head up and fixes an incredulous stare at Ichigo. Adorable, is the first word that springs up in Ichigo's mind.

"I can?" Grimmjow asks, slow and cautiously hopeful in a way that wrenches Ichigo's heart right out of his chest. He's a beast of battle, the Espada of Destruction, of course nobody's ever before told him that he can have a damn cookie. Ichigo is sure that if he speaks now, his voice will quiver.

He doesn't need to speak.

The phone in the clinic starts ringing.

Ichigo nearly jumps out of his skin. Grimmjow looks remarkably alarmed, chair creaking as he goes completely rigid and ready to pounce. "It's the phone. I'll be back in a minute," Ichigo says, carefully keeping his voice devoid of any emotions. "Have a cookie, and the plates go in the sink."

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

Ichigo's ears are still ringing when he closes the door of the clinic behind him.

The call lasts way longer than Ichigo had bargained for. He has to keep the call on hold, and dig up the dusty pile of patient records, because the lady on the call isn't satisfied unless Ichigo's speaking in millimeters of mercury and milligrams per decilitre, and miraculously, Ichigo manages to end the call before she googles everything. 

Ichigo walks back into the living room, and his body automatically turns him towards the dense aura of reiatsu now radiating from the couch. Grimmjow has made himself quite cozy on the couch, evidently, lying down with a hand under his head, and another one folded over his abdomen.

Ichigo's heart lurches. He kneels beside the couch.

Grimmjow's face, slightly turned to the other side, devoid of the usual frown or the snarl, looks oddly peaceful. Peaceful, that's the word, Ichigo is sure. The relaxed line of his jaw, the lips slightly parted, chest rising and falling softly with respiration. Fingers lax and not curled into fists, a nail of his thumb slightly crooked. Probably a battle injury.

Why's he sleeping now, Ichigo wonders, didn't he sleep well last night? Or maybe he takes catnaps like this. Disrupting his observations, Grimmjow shifts a little, makes a soft sound in his throat.

Mortification and fondness make a weird melee in his head and Ichigo shoots up to his feet, immediately doing what he has never done voluntarily: retreating.

Distance. He needs distance. And something to engage his mind.

Now seems to be a good time to pack the cookies into the fridge. If he's careful, he won't make too much of a noise, Ichigo thinks, as he shuffles his way towards the table. The prospect of cookies in the near future distracts him, excites him much more than he cares to admit, and as reward for all the emotional stress since he's woken up, he might as well have one while he's—

"Grimmjow!"

The yelp of acute horror that rips out of his soul sounds nothing like his own voice.

"Did you eat all of the cookies?!"

"For the love of fuck, Kurosaki," Grimmjow throws back like a sharpened meat-knife despite how sleep-riddled his voice sounds, "why the fuck are you screa—"

"Did you," Ichigo makes his way over to the couch, "just eat—," slams a hand on the armrest and points a severe index at the lump of Grimmjow on the couch, "all the cookies?"

Grimmjow blinks. And sits up and flexes his knees and rests his forearms on them. And clicks his tongue and looks away. "They were good." He says dismissively. As if he's graced them by eating them. For a while, Ichigo almost forgets he's supposed to be affected by the proximity and really wants to land a punch.

"No shit!" It's not nearly emphatic enough.

Grimmjow casts an extremely annoyed glare at him. "Quit your yapping. I'm going back to sleep."

Ichigo leans in, close enough to feel the slight brush of the strands hanging over Grimmjow's brow against his own forehead. "Listen here." he says, looking directly into the endless depth of the cerulean eyes that he often has to force himself to look away from during their fights. "Yuzu's been working like crazy since the morning, and god knows what else she plans to do once she comes back home. Point is, she'll happily bake it all from scratch again, but—"

"I get it." Grimmjow says and Ichigo clamps his mouth shut so fast that his teeth make a clanking sound. Grimmjow scratches the back of his head, averts his gaze. "Shouldn't have eaten all of those. Not… familiar with sharing shit."

Ichigo feels his lips part slightly, trying to grasp themselves around words but there aren't any. Grimmjow looks so unbelievably soft, sounds so unimaginably vulnerable when he says that, like he's admitting something, more to himself than to Ichigo. He's been alone always, hasn't he?

Grimmjow's voice rouses him from his thoughts. "You know how to make those?"

Pride is sure a hard pill to swallow. "... No."

"Excellent. You're hopeless, Kurosaki." Grimmjow clicks his tongue, and shakes his head. "Let's see if we can figure something out together."

Together. Together. Grimmjow used first-person plural. He said together.

"Yyyes, right. So, uh," Ichigo blindly stumbles away from the couch and almost body slams against the counter in his haste to create some distance. "Yuzu always writes her recipes down on a paper before she starts to bake, and it should be…" he says as his eyes skim over the counter and fingers forage through the row of jars and tins lined against the wall, "here… somewhere… Ah! There—"

The first thing that registers in his brain is the warmth.

The warmth that drifts off Grimmjow's body as he suddenly materializes behind Ichigo, the front of the jacket brushing against his wrist. Half a step backward and Ichigo's back would be pressed right against Grimmjow's chest, exposed over the parting of the zipper drawn to the base of his sternum. When the fuck had he gotten so close?

The second thing that registers in Ichigo's brain is that, in his attempt to step away, his fingers land in the bowl of melted butter on the counter— "Oh, shit! Shit!"— and that topples over his only ray of hope, Yuzu's recipe.

Grimmjow glances at him once and Ichigo already dreads what is inevitably going to come. "Butter-fingers." Grimmjow says with a shit-eating grin, savoring the dreadful pun he's just made and Ichigo dies a little inside. Grimmjow snatches the paper away from his hands and squints at Yuzu's neat handwriting, marred by blotches of the butter. "Give that back here!" Ichigo begins indignantly but it ends in a squawk as Grimmjow firmly plants a palm on Ichigo's face as he studies the manuscript in his other hand.

Ichigo grabs the offending hand with both of his own in an attempt to pry it off his face as he takes a step back. He's pissed, and he's damn well going to give Grimmjow a good piece of his mind when he realizes that he's holding the pale wrist snugly in both of his hands. Grimmjow stands stock still across him, eyes wide and mouth slightly open, cheeks faintly dusted with pink.

Ichigo pulls his hand back at the same time as Grimmjow does. He watches as Grimmjow goes back to peering at the recipe, with even more concentration than before. 

After approximately half a minute of attempting to decipher it— melted butter really, really fucks up ink, Ichigo learns— Grimmjow crumples it up into a ball and flicks it off over his shoulder without even glancing back, and it neatly falls into the bin in the corner. Ichigo gawks, firstly because he shouldn't have aim this good and secondly, "What the hell did you just do?! How on earth—"

"Shut your trap." Grimmjow rolls his sleeves. "We're just gonna have to wing this shit."

"But— but how?" Ichigo's voice climbs up several pitches.

"Huh?" Grimmjow casts a glance of glacial blue towards Ichigo and it screams are you really that fucking dumb. "How else? You go by instinct."

"... Right, instinct." Ichigo repeats after a pause. Hollows must really love that word. "Aizen taught you all to bake cookies for his tea?"

"Yeah," Grimmjow says, airily, "Used to crack the eggs on my hierro."

Ichigo chokes. "Don't mess with me!"

"No shit, dumbass." Grimmjow fixes him with an incredulous look, raising an eyebrow into a perfect arch. "We weren't called the Espada for no reason, know what that means?"

Ichigo follows the movement of Grimmjow's hands as they detach Pantera from its holster in his upper belt. "Uh, Sword?"

"Exactamente. Why, you do have some livin' brain cells in there." Grimmjow sounds fairly surprised. "Sword, Kurosaki. Cast and welded to kill for Aizen's sake. These hands were meant to rip out hearts. Not fucking…bake cookies."

