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“This is fucking demoralising,” Grimmjow says the instant an arm slides beneath his thighs, bristling at the sight. He’s armoured up in the thick plates of his resurreccion so he can’t really feel it, but it’s still Kurosaki and he’s way too fucking close. “The tendons’ll heal on their own. Fuck off and leave me here.”
“I’m the one who cut through the back of your legs,” Kurosaki replies, like he isn’t exhausted to hell and back from the fight. He’s covered in blood and dirt, uniform shredded and torn up from his claws, but in true form he wears it well. Born warrior. If he wasn’t always so fucking concerned about his enemies, anyway. “C’mon, quit squirming. We’re on the fringe of the bunker, and I’m not gonna let you crawl back.”
“I’ll scratch your face off if you lift me one inch off this dirt.”
Kurosaki’s face scrunches up into some kind of scowl. Fucked if Grimmjow knows why he wants to help so bad, but he’s an arrancar with an arrancar’s sense of pride. Maybe he would crawl first. Thing is, Kurosaki has other ideas and the fucker isn’t bleeding out from two deep slashes to the back of his ankles. When he tries again to get his arms around Grimmjow’s bulk, claws almost take off the end of his nose. He leans back so fast he windmills and lands on his ass in the dirt next to him.
“Don’t be such an asshole. You’re not gonna get my shinigami germs on you.”
“Actually—”
“I’m not bleeding that much. Besides, I can see the meat inside your legs.”
“And?”
“And Yuzu is doing a roast tonight, so I want to get home before Dad takes the best bits. Quit being such a coward and let me cuddle your injured body for two minutes. If you’re worried about it being gay just keep your eyes shut. Think of Nel or something.”
That shit doesn’t even deserve a reply. But his legs are screaming with pain and there’s dirt inside the wounds, and even Grimmjow knows he isn’t going to magically heal up inside a few hours. He needs water and someone to poke all his important parts back inside his legs, at the very least. It just burns to see Kurosaki looking at him like he’s something weak. It’s always the same shit with them; they fight like a couple of assholes, but the moment Grimmjow gets hurt bad Kurosaki is right there in his fucking face, making cow eyes and trying to patch him up again.
Thing is, Kurosaki doesn’t do it to rub in his face later. He just does it, like it comes to him naturally to reach out and lend a hand.
To Grimmjow.
It’s fucking infuriating.
He’ll never admit it, but Grimmjow wonders often if one day he’ll simply stop. Take him at his word and leave him right there bleeding out in the dirt. For all his arguments and complaints, the thought is unsettling.
When Kurosaki tries a third time, rolling up on his knees and shuffling over, arms open like he’s coming in for a hug, all Grimmjow does is scowl and lean in the other direction. He can’t just give in.
“Finally,” Kurosaki mutters, fingers gripping the side of his ribs, arm like an iron bar under his knees. He gets in so close that Grimmjow can smell the sweat in his hair, the shell of his ear inches from Grimmjow’s sharp teeth. The urge to bite down and rip it off is unexpected, but the stink of blood is heavy in the air and yeah, maybe he’s still a little pissed it’s come to this.
The first haul of his weight into Kurosaki’s arms is startling; he goes rigid and almost punches him directly in his grimy face for the hell of it. Gritting his teeth, having no idea what to do with his hands, Grimmjow glares at the hand touching his legs and tries not to notice the heat pouring off Kurosaki’s skin. He’s always a fuckin’ furnace when they fight, hot to the touch on every claw swipe and kick, but he’d never felt it pressed up on his side like that before. Bizarrely, Grimmjow wonders if he must feel like ice by comparison.
Kurosaki hefts him more comfortably, bouncing him like he weighs nothing at all. Death would be preferable at this point. He’s going to be waking up at 3am in mortification at this exact moment for the rest of his fucking life. Grimmjow refuses to so much as grunt as Kurosaki exhales a cautious breath and starts trudging in the direction of the ladder in the sky. At least he’ll be able to climb it on arm strength alone. For a while there’s just the sound of footsteps and even breaths.