Grimmjow stares at his hands with the air of someone who absolutely has no idea why he's doing what he's doing, who cannot believe he's actually doing it. Ichigo doesn't say anything. He doesn't know what to say. Grimmjow's hands are beautiful.

"Now don't stand there like a dumb codfish." Grimmjow commands. "Make yourself useful and get me flour, sugar, eggs, butter that you didn’t get your fingers into, and what the fuck was that last thing?"

Throughout the entire assiduous assembly of ingredients, Grimmjow leans his weight on the ledge of the counter, arms crossed in front of him, and calls Ichigo a dumbass ten times a minute, with astonishing innovation. Ichigo hunts and gathers, and brings Grimmjow an apron— "If any of this shit gets on my shirt, you are mincemeat"— his own pink apron that his sisters gifted him two winters ago, but Grimmjow doesn't need to know about that. It's almost new, considering he's only ever worn it a handful of times.

Grimmjow walks back to the couch, takes his jacket off in a fluid motion, and Ichigo's heart, entirely against his will, jumps up to his throat.

This isn't the first time he's seeing Grimmjow without that jacket. Hell, he's torn that jacket off Grimmjow's torso with his own Getsuga Tenshō so many times. Now that he thinks of it, there was a time Grimmjow didn't wear anything underneath that jacket at all.

A defined bicep flexes as Grimmjow slips the apron over his head, the sleeve of his black shirt just exposing the belly of the muscle.

Short of sticking his head in the freezer, Ichigo doesn't know what to do with the raging storm of heat inside his chest.

Grimmjow's voice anchors him. "This pink piece of crap belongs to you, doesn't it?" He asks, as he's tying the strings behind his back and Ichigo very promptly chokes on air. After a good few seconds, he's able to cough out a how the fuck did you know that?

"Only you could have such sodden taste in things." Grimmjow says, and then adds after a pause. "'Sides, it kinda smells like you."

Defibrillator, his brain says. His heart agrees.

He only notices it when Grimmjow turns around, that Pantera is no longer on his person. He must've been less discreet in his staring than he thought he was. "What the fuck are you gawking at?" Grimmjow asks with a snap of his fingers.

"You— I've…," Ichigo flounders, "I've never seen you without your sword. Except for, uh, when we're in the spring after our– our fights."

"I don't need it now." Grimmjow says, face turned away from Ichigo. "I don't want it to get dirty. Now get your ass here."

Ichigo obeys.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

"Is it— is this right?" Ichigo asks tentatively, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, after the measuring cup in front of him is almost three-fourth full of flour. Even in the cold of December, there are beads of sweat on his forehead, courtesy the fuckery of flour physics and its overwhelming tendency to spill out in directions it isn't supposed to go.

It definitely doesn't have anything to do with Grimmjow standing right next to him, pink arpon against his black shirt, strands of hair falling over his face as he stirs whatever concoction he's holding in his hands.

Grimmjow hums and looks at the measuring cups, "Yeah, that seems about right."

Ichigo feels his breath catch in his throat when the blue gaze travels up and up till it reaches his face. Grimmjow withdraws the beater from the bowl, the soft whirring of the machine slowly dying out. His lips curl upwards, flashing white teeth and nearly a dimple on the cheek spared by the mask.

"Flour and sugar's a good look on you, Kurosaki."

Ichigo very nearly pops a vessel in his head. Must've gotten on his face when he, displaying intellect of the highest order, wiped his face with his hand. He keeps his gaze viciously pinned to the counter and channels all the energy into folding the flour in with the batter until it turns into a soft dough, and hopes to god the heat isn't showing on his cheeks.

"Is this how it's supposed to look?" He asks when all of it comes together into one giant ball of dough.

"Lemme taste it. Put some in my mouth." Grimmjow says without looking up, engaged in some sort of wrestling with the baking paper roll.

Ichigo very nearly drops the dough, and while he does manage to save the dough from dropping, his jaw drops instead. Something doesn't equate in his head. Grimmjow Jaegerjaquez, in a pink apron, in his kitchen, asking Kurosaki Ichigo to hand feed him cookie dough.

"Don't got all day to be staring at my face, Kurosaki." Grimmjow clicks his tongue. Ichigo's throat feels very dry.

"I– I'll just taste it myself!" He says in panic.

"You wouldn't be able to tell breadcrumbs and caviar apart." Grimmjow drawls gratingly and Ichigo doesn't get the chance to retort a fitting reply to sooth his chuffed pride. "'Sides, I ate those damn cookies. I'll be able to tell."

Well, fuck. Ichigo scoops off a bit of the dough between his index finger and thumb, and gathers his entire willpower in the forearm of his right hand so it doesn't shake when he lifts it towards Grimmjow's face.

Grimmjow brings out the tip of a very pink tongue to lap at it, his eyes focused along the line of his nose, brows furrowed in concentration. Ichigo can tell he's having a sensory lag of sorts because he sees the tongue make contact with the pad of his thumb but he doesn't feel anything, and then it hits all at once, traveling at lighting speed up his arm— a feather-soft touch, the barest hint of wetness and a buzzing warmth that spreads to his cheeks before he can catch a breath.

He comes to, to the sight of his hand still frozen midair, and in the background of it, Grimmjow's face— slightly flushed, the teal of his estigma shining bright against the soft pink— staring at him like he'll stick Ichigo's own arm into Ichigo's abdomen if he doesn't retract the limb back soon.

Ichigo sentences the disobedient hand to five minutes of penitence in the cool darkness of the pockets of his trousers and tries to will the adrenaline away. Lord, help me, he thinks, and the Lord does, announcing his divine presence via the beeping of the preheated oven.

Balls of dough on the tray go into the oven. The oven glows. The dough melts and spreads and gains texture as the timer ticks down. Ichigo falls into the practiced and comfortable rhythm of bickering with Grimmjow. But neither of them move away from in front of the oven.

The product of their first joint endeavor, Ichigo thinks in pride. Would've been their second if Grimmjow hadn't charged at the Poison Ball Bastard on his own. He casts a quick glance out of the corner of his eyes towards Grimmjow. Grimmjow is locked in a staring competition with the cookies, the intensity of his unblinking gaze such that it could burn holes in steel.

Ichigo doesn't think about that. Tries his best not to at least. About the blood and broken bones and crumbled walls as far as the eye can see. About the froth at the corner of pale lips. Aftermath, that's what it's called. All Ichigo remembers is exhaustion, bone-deep and jet-black.

Ichigo doesn't think about that. This is different, he reminds himself, an apron is very different from battle armor. It's just the two of them here. Together. There is a delightful aroma from the almost-done cookies. Ichigo smiles.

The doorbell rings minutes after Ichigo takes the tray out. Yuzu comes running to the kitchen and clasps her hands together in delight when she sees the cookies resting on the table.

"Onii-chan, look! They came out so good!" She sounds exalted. Grimmjow grins at Ichigo, brighter than Ichigo's ever seen, and even though it blinds him a bit, he reaches out his hand to bump it against Grimmjow's, down low and out of Yuzu's sight. Grimmjow returns the knuckle-bump, still-grinning, looking more victorious than Ichigo ever remembers seeing.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

Ichigo walks into the living room to see Grimmjow sitting cross-legged on the floor, in front of the tree, strings of rice-lights in a veritable heap in front of him.

Ichigo quietly ups the meter of respect for Grimmjow in his mind, because there's no way in hell he'd make it through untangling knots from something that nears dimensions of the earth's diameter in length. It's science beyond his understanding really, how something that's preserved so carefully, perfectly packaged inside the box, undisturbed and unbothered, manages to fuck itself up so royally every damn year.

He'd never have thought Grimmjow would've had the patience to tackle something he himself had given up upon. Patience isn't Ichigo's strong suit, he is well aware of that, but he liked to think that he had marginally more of it than Grimmjow did.

Yuzu sits beside him, absolutely unbothered and very comfortable, happily chattering about what she's making for dinner while she sorts out the decorations onto the floor. Candy canes in a heap, balls of glitter, bright stars, little plastic faces of Santa Claus. 

Ichigo places a gentle tap on Grimmjow's shoulder as he sits down beside him. Grimmjow doesn't lash out. In fact, he doesn't even look up and Ichigo feels somewhat offended at the sheer lack of response. He isn't used to this. He's so used to having all of his attention.

When he snaps out of his thoughts, Yuzu is saying something about distributing the decorations all over the tree and calculating everything to be equidistant from each other and Grimmjow hums absently in response. Ichigo likes the sound of it, low and deep and soft.

Ichigo nudges Grimmjow's knee with his own.

"What." comes the extremely flat reply, "Don't bug me, Kurosaki." Ichigo gasps a little at that.

"Didn't take you to be a masochist," Ichigo probes, "Why on earth would you willingly agree to this?"

"I'm defeating you." Grimmjow pulls a finger, slender and nimble, through another knot and draws it loose. "Midget over there said you suck at this shit, so I'll do it and I'll beat you."

"You two, I swear!" The exclamation is automatic, and the exasperation is very genuine. "What have you been telling him?"

"Nothing but the truth, Ichi-nii," Karin grins from her cozy place on the couch.

"So," Grimmjow asks with thinly veiled curiosity, "What exactly is the deal about Christmas?"

Ichigo scratches the back of his head. He should've guessed this question was coming, but now that they've come to the bridge, he doesn't actually know how to get around to the task of explaining Christmas to someone who was spending his first winter in the world of the living. Ichigo's mind strays. This is Grimmjow's first Christmas here, and somehow, they're spending it together.

"It's the birthday of Christ, Grimmjow-san!" Yuzu's excited voice shakes him out of his reverie. "Jesus Christ was born as a little baby on Christmas day." She holds up the two of her hands, the distance between them depicting the approximate size of little baby Christ, and Grimmjow nods, with the clear air of someone who hasn't understood a single thing, but Yuzu supposedly sees the jello structure bobbing its head and goes back to chopping vegetables with a happy hum.

Karin sits up on the couch. "And today's Christmas Eve, the night before Christmas," she explains, "It's a day you spend with your loved ones, give presents and spend time with each other. Say, Yuzu, can you still sing that song?"

"Which one?" Yuzu wipes her hands on the apron. "The– Oh!"

Karin grins at Grimmjow. "Grimmjow-san, listen, this is Christmas."

Yuzu tucks a lock of hair that had escaped her hairpin back behind her ear, her smile shy. She takes a deep breath and all falls quiet as she starts singing. The lilt of her angelic voice fills the space of their kitchen and adjacent living room, and Ichigo lets his eyes fall shut with the rush of peace that comes with this song.

Mary's boy child, Jesus Christ, was born on Christmas Day!

When he opens his eyes, right before the final verse, he sees Grimmjow's fingers stilled on the bundle of the lights, eyes focused on a spot on the floor, shoulders slack and the line of his jaw less tense than Ichigo ever remembers seeing. He almost looks like a different person.

"Karin-chan," Yuzu says, flushed, after she finishes singing, "Let's get our cassette player. What carol should we play next?"

"Oh, oh, I know!" Karin says, excited. "Señor Santa Claus!"

"What is this now." Grimmjow looks up at Ichigo and his voice translates into the visual imagery of a cat very warily touching something it isn't familiar with.

"Well… uh…," Ichigo marvels at his own eloquence, "Santa Claus is this…big old man, with a white mustache and beard, and oh, he wears a red suit."

Grimmjow stares. Karin and Yuzu surprisingly fall very, very silent.

"And he lives in the North Pole. Has a toy factory there. Run by elves." Good lord, Ichigo thinks, this is a disaster, but continue he must.

"He goes 'round the world on a sleigh in the sky drawn by reindeer. On the night before Christmas, he comes in through the chimneys—"

Up until now, Grimmjow was dealing fairly well with all the information. At this, he looks positively scandalized. "That's fuckin' trespassing!"

"Jesus, no! Let me finish, dammit!" Ichigo says in alarm, because Grimmjow begins emanating a very familiar murderous aura. "He leaves gifts for children in the socks that they hang by the fireplace."

"Nutcase with a sock fetish?" Grimmjow raises a dubious eyebrow. Almost inevitably, Yuzu asks, curious, "What's a fetish?" and Ichigo almost clamps a hand on Grimmjow's mouth before he takes the responsibility of answering the question on himself.

Karin urges him out a few minutes later to turn the lights on. Ichigo steps outside and takes a few deep breaths, steadies himself. The day's been passing like a dream. Grimmjow coming over with a delivery, and then settling in so fast, not even remotely showing any signs that he had any desire to leave whatsoever. He must be really comfortable. Ichigo smiles to himself. He never thinks too far ahead, which Ishida always gives him hell for, but he doesn't want to think far ahead about this at all. What matters is now, what matters is Grimmjow sitting in the warmth of his house, and his sisters laughing and happy.

Oh right, the lights, he reminds himself, he needs to turn on the lights. Had he known about Grimmjow's hidden talent at knot-picking earlier, he'd have given him a call. With a flick of the switch, their house lights up. Ichigo surveys his handiwork, pleased. The sign of the clinic glows a neon red and green.

Huh, he'd have given him a call, no big deal. Ichigo walks in, shuts the door behind him. He has Grimmjow's number saved in his cell. Kon, the bastard, had put it on speed-dial on the number 6 of the keypad, saying it'd have been such a waste otherwise and then had spent the rest of the evening cackling at his own humor.

Ichigo hadn't changed the settings afterward. He hadn't called ever, either.

Now that Ichigo comes to think of it, they do not really speak a whole lot outside of their regular battles.

Their post-spar routine is not something that results from an explicit agreement, rather some sort of weird unspoken but mutual accord that neither of them disagree with. It happens one day and then stays like that— both of them getting into the hot-spring simultaneously, mostly because they're exhausted to the bone and cannot start a second fight about who gets to go in first, both of them complaining that sitting across from each other is too bothersome because their legs keep getting entangled, and none of them go deeper into the explanation of why that is bothersome, but somehow they both arrive to one conclusion: sitting side by side.

It becomes shoulder-to-shoulder before Ichigo realizes.

Grimmjow is surprisingly quiet in this duration, leaning his head back on the circumference of the pool, and Ichigo mostly looks at the water rippling in front of him, and sometimes at the taut muscles of Grimmjow's throat and at his adam's apple that bobs up and down. 

Does he have my number saved? Ichigo wonders as he steps into the square of light spilling out into the hallway from the open door of the living room. Urahara did give him a little phone too, never mind the fact that he immediately sent it flying across the room. What does he have my numbers saved as? Does he ever—

"Rudolf should have just stabbed those punk ass reindeers who messed with him." He hears Grimmjow's voice drift out. 

"But they were friends, Grimmjow-san!" Yuzu wails in defense of Rudolf's reindeer friends. Ichigo thanks the lord quietly in his mind that he didn't have to explain the reindeer lore.

"Listen, brat," Grimmjow says, his voice sounds as if he's sharpening a knife, "anyone who's good to you only when you're useful to them, is no damn friend of yours. You don't let nobody ever disrespect you for anything about yourself, you fight back so fiercely that they don't dare to."

From where he stands, Ichigo sees Yuzu fall silent, look at Grimmjow's direction with wide eyes and then nod slowly.

Ichigo's eyes don't leave the back of Grimmjow's head. It's easier in a sense, like looking at him without looking at him, looking at him without him knowing. Looking at him without the constant reminder of time running out. Looking at him without the sharpness of blades in between.

The place where his knee touched Grimmjow's is still warm.