“It was a dirty move,” Kurosaki says eventually, sliding him a furtive glance. “You were flipping around too fast for me to grab you, and I got frustrated. I could’ve cut your feet off like that if I’d hit you any lower.” His mouth flattens into a line of pure tension. Grimmjow rolls his eyes.
“Who gives a shit? I don’t want you pulling your punches. Next week I’ll get you back for it like I always do. Remember last month? I’m pretty sure we both saw intestines.”
Kurosaki instantly scowls at the memory. “That wasn’t intestines, dickhead. You cut my sash with that swipe and took a chunk out of my stomach, but that’s it.”
“It was intestines.”
“It wasn’t intestines!”
He’s too easy. Snorting at the red-cheeked annoyance replacing the guilt on Kurosaki’s face, Grimmjow wriggles a little and pulls a finger out from the crook of his knee. It’s a weird grip he’s got, now that he’s looking properly. Almost like he’s trying not to touch him too much—trying not to grab his thigh, in fact. And Kurosaki thinks he’s the one worried about looking gay. As if he cares.
Annoyed that he noticed and even more annoyed at the deformed grip Kurosaki has on him, it takes nothing to pull his arm into the correct spot and slap his palm directly on the armoured muscle of his thigh. Kurosaki does some kind of full-body spasm at it and stares at him, brown eyes wide on the side of his face. Grimmjow snorts again.
“You’re shit at carrying people.”
Kurosaki doesn’t respond right away, but he does flex his hand a little. It doesn’t feel like anything. Even the heat of his hand doesn’t soak through. The idea of sealing his form again briefly surfaces, but he doesn’t want to fuck with his legs and Kurosaki would probably have a heart attack and die anyway. Fucking hand on his knee. Idiot.
Realising he’s pissed off that Kurosaki isn’t cuddling like he said he was going to, Grimmjow files that one in the mental archive of uncomfortable truths and wonders exactly when he decided to be offended that Kurosaki doesn’t want to touch him much.
The rest of the short journey is silent. Grimmjow, pissed off at the world and seething over stupid revelations, refuses to even look away from his own useless legs. The hand on his side is just numb pressure, same as the rail of the arm across his back. His tail is dragging in the dirt. Feeling irritated and petty, he does nothing to help the asshole when they reach the ladder. Kurosaki looks up the endless metal length with stubborn determination, then at Grimmjow.
“You’ll have to ride on my back.”
Like hell, Grimmjow almost says. Instead, his brain provides him a series of quick images of exactly what that would entail, and the idea of making Kurosaki deeply uncomfortable by sandwiching him between the thighs he absolutely did not want to touch breeds gleeful malice.
“Whatever,” he says instead. “But I can’t stand like normal so my feet are gonna look all fucked up, so keep your eyes to yourself.”
Kurosaki seems to flinch a little at that. Idiot is still feeling guilty, probably.
“I don’t want to make it worse. Can you change back to normal real quick?”
“Normal? Fuck you.”
“You know what I mean!”
Grimmjow does know what he means, but he’s not going to do it on principle now. Kurosaki isn’t stupid; he realises that almost immediately and curses an interesting streak, muttering under his breath as he dips and lets his hand slide away from under Grimmjow’s injured legs.
“Hey, you really can see the meat,” Grimmjow comments, right before he’s forced to take his own weight. Feet that have only ever walked on tiptoe are forced into a grotesque flat-footed stance that makes his black-furred feet look alien and malformed to his eyes. Oddly, his stomach churns from something other than the pain. His feet weren’t supposed to look like that. Under the pressure of all his body weight, a short spurt of dark red blood wets the dirt around him. Grabbing a rung of the ladder, Grimmjow does his best to take some of the weight off.
“That’s not right,” Kurosaki breathes, his eyes fixed on the new angle of his feet. “Look, I’m really—no, shit, okay. I’m just going to back up into you, okay? I’ll get you up on my back and then you can just kind of pincer me with your legs, right? Because I won’t be able to hold onto you.”
Having Kurosaki take his swords off and reverse his ass straight toward Grimmjow’s crotch is briefly hilarious, and for a moment he forgets the state of his feet and the blood loss just to push him away and make him do it again. And again. In keeping with his current trend, Grimmjow lets him in close on the third try, bearing down on his shoulder with a clawed hand while Kurosaki grabs him beneath each thigh and hauls him up onto his back, which takes the bulky weight of his released form with insulting ease. Yeah, he’s a damn strong shinigami.