Ichigo traces the mussed stray locks of blue, haphazard over his neck, the sharp line of muscles descending from shoulder to bicep to forearm, to his slender fingers adorned by the lights, the slope of his waist embraced by the belts.

Ichigo doesn't try to decipher his feelings. He doesn't try to separate rage from sorrow from grief from joy from emptiness. He doesn't often have the time to, the next battle always calls, a few steps away. They're all the same, King, his hollows tells him once. Deep down, Ichigo knows he's right. The lines are too thin and he knows he isn't good with delicate, intricate things like that.

Grimmjow fits effortlessly in the living room, in front of the tree, in between his sisters.

It doesn't need to be deciphered. In the golden light of the epiphany, Ichigo sees it, clear and unmistakable.

He's in—

"Ichi-nii!" He almost jumps out of his skin at Karin's voice. "We're going to our room, we still have to put the name tags on the gifts," She says, Yuzu peeking out from behind her.

Ichigo enters the living room, his feet take him straight to where Grimmjow is sitting. He sits down beside, keeps his gaze trained to the floor.

He doesn't want to think about it. He'll give it time and it'll dissolve, hopefully. He'll sleep over it, yeah, right, that sounds good, and he'll think about it in the morning when the mint toothpaste will blast the sleep out of his skull. It comes in handy, this ability of his, honed over many years and many battles, to shut his brain down when it says things he doesn't know how to deal with.

"Oy, Kurosaki." Grimmjow's voice stirs him out of his spiral of thoughts. His voice sounds closer. Ichigo looks up. "You got glitter on your face."

Before Ichigo even has time to process, to think, to react, there's the brush of a warm thumb at the corner of his lips, the slight catch of the calloused skin like fine sand brushing slowly, ever so slowly from periphery to center and his mouth parts slightly on its own as his breath catches in his throat.

Grimmjow holds his gaze. The touch lingers for several slow seconds that drop off the clock. "Is it gone?" Ichigo whispers, his mouth suddenly dry, feels his lip move against Grimmjow's finger. 

The question goes unanswered, as the front door opens with a loud bang and an even louder, "I'm ho-ho-home!"

"Yuzu-chaaan, I've missed you!" Heavy footsteps break into a sprint on the hallway, and Yuzu squeals shortly after, her high pitched laughter melding with a deep guffaw. Karin's voice bites out a "Don't you even dare, old man!", followed by the sound of a solid impact on bone and a concerning amount of howling.

Ichigo releases a breath that he didn't know he was holding. He slowly becomes aware of his surroundings, all that is there— the carpet under him, the Christmas tree, decorated, footsteps approaching the living room— and all that isn't, the brush of a thumb against his lower lip and the intensity of a blue gaze.

Familiarity is an anchor, as always, as his battles have taught him.

Grimmjow's outline in front of him is rigid, recoiled back into himself since the first sound of the door banging open. "Don't worry," Ichigo mumbles, reassures, even though he's doubtful how much of it Grimmjow actually hears, "It's just my dad."

"Good evening, son!" Isshin bellows as he walks into the living room, and then without missing a beat, he adds with equal enthusiasm, "Good evening, Arrancar in my living room!" Grimmjow stiffens further, looks like he's stopped breathing altogether. Ichigo presses a gentle hand on Grimmjow's shoulder as he stands up, but Yuzu starts speaking before he gets a chance to. "Dad, he's been with us all day! He decorated the tree!" Karin nods along.

Ichigo opens his mouth, "Dad—"

Isshin laughs, hands on his hips. "The more the merrier, son, the more the merrier!"

He turns to Grimmjow. "Please have dinner with us tonight, Arrancar-san! Consider this your own ho-ho-home!"

Karin drags him out of the living room. Isshin ho-ho-ho's his way around the house until she threatens him with a blow to the head by a slipper. The Christmas tree is lit up and the lights twinkle merrily. Yuzu puts the kettle on boil for hot chocolate.

Grimmjow looks tense to the point of uncomfortableness.

"Yuzu," Ichigo says, "I'll be upstairs in my room for a while, I'll bring your gifts down before dinner, okay?"

"Grimmjow," he pauses when he turns around, the tips of his fingers almost touching the fabric of the jacket over Grimmjow's shoulder, "Are you coming?"

Grimmjow lifts himself soundlessly, and follows when Ichigo walks out of the living room.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

Ichigo takes a deep breath and turns the handle of his door. His heartbeats thrum fast against his eardrums and his limbs feel heavy, buzzing with an unfamiliar, but not entirely unwelcome, heaviness. Everything feels too unreal, his room in the soft lights of the neighborhood decorations, streaming in through the drawn curtains, Grimmjow standing quiet at the door of his room, his hair illuminated by the muted hues, estigma shimmering in the pauci-darkness.

Ichigo doesn't turn the lights on.

He curses himself mentally as his eyes fall on his unmade bed, his blanket still heaped in the center, how he'd left it when he got out of bed much too preoccupied with his thoughts. What if Grimmjow thinks—

"Your room's pretty civilized. Thought it'd be a garbage dump." Grimmjow's deep voice shakes him out of his reverie. He's already walked in, standing with his hands thrusted inside the pockets of his pants as he surveys the room. Ichigo follows the line of his eyes, moving from his study table to wardrobe to guitar in the corner to the old skateboard he'd even forgotten was there.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean." Ichigo grumbles without much heat when Grimmjow's eyes finally come to rest on his own, and realizes that he needs to engage his hands with something asap. Grimmjow shrugs non-committally. 

Ichigo's placing his pillow back in its place when suddenly a question lodges itself in his mind with the single-minded tenacity of a woodpecker in spring. He tries to sound as off-handed as possible, to not let the curiosity show through when he speaks. "How's your room look like? Bet it's a mess."

"I don't own any of the junk shit you do, Kurosaki." Grimmjow says, shoulders drawn and head angled away from Ichigo, his face carefully empty save for the characteristic crease back between his eyebrows. "There's only a bed in my room in Hueco Mundo. White walls, ceiling, door."

Ichigo smoothens his bedsheet with a hand and his mind involuntarily conjures an image of a vast barren room, spartan with its stark white walls and a bed in one corner of it, more negative space than matter. From what he'd seen in his time in Hueco Mundo, Las Noches could probably hire some better interior designers. Ichigo remembers all the time he spent carefully planning where to put the new dresser in his room, how to fit the metal book-rack at the foot of his bed, how to place the two-storied organizer on his table, and feels his heart clench.

What does one do when there's too much space to be alone with yourself?

How does Grimmjow spend all his time in Hueco Mundo, Ichigo wants to ask, there's so many things he wants to ask, so many things he's been wanting to ask for so long and they suddenly erupt in his mind with volcanic force. There's so much he doesn't know about Grimmjow. None of that is your concern, Grimmjow would probably say and he'd be absolutely right. It shouldn't be. But it is.

Ichigo clears his throat and asks through the crowd of a hundred other questions in his mind, "So, you like my room?"

Grimmjow snorts. "Guess it's better than mine at Urahara's. You've got aesthetic senses and shit."

"What's your room like at Urahara's?" Ichigo hopes he doesn't sound as curious as he feels.

"Uh," Grimmjow sounds like he honestly doesn't get the point of this conversation. "There's a small table? Curtains? A rack where I hang my belts? What the fuck is with the interrogation?" An irritated click of a tongue follows.

"It's not— Jeez!" Ichigo takes a deep breath, releasing the tension in his back with the subsequent exhale. "About what happened downstairs, are you okay?"

"Yeah." comes the curt reply, too quick.  Ichigo tenses a little. "Not used to so many lights," Grimmjow says after a pause, clicking his tongue and hunching his shoulders. "Why the fuck were they blinking like that?"

A rush of warmth washes over Ichigo at the way Grimmjow scrunches up his nose slightly when he speaks, at his guarded stance, tension clear in the line of his jaw in the shimmering light. Grimmjow isn't used to this, to any of this. Bright lights and the smell of hot chocolate and loud laughter. Of course, he's overwhelmed. And he doesn't know how to express that.

"You don't have to go back downstairs if you're uncomfortable. You— uh, we," Ichigo busies himself with folding the duvet, "We can stay here."

Grimmjow doesn't say anything in reply.

Ichigo presses the approximate center of the longer edge of the duvet between chin and chest, hands bringing the corners together.

"I don't really like all the light either." He begins speaking because it feels like the right thing to do, because it feels like too much is bubbling inside his chest and because it feels safe, comfortable, here in the small space of his room, illuminated by the ethereal light.

"I used to really love Christmas, you know, when I was a kid. Loved all the lights. Can't stand them anymore." Ichigo smiles softly to himself. It feels weird, saying this out loud. It feels like he's admitting something long due. There's a dull throb in his heart. When he looks up, Grimmjow is staring at him, an eyebrow slightly raised in expectant silence.

"Me and my sisters used to make little snowmen, and give them Christmas hats to wear. And when we came in, frozen cold to the bone and laughing, mom would wrap us in one big blanket and make hot chocolate for us. With—" Ichigo pauses to swallow the sudden heaviness in his throat, "marshmallows floating on top."

"What happened?" Grimmjow's voice is barely a whisper in the dark, and Ichigo almost doesn't recognize it. He sounds very different, without the subtext of murder that's present almost always when they fight, without the sarcasm, or the annoyance.

Ichigo drops the folded duvet at the foot of the bed. "Mom died when I was nine."

For a while, there's silence. Ichigo breathes.

"Why do you do it then," Grimmjow asks, slow, "if it hurts you so much?"

Ichigo whips his head up to look at Grimmjow, eyes wide and Grimmjow looks right back at him, the depth of his blue eyes unwavering.

A heartbeat drops.

"For the sake of my family, for the sake of my sisters. They're so happy, you saw them." Ichigo says, "I'd do anything to protect their happiness."

"Is that how it works," Grimmjow asks, and for a fleeting second, he looks like he's reaching for something that he can't quite grasp, he looks vulnerable, he looks so beautiful, "Does love make it hurt less?"

Ichigo's head swims. "Yes, yes it does." He near-whispers, looking down at the plain white of his bedsheet, magnificent in the soft light. He can feel Grimmjow standing right next to him, close, so close.

Closer than the time Grimmjow punched him into the asphalt the night they met. Closer than the time Ichigo fired his first Getsuga Tensō at him with his hollow mask on. Closer than the time Ichigo held his hand to stop him from certain death, back in Hueco Mundo. Closer than the time Grimmjow nearly pounced on him with an unsheathed blade the first time they met after all those years. Closer than all the times they sit quietly next to each other in the healing hot spring.

Ichigo wants to turn around and see what his face looks like from so close, wonders if Grimmjow would hold his hand if he touched Grimmjow's fingers with his own.

He feels a flicker of movement in his fingers.

Suddenly, the silence breaks.

"I need to leave." Grimmjow says, like he's speaking around a mouthful of glass.

The air between them shatters like gunshot to glass, and Ichigo feels like someone has punched him square in the guts. It's strange, Ichigo thinks distantly, how neither of them has moved an inch but how there's an acute unfathomable distance between him and Grimmjow all of a sudden, and Ichigo feels his head reel with the sudden drastic acceleration of motion. Only a confused "Huh?" makes it out of his mouth.

"I said, I fuckin' need to leave." Grimmjow bites out.

"I don't get it," Ichigo sounds the words out slowly, it feels like he's falling. It's not harmless, he's not breathing. "Is there a problem?"

"I don't owe you anything." Grimmjow says, suddenly vicious. "You let me in and I worked to earn my stay, I leave on my own damn terms."

Is he…Is Grimmjow so uncomfortable? Was he so wrong in his estimations of Grimmjow, then? Perhaps he's freaked out by the shenanigans of his family downstairs? Tired of being here, with him? Are the sounds too loud, lights too bright? Does he feel unwelcome? It can be solved, Ichigo tells himself, yes, it can, he will solve it.

He reaches out blindly and grabs Grimmjow's wrist and feels his entire body stiffen. "Stay," he says, as firmly as he can manage and a little desperation bleeds through, "Stay, Grimmjow. No one should be alone on Christmas Eve."

Grimmjow stares back at Ichigo, lips drawn into a tight line across his face and eyes alight with a fire smoldering beneath the azure and then he lowers his gaze. He clicks his tongue like he's itching to spit something in his mouth out and frees his hand with a rough jerk. Ichigo's hand stays frozen in space, the sudden loss of contact feels like someone peeled the skin right off his palms.

"I'm not a fuckin' charity case, Kurosaki. Never asked for your fuckin' pity." Grimmjow spits out at Ichigo's face, "You haven't done me any bloody favor by letting me stay." Ichigo sees red.

"You think it was pity?" he snaps, yells out and his voice breaks from the strain. "You think my sisters let you in the house and offered you breakfast out of fucking pity? You think you need to work and earn your stay when you're under this roof? And if you do—" A vein throbs painfully in his temple and his nails dig into the prominences of his palm, "If you do think that, why the fuck did you agree to anything at all? Why the fuck did you sit with them in the evening, helping them out when you didn't need to? Why the fuck did you come here, Grimmjow?"

"Because I had nowhere else to go!" Grimmjow thunders back.

"I would've fuckin' blown the entire damn town into oblivion if I had to stay at that madhouse for one more minute in the morning, you hear me? So I took the dumb package, came here and your soft little sisters downstairs saved me the humiliation of having to ask for shelter!"

Ichigo moves his mouth but no sound comes out.

"Energy readings in Hueco Mundo are so fucking unstable that opening Gargantas have been restricted to one specific time of the day. And that time," Grimmjow seethes, his voice like bubbling acid. "is now."

"I just needed somewhere to stay till I could leave. Why the fuck else do you think I'd come here?" Grimmjow spits out.

Distantly, Ichigo remembers a warm fist bump. The smell of cookies. A victorious grin. The soft pressure of a thumb against lip. 

Grimmjow rages, relentless.

"Because I'd want to spend a day baking and putting up stupid little lights with you? Because I'd want to wear dumb fucking aprons that smell like you? Because I'd want to realize that I don't hate all this warmth like I'm fucking supposed to?"

Ichigo feels his breath hitch, feels like he can't breathe because the air around him feels too thin all of a sudden.

Grimmjow stops, breathing harsh and ragged. His voice drops deeper than it usually is, gravelly and broken. "I'm leaving." He pants, but still doesn't move.

"I don't," Ichigo says, even though he's not sure what he wants to say or how he wants to say it, the tremble in his fisted hands rising dangerously close to his vocal chords, "I don't want you to go back to a cold, empty room in the midst of a godforsaken desert tonight, Grimmjow."

"And then? What happens tomorrow? Day after?" Grimmjow surges up, fingers balling into fists at the front of Ichigo's cardigan and teeth bared in a snarl.

There's an answer ready at the tip of his tongue, heavy in his mouth, but he doesn't have the power to summon the words. Stay, stay with me. The answer manifests itself in his mind as if it's always been there, right from the day he's laid his eyes on and crossed blades with Grimmjow. It sounds so simple when he says it over and over in his mind. Stay with me, you can stay with me, can't you stay with me.

He clenches his jaw hard, lest anything slips out from his mouth, clenches his jaw till he hears his ears ringing from the force of it. It works. He just needs to ground himself. Get a grip. What the hell is he thinking? Grimmjow will laugh in his face and probably punch his nose in. It's all going fast, too fast and he can't breathe.

Ichigo feels his entire body, taut and shaking with tension go limp, and the only thing that holds him up is Grimmjow's unyielding grip on the front of his shirt. Grimmjow jerks his hands once and lets go, and Ichigo's body keeps standing even though he feels like he can't for a second more.