“Try not to crush me with your monster thighs,” Kurosaki says casually as they get settled, and Grimmjow’s breath stops in his throat for an instant. “But you can hang on pretty tight if you want. Put your hands wherever you want. Just don’t fall off.”
He takes off up the ladder without any other warning, slow and steady, hand over hand like there isn’t a whole other weight load dragging him down. Fucker probably has strength reserves even after fighting it out for hours. Apart from the legs, Grimmjow is littered with cuts and bruises where his armour couldn’t protect him, but Kurosaki is all skin and cloth. He’d taken more hits than Grimmjow had, for sure. And he can still scale a ladder like it’s nothing.
They’re halfway up when Grimmjow says it.
“You think this form is ugly, huh? Saying stuff like normal and monster, trying not to touch it.”
Kurosaki’s hand misses the next rung, and Grimmjow reaches over his shoulder and grabs it for him. He corrects his fumble quickly, trying to pull his head back enough to glare with focus. He doesn’t quite manage it.
“That’s a load of crap! Just because I don’t know what to call it doesn’t make me a cat racist.”
“Monster thighs?”
“They are! You could crack me like a walnut with them. Your legs are my biggest fucking enemy, and all your power’s locked in your thighs.” He actually sounds sulky about it, which Grimmjow thinks is fucking fascinating.
“You like my legs?”
“I hate your legs. They’re fifty feet long and they bend all over. I have a fucking grudge against your legs.”
“You like my legs.” When Kurosaki makes an annoyed sound and keeps climbing, Grimmjow squeezes them a little harder around his waist. He wishes he could feel the heat coming off his skin, but the slight give in his muscles would just have to do. “Maybe you got a little crush on them.”
“Fuck off.”
“Cat racist.”
“I’m not a fucking—”
“And I’m not a cat, and I’m not pissed at you for crippling me, and you’re getting all tangled up over nothing, dipshit. Fucking hell, Kurosaki, you landed a good hit. You’re getting better with every battle. I need to up my game.”
“No, you don’t. Your reach is insane. It’s two swords against none and I’m desperate as hell every time we fight. Why do you think I lost my temper today?”
“You did take a fucking excellent round of my garra de la pantera to the face right before you hit me.”
“Elbow rockets aside, I mean. I’m fast and I’m strong but I’m not naturally agile like you. What the hell am I without my swords? And then I went and fucked you up. Of course I’m going to carry you back and make sure you’re okay. The whole thing was on me.”
It just figures that Kurosaki would have a stupid guilt spiral instead of telling Grimmjow what he wants to hear: he’s jealous. But he hears it anyway, tucked under a thick layer of self pity that Grimmjow chooses to steadfastly ignore. He’s just handed out some prime compliments and the asshole isn’t even blushing about it. Fuck him.
“You can clean out my wounds when we’re topside,” Grimmjow says, and bumps his crown piece of mask against Kurosaki’s stupidly hard skull. “Dumbass.”
It’s nice to feel the quick intake of a surprised breath. It swells sharply against Grimmjow’s chest.
“I can do that. I’m no Yuzu or anything, but yeah, totally. It’ll be easier if you change back into your…other…form for it though.”
“You were going to say human then. I could feel it. You’re a fuckin’ disaster, shinigami.”
Kurosaki laughs. “You haven’t called me that for a long time, arrancar. But you could probably call me Ichigo since you’re riding me like a horse right now. Zangetsu is jealous as hell about it.”
“Your zanpakutou can suck my cat monster dick. Nobody gets to ride you but me.”
“Can you never say that again?”
“Which part?”
“Cat monster dick, specifically.” The heavy implication that he can say the other part is damn interesting, and the red stain on Kurosaki’s cheeks says he knows Grimmjow picked up on it. He waits for the embarrassed clarification and flustered insults to fly, but they never come.
Huh.
Maybe Kurosaki had been an awkward fuck before because he does want to touch his legs.
Sick bastard.
Grimmjow is definitely going to let him.