"See? You don't have a fucking answer." Grimmjow says, his voice laced with a wry victoriousness, and Ichigo has never heard him sound so defeated.

"Gonna call me over for breakfast everyday? Hah!" He scoffs, jerking his head to the side, sharp canine glinting in the soft light. "Don't make me laugh, shinigami."

It comes like a stab to the heart. Ichigo flinches, and whips his head up, an overwhelming tightness wrapping itself around his throat. "Grimmjow, what—"

Grimmjow doesn't pause. He makes a face like he's swallowing something bitter and cuts right through Ichigo's exclamation. "What will Soul Society say, when everyone's favorite golden boy gets too buddy buddy with an Arrancar?"

"Don't bring Soul Society into this! Don't you fucking dare!" Ichigo shouts before he can catch himself. "This is my fucking life!"

"Think your sisters will rain their graciousness on me again if they get to know what we do to each other? What I do to you? Don't think one day of baking fuckin' cookies changes shit!" Grimmjow roars. "I'm a Hollow and you're a Shinigami, we fight and we draw blood!"

"Shut up! Shut the fuck up!" Blind rage seethes in Ichigo's chest. All of what he's been saying so far, has nothing got through? All of today, has it meant nothing to Grimmjow at all? Or maybe Grimmjow is right, a voice creeps up in the back of his mind, maybe he's the idiot, he's the fool for having thought any of this means anything. The shame only adds to the viscosity bubbling in his chest. "You've just been saying whatever the hell you bloody please! Just shut up!"

Grimmjow, seemingly taken aback by the sudden outburst, falls quiet. "You do this every single fucking time! This is the bloody problem with you, do you see? Why the hell do you have to make every single thing so complicated?" He yells, squeezing his eyes shut with the force of it, a hand shooting up to grip the collar of Grimmjow's jacket, and when he opens his eyes, he meets Grimmjow's eyes head-on, "Where, where the fuck did I go wrong?"

"Yes. Hate me, Kurosaki. That's how you should look at me. Do what you're supposed to." Grimmjow bites out, terse and dry and terribly empty without the usual entertainment he seems to reap from this line, without the accompanying smirk of evident amusement.

"I will fucking not! You don't get to tell me what I do and what I don't!" 

"Why the fuck do you not know when to give up?" Grimmjow yells back, a pitch louder, bringing a hand up to grip Ichigo's wrist, in an attempt to pry his fist off his jacket. "Why the fuck are you getting so worked up over where I spend my night?" 

"Because I'm in love with you!"

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

Silence.

There's silence.

Acute. Stifling. Deafening. Like the dark heaviness of water surrounding him. Like the calm before a mushroom cloud. Ichigo suddenly has a lot of words and no voice.

Does Grimmjow wrench his jacket free from his grip? Or do his fingers fall loose? Ichigo can't hear anything.

His eyes catch movement.

Grimmjow steps on the windowsill and in the next breath, he's gone.

The silence becomes hollow. The silence screams. Ichigo can't hear anything.

For a long while, he doesn't move. He stands still, very still, doesn't even dare to breathe as he stares unblinking into the space in front of him, suddenly empty. Suddenly very empty. A vacuum with a devastatingly familiar outline, the anatomy of every curve and rise and dip etched in his brain.

In the soft lights, everything seems too unreal.

There's a gasp and Ichigo's lungs kickstart back into breathing. Then, the hyperventilation. The light-headedness that comes with it. Vision blurring at the edges. When he lifts his hand, limp and lifeless and pale, he notices his fingers are trembling.

What the fuck has he done. What the fuck has he just done.

Despair brings out the best in you, he remembers, as he has seen, as he has been told.

Despair hurts, as he knows, before and during and after.

Ichigo tries to take a step. His knee buckles and his hand grips the chair in a reflex.

He ruined it. He ruined it, didn't he? The soft magic moment when he was standing closer to Grimmjow than he ever had. Than he ever would. What could he have, what else could he have stolen while Grimmjow wasn't looking, Ichigo wonders, if he hadn't just ruined everything by saying it out loud.

Ichigo doesn't try to decipher his feelings. He doesn't try to separate rage from sorrow from grief from despair from emptiness.

They're all the same, King, his hollows tells him once. Deep down, Ichigo knows he's right.

He doesn't have the time, the next battle calls, a few steps away.

He walks out of his room, comes down the stairs, his steps heavy. He tries to lift his head up, get the smile back, somehow. He can't go into the living room looking like this, can't infect his family's cheer with his own fucked up feelings. Yuzu and Karin are so happy.

He balls his fingers into fists and tries to will away the residue of the warmth still festering on his hand.

The lines are too thin and he knows he isn't good with delicate, intricate things like that.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

The lights in the living room are too bright.

Isshin is fiddling with the remote of the cassette player, Yuzu is standing at the sink, and Karin sets the table for dinner. Five plates. She sets five plates.

Ichigo feels slightly sick.

"Karin, Yuzu," he hears himself say, "Grimmjow won't be staying for dinner."

Karin sets down the fifth plate very firmly. It makes a clattering sound against the table.

Isshin looks up from the remote and turns his head towards the poster hanging bright and pretty on the wall, and declares, "Sweetheart, we have raised a complete idiot. An absolute buffoon. An utter moron."

He casts a quick glance at Ichigo out of the corner of his eyes and says, as if he's replying, "Of course, honey, I'm talking about our son, our dear first-born."

"Our dumbass brother," Karin snorts from the table.

"Dad, Karin-chan!" Yuzu reprimands, "Don't say it like that!"

Ichigo looks between the three of them and genuinely forgets about whatever he's feeling as the dumbfoundedness takes the wheel.

Before the voice in his head can sneer this is what you deserve, Karin speaks over it. "How much more dense can you get, Ichi-nii?" Karin sighs, shaking her head.

Ichigo stares.

"Onii-chan, the roast's going to get cold if you're late!" Yuzu complains. Isshin pats the remote on the back. "You heard what your sisters said."

Ichigo isn't sure if he's quite on the same page as the rest of his family. "Late…? Why would I be—?" He looks at Isshin. "Dad, I'm not sure I understand."

Isshin heaves a sigh and drops the remote on the couch. "Okay, let's try another way. I, as the esteemed head of the family—" Karin snorts, and Isshin's chest deflates just a little, "— hereby order Grimmjow to be present at our family Christmas dinner."

"I really want Grimmjow-san to try my shortcake!" Yuzu says, bright eyes shining with hope as she looks at Ichigo.

Ichigo's heart takes a straight dive to the stomach. How he ruined everything by saying it out loud. I'm sorry, he says in his mind, Yuzu, Karin.

"Yuzu," he says out aloud, and by some divine grace his voice is marvelously steady, "I'm afraid he won't be able to make it. Something," —keep speaking keep speaking don't pause— "came up and he had to—"

"Leave?" Isshin cuts through, his grey eyes sharp.

Ichigo doesn't even get the time to take a breath. Isshin near-roars, "And you're just going to let him go? Do you hear yourself, young man?"

Ichigo hears that. He can almost trace the path by which it travels from his eardrum to the brain and he feels the response coming from the higher centers, manifesting itself as a sharp inhale and eyes open impossibly wide.

It takes him a second. When he meets Isshin's eyes next, they're twinkling with a suppressed smile.

"I see that you understand." He comments, picking the remote back up again. 

Ichigo hesitates. Yuzu didn't want him to leave the house today. "Well?" Isshin raises an eyebrow.

"Onii-chan," Yuzu pulls off an astonishingly world-weary tone, "I agree with Karin-chan a little. You might just be a bit of a dumbass. This is important to you, isn't it?"

It is. It is. It is. Ichigo smiles at Yuzu, and this one doesn't feel forced.

"Go after him! Get him back!"

Ichigo throws the front door open and doesn't look back.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

The cold air of the night bites into his skin, almost slicing his cheeks open as he steps from the terrace of one building to another.

Yuzu went so far to ensure he wouldn't have to leave the house today. Ichigo is absolutely determined to not go into spirit form for as long as he can help it. He accelerates on spirit particles gathered beneath his feet, pushing down so they push him back up with twice the force.

While moving forward between the dark rooftops, Ichigo dials the number of the shōten.

The call connects.

"Have some eggnog with your rum, Yoruichi-san!" Ichigo hears Urahara's voice say, before Tessai's deep voice greets him. "Good evening, Kurosaki-dono. How may—"

"Tessai-san," Ichigo cuts through. "Is Grimmjow there?"

"I'm afraid, Kurosaki-dono, but Grimmjow-dono is not present— my word, Tenchou!"

"If it isn't Kurosaki-saaan!" Urahara's cheerful and slightly slurred voice hijacks the call. "My heartiest greetings of the season to you and your family!"

Grimmjow isn't there. Grimmjow isn't at Urahara-san's. Has he really—

"Is something the matter, Kurosaki-san? Your voice seems to be lacking in appropriate christmas cheer!"

"Ah, Ichigo! Come over here, boy!" Yoruichi yells over Urahara. A buzzed-at-best Urahara is no match for a completely wasted Yoruichi. "We have plenty of Christmas cheer -hic- right with us!"

Ichigo shudders and his foot almost misses the next ledge. He faced Aizen with three months in the dangai, facing a drunk Yoruichi would take thrice that amount of training. Hard pass.

"Urahara-san," Ichigo gathers himself, "Do you know where Grimmjow is?"

"Grimmjow?" Ichigo can hear the characteristic blink. "Well, he had a minor scuffle with Tessai-san in the morning, whereupon he upset two entire stalls of—

"Urahara-san!"

"Yes, yes! If I recall correctly, he said, in much more impolite language, that he was going back to Hueco Mundo after he completed today's deliveries." 

"He didn't." Ichigo blindly jumps from the railing of a terrace, accelerating midway and gaining his foothold on the air now. "He was at my house until just now."

There's a squeal, it's hard to tell whose, then there's a lot of noise, a shuffling sound like something is covering the speaker. Hushed voices in the background. Ichigo catches bits and pieces. Yoruichi-san—, did they really—, oh I hope to Christ—

"Urahara-san? Urahara-san? Are you th—"

The sound becomes clear again. "Of course I am! Kurosaki-san, are you going to ask me to open a Garganta?"

Ichigo opens his mouth but can't think of anything to say.

"Let me give you some advice, Kurosaki-san." A faint shadow of seriousness appears alongside the slight slur. "If one is looking for something one really wants to find, it is always wise to start looking at one's home."

The line goes dead. Ichigo falters in his pace for a brief second. 

The city beneath his feet shines with lights, bustles with life. Bright and festive. Sidewalks adorned with decorations. Children running ahead of their parents, teens making merry with their friends, couples holding hands.

Ichigo doesn't go near the lights. He skims through the hill behind the high school, the abandoned soccer field, the local cemetery, even, but Grimmjow isn't anywhere.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——

Ichigo doesn't give up.

He does something that he has never done before voluntarily, he retreats. Grimmjow isn't anywhere, which means Grimmjow has gone back to Hueco Mundo, which means, there's no getting him back tonight. Opening a Garganta is out of the question, and besides, Yuzu and Karin have been so enthusiastic about everything, planning about this day from weeks beforehand, and he's already done enough harm, been too selfish. He needs to get himself back to them. 

What the fuck are you gonna do? His mind says. Shut the fuck up, Ichigo returns.

He doesn't realize when he travels all the way back, and suddenly he's in front of their house. He drags his feet to the front of the door, and stops, before his fingers touch the knob. So much for all the counseling. Remove the extra chair and forgive your brother, Yuzu, Karin, he's let you down once again.

The metal gate jingles behind him. There are footsteps, light and rustling on the paved entrance.

Ichigo's heart leaps up into his throat.

The reiatsu behind him crackles unmistakably azure.

Maybe one of these days he'll take Byakuya up on that think before you act agenda he goes on about, Ichigo thinks. It's strange how in all these years of fighting, that sentence had served him no other purpose than to pass smoothly through his skull, and now it comes to him in a moment of golden epiphany— sodden timing, given that he wasn't even in a fight— that he really should have thought things through before he set out, because now Grimmjow is here, standing in poignant silence behind him and he doesn't have the slightest goddamn clue as to what he should say or do. He found him, and now what? 

Maybe he should've started the thinking a little earlier, before he was screaming out his own messed up feelings. Or earlier still, before he started thinking that any of this could've meant something more—

"You can go in, they're all waiting for you." Ichigo says, keeps his head low and his voice stable. "I'll stay upstairs."

Silence.

Ichigo drives his nails deeper into the heels of his palm until his heartbeats thundering against his eardrum become an afterthought.

"Still gonna let me back in?" Grimmjow murmurs. The lights outside are brighter, brighter than it was in his room, every house in the neighborhood draped in decorations, bright and shining.

Ichigo doesn't try to think of reasons why Grimmjow could possibly have come back. His voice doesn't sound like he wants to slice Ichigo open. Maybe he hadn't left at all, maybe he was too late to open a Garganta. Maybe Ichigo should give up on the analysis. 

"Like I said." He closes his eyes and forcefully exhales the dead weight of air in his lungs. "I'll stay upstairs, you won't have to see me, don't wo—"

Ichigo is cut off by the sudden surge of reiatsu. For one moment, unbridled panic sears through his chest and it takes a dropped heartbeat to remind himself that Grimmjow would never, ever attack like this, not from behind. The swirling reiatsu descends slowly upon him, around him, envelops him from all sides like a warm comforter and suddenly Ichigo realizes, he was so cold.

It feels like a warm hug.

"But I want to." Grimmjow says, a little breathless. "I want to see your stupid face."

A strong hand grips Ichigo's wrist— too tight, nails digging into the thin fabric of his cardigan— and pulls. Before Ichigo's brain processes what's happening, the torque of the force turns him around and the next thing he knows is Grimmjow's face is buried into the crook of his neck, the solid warmth of Grimmjow's body pressed flush against his own.

Ichigo doesn't know what to do with his hands and his heart, the absolute fucker, suddenly goes so quiet that Ichigo wonders if it could seriously have gone into an arrest.

"Dumbass," Grimmjow's voice washes over the sensitive skin on his neck. "You're shivering. Couldn't you have put on warmer stuff before you went out looking for me?"

For the n-th time, Ichigo's brain shows a blaring computation error and then gives up altogether. 

He feels his neck strain uncomfortably as he leans it up as much as he can to rest it on Grimmjow's shoulder. He never would've thought the few centimeters would make this much of a difference, in this sense at least. Well, fuck. Heat rises sharply to his cheeks, and some probably spills over to his eyes too because they begin to sting.

Grimmjow repeats, soft and disbelieving, not a question this time. "You went out looking for me." He says it like it's the craziest thing he could ever imagine. "Why the fuck? Nobody does. Nobody should."

Ichigo barely realizes when his hands come up to grasp the back of Grimmjow's jacket. Like an answer he didn't know he was looking for, the circle of Grimmjow's arms tightens around his torso and a cold nose presses further into his shoulder.

"Grimmjow—"

"I fucked up big time," Grimmjow pauses to swallow. The effort it's taking for him to speak is evident in the muscles taut beneath Ichigo's palm. "I was a coward and an asshole. Shouldn't have belted out."

"It's okay," Ichigo all but chokes out. "I probably freaked you out. It's okay if you don't want—"

"If you don't want?" Grimmjow pulls back and leaves warmth in his shape against and inside Ichigo's chest. Blue eyes stare at him incredulously, and Grimmjow stresses, a pitch higher, "If you don't want? All I ever do," he pushes the words out of his mouth like they're burning charcoals, "is want."

Quiet flows time. The world swings around, the sky spins, the trees go hush, hush the mountain sings—

What a terrible fucking cliché, Ichigo's brain supplies, but the rest drowns beneath the soft, warm pressure of a mouth against his.

Grimmjow pulls back, heartbeats trembling in the air between, and pants softly, each rush of warm breath coloring Ichigo's lips and then dissipating in puffs of translucent mist.

Kiss. It was a kiss. Grimmjow just kissed him. Ichigo swallows a lump in his throat. It's so dry it hurts.

"Want and long after things I don't understand, things I can never have. Stupid soft little humans calling me to breakfast, sitting on the floor and sorting out knots on a bloody string for no good reason and the dumbest fucking dipshit alive telling me to stay."

"And this… This isn't easy for me. I've never— Not like this."

Ichigo brings up a hand to rub circles on the broad back, hunched slightly to meet the embrace. His voice wavers a little more than he would've liked it to. "Hey, don't sweat it. It's absolutely f—"

"I'll fucking gut you." Grimmjow growls against his back, trying to sound as menacing as he possibly could with both his hands tightly fisted in Ichigo's cardigan. "You shut up and lemme finish this, fuck."

Ichigo falls quiet on a sharp inhale. Warmth bubbles in his chest.

"I actually— didn't even remember that I was supposed to leave. It's only when… When you were standing right next to me, like another thing I wasn't supposed to have, another thing I was about to lose, that I remembered. So I wanted to leave before I lost the day." Grimmjow pauses, Ichigo feels the movement of his throat against his shoulder as he swallows. "Pantera would kill me in my sleep if I turned my back—" he's very nearly panting at this point, "if I turned my back because I heard something I've wanted to hear for, for so long."

Ichigo blinks, once, twice. A jammed cogwheel slowly starts turning. "You've— you've wanted to? What—", his whispers, weak and unsteady, "What do you mean?"

Grimmjow pulls back and stops just short of letting go. He raises his brows to the middle of his forehead, and stares at Ichigo in confusion, like Ichigo's just sprouted antlers from his forehead. "What do I mean? What do you think? I just fucking kissed you, dumbfuck."

Familiarity is an anchor. Ichigo breathes a lungful of air, doesn't care if it freezes everything inside, and when he exhales, he starts laughing.

He pushes his face into Grimmjow's shoulder, as far as it yields, and laughs, softly, pressing the cold tip of his nose into the fabric of the jacket, warm from the heat of Grimmjow's skin, and feels the cloth shift beneath his cheeks. Grimmjow's arms around him are overwhelmingly tender and simultaneously bone-crushing.

He laughs until his face is burning hot and his cheeks start to hurt. When he pulls back, Grimmjow looks fairly concerned. "You okay in there, Kurosaki?"

"We're both kinda dumb, aren't we?" Ichigo says.

Grimmjow immediately shoots back, "Speak for yourself, Kurosaki, don't lump me in with single-celled organisms like you." His cheeks betray him.

Ichigo slides his arms around Grimmjow's waist, hikes him even closer. Grimmjow makes a faint sound of annoyance, but doesn't resist in the least, suddenly very interested in the wreath on the front door.

Ichigo never thinks too far ahead, and he doesn't now, because all that matters is already in his arms. He follows Grimmjow's gaze. "We should probably head—"

"What is happening," Grimmjow exclaims in sudden alarm. "What's that white stuff falling from the sky?"

Ichigo almost doesn't believe his eyes when he sees the first few flakes of white descend earthward, riding on the breeze.

It's snowing.

They're going to have a white Christmas after many, many years. And, Ichigo realizes with immense delight, this is Grimmjow's first time seeing snow.

Grimmjow looks skywards, face upturned and eyes wide and mouth slightly open, and Ichigo can't look away, can't tear his eyes off the wonder that shines in Grimmjow's eyes as he witnesses his first snowfall.

Ichigo knows in his bones that Grimmjow will look down after a while and will click his tongue and pull an extremely unimpressed look, probably huff and say Huh, that's snow? Big deal. Ichigo laughs when Grimmjow does just that, and warmth blooms beneath his skin. It should be cold, but it isn't.

"What the fuck are you laughing for?" Grimmjow snits.

"Absolutely nothing," Ichigo says, most untruthfully. "Any chance of you letting my arms go so I can brush it off your hair?"

"Shut up." Grimmjow grumbles distractedly, before his curiosity gets the better of him and he sticks his tongue out. Adorable, Ichigo thinks, fond. Before long, a downy white flake lands on the surface, and like a wisp of cotton-candy, melts. Grimmjow pulls a face and Ichigo laughs. "Well? How is it?"

Grimmjow smacks his tongue against his palate and it makes a sharp lapping sound. "Cold." he says, "Tongue feels numb."

Ichigo doesn't wait to hear the rest of it. His fingers slide in at the short hair of Grimmjow's nape and an orchestra of things happen at once— Ichigo standing up slightly on his toes and Grimmjow's head angling down, pliant and eager, eyes falling shut as the kiss meets halfway.

The movement is familiar, it's like the rhythm in their battles, perfectly in synchrony, a mesmerizing push and pull. At some point, Grimmjow raises a hand to cup Ichigo's cheek. Ichigo breaks apart for a fraction of a second to surge forward again, and Grimmjow reciprocates. He tastes sweet, and soft, Ichigo registers dimly in the back of his mind, like a marshmallow, right before he loses all conscious thought as Grimmjow makes a soft sound in his throat and opens his mouth further. 

"Tongue still numb?" Ichigo pants when they finally part, grinning as he looks up and azure eyes shimmer with an interesting heat, and the pink on the pale cheeks is most definitely not exclusively due to the cold, Ichigo thinks.

"You don't disappoint." Grimmjow grins back. He unwinds one arm from the embrace, and brushes a snowflake off Ichigo's eyebrow in a languid stroke of his thumb.

"We should probably head back in." Grimmjow says before Ichigo can blush. "Unless your idea of making snowmen is standing out here till we turn into them."

Ichigo laughs as he lets go, bumps his knuckles on the shoulder beside. Grimmjow catches the hand in a fluid swipe of his arm, holds it tight.

"I'm— We're home!" Ichigo says as he walks back in, snowflakes glistening on Grimmjow's collar and his own face conspicuously red.

He notices with utter horror that somehow, in the little time of their absence, the house seems to have sprung mistletoe from every conceivable corner from the front door to the dinner table, and multiple voices immediately fill in Grimmjow on the essence of the tradition and then immediately scatter outside Ichigo's field of vision and oh, Grimmjow kisses him under each one, seemingly very pleased and smug and grinning while Ichigo groans, tries to keep the red off his cheeks and his hands off Grimmjow's skin, but fails spectacularly in both. Ichigo pulls back with a groan when Isshin starts positively wailing from the dining room and judging by the squawk that follows, Ichigo is almost sure that Karin has choked him with a cushion.

The roast makes it out of the oven amidst the chaos and Yuzu beams as she places Grimmjow's plates beside Ichigo's. Isshin places a solid thump on Grimmjow's back and he doesn't immediately snap— Ichigo notes with analytical appreciation around his mouthful— only throws a knife with miraculous aim the second time Isshin attempts it. Isshin dodges, barely, and across the table, Karin cheers.

After about five minutes of the cheer going around the table, Ichigo feels a warm pressure on his thigh and realizes that it's Grimmjow's hand, but before the heat can rise to his cheeks, the grip tightens, almost to the point of pain. Ichigo reaches for the hand before he has time for conscious thought, intertwines their fingers under the tablecloth and squeezes.

He looks to his side, and when their eyes meet, Grimmjow squeezes his hand back in return, and it's endlessly warm.

Laughter hasn't been this easy in a long while now.

——-∘◦❅◦∘-——